Merry Christmas Everyone. Here is the annual Christmas message from Her Majesty The Queen to the people of the Commonwealth.

Step 1
Pop in the OS X disc.

Installing Mac OS

Step 2.
Go away and do something engaging like read a book or something.

Step 3
Adjust some settings, for some strange reason my Mac thought that I was in Thimphu, Bhutan instead of New Delhi, India as far as the Time zone goes.

Glitz and Glamour

Now came the more challenging parts. Backing up all the data that my previous installation had. Now Macs come with this software called “Time Machine” that allow you periodically back up your computer’s drive to an external Hard disk. I had been diligently backing up my former installation of Mac OS but when I connected the hard disk to the laptop after reinstalling the computer was stuck at a dialog box and would not budge from it. After some research I discovered that the reason for this is because both the Time Machine backup as well as the new installation have the same hard drive name, i.e. Macintosh HD.
So I simply canceled the back up, restarted the Mac and renamed the HDD of the new install and ran the “Migration Assistant” utility and backed up the computer from there. However after the migration was over to my utter surprise, all of my emails, music and pictures were still missing from the computer.

Select your country

Now I do not know how you would feel about losing around 7500 emails, about an equal number of photos and around 800 songs but I was not very pleased about it.

Yes yes I do!

Just as I was about to write a really annoying email to steve@apple.com, I had an idea. I opened my old Time Machine external disc and did the following to restore my email. This is a course of action I would suggest to anyone who is in a similar position that I found myself after a fresh install of Mac OS.

1) Navigate down in finder to Username>Library>Mail
2) Rename the Mail folder by selecting and pressing the Enter key, lets say name it Mail (Default)
3) Open Time Machine from the Dock and select the option that allows you to use “Browse other time machine disks”
4) Select the most recent back up from your Time Machine Finder Windows
5) Simply navigate down to Username>Library>Mail
6) Select the mail folder and click “Restore”
7) Now Navigate down to Library>Preferences>com.apple.mail.plist file in your time machine back and restore that as well.
After the restore is complete, simply open your Mail from the dock and you will find an import dialog box and all your email as it was in pristine condition.

Ummmm

Restoring Music and Photos was a simple enough process for me. I simply had to navigate to the respective folders in the Time Machine back up and restore them. One more thing that I noticed that could be trouble some after a restore when it comes to certain Microsoft Office Documents is that they become “read only” this is a very simple process just select the folder in which they rest and: -

1) Right click on the folder.
2) Click on “Get Info”
3) Scroll down and at the very end on the right hand side you will find a small lock icon, click on it and enter your computers administrator password.
4) Now you can edit the permissions for this folder that rest just above the lock. For your own username you can assign “Read and Write”, for Everyone “Read Only” and Unknown “Read Only”. This should be sufficient. Just lock back before you close the dialog box.

Over all I have installed many different operating systems and I must say Mac OS is quite easy as long as you have a good back up. So if you do own a Mac there is a lot of merit in doing periodic Time Machine back ups.

Well the media in India has been full of news about Chinese activities on the Indian frontiers. There is considerable consternation about what goes on there. So in the spirit of,  “curiosity killed the cat”. I have decided to investigate myself! I am just joking, the actual fact is that I got so very bored sitting at home baking cakes and writing this stupid blog that I needed some adventure and I just went for a 20 day holiday across 7 Indian states and 2 foreign countries (Well I am going to count 10 minutes that I was in the PRC as well) for some cheap thrills.

So back to the evil Chinese….

I was in the state of Arunachal Pradesh or what the Chinese refer to as “Southern Tibet” for a few days. I went to the city of Tawang just before the visit of HH The Dalai Lama who was due there to inaugurate the new multispecialty hospital in the city. The whole area was awash with rumours of the impending invasion of the Chinese, all the way from Tezpur, Assam to the last city i.e. Tawang in India. Well to be honest, these people have some rather bitter experiences from the 1962 war when Tawang fell under Chinese occupation/administration for a couple of days.

On the border proper, which is about 40 Kilometres away from the city of Tawang and about 500 Km away from the city of Lhasa in Tibet, there was an air of quiet except for the howling winds. I met a couple of Punjabi soldiers and we exchanged some pleasantries and they merrily let me cross the international border in to China without any problems for 10 minutes. Of course they were themselves standing on Chinese soil at that moment when I joined them. Apparently Chinese do not like to stand right on the border and they have built for themselves cosy little watch towers just around 10 kilometres away from the main border from where they can keep watch on the Indian long nosed devils.

What is very striking on the border is that there is no permanent structure on the Chinese side of the frontier. So whereas the Indians have built for themselves a permanent border post, the Chinese make do with tents. The reason that I could make out was that the Chinese do not really consider this to be a permanent “border”.  So they are waiting for some unfinished business to be “finished”.  The other thing that struck me a lot was the construction of roads right up to the Indian border. These roads are of good quality as compared with the solitary Indian road leading up to the border that requires 4X4 vehicles.

What is also remarkable is the attitude of the Indian soldiers posted on the border. On our way to Tawang from Tezpur we gave lift to a soldier of Indo Tibetan Border Police who was extremely nervous because he was late for reporting to his post. He had been posted on the border for the past 3-4 years and was quite aware of how bad the Indian defence situation is. He told me that at the place where he is posted, the Chinese can drive right up to them, whereas for them it means a 2-3 day trek depending on the situation that prevails.

So all in all, I would say this. There is something fishy going on at the border between India and China. Why do I say it? Well simply because there is a lot of army movement up there. There are a lot of rumours and there is a lot of heat about the border in the media. I hope that there are no wars but if in case there is one. I am sure that this visit to Tawang would make you all appreciate the kind of situations that the local people have to endure. I am going to do a number of posts about my latest adventures. I hope that you all enjoy them.

If you are ever hungry and you have some left over rice from the previous day try making fried rice, its incredibly simple and you do not need many ingredients. I used ham and eggs in this version, if you have some spring onions it is good but otherwise just use some normal onion and a few cloves of garlic. Nothing could really get simpler than that!

I suggest using an iron utensil for stir frying that does not have a very thick bottom otherwise you will not achieve good success on a domestic gas stove. High heat is the key to all good stir frying.

However I have found that there are other uses for the humble placenta, its the perfect thing to wash your hair with. Do not believe me just look at the image below :

Only Rs. 99+VAT, Its a real steal!

Made Proudly in the United States!

We have these wonderful “E-Sampark” centres all over the city where you can among other things get a bus pass, pay your electric and water bill, file a right to information request, pay your mobile or landline bills, buy stamp papers or revenue stamps, get a birth or a death certificate and if you happen to be starving even buy subsidised and vitamin fortified wheat flour at a discount. Nothing to complain about them really, they are nice comfortable places which are air conditioned and they even have a TV to pass the time while you wait.

So yesterday I went to pay my electric bill and I observed they had this notice there. I guess the photo is a bit incomplete so I will repost what I saw on the notice …..

“Dear Customer

1 PM is cash tally time and the same has to be handover to bank collection team which comes around 1:15 PM as such case the cash counter’s will stop taking bills for atleast 5 to 10 minutes (approximately) at around 1 PM.

Kindly bear with us

Sampark Centre-18″

Apart from the terrible English, I am sure you can probably guess what it means but if you can not what they are basically saying is — that the bank people come around 1 PM to collect cash from their centre and they can not take bills for around 10 minutes around the time when it happens.

So here is my question now, why should not some person who has every intention to get rich by a couple of hundred thousand rupees come over at 1 pm, point a gun at their heads and take away their cash one fine day? Which brilliant mind had the idea to give away this information? I mean these guys are loaded with money, so any of you guys out there if you want to make a quick buck  and if you own a high calibre handgun or two, head over to E-Sampark Centre, Sector 18 its adjacent to the road that heads to Madhya Marg and cuts between Sector 17 and Sector 18. Good Luck!

What I noticed when I started this home improvement is how untrained the labour is. It seems that there are no standards when it comes to the construction industry in India. No wonder we have bridges that fall, buildings that look shabby and most importantly — they all look the same. The majority of the labour and masonary seems to hail from East-Indian states like UP and Bihar. Not only did I face a problem trying to get work out of them but it seems we also had communication issues. Having said that I must say that they do try their best and work for a pittance. However the problem seems to be  that their “Best” is not good enough!

So my small project now is finally moving towards its finalisation, its a different story that the carpenters  that I have hired to do some woodwork have not showed up for 3 days and it took 3 days to chase after a glazier to have glass fitted in. No one keeps to commitments and its really frustrating that whatever I conceived at the beginning of the project has in some ways been modified by the workmen because of their inability to follow instructions precisely or rather their lack of precision. I must say that somewhere if this country needs to progress we need to have standards among blue collar workers rather than just some uneducated farm peasants doubling up as construction workers, carpenters etc.

Some days ago I came across two big blocks of hard Tibetan Cheese called “Chura”. This type of cheese mostly eaten as a sort of a hard candy. I remember from my college days my deskmate was addicted to eatiing this cheese and he always had a couple of cubes of this in his pocket and one permanently in his mouth. This deskmate was always “high” and had a cricket kit bag full of hemp in his college hostel room. However he was fun to be around and had an extraordinary level of intelligence. So the cheese itself is pretty disgusting and there are many types of it. If I had to describe its taste I would say it tastes like rancid vomit but there is one particular variety that is shaped like flakes and if you throw those in a soup it gives a very nice flavour to it. I must admit my liking for Chura stops there. However this along with dried meat called Sha-Khambu has an extraordinary role to play in the Tibetan diet. This type of food hardly goes bad and it provides for a good source of protien in a climate where such type of nourishment is difficult to get especially while you travel for days. This is such a good travel food that they almost always string a couple of cubes of it together and you can carry it handily in your pocket without the fear of spoilage.

As for these particular pieces of chura, I plan to nibble on them even though its not really very tasty for me. Slowly but surely I am sure they will disappear.

Its always good to use good quality tomatoes when you do a tomato based pasta sauce. If you like you can also use a bit of tomato paste for a darker colour.

As I had expected the congress candidate Pawan Kumar Bansal won by quite a margin. This election was special in Chandigarh because of two reasons. The first we had major parties trying to win the seat for the first time, in the past it was only a competition between the Congress and the BJP. Second voters turned out in huge numbers, in some parts of the city voting reached 85%, over all the city vote percentage was around 65%. On a sadder note the brother of the BJP candidate died after election results were declared due to a heart attack. When you are the richest city in the country you don’t usually expect such percentages. The people this time were determined to come and show their resolve to vote. It was very nice to see many first time voters and young people. The atmosphere in the polling center was polite and respectful. The guy who marked my finger even called me “Sir”. Something that I don’t really expect from an Indian public servant.

I would encourage everyone to vote in the next elections whenever they get a chance. Not because your vote will or not make a difference but because you can vote. Although I am opposed to compulsory voting I think when people get the encouragement they will come out. As for the mark on my finger now I am curious how many months it will take to vanish, however the one good thing about this is that I can now be amazed at how fast finger nails grow.