Delicious Home-made Raita

On food front, I am having a better time than before. When we had a maid for cooking food, the process of procuring food was very convenient. Every evening we find pre-cooked food ready to be gobbled. However the quality sucked many times. Then came a decision to get rid of the bai.

Since then we have been cooking food at home and eating outside mostly at Cafe Diamond. One fine day, Kshama had an idea of making a raita. So she bought a pack of Masti Dahi and some tomatoes and cucumber. Then she applied some magic on the ingredients and voila. I was treated with the best raita ever.

Copperchocs Strawberry Cake

Spelendidly decorated Strawberry cake was delicious. We had ordered this cake to celebrate Deepesh's Happy Birthday at offish, on 23rd February, 2007.

Electronic Cheque Acceptance System

I had been to HDFC Magarpatta city branch to deposit the cheque issued to me by someone. I was all set to fill in the cheque deposit slip and submit it to a specified counter. Consequently, the banker on the other side would collect the cheque, stamp the slip and return me the acknowledgement slip.

However, things did not go as I had thought. I was introduced to a machine by the security guard. It had an impressive display and the software was easy to use, especially for people who frequently use ATMs. I keyed in the account number and inserted the cheque into the designated slot. The cheque was scanned and an acknowledgement was printed. I collected the acknowledgement slip that had the scanned image of the deposited cheque and happily left the bank.

While riding the bike, I thought as to why do they require a separate machine for this task. Why cannot they extend the ATMs to accept cheques? May be the next generation ATM machines would have this facility too.

Luggage racks removed from locals

This is some unknown General knowledge to me.

I travelled by western railway local train from Borivali to Dadar while returning from my recent Water Kingdom Picnic. One most striking thing that I noticed was the removal of overhead luggage racks from the EMUs of local trains that ply on the western suburbs of Mumbai. When I enquired a bit about this seemingly unusual thing to happen. It revealed that this has been done on account of 7/11 bomb blasts in Mumbai local trains that tested the city pshyche. Once the reason became known to me, I could not help but appreciate this decision. No doubt that this would add to the inconvenience of local train travellers who use it to commute with heavy luggage. But this would mean that terrorists will have a hard time finding a place to leave their bomb-laden baggages in railway compartments. This was one such bold decisions that could attract huge criticism, but nonetheless it is justified by the safety criterion.

However, no such steps have been taken in the local trains that ply on the central suburbs between CST and Karjat/Kasara. Are the authorities waiting for the terrorists attacks on central corridor before they can implement similar preventive measures on the central railway local trains?