Monthly Archives: April 2011

Subway, Sandals and choice

Posted on by
A SUBWAY Club 6" sandwich.

Image via Wikipedia

Today is a bank holiday, and so I have no work. Due to external factors I no longer have to go to the beach with the in-laws either. Easter was yesterday so I have no church commitments. So I have that rare thing of being able to choose when I get up. This doesn’t happen very often to me so it is a bit of a treat. Of course I still ended up being up before 8am, but at least I had the choice.

Not that I always appreciate choice. The proof of this is Subway. I am sure many people enjoy getting a sandwich from this chain of stores, where as I do not. I have no problem with the quality of the product or the taste, all fine. I have a problem with the choice. I get stressed about it. At every stage there seems to be a choice, 6 inch or foot long? Which bread? What filling? Do you want it toasted? With cheese? Which cheese? What salad? What dressing? Do you want a meal? Do you want a drink? Do you want it large? Normally by this point I am having a nervous breakdown. I am sure that subway prides itself on its choice; I just can’t handle it, too much for me.

I do know that I like some choice, and sometimes choices have a very pleasant effect. O Friday I made 2 choices that made me happy. Choice one, I decided to wear my ¾ length trousers, choice two I wore sandals. The reasons that these made me happy need a little explaining. In the pocket of my ¾ lengths I found two 10 rupee notes. This reminded me of being in India, the good times I have spent with friends there and the massive love and affection I have been shown by people I have gone to help. That humbling experience when people show you outrageous hospitality in the midst of poverty, or the huge smile on someone’s face when you give a simple gift like a toothbrush. Those are good memories, and I liked being reminded of them.

My sandals also reminded me of India. Last August I only wore this same pair of sandals the whole time I was in India (I did change my ¾ lengths). They did get a wash now and then, but they just seemed to be the shoes to wear. I had other shoes with me, but they just sat in my room feeling left out. I had the choice available to me, if I wanted, to wear other shoes but choose not to.

This makes me think about all the other people I was coming in to contact with in Chennai. What choices did they have? Nothing like the amount of choice that I have. No where near enough choice to get stressed about buying a sandwich. I doubt they had the choice of shoes. Many people would be going around without shoes, or if in shoes might be in their only pair. Of course I should say donate to Chennai Challenge to help us to help people (and of course do, by clicking here) but I actually also want to tell you about Toms Shoes. I recently became aware of them and I like the sound of them a lot. When you buy a pair of shoes from them, they give a pair to someone else. Why not buy your next pair of shoes from them, now that is a choice that I think is worth making.

Cooking South Indian Breakfast

Posted on by

Five days ago I fractured my colcaneum, my heel bone.  I wasn’t expecting it to be as painful as it was, it seemed that it didn’t matter what position I had my foot it, it still really hurt. For three days I was unable to walk at all, not being able to put any pressure on my foot, but hopping round the house seemed quite funny.  It also meant that I was able to catch up on Waterloo Road, that I had recorded on the HD box.

What’s all this got to do with cooking I hear you cry?  Well yesterday, I was able to walk a little and so because I was going a little mad decided to do some cooking as this always makes me feel better.  Also because it was Good Friday and we fasting from meat (apart from the accidental chicken sandwich for lunch!) I decided to make some South Indian breakfast items.

I planned to make vadai, medhu vadai, sambar, rasam, coconut chutney, aloo masala and poori.  These are all foods that we would enjoy eatinig at Raj Bhavaan or Doveton Cafe in Vepery for breakfast, lunch, dinner or any time really.  Of course I had cooked all these items before (apart form the vadai and medhu vadai; I had previously always used an instant mix. Shame!) but not with a fractured foot.  I started by finding a recipe for real vadai and soaking my dals.  Easy! Now all I have to do is wait, which is good, because walking round the kitchen was already starting to make my foot ache.  Whilst I was waiting I tried to learn some more Tamil – sentence structure and use of negatives. Illai!

My urad dal was now ready for grinding, I hobbled into the kitchen and got my food processor ready.  This is not a grinder, but would do the same job, it may just take a little longer.  So I added my dal, chopped cheen chillies and a little water to the processor and turned on, and off to scrape the sides, and on, and off to scrape the side…repeat for what seemed a hundred times.  This process took ages to reach the right consistency, but it was now there, add salt, pepper and asafotida and we are ready to cook.  However, I am now back to hopping around and thinking ‘health and safety’ thought it best to not have hot oil and hopping.  Sit down, bag of frozen peas on my foot and a couple of ibuprofen should make it feel a little better.

I rested for an hour or two and got to work on the coconut chutney, coconut, green chilli and coriander into a food processor with a little water and blend.  Then add tempering of dried red chilli, mustard seeds, chana dal and curry leaves, and mix.  Time for making the sambar.  Toor dal in a pan with water and turmeric and boil until soft. Then chopping onions and getting spices ready.  I think I had bitten off more that I could chew.  I couldn’t stand any more, it hurt, I had to sit and rest, frozen peas to the rescue.  At this point Rob suggested that maybe we should get something else for dinner as he didn’t want to see me trying to cook in pain.  (I think he thought it may put me off cooking in the future!)  As I was in pain I agreed and chips from over the road it was.

So this morning having rested my foot all night, I got up to make the sambar.  Fry mustard seeds, chana dal, dried red chillies, fenugreek seeds and curry leaves until the pop, add in onion and cook until brown.  Add tamarind water, toor dal, tomato and veg (peas), salt and asafotida, cook for a little while and sambar is ready.

Now to the medhu vadai.  I beat the mixture I made yesterday to make it light and added some curry leaves. I then made the dough into doughnut shapes and fried them, easy.  Medhu vadai and sambar, done.  We sat down to a South Indian breakfast of medhu vadai, sambar and coconut chutney.  Rob commented that they weren’t as good as Raj Bhavaan, but I thought for a first attempt they were pretty good.

It did make me think how long, some of the Indian recipes take to cook, even simple things like sambar that are eaten everyday.  It made me think how long some women would spend cooking to prepare breakfast of vadai or dosai, especially when they do not have the same equipment.  I thought grinding in a food processor took a long time, imagine how long that would take in a traditional stone grinder.  Do our time saving devices, really give us more time to do other things or do we now rely so heavily on them that using traditional methods would just frustrate us? Perhaps we should stop and look at our instant, take-away lifestyle, and realise how priviledged we are.

12,000ft, 41 sec freefall at 131 mph!!!!

Posted on by

Well just another ordinary Sunday for me then yesterday!!! Maybe not!

Experience life outside your comfort zone, one of the many challenges you are asked to face when becoming a team member for Chennai Challenge. I don’t think it gets any more outside your comfort zone then a skydive! I am one person who definitely likes to keep my feet firmly on the ground and only being 4’11 I’m never far from the ground either!

So in some moment of insanity I decided, to raise money this year I would jump out of a plane with a complete stranger at 10,000ft in the air.

So 17th April 2011 was the day. A very early start and a long journey to Nottingham begins the day. A slight detour with road works and diversions but eventually we get there with time to spare. Firstly a sausage and egg bap to get me going (after all it could be the last meal I eat). Then briefing time. A chance for us to be shown everything we will need to know to be able to complete this skydive safely. A few funny positions shown to us in the hope that we would remember. Legs back, hips out, head up, arms crossed… oh and don’t forget to smile at the camera! And that was before we left the plane. Then it was remembering to land safely. Nothing like a safety brief to settle those nerves!

Then the waiting begins and what better way to take your mind of whats coming then a game of uno! I lost of course. At this point I’m still not really nervous just excited which is surprising me. Then one by one we go, Dawn first, Joel next and after a plane of solo divers me and Max finally get up there.

The ride up to our height was interesting. Very cramped but breathtaking with the views. Still at this point I’m not noticeably nervous. We get to about 7,000ft and we start to prepare, helmets and gloves on but that’s not until we have been hitched up onto the lap of our instructor and strapped onto him within no room to spare (very snug).

Even while my instructor shuffled his way to the door of the plane I was relatively okay. It wasn’t till I was hanging out the door with the instructor rocking back and forth and trying to remember what I needed to with my legs, arms and head that my heart started to pound. Then we fall. At first you spin around but then once in position in the air the freefall is amazing! Such an exhilarating experience, it really does not feel like 131mph. The noise was incredible. I was enjoying that moment so much that I forgot I had a cameraman filming the whole thing and at the very moment he must have been getting great shots of my fetching helmet. Ooops, quick get my head up!

After 41secs our parachute is deployed. With a drastic change in speed we start to descend leisurely taking in the views, which were incredible. Eventually we get to the airfield and spin over it a bit. I catch a glimpse of our group and even manage a wave. Then in no time at all I hit the ground, safely.

All the planning and organisation and months of begging people for money and it is now over. Had they given me the opportunity to get back on the plane and go again I would have jumped at the chance! It was possibly one of the best experiences I will ever have.

This experience has taught me to forget my inhibitions and take chances. Never letting anyone especially myself tell me I can’t. The one surprising reaction I had when telling people I was doing this was ‘you’re very brave, I couldn’t do it’!!! How do you know? Until you step out of your comfort zone and try the impossible, never say never. I have given myself an experience I will never forget and in the process raised a great amount of money to change the lives of others.

Thank you to all who came and supported us, and a huge thank you goes to all those who have sponsored us.

Leap of Faith!

Posted on by

Well what can I say other than ‘I’M ALIVE!!’. Yesterday four of us took a ‘Leap of Faith’ 13000 ft out of an airplane and all of us managed to survive the ordeal…just! Here is how the day worked itself out:

5:30am – Time to wake up – lots of yawning!

6:30am – A car full of sleepy looking adults arrive at my house, and we’re off!!

7:30am – Hmmm where are we?! Then after some nifty and in places slightly illegal driving  by Rob we were there!

8:30am – Nom Nom Nom bacon and sausage sandwich paid for by someone else! Can this day get any better?!

9:00am – Uno! With some very strange rules that as the game developed gradually came out! (to be honest I think they made them up as they went along!)

9:30am – The briefing! Here we all learnt the correct positions for jumping and any other information we needed to know. (Suzanne listened particularly carefully to this bit, possibly due to the tall man explaining everything!)

11:30 am – My time to jump! Dawn had already been and said it was amazing so at this point I was very excited! I walked into the reception area and met the instructor I was going to be attached to, I then found out that actually he was very weird! (all this jumping out of the plane had made him go a bit crazy!) I then got my very fetching jump suit and harness on (VERY TIGHTLY!) and we were all set to go.

11:40am – It was time to get into the plane. 20 people had to fit in the back of this very small plane so as you can imagine it was very ‘snug’. As the plane took off the nerves started to kick in but whenever the camera came near me I tried to hide it as best I could!

11:55am – This was it. I had seen all of the others jump out leaving me and my instructor left. We sat on the edge of the plane 13000ft above the ground, my heart was thumping, then we jumped. It was the weirdest feeling i had ever felt in my life! In those 2 seconds i had forgotten all of the positions that i was meant to get into and was flailing and flapping my arms – much to the annoyance to the man strapped to my back. As we hurtled to ground at 130mph I was loving it! Then as soon as it had started the parachute deployed and we were slowed from 130 to 25mph in 5 seconds!

11:56 – Everything was calm! The rushing air had stopped as we floated gently towards the ground. I got to steer the parachute and so we flew wildly around the place for a few minutes.

12:00pm – Ground at last! A small feeling of relief and lots of adrenaline flowed through me. This had been one of the best experiences of my life and it makes it better knowing that all of the money that I have raised is going  to a brilliant cause!

Silence is Golden?

Posted on by

Sup…

This week (04/04/11 – 08/04/11) I have been completing a sponsored silence (original I know). You may think wow, five days of Barney Blake being silent…. and yes I am amazed as well but I do allow myself do have breaks in the evenings to let it all out and let my larynx continue to function normally. ;)

The silence has really opened my eyes though to the meaning of communication, to the importance of social interaction and to how meaningful/meaningless some of the things we say/do everyday are. For example, it seems so easy to say hello to people you know when you see them everyday and becomes part of a routine. Break that routine and it feels really strange and stopping basic day-to-day interaction has been quite tough. People may say that it’s just a sponsored silence and really it is not that hard but it has opened up my eyes to things that I never realised before. Trying to get your point across (as people may know I am sometimes a tiny bit opinionated) to someone without being able to communicate in a way you are used to is very hard. I have also had to slow down how I pace my conversations because writing down something every time you want to say something slows everything down.

This week has made me think about some of the people I met in Chennai last year and people I may meet again this year. The first thing is the language barrier that we face when working out there because we cannot communicate very well with some of the boys (especially the younger ones that I worked with at the Yellagiri camp last year). It is hard to want to make your presence known in a situation without blurting out your point of view. I have tried to contain many of my opinions and it has been a strange experience.

The second thing that came to mind in terms of how this relates to Chennai Challenge is the fact that I cannot communicate to other people by choice but some people who we may meet in Chennai may either have no one to talk to or just not have the knowledge to be able to communicate. We do meet some very lonely, poverty-stricken people who you can’t help but wonder that if the very kind people of Madras YMCA and Oasis India were not there supporting them, they would literally have no-where to go and no-one to turn to for help. Also, we meet people who have no-where near the privileged up-bringing we have in the UK and have not had as good an education or childhood. This leaves them without any way to make something of their lives and this is where we come in.

Chennai Challenge does not only go out and work in Chennai for a month in the summer each year and then for 11 months leaves them to settle for the poverty-stricken conditions we found them in. We work to create solutions for people to get their lives on track and to get them out of their poverty trap. The 11 months we are not there are as important as the one we are there for because that is when Chennai grows, through the YMCA and Oasis, creating opportunities and new starts for people who without intervention would have very little hope in their lives. This is what Chennai Challenge can do for people, start a beacon of hope in their lives by being a presence that they will hopefully remember as they work themselves out of the situation they are in.

Chennai Challenge can only do this through the continued support of everyone back here in the UK and this can be in any way you can. If you can give money, give your money. If you can give time, give your time. If you next year want to give yourself, I’m sure Chennai Challenge would love to take anyone and everyone to help in India. After all, they took me didn’t they. ;)

Thanks for reading this and I hope it wasn’t too long and that it made sense to people, I just didn’t realise how much a little sponsored silence would make me think. I don’t think very often, I’m a bass player. (apologies to any bass players who can’t take the wet out of themselves once in a while) :P