Eating out : Good service is as important as good food

I was battling through mentally and physically draining peak time traffic in Colombo trying to reach home after an equally grueling day at work. As I was passing one of our favorite take away joints, it just dawned on me that I was supposed to bring home dinner tonight. I had passed the turnoff and I was in no mood to make a U turn in this heavy traffic. Briefly thought about calling for a pizza but quickly dismissed the idea after remembering that I was supposed keep fast food away from the kids as much as possible.

That meant only one thing, eating out. After a quick call to one of my good buddies in the restaurant business, I decided to take the family to Bayleaf.

We reached Gregory’s road around 8pm. There was an unusually cool breeze and a slight threat of rain. We chose the verandah to enjoy the breeze. Mercifully the place was sparsely occupied. And the diners were well behaved and didn’t talk loudly.

The kids chose pizza after all – well, at least it was gourmet. I chose the seafood ravioli and my wife, bacon spinach fettuccini. Kids finished their meals without us having to make a fuss – the pizza must have been pretty good. I haven’t had ravioli in years and quite enjoyed it. My wife loved her fresh fettuccini too. All in all, the food was good.

What really made an impression on us was the service. We ordered a few drinks. The strawberry margarita was garnished with a large fresh strawberry. Both my kids love strawberries and had to grudging share it.

Few minutes later, to our pleasant surprise, the waiter brought a couple of large strawberries for the two kids – on the house. That thoughtful gesture made our evening and will be remembered I’m sure.

We left Bayleaf quite satisfied and wanting to come back just as a light drizzle started to come down.

(C)orporate (S)ocial (R)esponsibility

CSR has been a buzz-word (or a buzz-acronym) in the last few years in such that it had become almost fashionable to be able to belong to one. Despite it being unceremoniously brandished about, it is serious business – or at least it should be. Anyone who has gotten involved with a proper CSR effort would know how effective it can be as a tool in contributing to the society in a multitude of ways.

While the company I work for has done quite a bit of CSR projects in the past few years, my first hands-on involvement was in February. We travelled to Oddusunde (in Wanni region) and helped build 51 houses in a village that was decimated by war few years back. While most of it was hard and backbreaking labour, it was nothing compared to troubles those villagers have gone through during the war, and the hardship they are going through now trying to rebuild their shattered lives with nothing but a few pieces of meager belongings.

Picture by Subhash Edirisinghe

Despite losing so much, it is heartening to see the resilience of the villagers. It was easily the most satisfying effort put in by me in the recent past. It is so addictive, that I will probably volunteer next time the opportunity arises as well.

Learning to ride a bicycle

They say cycling is the most efficient mode of transport. It’s a pity that Chinese moved on to gasoline vehicles and then again to Hybrids now – they should have stayed with bicycles.

Since of late, my eldest (10 year old) have been asking us to get her a bicycle. I suspect it is more because some of her friends having bicycles than her love for the same. In any case we went shopping for one over the weekend. Ended up at a place in Galle Road which sold foldable bikes – wow, now that’s a neat trick. It only came in silver/black combination. Luckily my daughter loved it too (she is growing out of that usual ‘pink’ phase). So we got it. After also buying a helmet, the question was whether we get some training wheels or not. Although my daughter was looking forward to owning a bike, I was quite sure that she will put up a tantrum when she has to learn how to ride it (She did the same when she got on a horse the very first few times). So I am pretty certain that if I had offered her training wheels, she would not really grow out of it. So I decided not to bring it up.

Now that we brought the bike home, I am trying to figure out the best way to train her to ride it. Should I hold it from the back and run behind the bike as some parents do? Or should I ask her to ride/learn on her own. I honestly cannot remember how I learnt.

Any advice?

Face-off with Facebook

Now that I’ve touched on LinkedIn, let me state my opinion about it’s more social/informal counterpart, Facebook. Now we all know how successful and addictive it has become. I have been pleasantly surprised and amazed by the number of long lost fiends I have discovered due to Facebook. Some of them after more than 20 years.

But there is the proverbial “other side of the coin” that we must always look at. The one that give pedophiles yet another tool (a very effective one at that) to exploit unwary children, a place where Spammers can go to town, an avenue to easily and unintentionally expose your deep dark secrets to millions of strangers and an addictive tool which can become the most effective time waster since the introduction of news bulletins at national TV networks.

But more than anything what I cannot comprehend is why in the world some folks want to invite total strangers into their “friend list”. Is it because they think it might be “cool” to have a “friend list” that exceeds the 500 or even the 1000 mark? I of course reject these invites. But I know some don’t.

Any idea why?

Love

Don’t get too excited just yet. I have not suddenly morphed into a sensitive type who can just as easily share his feelings for hours and hours over a cup of cappuccino. I am still the thick-skinned, logical, uncomplicated, black-and-white-type you knew for the past so many years.

But recently I was tagged by someone who I think has a complete opposite personality to mine – at least from what I can make out from her blog. It was all about what our own interpretation of what love is. In my opinion, love is…

My wife tolerating my devil’s-advocate attitude to just about anything.

Discovering a “hope you enjoyed” note from our eight year old when we come back from our infrequent night-outs.

My daughters giving me hugs without having to ask for them.

....I think you get the general idea. It’s been a long time since I got tagged on this subject. Therefore I will not re-tag anyone else.

When I was young...

Back in the day, I used to say to myself 'Here we go again' whenever my father started a sentence with 'When I was young...'. Having said that, I'm going to do just that.

In my younger days, fireworks were really fun. And above all, dependable. When we pulled out a sky-rocket from its bundle, we knew it was going to threaten low-flying aircrafts. They had strong tails and took off as straight as an arrow high into the night sky. And anything that was supposed to go 'Bang', did. The sound would have caused the neighbors to call the ol' bomb squad if we were to light one up during off-season. The 'Chakra' burnt and rotated in all it's glory for at least two minutes.

I am quite disappointed with the sorry state of the fireworks on sale these days. Every time I light one up, I feel like a participant who is just about the spin the wheel-of-fortune. It is quite common to find sky-rockets that won't fly or out of the ones that do, they wouldn't explode with a thunderous bang that would give your grandma a heart attack. The 'Charkras' and 'Nilas' often won't last longer than it would take you to say "what next".

But it still pleases me to see the sparkles in my kids eyes every time I light fireworks. I just hope they will somehow become better as time passes by.

Caramel Popcorn

For a few weeks now my missus was looking for this Julius Caesar DVD; She wanted it for a teaching assignment. She had been looking for it in all kinds of DVD stores (and there are many kind too) but in vain. Finally she had heard it might be available at Majestic City.

Like many typical Sri Lankan blokes, I am not the kind who likes shopping – or even be seen at any shopping centre. But then again I wanted to check out a webcam, so I finally agreed to accompany her to MC. My 8 year old who happened to acquire superhuman hearing at that very moment jumped in joy. “Wow, caramel popcorn!”. Y’see, the last time I was at MC (which was a good 7 months back), I bought her a bag of caramel popcorn from that basement outlet near the food court. They were fresh from the popping pan – hot and crispy.

We reached the underground car park around 5pm on Sunday – mercifully there were hardly any traffic. There were plenty of parking spaces too... hmmm… odd! By this time my 8 year old was getting very impatient – so I got her the popcorn immediately – 30 bucks a bag, not a bad deal – it was quite tasty. Then we all went upstairs and into this DVD corner-shop. The very mention of old Julius brought a blank expression to the poor shop-girl’s face. So we moved on. I spotted a fancy DVD shop to my right and swiftly moved in – Julius Caesar? Sure miss, we have the one with Charlton Heston. After a quick play on their in-shop player, we purchased it. By this time, shops were closing all around us. My webcam hunt would have to wait for another day.

As we were descending the stairs down to the car park, I experienced a tug at my t-shirt, “Can I have another Thaththi?”. Gosh, she had already gone through the whole bag. So I spent another 30 bucks – one for the road I guess!

Grade four Independence

Picture this.

My seven year old is almost falling asleep on the toilet seat. The time is barely 5.45am. Still pitch dark outside. It was my turn to get her ready for school this morning. She is supposed to leave home by 6.30am.

“Thaththi..” she says,..”I don’t feel so good this morning…”
I know this routine,.. “Ok darling, what did you forget this time?”
She sobs quietly and says,…”Teacher asked us to read up on the National Day,.. but I completely forgot thaaaaththiiii……”.

Did she say “read”? Not “write”?… no problem,.. I can handle this on my own,.. no need to wake the general I thought.

“Ok darling,.. no need to be upset, this is what you do,.. while you are brushing your teeth, try memorising a few sentences”. Sure, I can handle this, no sweat! But in my peripheral vision, I could see her giving me a puzzeled look.

“We celebrate independence day on the 4th of February”
“Independence day marks the end of British rule over Sri Lanka and handing over the control of the country to it’s people” (let’s not go there)
“This year we celebrated the 61st independence day”
“We watched the military parade on the TV on our independence day”
“Our president gave a speech on the independence day”

“Thaththi,.. why does the president have to talk? Band music is much better”.

“That’ll do darling, let’s memorise the first four sentences only”. It was already 6.05am. Chop Chop!!!

VGA? You’ve got to be kidding me!

While we are on the subject of photographs, let me share my most recent and brilliant stroke of stupidity – I’m sure it would have come pretty high on the scale of the ol’ Darwin awards.

I have a mobile phone with a 3.2 Megapixel camera. Infact, I’ve had this phone for more than a year now. But all this time I have been cursing it on how grainy and low res it’s photographs turn out. Just the other day I walked in on my 7 year old meddling around with my phone. When I grabbed it from her, I noticed it was in a “settings” menu, and the options read…

3MP
2MP
1MP
VGA

Guess what was selected by default? Of course, like a true techie, I cursed the phone manufacturer under my breath for not setting the default correctly. Maybe I should ask my 7 year old to play around with my brand new DSLR.

Barbies and things

Did I mention that I live with 3 beautiful girls? My wife (brownie points, yeah I know), and the two little girls. And I love them all very much. But every weekend I wake up to some sort of a surprise. Take this morning for example,.. After a late night on Saturday, I slept in a little longer than usual this morning. After waking up to the noise of my youngest, I managed to waddle my way into the bathroom, barely managing to open my eyes. As I was reaching for the faucet with the intention of splashing some water on my face, I saw strange creatures before my eyes,.. a butterfly, a barbie and a mermaid. I shook my head and blinked my eyes hard thinking I was still daydreaming,.. but no, they were real alright.

It took me a moment to realize what had happened – it was just that my 7 year old have been using the bathroom before me. Y’see, she has this habit of taking her whole entourage wherever she goes – even to the bathroom. Not very different to Sri Lankan politicians I guess. Anyway, very often such things get left behind.

I sighed and went about my business.

What's in a name?

We are trying to name our newborn baby girl. It appears that the most appropriate letter to start with is "J"; Ideally "Ja". I prefer a name that is not very common and with some nice meaning to it. Anyone got any ideas?

It's a Girl!

On 5th early morning we were blessed with a little angel of a baby girl. Keeping with tradition we will be naming her according to her time of birth. I hope people out there, especially Sri Lankans, will be able to help me choose some names. Watch this space for details.