Somu's Scribbling Pad: Cooking up a story ;o)

I learnt how to upload a pic here and so this post. Besides, I now have a blogroll, blogstreet link and a stat counter. Thanks to Sangeeta (http://toerag.blogspot.com/) who enlightened me of all these in just about couple of hrs time.

This photo was taken during the Outbound Learning Program in Bangalore we had recently. The challenge was to cook food for a group of ten delegates.I can fry in the hot sun, boil in anger, grill my subordinates, steam up in frustration, heat up an argument, cook up a story , but my actual culinary skills were a BIG ZERO. You can now understand my calling it a challenge.

Having been put to this task, I had to do my part for my team. So I did the things I knew. I washed the plates, moved things around for the chef, refilled the bucket of water used for washing, cleaned the chicken and squeezed all water out of it (That’s me doing exactly that) - A reason why this picture has been cautiously kept away from my mother’s eyes. She would fume in fury as I never bother to help her in the kitchen.

While the learning out of this was to understand how teams worked, how people in a team can have varying talents and how effectively can we use their talents to perform specific tasks that entail use of these definite skills, I learnt something else too. We appreciate shade when scorching in hot sun, we value water when we are dying of thirst, and I realized how complex the art of cooking is when I was stranded with all the ingredients and I had to cook .

How many times have I walked away from dinner because I found the food bland, how many times have I eaten at the food court (despite home food being at my disposal) and how many times have I told my mom that breakfast could have been better ? I had been happy when the best of life was showered on me, but sneered at its slightest variation from being the best. If not appreciate, I have decided never to find fault in whatever I get to eat at home.

P.S. After all this, the chef was really disappointed with me for not squeezing out water completely from the chicken. Phew… Good work never gets appreciated.