Restaurants in Cambridge

Here is a review of some of the restaurants in Cambridge that I have been to in the recent past. I hope to keep them updated with time.

Bombay Brasserie
Avoid this one. Terrible food, crap ambiance, average service.

Visited: Q4 2007
Address:


Dojos
I think that this one is a pick and mix kind of restaurant. You choose the sauce and decide whether you want to have it with Rice or Fat noodles or thin noodles. Overall, its quite cheap with decent food. Generally good for takeaways. I especially like the salad rolled up in rice paper and also the Yasai kare gohan/udon.

Grumpy service though and you usually end up sitting bum to bum with somebody from the table behind.

Style: Oriental noodle bar
Visited: 2005, 2006, 2007
Address:


The Rice boat
A good restaurant with authentic food. The menu is very different from the typical Bangladeshi restaurants. Slow service, a bit pricey and can be busy over weekends.

Cuisine: Authentic Indian
Visited: Q4 2006 and Q1 2007
Address:


Wok & Grill
Very Good, clean buffet style Oriental cuisine restaurant. I am not expert in authenticity but this feels great. You can choose the vegetables/fish/meat/poultry along with the sauce and take it to the chefs who will cook it for you in front of your eyes. It usually tends to be busy so over weekends book a table..

Visited: Q1, Q2 and Q3 2007
Address: Trumpington Road


Gardenia (Gardys)
Takeaway shop, not a restaurant. Very good.
I wonder why people eat from those night life vans when Cambridge has one of the best Falafel places that I have ever been to. Lots of choice, good food, well located and modestly priced.

Visited: 2005, 06, 07
Address:


Gourmet Burger Kitchen
Belongs to a chain of restaurants. This restaurant mostly has burgers on the menu along with some salad. The burgers are really nice but the place is quite small. Its also a bit pricey. Try out their recommendations/specials. The service was awful but I have only been there once (at an odd time) so, they might have other staff during weekends.

Visited: Q4 2007
Address: Regent Street


Al Casbah
One of the best restaurants in Cambridge. Very tasty food, not very expensive. Small and crowded.

Take care: No card payments accepted and you are not warned adequately. Get sufficient cash before you start eating.

Visited: Q3 2007
Address: Mill Road

Mac OS X Leopard

I upgraded to Leopard recently and I would say that this is probably the best update that I have seen so far (comparing to Jaguar and Tiger). The interface is so polished and well thought about. The layout of the system (for example network connections) is simple, uncluttered and yet packed with features.



Some of best bits that I have discovered so far are the sharing options that are available. It took me just a couple of clicks to see and control the entire screen of another mac from my mac. It again took me only a couple of clicks to create a computer to computer wireless network (802.11g) and login to another computer to access files. All the computers (including windows based) in the local network appear in the finder of the mac and can be accessed as if its just a drive on my machine. Spotlight search is incredibly fast. I can go on and on about this.

I used Vista for a while and frankly, it feels like a bunch of gimmicks put together with not much regard to intuitiveness.

LoL

A very funny read..

Sporting events this weekend

So much sport to watch this weekend..

Saturday: Rugby world cup final between England and South Africa

Saturday: Cricket T20 between India and Australia

Sunday: F1 last match of the season qualifier on saturday and race on sunday

Karnataka Politics

If you have been following up on the political developments in Karnataka, it won't take long to figure out how immature and undignified politics is in Karnataka (could be extended to the entire country in my opinion).

We have a Chief Minister who is guided by the ex-PM (Why a person who has occupied the PM position goes down to this level is beyond my grasp). Most politicians across all parties either have a criminal record or they have been accused in the past. They have no skills or education whatsoever in administration of state/people. Youngsters like us on the other hand don't care, can't be bothered to enter politics and will not get involved.

The world sees a developing economy at a rate greater than 8%. The reality is that the standard of life, the core principles of living and the adoption of the Gandhian ideologies are at a level so ugly that I just can't think of any words to describe them.

There is no way this is going to change for the better in my lifetime...

Time to be practical?

I read this article on how an astronaut is trying to gather information on how to pray in space.

While I am considerate towards religious sentiments and I believe that every individual has the right to follow his/her religious beliefs and practices, surely, in examples like these, these people have duties towards their countries and the taxpayers who have financed their journey to the rim of our planet and beyond.

One then needs to ask if a line should be drawn somewhere that recognizes the religious sentiments but at the same expects followers to be practical and not to waste much time on such "details".

Of course I am not pissed off

So what if Apple introduced new ipods today? Mine is just as good as the new nano..isn't it? Its only a month old after all..

Nice photography

I happened to hit this page on Flickr. Nice photography, especially the ones in Egypt (look for the Cairo skyline - ancient and new) and the London eye @ night.

Should I buy an iPhone?

I would say, wait for a while. Prices will drop a little, software will mature and more than anything else, you will get to read proper reviews before you spend a lot of money (rather than reviews based on speculations and peanut sized phone specifications).

I would also say, a phone like the iphone is absolutely necessary for the market. It should wake up all these sleeping, terrible phone manufacturers - set a new bar for them to aim for.

Movie reviews

Updated


Pirates Of the Carribean - At World's End
I liked it. Jack Sparrow is cool as ever. I didn't like Kiera Knightley's expressions. She just doesn't seem to know how to act (not that I do but there are certainly better ones out there).

4/5

Oceans 13
Better than the last one (i.e. Oceans 12) but not as good as the first one. Plot and cinematography feel very similar to the first one. The plot is a bit more complex. Al Pacino does it soo well.

Boy, is Brad Pitt looking old or what...Also, no Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta Jones (the producers must have done some cost cutting :) )

4/5

Fantastic Four - Silver Surfer

Cool graphics but way too much importance to the love life of Jessica Alba and the stretchy guy. They are not even romantic, no chemistry...
I remember liking the previous one more.

2.5/5

We have GOD or rather, we lost GOD

As much as I would like to comment more on this, I believe that the root cause of this could be a psychological problem and its not nice to make fun of it.

Times of India reports:

Court quashes man’s plea to be known as 'god'

Mumbai: A man claiming to be “god” and wanting recognition of his “divine status” on Thursday failed to get the judicial endorsement he had sought.

The Bombay High Court rejected 30-year-old Dharmendra Mishra's application, saying it was not in its jurisdiction to respond to his prayers.

“I am Vishnu, Buddha, Christ. I know everything that goes around,” said Mishra, who also pleaded with the court that he should be given the reins of the country and the UN as he was god.

The matter came up before a division bench of acting Chief Justice J N Patel and Justice S C Dharmadhikari, who dismissed Mishra's plea.

Mishra, a resident of Kurla who works in a call centre, claimed in his petition that he had written to President Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterji, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan about his divinity.

He claimed in his petition that his wife is “Laxmi”, and she recollects her previous births. Mishra also told reporters that he was ready to undergo a cyanide test and claimed he would not die.

Programs shot with HD Cameras - worth the price of a HD TV

Wired.com clears up some assumptions that we have made about wildlife programs until now. Apparently, the wildlife hunts where one predator chases its meal is usually not a single act of hunting. Many such hunts by the same species of the predator are stitched together and we end up believing that its the same hunt. You can read more here.

With the introduction of HD Cameras and TVs, this is changing. BBC's upcoming Planet Earth program seems worth watching. An excellent ad for this program, which is on YouTube is embedded below. Watch it..its really nice.

BTW, I don't think buying a HD TV should be high up on the shopping list..yet (for somebody with averagish savings). Prices are bound to go further down due to competition.

Office Open XML vs ODF

Its not breaking news anymore that Microsoft is making an attempt to open up and standardize its document format. One might ask if there are existing standards that Microsoft could adopt or even further develop by interacting with the community. The answer is 'Yes there are' and 'No, Microsoft wants to come up with its own "standard".

I read a well written and detailed article explaining why one should really hope that Microsoft is not succesful in its latest attempt in this area

Buying MS Vista

I saw this on Macrumors forum. I am guessing that Apple will do a new version of their 'I am a Mac and I am a PC' ads along similar lines..

Re-growing cut fingers

Accident Victim says: "I lost a finger in an accident...booo hooo..."

Pig says: "Here, take some extract from my bladder and apply it on your wound. You will get your finger back (at the cost of my life)

Well, apparently this might be possible sometime in the near future. Want to know more? Read this.

Pheromones

I got this from 'How Stuff Works'. Its a very interesting read on Pheromones and its connection with the immune system.

The debated topic of human pheromones still carries some weight in the field of love research. The word "pheromone" comes from the Greek words pherein and hormone, meaning "excitement carrier".

In the animal world, pheromones are individual scent "prints" found in urine or sweat that dictate sexual behavior and attract the opposite sex. They help animals identify each other and choose a mate with an immune system different enough from their own to ensure healthy offspring. They have a special organ in their noses called the vomeronasal organ (VNO) that detects this odorless chemical.

The existence of human pheromones was discovered in 1986 by scientists at the Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and its counterpart in France. They found these chemicals in human sweat. A human VNO has also been found in some, but not all, people. Even if the VNO isn't present in all of us -- and may not be working in those who do have it -- there is still evidence that smell is an important aspect of love (note the booming perfume industry). An experiment was conducted where a group of females smelled the unwashed tee shirts of a group of sweaty males, and each had to select the one to whom she was most "attracted." Just like in the animal world, the majority of the females chose a shirt from the male whose immune system was the most different from their own.

Whats after this life?

This is a question that comes to my mind quite often. A question like this tends to get an answer based on beliefs of the person answering this question. Some say that you will be born again, some say that you will be judged and sent to either heaven or hell while others (like me) tend to believe that its the full stop to another life.

The same question popped in my head today but this time under a totally different circumstance. Our pet dog back home in Bangalore had to be put to a never ending and premature "sleep" today. Sitting here, all I could do was to hope that he slept well and that he is happy?? wherever he is. Well, if I think about this from my "pragmatic" point of view, the latter part of my last statement doesn't make any sense. But at this point in time, I don't want to believe the "pragmatic" myself.

Anyway, the fate of attachments: we know that we will have to let go one day and yet we don't see any point in living without them. Rest In Peace Rubel...you will be missed..

This wierd weather

Its confusing me. One day its freezing with snow, frost and all. The next day, its comfortably cold. Well, if this is my situation, I wonder what our flora and fauna are going through. I can hear some birds thinking, "Should I lay eggs or not?". Some trees cursing, "Dammit, I just spent so much energy into these new leaves and its getting cold again. All this for nothing.."

If any of you are still wondering if climate change is all but just hype, think again. Well, actually, stop thinking and do something about it.