Cooking & Business Management

I started cooking lunch every day for the past one week. It is not only that I wanted to learn cooking but also I wanted to know what it is like being in kitchen. I have picked up in a very short time. I saw an amazing connection between cooking and management principles like time management, material management, presentation and marketing. Here they are in detail.

Time Management:
Success in cooking is not only the taste but the time that you finish cooking. It makes no sense to have food missing the right time to have it. In business quality matters a lot but timely delivery is the most critical matter. Afterall it makes no sense to submit a quality RFP after the submission deadline. The other day I was making some dal gravy, beet poriyal and rasam. I know dal has to be cooked well before it is fried so I steamed in the cooker for almost ten minutes and then I kept rice for cooking. In the meanwhile I started making other stuffs. After a while I remember my mother use to keep rice & dal at the same time and cook. A simple time management technique. Aint it?

Material Management:
There is never a perfect kitchen which has all the materials and so is a business that has all the resources in hand before starting any activity. It starts with assessment of the materials including resources required for the task to be completed in both kitchen and business. A good assessment and getting prepared with the materials/resources well in advance will not only help to carry on the task seemlessly it will also compliment your time management efforts. For Ex: Get ready with the onions and all the other stuff and keep it lined up while the dal is getting cooked. I think you would have alredy related this in business terms.

Presentation and Marketing:
In the initial days I banked a lot on my presentation and marketing skills to make my pathetic dishes look/sound like they are delicious, to my wife. Sometimes it worked when I garnished simple boiled egg which is cut and spread neatly. I remember my mother rolling the chappathi with the masala inside than having them seperate and presented it in my lunch box in such a way that I would eat everything without missing one.

I believe a good cook should have better management skills and Vice Versa. After this experience I changed my thought on home makers whom I believed knew nothing about management and understood the way they manage the whole house multi tasking between various activities.

Is it a plotted plunge?

In continuation to my previous post about share market mayhem, It makes me think if this is some kind of a ploy by USA to pressurize Oil producing countries to reduce the price. In the past US has done a lot to pressurize the Oil Countries but they yielded very poor response. If the markets arent doing good the demands will reduce and the reduction Oil demand means a great loss to money craving oil countries. You may ask if this kind of a drastic step is required to bring down the price? I would say YES coz one of the major reasons for the recession in US itself is growing oil price and consumer worry led to weakened spending.

I got this doubt after reading these articles...... "The price of oil, meanwhile, fell amid expectations that a downturn would depress demand for energy" - CNN-IBN, "I think the oil market is now attached to the hip of the equity markets" - Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates as quoted in AP. "Oil prices fell to a six-week low Tuesday on expectations that slower economic growth in the United States will cut demand for energy" - Voice Of America

Global Trend - Indian Fears!!!

"China is down four per cent, Japan is down 4.5 per cent, Singapore is down four per cent, Hong Kong is down 6.5 per cent and Korea is down four per cent." This is how the world stock market is yesterday and today. Our Indian Stock Market also bore the brunt of this worldwide mayhem. Though this is a worldwide trend especially in developing countries, we are much worried than the others and there are several reasons to this. One very important reason for our fear is we do not have clear policies that can control any kind of chaotic situation this is because of our political system. We do not have a government with independence to decide on some key policies that will save us from economical disasters. The reason for this, our political parties are not bothered about our long term goals and the need for policies with a future vision. Afterall we have Commy puppets who act on the orders of the Great Wall country and they are current govts major ally. The other reason I would say is we are relatively new to this kind of a Global Economy. When India really started going global we were hit by the 9/11 and post 9/11 economic disaster because our globalisation just started then and it got initiated with USA. We have come across a long way and now we have broader economic ties beyond USA. Many talk and feel proud about the growth that we have attained but we fail to introspect what we have not done to sustain this growth.

I am sure our markets will come out of this situation as this is not something local and when others recover we also will. But we should think about being a global economy with stronger internal/international policies and we should capitalize the growth properly and utilize this growth in building a strong nation. Unless we do that, not only foreign investors we ourselfs will not have confidence in our market/growth. If any one has any questions about our resources to build such policies/nation, I can just give you two names as examples for our rich resources Dr.Manmohan Singh and P.Chidambaram isnt this enough?

To my critics.

Though I have a handful of people reading my blogs, most of them criticized that there is some kinda sequence that is missing in my writings. I accept this comment and I have felt this many a times. I am trying to rectify this afterall am just an amateur blogger. Thanks for your support and keep reading/criticizing.

Dry Chappathi!!!

I woke up to an uneasy calm, a dry morning and noticed suddenly everything around me had disappeared. What a bad start? I slowly got out of the bed and walked across the room straight to the bath room. While I walked out I noticed the newspaper still on the tea table. What today I didn't take newspaper to the bathroom? This is something thats rarest of the rare. I cant "S" with out reading something its so bad a habit that I read toothpaste and shampoo covers now am aware of all the major brands ingredients, corporate office and trademark disclaimer. What happened to me? I sat on the bean bag and after a few minutes I realised that I have still not switched on the TV. Whether or not I watch it I switch it on once I sit on my bean bag. Something is terribly wrong. Now I switched on the TV and left to kitchen coz I was so damn hungry after a long undisturbed "void" sleep. I saw what there to eat and I realised there is already some Chappathi Dough prepared and underneath the same box there were some subji with onions. Took out the box and started rolling the dough. The TV noise was irritating me and I switched it off. I didnt know what oil to use so made some dry chappathi's coz i didnt want to take any chance. I came to the dining table and realised the Chappathi was so dry and I am not able to swallow it. I was munching it hard and now started shouting at her. "Hey, where the hell are you?" no response "Oh my god she left to her native for couple of days." Now I realised how important it is to her to stand near her in the Kitchen while she is cooking and on top of that how irritating it is to watch TV when someone is boiling in Kitchen and beyond all this accept my criticism about the dish she cooked. This emptiness continued until I left home in the form of taking bath without towel and none to yell for a towel and calling her from garage to bring my goggle.

Oh my dear life is pathetically DRY (Chappathi) when you are not around!!!

I have stored some Chappathi in the refrigerator for you to know how pathetic it is for me to live without you for even couple of days.

AmeriBharat

We are getting Americanised in everything that we do right from Nuclear deals to school shootings thats happening. Have you seen an american who lives abroad getting or trying to imitate the regional accent of the place that he lives in. But people who go to America first try to imitate their language. Leave the guys who go there, people working in call centers that handles American projects try to imitate their accent while most of the call centers insist on neutral accent. I have seen in many news channels particularly when there is a news from Banglaore and Noida people talk American english. I am not trying to say American english is bad but imitating it is bad so Americans reading this do not mistake me. Anything should come to us naturally, a cultural change, a political change, a scientific change if we try to force change in any system of ours which will have adverse outcome. I am not agaisnt change I am against change that comes out of misconception and without clear understanding. It is a general belief that in America men and women get married and get divorced easily and they do it like changing their hair color. This perception is wrong, I have worked with and have been following American people and culture in the past five years. May be the ratio is high comparatively. This is one of our biggest problems we do not look at right things in a right way and try doing it. They give a lot of respect to human values and privacy. Do we do that? As far as I know Americans talk their mind and they do not lie (except for Bush who lied on bio weapons in Iraq). Have we learnt that from them? Lets take a simple example in the manners they have.......if an American happens to sneeze in public he will say sorry to people around him. Hw many of us do this? They do not talk loud on cellphone while in a public place. In India its a fashion to that.

What I mean to say here is when there is a cultural, scientific, political exchange lets us take the right things that will sit our country and culture and leave alone the ones that doesnt suit us. Be it Nuclear Technology, lets get their ideas on that and implement it here for good without compromising our independence and internal security concerns. Let us export and import good culture not copy their gun culture and shoot kids in school. Lets try to bring the democracy thats truely by, for and of he people as in America without giving away our values.