My little garden :)

Firecracker flowers (Kanakambaram), Marigolds, Jasmine, Cilantro(Corriander) and Fenugreek plant(Methi).

Never saw a firecracker flower or hoped to see one

after I left India. I was totally excited to see them at Home Depot...grabbed the plant without thinking for another second!!

Eggless pinapple cake recipie

This is the easiest pinapple cake recipie I saw and is very very good as well:
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1616,149190-241205,00.html

Blueberry muffins from scratch

Here is a good recipie that I tried today and it works great. It takes just about 30 mins..
http://www.recipezaar.com/Awesome-Blueberry-Muffins-51997

Just keep going...

In this economy...the most important thing to do is to 'hang tight'. It is important than ever..whether one is in a job or looking a job.

Looking for a job has never been tougher. Thats because there are several thousands of candidates looking for opportunities in the market and the number is increasing every day, while the number of companies that are hiring or even thinking of hiring is diminishing. The demand-supply chain has become so messed up that for the few companies that are hiring, there are needy professionals willing to work for under bare minimum salary to just keep them going. This is bringing down the market even further by making it harder on rest of the individuals who are marketing themselves and ready to accept a lower pay already...and the cycle continues.

On the other hand working hard and keeping the job thats in hand has never been tougher either. Companies/firms/offices are operating with lesser than bare minimum workforce. With such little workforce and demand of output and deliverables remaining the same or even more, the pressure to perfom is much much higher combined with the fear of insecurity that he/she might be next one to 'let-go' next if there is cutting-down again.

Govt, news, media..everyone say the economy will turn around soon and things will start to get better. No clue when that will happen, but one thing for sure is that everyone needs to keep their faith alive, have hope and keep the self-confidence strong and stay bold. Because be it sooner or later, the market will turn around and get reparied...but if one's personality is damaged, it will be much harder to repair that. So, I know its hard, but its important to calm down, relax and hang tight.

Yellow Cake from Scratch

I have tried several different recipies..but this one works best:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Yellow-Cake-Made-from-Scratch/Detail.aspx

Working with Fondant

Our class today was to work with fondant on a real simple pattern..a party cake.

It was much easier than anticipated. The easiest aspect of working with a fondant, as opposed to butter cream icing was that if something went wrong, I could simply remove it or wipe it off without messing up anything on my cake and re-do it!!

Finally here..

I have always had the habit of writing. Friends and colleagues often teased me for being verbose as well...I used to maintain a diary for a long time and somehow lost the habit. Finally today, something happened and I got back to writing..and this time, blogging...

A recruiter called me today morning to give me feedback on an interview(phone-screen) I attended Thursday morning...turns out that the interviewer wanted to 'move on' with other candidates, because he was looking for someone who could 'fire answers back' at him like he could fire questions. This got me to thinking...

It is not about knowledge or skill set or talent anymore..in this market, it is purely one's position and power to choose is a key player for a candidate to be 'picked' or not. How fair is this??