Santoku knife

The Japanese word Santoku means "three virtues". When it comes to Santoku knives, these virtues are: chopping, mincing and dicing. Santoku knives are also known as "chef's knife". We recently bought one of these babies and here is the story.

One of my wife's hobbies, among scores of others, is cooking. She loves to cook and experiment with different kinds of cuisines. Lucky me, I get to be the taster! Did I tell you that she is a great cook. Since she is a cooking aficionado, she watches the Food Network on a regular basis. She always wondered how the cooks on the show chop the vegetables so precisely, and wondered why we could not do so. After a little bit of research, she found out that the answer lies in the knife you use, and the technique. She looked around and found that for most of the chopping, mincing and dicing work, a chef's knife was the best. To our surprise, we found that there was a whole world of knives in prices ranging from a mere $5 to upwards of $200! The more expensive models are the professional tools some of which have ceramic edges.

Santoku knives a heavy, well balanced and have a comfortable grip. Used in the right manner, you can rival the chef's on Food Network. We always thought that really sharp knives were dangerous since you could easily cut yourself. But, you know what, it is the other way around. Dull knives have a tendency to slip when you force them through the veggies and you end up chopping a finger or two. Sharp knives do not slip and always do their job. A well maintained chef's knife has a keen edge and can easily cut any vegetable/fruit/herb. Also, the right technique of wielding the knife and holding the vegetable is also very important.

For quite sometime, we have gravitated towards serrated knives and glass cutting boards. They sorta get the work done. You are always 'sawing' the vegetables, than 'cutting' them. Also, even though glass cutting boards are easy to clean and hygienic, they are loud. After using one of these Santoku knives, we can vouch that it makes a big difference in preparing the ingredients for a meal. One important thing is that you use these knives only on wooden cutting boards, or they go dull before the meal is done. It is a pleasure to chop veggies. Your hands don't get tired so fast. So, in the end, you save some time as well as energy. What a pity, we waited all these years before discovering this secret!

Before I go, an update on the boat. I finished glassing the entire bottom, and it took only 5 hrs spread into two days. It was a lot easier to lay the cloth compared to the tape. It was an exhausting experience since I was working alone, and had to run back and forth mixing small batches of epoxy and applying it before it hardened. Now, I am ready to epoxy the insides of the boat, and put the finishing touches! With every coat of epoxy and fiberglass, the boat is getting heavier and heavier. Looks like, cartopping may be a challenge once the project is completed.

OHIO

OHIO- An acronym which stands for (among other things) Only Handle It Once.

This certainly applies to all sorts of mails, be it emails, snail mails, bills, etc. Earlier, whenever I received a bill, for instance, I would open it, check it for its accuracy, file it for later payment. Most of the time, I would miss making a payment and pay a late fee. Or, end up going through the pile again another day and paying some, and stacking the others for another day. This was a very bad habit. Now, I am close to following the OHIO rule for all my correspondence. There is no point in procrastinating. It only multiplies the time spent on the subject. So, as Nike says "Just do It"; as soon as you receive your mail, read it and take an action on it immediately, and be done with it.

I started applying epoxy and fiberglass to my boat a few days ago. It sounds intimidating, but once you get all the materials in place, and follow all the safety instructions, it is not so bad. I am still getting used to laying the glass fiber, and saturating it with the right amount of epoxy. You apply a coat of epoxy on the wooden core, before it dries (this is the wet layup method), lay the fiberglass cloth on it. Now, you are supposed to apply just enough resin to wet it completely, but not float it off the wooden surface. That is the tricky part. In one occasion, I ended up floating the cloth. In another, I had too little resin and had to soak it again. But, I am getting there.

With epoxy, there is not much reuse of materials. The mixing cup, the stirring stick, spoons, brushes, gloves, all go to the trash after 15- 20 mins. You need to use all the resin before it starts getting hard. Epoxy is what is packaged as super glue in small containers. It comes in two parts: resin and hardener. Alone, both of them are in liquid form. Once you mix them in the right proportion, an exothermic chemical reaction starts, and the molecules bond to form a very strong union. So, at the end of the curing time (20 mins, in my case), all tools used in the application will become useless. This was when I remembered the OHIO acronym. In case of fiberglass, you are forced to complete the work as soon as you start it. This is a great way of making sure that you don't procrastinate. Procrastination, in this case, turns out to be very costly.

Well, the boat core is completely done. I just need to finish off some rough edges, and then I can glass the entire boat.

Back to the boat

The core of the boat is all done, and that wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. The right tools made all the difference in the world. I had cut the plywood a bit generously, so as not to screw up, and ended with a lot of extra material that I had to sand off. When I went to Lowes to get some sandpaper, I discovered this amazing yet inexpensive tool, SurForm. It is like a cross between a rasp and a plane. It is small and removes material at an alarming rate. It saved me days of sanding and dust.

I have also cut the bottom piece a bit wider than necessary. For this I am thinking of using a router. Once I am done with fiberglassing the insides, I will just turn the boat over, run the router over the bottom edges, and I should have a beautiful smooth surface. That brings us to fiberglassing (aka, glassing). As of now, it seems very intimidating, since I have never done it before. I am planning on trying it out for the first time tomorrow, and I am sure it will turn out to be a simple process. Scarphing seemed tough and I was done with it in a jiffy. Now, I can scarph plywood to any length.

In my next entry, I will most probably extol on the joys of fiberglassing. Or, if the whole thing turns into a gooey mess, you will hear me cursing... Hopefully not.

Beauty is only skin deep

The other day our daughter was acting and doing cute things, as usual at this age, and I ran to get my camera, as usual for me. As I started snapping pictures she immediately called her grandmother, who is visiting, to join her. Her grandmother's immediate reply "I am not looking good. Why do you want me to spoil the picture. Go ahead by yourself". But, my daughter vehemently insisted and grandma reluctantly joined. I finally ended up with great snaps of both of them.

The lesson from my daughter: Beauty is only skin deep.

She doesn't see the outer beauty of her grandma. For her, beauty comes from the person's intellectual, emotional and spiritual qualities. In short, she equates the personality to a person's beauty. Which is what everyone should do. Today's media paints a different picture. It splatters the so called beautiful models day in and day out on the TV, in Ads, in movies, etc. Which makes me wonder: of all the actors in Bollywood, it is easy to find ones that are not so 'physically attractive' but great at acting. But, we seldom find Bollywood actresses who are short on the beauty end and still great in acting. Hmmm. That speaks a lot on the Bollywood audience. But, I am digressing...

I always dislike sharing photos of friends and family with people who don't know them. Consider this scenario: You are visiting a friend/family member and they start showing off pictures of their friends' who you don't know anything about. You see a guy with droopy eyes, and the first thing that pops to your mind is that he snorts drugs or is into drinking. But, for a person who knows the 'personality', they 'see' a great ball player, a great friend in need, a great cook, a childhood friend who loves to crack jokes, etc. You get the point. So, whenever people visit us, all they see is slides of our adventure, places we visited, or projects we have done. Only rarely do we share pics of people, and that happens only when the audience knows the people in the pictures.

'Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder'. What is considered (media-suggested) as beautiful in one country may not be so in another. This is true right here in America. The US media portrays tall and skinny (almost to the point of mal-nourished) women as models of beauty. Go South for a few hours, and you see a completely different portrait of beauty. In Mexico, a little chubbier women are portrayed as beautiful. We are 'trained' by the environment around us to 'see' beauty.

My daughter is still at a stage where she is not yet influenced by the environs, and I want to keep it that way as far as possible.

For her, I am the most handsome, smartest, loving, caring father in the whole world. I am not going to argue with her. For all you (and the influenced world) know, I may look like the ugliest toad in the whole world.

Her grandma is the most beautiful, intelligent, loving, caring grandma in the whole world. Why should we argue with her. We should learn from her and go back to our roots, and accept it whole heartedly and bask in that glow.

Take the "Red Pill" and discover how deep the rabbit-hole is!

Last weekend we had some friends over, and as usual, after some time the group polarized and the women gathered around in the kitchen/breakfast area, and the men congregated in the family room.

Soon, the topic turned, among the men, philosophical and we started talking about life, its purpose, and all that deep stuff. I have gone through these sessions with countless number of friends at countless times, but this time I thought of really making a difference. So, here I am jotting down some of the notes/lessons that were gleamed out of the last session.

As the topic suggests, we should have the courage to take the Red Pill (Neo from Matrix), and be aware of the truth in our lives.

I also recalled one of my favorite taglines (it is from an Ad, for something I don't seem to remember. That shows how [in]effective the Ad was): "If your life was a book, would YOU read it?" Wow. What a way to put things in the right perspective.

Set your priorities right and live a meaningful, exciting, interesting and purposeful life.

Take a holistic approach to life. Look at the big picture, and not just tomorrow.

We also discussed the analogy of how a project manager, assigned newly to an ongoing project, would interrogate the team to get the pulse of the project. What is the SOP? Where is the SOW? Where is the project plan? Where are we, and where are we supposed to be? Are there any issues? What are the risks? How are we mitigating them? What action items are open? Etc. Why don't we turn it around and question ourselves in the different "projects" of our life? Spiritually? Health-wise? Socially? Financially? In relationships? In our career? We have to ask ourselves these tough questions in order to get a grip on our lives.

Come up with different categories that matter most in your life. They could be broad and at a 50,000 Ft level, like "Career", "Social", etc. Be the CEO of your own life and treat it like a public company. Generate quarterly reports in each of these areas. I had heard about the 'Boiling a frog' analogy, but had never understood the meaning of it until my friend explained it to me. If you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately leap out to escape the danger. But, if you put the frog in a pot of cool water, and then gradually heat the water to its boiling point, the frog does not become aware of the threat until it is too late. This is a great analogy which illustrates that if we are not careful, and take the temperature of the waters around (and within) us, we will not become aware of the changing environment as well as threats around us. So, this activity of generating quarterly reports is a great way of taking the temperature. We need to know before the fecal matter hits the air circulating device. The report should not only show the current status, but also have a timebound plan on getting it back on track (assuming we are of in at least one area).

We discussed tools that we can use to keep us on our tracks, and to visualize our progress in different areas, about which I shall write later. Use technology to the fullest extent to make sure that our minds stay focused on the important things in life.

Effective people know how to identify and execute the 20% things that bring the 80% rewards. Understanding and setting the right priorities goes a long way in becoming more effective in all areas of our life.

I conclude this entry with the poem:
"The Dash?" by Linda Ellis (copyright Linda Ellis)

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning...to the end.
He noted that first came her date of birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth...
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own;
The cars...The house...The cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard...
Are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left,
That can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough
To consider what's true and real,
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger,
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we've never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect,
And more often wear a smile...
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So, when your eulogy's being read
With your life's actions to rehash...
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?
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Take a moment and decide how you want to live your dash.