I spent most of my time in January playing computer games, specifically Simcity, spending anywhere between 10 to 12 hours on the computer each day. One might wonder what I was doing and what was the real cause of this escapism, but lets keep the philosophical issues aside and look at what I managed to build.

Simcity is a computer game that simulates city building. Its a single player game where one starts with an empty piece of land and slowly builds a city (or a town / village) over it. A range of factors, such as unemployment, pollution, transportation, utilities, environmental and trade policies, taxes, industries, health and education, govern how the city will develop – and I must say it is pretty close to real situations. Infact, this game has been used by planners and architects in a number of research projects.

Here are some screenshots from a small rural village housing a population of 3,000 people.

Town center, Mayor’s house, medical center, a mill and a little lake with stream flowing across the village. I like cities that have water bodies. There’s a school and a small library nearby.

Water pumping station, few houses and shops. The road tunnel under the bridge connects to the neighboring city.

Railway station and a blue train on an elevated terrain.

Rural rail with farms on one side and residences on the other.

I like laying out rail tracks, routing them through the village and working on their traction.

Some large farms next to agricultural industries. The tunnel passes under the railway line and takes you to the other side of the village.

More farms, trains and trees.

Assorted farms: Sunflower, apple orchid, wheat, corn etc.

So that was my calm little village, with no air or water pollution, almost zero crime and healthy, educated people. The train connects this village to the city (40 minutes away) and those with higher education go there to work. About 600 people from this village work in the city, while 300 people from the city work in the industries here. Primary revenue sources are industrial and residential taxes, and export of water to the neighboring city.

That concludes visit to my farming village. In the next post, I’ll take you on a tour of an industrial town.

¶ Blogged by Priyank Thatte

Summarizing my new life as an immigrant in Canada.

On December 8 2006, I arrived in Toronto and began my MBA studies at one of the most prestigious business schools in North America. Everything was new – people, food, student life, language, snow etc. and everything familiar was left far away – people, food, work life, language, heat etc.

Last three years have been remarkable. I learnt many new things. Taking a cue from my China-loving-French-immigrant blogger friend Zhu’s post, I made a list of things that will eventually lead to an identity crisis:

9 clues I am becoming Canadian:

• I have a number of seasonal clothing and other supplies. There’s winter jacket, fall jacket, summer jacket, fall hoodie, winter hoodie, winter toque, summer hat, winter socks, summer socks, snow boots, winter boots, (you know the difference, eh?) running shoes, sneakers, formal shoes, flipflops. I also have a humidifier (for winter) and de-humidifier (for summer).
• Holidays that are conveniently placed on certain days of week (as opposed to fixed dates) no longer surprise me. For e.g. Labour day is first Monday of September, Thanksgiving is second Monday in October, Family Day (ON) is third Monday of February, etc. I love talking about looking forward to the long weekend, planning trips for the long weekend, etc.
• I bitch about rush hour ‘crowd’ in Toronto subway. Rush hour means that each passenger gets only one seat (as opposed to four or five during non rush hours). Being an avid cyclist, I sign petitions asking for separate bike lanes in the city. In India, we usually have a common road for everyone – pedestrians, cyclists, stray dogs, and motorists (yet the per-capita injury rate is lower).
• I can comfortably shit in public washrooms which have flimsy partitions that barely offer any privacy.
• My sense of “personal space” has changed drastically. Now I get uncomfortable if strangers come within a radius of 1m around me. I also use terms like “personal time off”, “personal property”, “personal blah..” – terms that are unheard of in collectivist cultures like India.
• I get into unnecessary discussions due to my argument that the Liberals’ initiative of harmonised sales tax (HST) is actually a good idea but the Conservatives just want to oppose anything McGuinty does.
• If someone apologises to me for accidentally brushing their bag against my elbow in rush hour traffic, I apologise to them for making them apologise to me in the first place.
• I often say “hey! howz it goin’?” and walk away. Note to newcomers: This is a polite way of saying “hello”. When someone asks you “How are you?”, just say “Good, thanks, how are you?” instead of telling them how you actually are. This is just how we greet each other.
• I can identify Americans (I mean people from USA).

9 clues I am still an Indian:

• I don’t enjoy the “Indian” food served in fancy “Indian” restaurants at all. That’s because that food is so heavily customised for local tastes that it loses its Indian-ness. If you can eat your food with forks, spoons and knives, assume that it’s not genuine.
• I always address my teachers as “professors” rather than their first name. I have an incredibly tough time calling them Rick, Steven, Mary or Mark.
• I brush my teeth first thing in the morning and wont step out of the house without taking a shower.
• When I see an empty seat in the train, I run to grab it. Then I notice ten other empty seats and smile at myself.
• When I hear white people say that they eat “very spicy” food, I secretly giggle. I must say that there are notable exceptions to this rule.
• I mix up V’s and W’s, and forget which of the 4 T’s (त, थ, ट, ठ) or 4 D’s (द, ध, ड, ढ) I should use while speaking. I’m also known to speak (and write) “Indian English” (which, I hate to tell you, is much superior to American English). I ask people if they are standing in a “queue” or whether they “endavour” to plan something, etc. I am sometimes caught using awkward translated expressions like “today morning”, “I like this too much”, “many many colours”, etc.
• I am kinda shy of using public shower facilities, especially locker rooms where people walk naked.
• When people tell me that Toronto is a “fast-paced city”, I secretly giggle again. Ditto when they refer to their hometowns with population of 100,000 as “cities”. Oh please! The only real cities in Canada are Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton (in that order). It might be useful to mention here that my little suburban hometown Dombivli would be the fourth or fifth largest city in Canada. Among the suburbs of Mumbai alone, Dombivli ranks fourth.
• I carry an Indian passport and I’m kinda hesitant to give it up. Unless the Indian government stops eying all non-residents with suspicion, it won’t allow dual citizenship. And that sucks.

So you see, I am kinda all over the place, but I am happy with the balancing act of defining my identity. Only few thousand years ago we were all black and and living in Somalia. And in another few thousand years we might be on Titan or who knows if we’ll even exist! In any case, I am happy to learn and experience something new every day in a country that has so warmly welcomed me.

¶ Blogged by Priyank Thatte

Halva, halawa, halaweh, ħelwa, halvah, halava, helava, helva, halwa: spell it anyhow you like, it simply refers to dense, sweet confections, across the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, the Balkans, and the Jewish world. Few days back, I made Carrot halwa (गाजर हलवा) and it turned out to be great. See for yourself:

Recipe

There are probably a million recipes out there but this one makes the gaajar halwa closest to how it tastes when my mother makes it (we need a benchmark, right?).

Ingredients (4 servings)
4 cups shredded Carrots (गाजर)
1 cup (250 ml) Milk (दुध)
1/2 cup (125ml) Water (पाणी)
1/2 cup sugar (brown sugar tastes better) (साखर)
2 table spoons Butter or ghee (तुप)
1 tea spoon Cardamom seeds/powder (विलायची)
Mixed nuts: Almonds, raisins, cashews, pistachio, wanluts (बदाम, बेदाणे/मनुका, काजू, पिस्ता, अक्रोड)

Procedure:
1. Wash and grate the carrots. I prefer to keep the peels (hence the nutrients) on.
2. Drop the butter In a deep pan and let it melt.
3. Add shredded carrots and saute on low flame (about 10-15 minutes) until the carrots change colour to light brown. It’s easy to burn the carrots, so stir well and be watchful. Add water to compensate for the moisture.
4. Now add sugar evenly while you stir. It will quickly melt. If you are using cardamom seeds, add them now.
5. Add milk and keep stirring until all the milk has been absorbed and the mixture thickens (about 15 minutes). If you are using cardamom powder, add it now.
7. Remove from flame, let it cool and garnish with nuts.
Enjoy it with some hot chai and let me know how it went.

Gajar halwa: Carrot pudding, decorated with almonds, raisins, cranberries, cashews and walnuts.

¶ Blogged by Priyank Thatte

In a multicultural metropolitan city like Toronto, it is normal to hear a bunch of random languages being spoken when you are in a public space such as bus, subway, university or some restaurant. I hope I don’t sound racist, but most often I subconsciously associate certain languages with people who look a certain way. For example, if I see a brown guy, I assume he is Indian (or Paki, Nepali, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan) and I certainly don’t expect him to speak say, Norwegian. This post is about situations I encountered, during my past three years of living in Toronto, when such assumptions were defied.

• The first time I heard a non-Indian person speak Hindi in Toronto was when I was waiting tables (back in 2007) and a fellow waiter, who had long blond hair, blue eyes and strong East-European features (later I learnt that he was Czech) started chatting to me in Hindi. I thought that was unusual, but then I was in Toronto for less than a month, what did I know. I told him I was from Mumbai, and he said in Marathi, “मुंबई छान अाहे” “Mumbai is nice”, ehhh.
• Few months back I went to my bank (Bank of Montreal) and a young East-Asian lady, with a distinctly Chinese name was (wo)manning the service booth. I greeted her and subconsciously prepared my ears to hear some Chinese-accented English, but I was shocked when she said: “आप भारत से हो?” “Are you from India?” (formal). For few seconds, I stood there staring at her, dumbfounded. She said that she loved shocking people like that using the language she picked up as a child living in India.
• Then this one time I was in a west-Indian Roti shop, waiting for my order when two old east-Asian ladies walked in. ‘Two Chinese grandmas in a Jamaican restaurant… that’s kinda strange!’, I thought. I was almost expecting to hear some accented English, but instead I heard strange conversations: “Gimme wen glassa wata pleez”, “De nex time me will buy”, “How yuh eet so much!”, “Tek yu time man” and so on. Later a Jamaican friend told me that there are several people of Chinese ancestry that lived on the island. Pheww, who knew!

I’ve had reverse experiences too!

• The other day I was in the grocery store listening to my Russian lessons on iPod and repeating the lines, “Hi, if you have some time, would you like to have a drink with me?” “Yes why not, I like Vodka”, when a babushka (old woman) bumped into me and asked, “Ты в порядке?” “You okay?” I blushed realizing what happened.
• When I came back from Russia last year, at Toronto airport a Russian man asked me, “Ezkyooz me, izz the boos come ere?” Somehow, automatically I replied to him in Russian, giving him directions to the bus stop. I could see in his eyes the joy of hearing your mother tongue when you are in a foreign country, something that I’ve experienced few times.
• I posted an advertisement on craigslist looking for a study buddy to practise Russian with. Guess who showed up? A Chinese-Korean man who told me that he was learning Russian because he wanted to preach the “correct” (i.e. Catholic) Christian religion in Russia (which has Orthodox Christianity). I left immediately.

Making such generalizations and assumptions can often land you in funny situations.

• The other day a big fat guy was sitting in the subway, with one vacant seat next to him. Since I like personal space, I preferred to stand rather than take that seat. A couple entered the coach in haste and the lady immediately ran to snatch that empty seat (Hint: That’s how you can tell if someone is new to Toronto – they rush!). Something happened and the next thing I know, the fat guy started grumbling loudly in Spanish at the couple. There were some angry exchange of words between them in Spanish. Apparently the couple was making fun of the fat guy’s fatness in Spanish, assuming that the fat guy didn’t understand them. Oops!
• Also in the subway, I was once riding with my ex-boss who speaks Italian for some reason. Two college girls sitting opposite to us were giggling and talking something that seemed like girl-talk. My boss told me later that the girls were talking, in Italian, about boys and their recent sexual experience with all sleazy details. No wonder my boss didn’t talk to me the entire time we were in the subway, (I think she was learning new tricks from the girls)!

So you see, Toronto is full of language surprises and these are just few random stories I remember. There was a time a white guy speaking fluent Hindi puzzled me, but now I kinda take that for granted, I’ve seen atleast three such creatures this year.

That’s why I love Toronto so much.

¶ Blogged by Priyank Thatte