Office Desk et al.

Ok so starting today, I am doing a little feature in my blog. Every week I will introduce you to the desk of my 8-member news team. I believe that the office desk reveals a lot about the personality of the person. So here we go

Lets start with Christine or Xine as we call her. She is the mother hen of the group and is a total Brit tea lover- you can see her kettle, two mugs, a box of tea bags and a bottle of milk to the left. Her desk is always full of organized clutter and that’s because she has got everything you need. From cash to ketchup bottle, she is the person to go to if you need something but don’t have it. She is a sworn enemy of technology and her biggest achievement is learning how to put hot keys on and turn on the Telly. That’s why the two remote controls. But of late, she has started to try and organize her paperwork a bit. That’s why the organizer.

Jenny Matlock's Writing Prompt

Its Easter. The first one without her. Tom looked at his shabby self in the mirror. Life was so much easier when she was around. He went down to fix breakfast and the kids were already there. His heart broke for them- they looked so pale, so terrified . He needed to make this Easter good for them. Reassure them that life was beautiful.

Some time later the kids heard a bang and opened the front door. There he was in that silly blue suit. "I have buried eggs all over the garden" he announced. Two hours later, they were all covered in mud, collected plenty of eggs and had laughed so hard that their tummies ached. Life was beautiful.

Introduction

Check out our team
http://gulfnews.com/radio1/radio-news-team

Movie Magic

so much for my last blog entry about the ample amount of time that i have…I havent posted anything in a long looooong time. Well so, what do i blog about now? Have done a considerable amount in the past few weeks. Have organized a party, met a few friends, etc., etc. but being in the media field, i am tempted to write about something related to the media. Over the past few days I have seen a few good Malayalam movies and I felt like I had to write about them simply because I’m impressed by the changing trend in movie making and storylines. The first movie is Traffic. I must say there were many moments that made me sniff a bit and there were many scenes where I openly cried. Innovative style of story telling and some great editing really added to the value of the movie. Hats off to Bobby and Sanjay for giving the malayalam movie and TV industry some great scripts. The other movie is Kadha Thudarunnu. It released some time ago. A very realistic story which does not have the tried and tested ‘happy ending’. I hope more such films are made and that the Malayalam industry grows out of its superstar rut.

The Time Machine

Ok, so I have been a terrible procrastinator and not written anything in as long as I can remember. But hey, I have an excuse. In some moment of sheer madness, I agreed to host a DSF-special show on a local channel. In the past 10 days I have asked myself 50 times, “What were you thinking?” I have worked in TV a long long time ago when I was young, unmarried and carefree. And I know how it works- its absolute pandemonium and the most unorganized job in the world. So what exactly was I thinking when I agreed to do this- now that I have a full time job, a husband, and a very very restless child? I don’t know. I guess I was just trying to prove to myself that I can still do whatever I want. Wrong. Because I am about 15 episodes down with 15 more to go and I already find myself counting down the days to when this show will finally wrap up. But I must admit I don’t regret doing this. It has taken me back to my old times and somewhere in between all the madness, I do find it a little therapeutic. Also, you don’t realize how much time you have on your hands until you take up one more thing. I had always been complaining of my lack of time ever since my daughter came along and have wondered many a times what I did with all my time before she was born. But now, I appreciate how much time I had before this whole shooting saga began and am thinking what did I do with all that time? I could have used that time to do all those things that I haven’t been doing because “I didn’t have time”. So now 15 days to go and after that I will
a. clean my cupboard
b. clean my daughter’s cupboard
c. pack away all the extra showpieces I have in my house
d. put up those 5 year old photographs that I have been meaning to on Facebook
e. arrange all my books
f. …
g. …
h. …
I already have a sneaky feeling how this is going to turn out….

Memories

got into my car and drove down the familiar road back to my university- I was going for a reunion dinner. As I did so, I began thinking about the two years that had passed since my graduation. So much had changed. Two years ago, I was a student. Today I am a working woman and a mother. Back then my only worry was whether I had finished my assignments and whether my clothes were stylish enough. Today my worries were whether I had changed my 8 month old’s nappy and whether I had packed any breakfast for tomorrow morning. Back then all I had to think about when pulling a late nighter is if I would make it in time for my 8am class knowing that even if I didn’t it didn’t really matter much. Today I wonder if I can reach office in time for my 6am shift knowing that if I didn’t I would get a disciplinary action. How much life had changed. I desperately wanted to go back to those carefree days. I wanted to worry about my clothes. I wanted to laugh about the classroom humor. I wanted to gossip about who was dating whom. I wanted to go to the freshers party. I wanted to discuss about that cute guy sitting next to me in the design class. But time never comes back, does it? And it is one of the harsh realities of life that you never truly appreciate what you have until you lose it. Suddenly I was filled with a sense of sorrow.
Once at university I met my friends and sat around a table with them. We giggled over silly jokes, pulled each others’ legs, went gaga over the food, discussed weddings, break ups, etc. Sitting there on the campus I almost felt like I was back in uni.
While driving back I started thinking about home- when I get back my husband would hug me and listen patiently as I described every minute details of the dinner. My mum would help me pack my breakfast and lunch. My dad would have made the nice hot jeera water that I loved. And then my daughter- she would grin when she saw me. We would then have a playtime before we went in for her bath. She would splash all the water around. I started smiling. My heavy heart lightened. My sorrow dissipated. I realized ‘Yes, I do miss the old times but I have other important things in my life now’.
Life HAS to move on. Your happiness depends on you how gracefully you can take it. There are people who try to cling on to the past and forget to live the present. I didn’t want to be one of them. I got back home realizing that I had a lifetime of memories to be happy about and learning the lesson that life needs to be lived to the fullest every minute so that you dont regret it later

Cooking Venture

So it was one of those days when I decided to cook and here is what I made
ROAST CHICKEN WITH VEGETABLES
Ingredients
1 whole chicken
1 large onion
1 lemon
2-3 carrots
4-5 potatoes
3 sprigs spring onion
1 green pepper
1 cup chicken broth
Masala ingredients
1tsp chilli powder
¼ tsp turmeric
2 tsp Robertson’s chicken spice (optional)
Salt and pepper as required
Method
Mix together the masala ingredients and squeeze the lemon juice to make it a paste. Don’t throw away the lemon peels as you will need them later
Wash the chicken and pat it dry. (Apparently drying it out thoroughly makes the skin more crispy- seemed to work for me) Now make cuts on it rub in the masala. Keep for 15 minutes (My mum says that the longer you keep the masala on the chicken, the better it will taste. I didn’t try it because I didn’t have time but maybe you would like to keep it overnight)
Wash, peel and quarter the potatoes. Wash, peel and cut the carrots into 2-inch pieces. Now put the chicken in a baking dish and scatter the potatoes and carrots in it. Then pour the chicken broth all over the chicken.
Bake the chicken on 200 degree Celcius for 35 minutes.
Take the chicken out, baste it in the juices, add the spring onion and green pepper and bake for another 45 minutes or until done (to test, see if the juices run clear and the breast meat is completely white)
NOTE: To make sure that the chicken stays juicy, baste it very often in the juices. I did it every 15 minutes. You can do it more often. I did find my chicken a tad bit undercooked so I might just steam the chicken a wee bit before putting it in for baking