Chp 541. Of Wine + Dine and Oneplus One

So after using my new phone, the Oneplus One for a week now, I wrote a quick review about it yesterday, mentioning about some of the issues I have faced so far - My new Oneplue One - about the disappointing low in-call volume and how it unfortunately wasn’t compatible with one of my favorite premium apps that I had purchased last year.

This time, I’ll just post some of the photos I have taken using this phone, though I’m still trying to figure out which is the best setting to use under which condition. As I mentioned in my previous post, the camera quality is not as good as my previous phone, the S4. And regarding some of the photos you’ll see below, remember, I’m just an amateur foodie, and not even an amateur photographer, but I do love taking photos of my experiences just for the memories.

Below are three recent events I’ve been to this past one week - the first is at “Smoke House Deli - Bandra” where the photos are taken under natural sunlight with auto setting, the second is taken at “JamJar Diner - Versova” taken under lowlight condition without flash, and the third is at home where we baked our own home-made pizzas and the photos are taken under HDR setting.

Hope they aren’t that bad.

So, here’s the first set (Click on all photos to enlarge to a new tab).

My flat-mate and I, along with a few close friends nearby have started this new social ritual of stepping out together for brunch or lunch on a Sunday. We usually spend our Sunday afternoons cooped up in our rooms watching sitcoms or just relaxing but we decided to change that. So last Sunday, the place we went to was “Smoke House Deli” at Bandra.

Earlier, the place used to be called Yellow Tree Café, and we’ve been to it a couple of times. I remember how their imported beers like Hoegaarden and Stella Artois were quite affordable compared to the other pubs around Bandra. As Smoke House Deli replaced the joint, there were a lot of changes not just in the menu and management but the interiors as well.

We started off with Sangria. Sangria Rosso to be precise, which is an apt drink for a lazy sunny afternoon. Builds up the appetite just right while leaving you with a pleasant tingly feeling.

The side-serves went well with the aperitif, especially when dipped in olive oil.

And now for the main course. The Grilled Salmon with broccoli and spinach was the most expensive item we ordered. Though my friend said it was worth the cost (950 plus taxes), well maybe because I am not a seafood enthusiast but I really think it wasn’t worth that much. The taste was divine though.

The other main course we ordered was the Lightly Smoked Lamb Shanks with tamarind dash and roast garlic hash. Good stuff.

I had the Honey Orange Glazed Pork Spare Ribs, with roasted beets and mash. Hmmm… I wouldn’t say it was the best spare ribs I had, but yeah it was soft and yummy. Look-wise, it was very similar to the mutton dish above, though the tastes were very distinct.

The vegetarian dish we ordered was the Cottage Cheese Steak + Ratatouille. I’ve always wanted to try out a Ratatouille ever since watching that animated movie of the same name. I wasn’t disappointed.

We also asked for Bacon on the side, which in my case meant going overdose on pork since I was already having the Pork spare ribs :D

It was a bit saltier than we expected, so in order to counter that, we ordered another pitcher of Sangria. Ok fine, that was just an excuse :P This time we went for the Peach Sangria.

And then of course since two is an unlucky number, we had to order our third pitcher of Sangria, this time going back to Sangria Rosso. We actually liked the red version better when compared to the peach Sangria, maybe because it used white wine as its base.

And just as all good things must come to an end, ours had a sweet ending. We ordered a Tiramisu, along with Warm Apple Crumble. If you like a fusion of hot and cold dessert, like hot gulab jamuns or jalebis topped with cold icecream, then you must definitely try the warm apple crumble. It was Heaven.

So yeah, that was a lunch well spent. What do you think of the camera quality of my Oneplus One? All the photos were taken in “auto” setting under broad daylight, at 13M pixels and quality set to 100% (the output came at 4308 x 3120 pixels! All of them had been resized for web view). Here’s a pic from the secondary front-facing camera.

So that was it. Smoke House Deli, Pali Hill, Bandra.

The next session I attended last week was at JamJar Diner at Versova. A very cozy and beautiful place with its own jukebox. And unlike Café Mondegar in Colaba, you don’t need to pay to play your music. Anybody can queue their music selection one after the other, and they have a very good collection of classic rock and 90’s music.

As I’ve already mentioned in my previous post, my Oneplus One isn’t as good as my previous S4 when it comes to flash. Below is an example -

But the “night mode” shot isn’t that bad. In fact it’s better than the S4 when taken without flash under low light condition. Here’s the same pic from above – Melted Queso and Crispy Bacon Fries, this time without flash.

Other starters - Pan Tossed Chicken Sausages and Pan Tossed Pork Sausages. Similar in looks and preparation, but completely different in taste, both awesome.

Some veggie stuff :P I think it was the Popcorn Mushroom.

I love the way the drinks were served. Kinda retro. I initially had a pitcher of Mojito since it was rum-based.

Rum + Coke were also served in the same glass. I must say that gave me a very different experience, and I liked it.

Here are a few photos of the other main course we ordered - the Chimichurri Grilled Chicken, made from marinated grilled chicken breast and served with 4 herb chimichurri sauce, potato mash and grilled veggies. It was awesome.

We also went for their ultimate monster pizza - the Meat Overload, consisting of grilled chicken, pork sausage, crispy bacon and ham! Slurrrrrrrrrpppppppp. Probably the first pizza with abundant pork toppings that I had since Joey’s Pizza (Nobody can beat Joey’s).

We also ordered three of their specialty burgers - the BBQ Chicken, which is made from chicken piccata, gouda, crispy onions and chipotle mayo, the BBQ Pulled Pork and the JamJar Juicy Lucy.

Here, take a closer look at the Juicy Lucy! Oh mannnn it was soooo good. Made from molten cheese stuff beef patty, rocket gherkins and mustard mayo, such burgers with that patty size are rare to find.

Overall, I had a wonderful time at JamJar. As mentioned before, the place is really cozy and had a very unique and wonderful ambience of its own. Here are a few more photos of the settings around, all taken under night mode.

Not to forget, the loo. Hehehe…

We ended the night with dessert. We went for the house special again - this time it was the Flower Pot Surprise. The spoons were laid in front of us…

And then came the Flower Pot! It was… pretty much a flower pot :D

The entire pot was enough to serve more than 6 people, and it consisted of mixture of gooey brownie, marshmallow, ice cream and oreo soil. Ohhh it was super delicious.

And so that was my experience at JamJar a few days ago. I do recommend this place. And I think my Oneplus One handled low lighting shots pretty well! Here’s our table once we were all done.

I’ll definitely visit this place again and go straight for the Juicy Lucy!

And here is my and third and final update for this post. This time, I tried using the HDR settings on my Oneplus One. As I’ve already mentioned, I know nothing about photography but love taking pictures of stuff around me. Last week, we decided to bake our own pizzas at home, and these are some of the photos I took. As you can see, the color is much richer when taken in HDR.

(wiki - High-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI or HDR) is a set of techniques used in imaging and photography to reproduce a greater dynamic range of luminosity than possible using standard digital imaging or photographic techniques.)

The way we made the pizzas was very simple and basic. First we took the base and applied pizza sauce over it.

Next we added the main ingredients. We made four flavors that day - bacon fried, mutton kheema, chicken salami and chorizo sausage. The bacon was first fried separately since we didn’t have a pizza oven.

After that we spread the cheese and herbs all around the topping and then placed it on a frying pan.

Next, we covered the frying pan and kept the flame at low for a couple of minutes. This will slowly cook the ingredients and melt the cheese without burning the bread crust. Here is how it looked like once it was ready. Yummm.

Since we already had a lot of variety, I decided to make only half a pizza for the chorizo. The base was prepared just as before.

Next it was time to prepare the chorizo. Juicy yummy pork sausage marinated in spicy Spanish paprika. After carefully removing the casing (this is mandatory though) I sliced it into smaller bits and then slowly fried them using just a teaspoon of oil. Again, one must use very little oil because the chorizo will provide its own oil once heated.

I do recommend you grill your chorizo instead of frying it. I just did it that way because we didn’t have a grill at home. After that, I placed the awesome smelling chorizo on the pizza dough and that went to the frying pan again  -

We also made mini-pizzas, using the same cheese and herbs as ingredients, along with a slice of chicken salami. This was also prepared the same way as the pizzas.

To counter the rich cholesterol and oily fattiness, we made some plain and simple poached eggs as side dish :)

And so here’s the lunch we made at home - our very own pizza feast.

My plate, in HDR :)

Next time, I’m gonna experiment and make my own pizza version using ingredients such as Bekang (fermented beans), Nghapih (shrimp paste), Bhut Jolokia (raja mirchi), Bamboo Shoots and fried Smoked Pork! It’s gonna be soooooooooooooooooo AWESOME! :D

Cheers :)

Chp 540. My new Oneplue One so far

So it's been 1 and a half week since I got my new phone - the Oneplus One. I haven't had much time to fiddle around with it, but so far it had been an awesome experience.

Being a Samsung phone user for more than four years now, with my previous two phones being the Galaxy S1 and the Galaxy S4, I still need some more time to get used to the User Interface of my new phone.

As you can see from my two blog posts above, I bought the S1 for 29K and the S4 for 41K.

I bought the Oneplus One for 22K.

:)

So yeah, when it comes to price and value for money, Samsung is no match for this phone.

Secondly, I love Android, but I was starting to get really sick and tired of Samsung's bloatwares. There were a lot of installed apps that I didn't want but was not able to get rid of, unless I root my phone. I once ended up soft-bricking my S1 so I decided not to root my S4 since I wasn't such an expert at it and 41K was a lot to lose in case I screwed it up again. Not being able to customize your phones really defeat the very purpose of Android, imho.

And those bloatwares just sit their occupying precious internal storage space. When I bought the 16 GB Galaxy S4, it freaking had just 8 GB free space! I felt utterly cheated when I discovered that after purchasing the phone. Here's a nonsensical explanation by Samsung, explaining why they're just giving you half an apple when you bought a complete one (oooohhhh I just used an apple reference on Samsung, oh no I didn't! :P ).

I ended up buying a 32 GB micro SD card, and that really didn't make things better because installing apps to an SD card is not an easy task. Hence I could only have one or two heavy HD games (the ones that are around 1GB in size) at any given time :(

To make things worse, my micro SD card crashed one fine day. It just went kaput. Dead. Dieded. I ended up losing two entire months of precious photos and videos (December 2013 and January 2014) so I cursed Samsung even more for that (even though that might not be their fault). Storage had always been an issue for me when it comes to Samsung.

With my OnePlus One, haha, when I bought the 64 GB version and looked at my internal storage space, guess what? It had 62 GB free space! :)

Likewise, there had been many other reasons why this phone is absolutely rocking. But for now, I'll just quickly point out some of the negative things I have experienced so far with the OPO.

First and foremost, the in-call volume on my phone is very low compared to my previous Samsungs. I looked up online and realized quite a number of OPO users are experiencing this too. That really sucks because it's almost impossible to hear somebody on the other line if we're in a noisy area like traffic or football stadium.

Secondly, one of my favorite paid apps which I bought for 435 bucks, is NOT COMPATIBLE with the Oneplus One! :'(

I love Automatic Call Recorder Pro. It records every single conversation I have on my phone and saves it immediately to my Dropbox account. Very useful if you want to go through important call conference you had with clients again and take notes, or for security reasons like somebody made a threat call or somebody backed off from their bet or promise by denying they never said anything, or getting drunk and calling up somebody the previous night and listening to what you mumbled in the morning to see how much damage had been done, hahaha...

Unfortunately, this awesome app conflicts with the OPO. All my calls automatically get disconnected or inaudible after 2-3 minutes of talktime. It became alright only after I deactivated the Call Recorder settings. Dayymm.

Camera quality is also not that great compared to my S4. Like I said, I still need time to fiddle around with it and try out all the different settings, but my observation so far is that the OPO's night mode shot (without flash) is better than the S4, but with flash, the S4 camera output quality is much better. I will post a couple of photos I have taken in my next few updates. For now I'll just post these photos -

One of the first photos I took with my new phone - A duplicate sim card from Vodafone. And thank God we no longer need to file an FIR or police report after losing our phones. That was such a pain. And I really like how sim cards now automatically come in two formats.

And then that same day, I decided to treat myself at Dunkin' Donuts on Linking road. Their new burger called "The Naughty Lucy" was awesome, with creamy cheese oozing out from the center of the chicken patty!

So that's it for now. Other than what I've just mentioned, I don't seem to find anything negative about the Oneplus One so far. Will post a lot of photos taken with my new phone in the next few updates. And tonight being our anniversary, brace yourself for a mushy post update :D

Cheers.

Chp 539. The Best and Worst of times

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,

it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

            - Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities.

Even though this famous introduction from the classical novel was describing the contrasting era and lifestyle between London and Paris during the French Revolution, I just couldn’t help but think of these famous lines after what happened to me last week. Last Sunday was definitely my “best of times worst of times” moment this year. Something awesome happened, only to be followed by something awful!

The MSYM (Mizo Student and Youth of Mumbai) which is a part of our Mumbai Mizo Association (MMA) conducted its annual story writing and poetry competition open to all MMA members.

For months, many people wrote and submitted their original articles. I too decided to participate, keeping my fingers crossed. The article I decided to submit was a story I had written earlier, entitled - “Chemtatrawta, according to Ludlum”.

The story revolved around Chemtatrawta, a very popular Mizo folktale character. However, the twist was that the story was written in the style of Ludlum :) I used to be a HUGE fan of Robert Ludlum (RIP). I had read all his novels way back in school, and was crazy about Jason Bourne (and puleeeze, the movies starring Matt Damon came NOWHERE close to the awesomeness of the actual fictitious character).

All submissions were sent to Mizoram where selected University scholars and PhDs reviewed each and every single entry vigorously. The names were blotted out so as to keep everything anonymous. Once they all agreed on the result, they sent back their ratings to the MSYM.

And so, on the day of the prize distribution, I attended the Mizo Church service where the winners were going to be announced.

I was sweaty and fidgety, hoping to clinch at least third place. The MC came up to the mike and announced the winners, starting with third place. 

It wasn’t me. Round of applause.

Second place, my heart skipped a beat as the MC announced again.

It wasn’t me. Another round of applause.

And just when I was about to give up on everything, the grand winner was announced. *drum roll* Chemtatrawta did it! It felt so amazing winning the coveted award (with a prize money of 2000 bucks). It definitely made me feel really proud as I went to collect my award.

Here are the winners of the coveted contest - the three winners of the poetry writing competition on the left and the three winners of the story writing competition on the right.

Didika, one of the best Mizo football players today currently playing for Mumbai City FC at the ongoing Indian Super League was our guest of honor, and he distributed the coveted prizes of Best Male sportsperson, Best female sportsperson and Best football player at our recently concluded Mumbai Mizo Association Annual Sports Day that I blogged about earlier.

And then of course some of us wanted to take a few more photos with the legendary Didika :)

That continued even outside the Church…

By the way, our Mizo Church service does not get over that late, as you can see from the darkness behind us. It’s just that our service on that particular day took longer than usual due to the award ceremonies, and also because my dear friend Benjamin who’s also the MSYM Secretary, delivered what was supposed to be a quick 5 minutes sermon and stretched it out to 45 minutes :D

Anyway, yeah, that was my “best of times” moment right there, having won the coveted award.

A few of us then decided to go and celebrate…

And that was when the “worst of times” happened to me!

On my way home, I somehow lost my precious Samsung S4! :(

By the time I reached home, the phone was no longer in my pocket. The auto driver and I searched the whole auto thoroughly, but it looked like it fell out from my pocket and then out of the moving vehicle!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

So many blog posts I have written dedicated to my S4. In fact, most of the photos and videos I have posted on my blog the past one year were taken from my S4. And it’s only recently that I finally finished paying off the EMI (I bought it for a whooping 41,000 on the first week of its launch itself!). Reading through this old post of mine only made me feel worse - Mizohican: My new S4.

And now it’s goneeeee! :'(

Well, at least one concession was that since it fell off from my pocket at moving traffic and not stolen, the chance of another moving vehicle running over it and smashing it into smithereens was high, so I don’t have to worry about any of my personal data falling into wrong hands, not that I’m saying any of them were scandalous… :P

And so, after days of regret and self-pity, I brushed myself up and went and bought the Oneplus One, currently considered to be one of the most powerful smartphones in the market in terms of physical specs today. It is still not available to the general public and one needs a special invitation code to buy this limited batch. I’m still trying to get the hang of it, and will post a review on my next blog update.

So that was my best of times worst of times moment. What a rollercoaster ride indeed!

:-(