Curry Call!

Ah, reading week.

The one time every two years where I refuse to look at homework, midterms, or course material and spend the week either eating, shopping, or lying on a beach. Despite my hatred of all things cold, this year I opted for a Montreal/Ottawa trip. Needless to say...I ate and shopped. It was heaven.

After my week of real poutine, crepes, chocolate, and different food varieties, the one thing I didn't get was a curry. Now, I LOVE curry. But the problem I have with it - no matter how many times I try, I can't seem to make a curry that tastes as good as it does in a restaurant.

I remember the first time I did a butter chicken. It was yummy, but the amount of oil I scooped out before eating it was...yeah. Then, the first time I did a 'basic' yellow curry, I kind of burnt the curry powder (yes, lol, just the powder itself), and the place smelt like it for weeks. In fact, my boyfriend's parents came and visited us the week afterwards, and his mother asked if we made curry recently (this was a full week later =P). I've tried the store bought curry jars and stuff...but they just don't taste the same! The one time I made a decent curry, was when I found a random on sale spice pack at Winners, of all places. For $2 + cost of chicken and coconut milk, it was yuuuuummy. But I would love to be able to create that without 'cheating'. =P When I say cheating, I say I'd rather mix the spices myself, then using a spice packet with unidentifiable yellow and redish powders.

This is where you come in. Does anyone have any good curry recipes? I'd love to try them, and post the results. Since curry is a lot of work, I might eventually end up just resorting to spice packets in the end...but not before saying I can cook a decent curry from scratch!!

Either post in the comments or e-mail me at foodmathlife.s@gmail.com. I'm looking forward to it :)

-S

The perils of travelling with Ryanair

From travel books and well-travelled friends, I had heard of many European discount airline myths. Fly for a mere pound. Could this be true? Apparently it was, which was a concept hard to grasp as a person that hadn't even managed to take the Megabus for $1. At the heart of these myths was one name: Ryanair. And one year, a representative from Ryanair was on television, proudly announcing that it had made a decent annual profit. Cheap flights, but still making profits... it sounded too good to be true.

When I got to come to Europe for myself, I was finally exposed to real people that used this airline to travel. The most recent of these people was a friend of mine that I will refer to as "Neo". Neo is a seasoned traveller, having spent time in a large number of cities in three continents over the past year. However, even he was not prepared for Ryanair's little quirks when the time came to leave after visiting me for a day in Edinburgh...

1. Boarding pass

We had to fit in as much of Scotland as possible in a mere 24 hours, so naturally we forgot about printing Neo's boarding pass beforehand. Luckily, for most airlines, there's always the option of printing off the boarding pass at the airport. Ryanair is no exception... just with a catch.

"It will cost £40."

That's right, 40 pounds, spelt f-o-r-t-y, for a single sheet of paper. That's over $70, for you North Americans. The only sheet of paper I've seen that's more expensive than that is a university diploma. Being his student self, Neo wasn't just going to give into that. And the search for a printer in/near the airport began, so we could get Neo off to Frankfurt on his 11.15 flight.

Edinburgh Turnhouse airport does not have any printers available to the public, and our best bet was to go to the nearby Hilton Hotel, a 10 minute walk away. We took the courtesy shuttle, posing at first as travellers "flying in from Frankfurt", then as travellers "flying back to Frankfurt". In retrospect, it must have sounded mildly fishy, given that I wasn't even carrying any luggage on the way there. But that aside, the hotel trip did the job, and Neo walked away with a $5 boarding pass. A much more reasonable price to pay.

2. Check-in luggage

Before going off to search for printers, we had also asked about luggage policies. Neo had one backpack, a laptop bag, and a mini duffel bag of sorts, and was planning to check two items in. The initial assumption went along the lines of: 'I could probably check the first item in for free, and either pay for the second or haggle to get that in free too.' But who are we fooling. This assumption was far off what was actually demanded:

"£35 for the first checked baggage, £70 for the second."

This meant that Neo would have to pay a whopping £105 (around $180-190 CAD) with his luggage the way it was. As he aptly put it, "it would be cheaper to buy a second seat or a new ticket elsewhere". There was no way Neo was going to fit everything in his hand luggage anyways (especially not with a bottle of whiskey), so there were two options: a) buy a small suitcase that would fit the contents of two of Neo's current bags, or b) "wear, like, 8 shirts".

Upon returning from the Hilton Hotel, Neo frantically rearranged his bags for a good half an hour, and ended up wearing 5 shirts and his newly purchased Scottish hat.

3. Delay

And as we thought everything was finally fine, we learned that there were problems, and that more details would be announced at 11h. At the airport, it sounded like the problems were due to inclement weather - the people at the desk didn't really know. Yet when Neo got on the plane, apparently a different reason was provided by the pilot, which had to do with air traffic, rather than bad weather.



In the end, Neo was able to reach his destination at a reasonable time, but only after hours of unnecessary hassle right before his flight. Nothing we can do about different reasons given by different sources for the same delay, but save yourselves any additional trouble by printing your boarding pass beforehand and minimizing the number of bags you travel with!

One Month in the Life of a Jobmine Student

For those of you who don't know, Jobmine is the online horror that co-op students at the University of Waterloo have to endure in order to find jobs for upcoming co-op terms.

I am, thankfully, embarking on my last co-op term of my degree in the summer term. After the freedom of not having to use Jobmine for more than a year, my adventure back into Jobmine reminded me what a nightmare it can be. To illustrate, here's my shortened version of One Month in my life as a Jobmine student.

January 9:

Thankfully, in my rare moments of non-procrastination, my resume has already been completed. Looking ahead in the coming weeks, the weekend of the 16th is when Round One of Jobmine opens, and the week after just looks awful, I figure this is my only chance to take some time and get a new suit.

3 hours later: While my wallet is $260 lighter, I am consoled by the fact that at least I'll look damn good when interview season comes around.

January 16:

Round One of Jobmine opens. (Again, for those not from Waterloo, Round One is the first time jobs get released for applications. The majority of jobs are released now, if you don't get a job in Round One, it means many more months of painful Jobmine sessions.) We have 4 days to scan through jobs, add some to our shortlist, and then finally apply.

They always tell you to start early, in case something happens and you can't access Jobmine later on in the period. So I start on Saturday night, 9:00pm. Considering I thought that other people had lives, I didn't expect the servers to be that busy and I could go through all the jobs that night.

It was awful. Clicking on a job description - 3 minutes for it to load.

Clicking "Next" - took 1 minute to load.

How many jobs to go through? 1360.

ARGH. I went until midnight. If that's how long it takes all weekend, it doesn't matter how early you start, 4 days to apply is not enough time.

January 17:

Thankfully, today wasn't as bad. I was able to shortlist 13 jobs.

January 18:

While in my painful CS 371 class (where the professor thinks 12 is the same as 1), I managed to write up most of my cover letters and submit. Now the waiting game begins...

January 20:

As usual, I get an e-mail, Jobmine had a nervous breakdown the night before with the number of students who were trying to apply the night. As a result, deadline is extended one more day. Glad to know that I submitted early enough to avoid this rush.

January 22:

A few more jobs get posted. I find one more, and apply.

January 25:

I slowly start to develop OCD, as I check Jobmine 3 times a day to see if I got interviews for any of my jobs. Nada.

January 26:

I am slowly going crazy.....no interviews. I got my first rejection =( I ponder why I got rejected...I have more than a year's worth of good solid experience in the field I applied for. Oh well, there's always one that gets away.

January 27:

Rejection #2. This time, I don't even remember applying for this job, so I don't feel bad about it =)

January 28:

Officially, this is the first day of Interviews. I am really starting to get nervous now, with only 2 rejections. My OCD starts getting full blown - I have the urge to check Jobmine every 20 minutes or more. Basically, if I am near a computer, I will check. And check often. ARGH.

January 29:

*contemplates leaving the computer at home, so I don't check Jobmine so often. Na.* People around me getting interviews left and right - or have already done an interview. In a word....depressing.

Febuary 1:

The interview session is only 2 more weeks at UW. I get rejected from one more job. Now...I'm getting really antsy. At least more so than before. My thought process:

"Why does no one want me - especially in marketing? Come on, I helped with a freakin national commercial. That's got to count for something. "

"What if I don't get a job? What are my options? I could go home for the summer. *thoughts of boredom* Hmm. Maybe not the whole summer."

"Wait a minute, who needs jobmine? Psssh. I'll google jobs. *30 minutes later, and no good results later* Er.....crap."

"What's wrong with my resume? What about my cover letters? *I ask a friend. After finding out that I have 3 different resumes depending on what position I apply to, and write individual cover letters to all of them...he's at a loss.* Argh shit. I could go back to school in the summer...but I don't really have the money for that. Hmm."

4:00 pm, at the end of the day: Got my first interview. HUZZAH, I am NOT un-employable!!!

*sigh*

Excuse me...while I check Jobmine again.

- S