Chp 786. Notice Period

I've been so overwhelmed at work and was suffering from an abscess in my right pupil (small formation of pus in my eye because I was rubbing it a lot due to extreme monitor exposure) for around 2 weeks that I just realized I've already completed serving 1 month of my 2 months Notice Period!

Yeah, that's right. I am currently on Notice Period.

Around a month back, with a heavy heart, I had to officially hand in my resignation letter to my boss. I have been under a lot of pressure for the past few years from my family to start taking care of our family business and house back in Mizoram, as I am the youngest and only son.

And it is an open secret in office that there would eventually come a time when I will have to pack up and go home, hence the reason why I used the word "officially" to submit my resignation, so as to give my employers enough time to hire new resources before I could officially start serving my Notice Period.

Usually, if people are on their notice period, they are asked to keep it to themselves by their reporting Managers or HR, and only tell others on their last week. I guess it is like a Corporate office etiquette, so as to prevent other employees from jumping ship or causing a domino effect. However in my case, I am not joining any other company or looking for greener pastures as I really love where I work, this is like my retirement from the Corporate world due to family obligation, so it is different.

I've also realized that in around 15 years of my experience in the Corporate world across various sectors like Sales, Marketing, Advertising and Gaming, this is the FIRST time I am actually serving my Notice Period, as previous terminations were because of acquisitions, mergers, policy changes etc., which resulted in immediate new job profiles. This time, I am actually doing the proper Notice Period thingy! :D

So how does it feel to be serving my first (and last) Notice Period?

Well, for starters, I make sure I don't slack. I am still one of the firsts to reach office every day, and one of the lasts to leave, for FIVE straight years. That is one of my legacies I am planning to leave behind here. I love my work and the office environment, and nothing can take that away from me. Secondly, yeah, the tasks that I have been assigned to are a way lot lighter now compared to before, but I plan to make the most out of it.

Unlike other people who may be itching to complete their Notice Period so that they can start working in a new Organization, for me, every day of my Notice Period is quite nostalgic. Even the daily commute I take to office, as the first glimpse of our tall Corporate Office appear in the distant horizon, is poignantly painful, because working at such a place is something I will not experience again in my lifetime.

I will be in Mizoram, growing rice and vegetables, cutting trees and shrubs, rearing cows and pigs along with a handful of chickens, ahhh what a contrast my life is going to be. No more scrums, no more daily sprints, just a daily interaction with Mother Nature in its rawest form.

It feels just like yesterday when I was sitting in a conference room at a 5 star hotel in Mumbai, me and my fellow Co-founder Sumeet along with our entire Start-Up team at one side of the table, and on the other side sat Rajan, Parimit, Nitin, Niharika and the other top management from Jetsynthesys, as I presented all our gaming concepts and ideas to them. And finally, the green light that we had been acquired! Oh what a ride it had been, from moving out of our incubator space in Bandra to our new office in Chandivali, to the weekly commute to Pune, to finally moving permanently to Pune.

We were the first batch of employees of our newly set up gaming division of Jetsynthesys, and even though we were initially small, we gave it our best, and we stayed with the organization for as long as we could as more and more experienced talents were slowly absorbed, and today, it is filled with extreme super talents like Jenna, former game designer of Farmville, Roopak, Amitabh, Saurabh, Nayab, etc.

Our gaming division now occupies an entire floor of our office at the elegant Sky One Corporate Centre, and is more or less the size of the rest of all other Jetsynthesys divisions situated one floor below us. What a growth it had been, especially if you compare it to the time when we initially joined and we had to sit in that dingy old Metro House office with cramped up workstations and everybody had to push in their chairs and suck in their stomachs if somebody from inside the lane wanted to use the toilet, and I always felt bad using that toilet because everybody could hear the flush sound :D

What a transformation indeed.

I will really miss all this, the daily pressure of meeting deadlines, the brainstormings, the endless discussions in one of the many conference rooms, the learnings that I get from people who had many more years of experience in gaming than me, the mistakes we encountered, the pivots and re-strategizing, etc etc. And most of all, I will miss my colleagues and all the laughter we shared, especially our kickass upper management of Jetsynthesys like Rajan, Parimit, Nitin and Niharika without whom none of this transformation would have been possible. I thank them all profusely for giving me the opportunity to experience all this.

As I enjoy my last few days of Notice Period, I raise my glass to all these people, and hope that this company continues to grow bigger with more top grossing games released in the future.

In the meantime, I will continue drinking as many free coffee as I can from our office pantry room before my time runs out :D

Cheers for now everyone, and have a very happy Diwali long weekend!

Chp 785. Bachelor Pork

And thus, to complete my series of Bachelor cuisines, here is my Bachelor Pork.

You can read my previous posts too –

        Bachelor Potatoes

        Bachelor Bai

        Bachelor Dal

        Bachelor Eggs

        Bachelor Fried Rice

Pork is one of our favorite Mizo meat. Most of us Mizos prefer the fat part, whereas if you order from any restaurant, 99.99% of the time, you'll get only the meat part, which is why we prefer to cook our own pork at home.

In this post, I will teach you how to make Naga Smoked Pork!

Step 1. Wash and clean the smoked pork.

Step 2. Get all the ingredients like cabbages and king chillies ready.

Step 3. Add a Naga lady.

Step 4. Thaadaaa, your Naga Smoked Pork is ready! :D

All jokes aside, Smoked Pork is one of the easiest dishes to make. I have blogged about it before too. You can read about the first time I tried cooking it as my friends were giving me step by step instructions on Facebook :D Or about the time I had our Mizo Smoked Pork with various TV show celebrities :D

Just boil the Smoked Pork (after washing) in a Pressure Cooker for about 10-15 minutes (wait for the pressure cooker to phhsss 3-4 times). After depressuring, add some cabbages, and let it phhsss again for around 3-4 more times. Your boiled Smoked Pork is ready!

Simple right?

You can spice it up by adding some green chillies along with the cabbages, so that the meat and cabbage will have this uniform spicy taste.

So good!

There are other easy ways of making awesome pork cuisines, like the one my friend baked last weekend.

Maybe I'll blog about it one day. For now, this is a conclusion to a wonderful series of Bachelor dishes, and hope you found all these posts useful. Until then, cheers everyone.

Chp 784. Bachelor Fried Rice

Previous posts –

        Bachelor Potatoes

        Bachelor Bai

        Bachelor Dal

        Bachelor Eggs

No Bachelor set of dishes is complete without the traditional Fried Rice. Easy to make, easy to eat, and delicious and healthy too.

Here is a step by step method on how to make bachelor fried rice.

First, boil rice, following the golden rule of 2 and half cup of water for every 1 cup of rice.

Defrost sausages.

Chop them into small pieces and grind King Chillies and mix.

Fry them directly on a pan with little oil (sausages can be consumed directly too, but I prefer that crunchy taste).

Next, fry some eggs. Add salt to taste.

Miz the fried eggs with boiled rice and sausages and mix!

Your simple yet awesome bachelor fried rice is ready!

I usually take it to office as tiffin too. Most simple and basic bachelor dish to make.

Now you can add a lot of onions along with ginger garlic paste while frying the eggs. This gives an even better taste and aroma to the fried rice!

Tastes really good. If you want some Chinese taste, you can add soya sauce to the above while cooking. As for me, I prefer it just like that, with no extra additives. Taking it to office as tiffin is easy too.

Here is another version of a bachelor fried rice. Enjoy the pics.

Yummm :)

Until my next post then, see ya all.

Chp 783. Bachelor Eggs

Previous posts - Bachelor Potatoes | Bachelor Bai | Bachelor Dal

Eggs are super easy to make. Anybody can make a sunny-side up or full fry or omlette. I let to make mine a little bit more exotic :P

My version of scrambled eggs involve just onions and chillies (and some salt, duh). You can even spice it up further by adding mushrooms, jalapeños, cheese, salami etc., but for now, this is how you make a very basic scrambled eggs.

 First, chop some chillies and onions into small pieces.

Beat eggs (2 per person) on a bowl and add salt.

Heat oil in a pan and fry the onions and chillies real good until they start to turn golden and crispy green.

Gently pour in the eggs from all corners and stir slowly.

Thadaa, your eggs are ready!

Another simple hack is, if you want to make tomato scrambled eggs but you're out of tomatoes, simply use some "tomato puree" :D First deep fry the onions again.

Pour some "tomato puree" in the pan.

Add the eggs.

Yum, your tomato-less tomato scrambled eggs are ready!

Of course nothing can beat the taste of real tomato scrambled eggs without tomatoes. First, slice the tomatoes into tiny pieces (so that it cooks faster) and fry it in a pan along with onions and chillies.

Make sure you add salt in both the tomato base in the pan and in the egg bowl, so as to make sure every part is seasoned properly. Finally, pour in the egg from all sides and stir gently.

The more tomatoes you use, the more you can have a liquid like state, like the one below.

So good, yummm. So that is how you make Bachelor Eggs. :D

See you on my next post. Cheers (which I technically can't for the next 4 days because I am under medication due to an abscess in my pupil).

Chp 782. Bachelor Dal

Previous posts - Bachelor Potatoes | Bachelor Bai

Dal is one of the most basic yet important part of almost every Indian meal. You can have it with rice or with different types of bread.

I love all sorts of dal, from Dal Fry to Dal Tadka, Dal Makhani, Dal Bukhara, Palak Dal, Toor Dal, Panchratna Dal, Bengali Masoor Dal and so on, along with their cousins like Rajma and Sambar (the only Dal I don't like is Gujarati Dal as it is sweet).

In this post, I will show you how I make my famous Bachelor dal, which is extremely simple and easy to make.

You will need -

Dal (red masoor dal variant)

Onions

Chillies

Turmeric powder and salt. That's it!

Simple right?

First, wash the dal and soak it in water for some time.

Soaking dal (or rice) before cooking makes it faster to cook, and also, since this is a bachelor dal, you don't have any girl to soak wet, so this is the only soaking you'll get to do.

Next, slice a couple of onions and chillies.

Heat some oil in a pan, and once it is heated, throw in the sliced onions.

People usually make this type of dal in a pressure cooker, but everything is so easy that way. Since we are making a bachelor dal, there is no pressure from any missus or wife, so no need to use a pressure cooker, you can take your own sweet time :)

Once the onions start to turn brown, add 1 tbsp of turmeric powder along with the chopped onions and stir.

Finally, drain the water from the soaked dal and add the dal to the pan.

Stir nicely for some time and let the boiling oil nicely sizzle around the dal pieces (the only type of hot sizzling you'll experience as a bachelor).

Finally, add filter water to the brim.

Stir occasionally.

The dal will start to boil.

They will start absorbing most of the water.

Hence it is important to keep adding a little bit water now and then, with continuous stirring to prevent the bottom part of the pan from getting burnt. Once it is almost ready, sprinkle salt and stir again. Thadaaa, your bachelor dal is ready!

Goes great with any food, from rice to roti, or just as soup too.

BONUS recipe.

Wanna spice up your bachelor dal a little bit?

Add canned fish!

Soooo good! Just add a can or two of sardines as the dal is almost done, and then stir very gently so as not to break the fish into little pieces.

Yummmmmm!

And so, that is my little secret on how to make a bachelor dal. Hope you find this blog post useful. Stayed tuned for more upcoming bachelor dishes. Cheers until then.