sorry hooters, but life seems to be better .. !!

Today is my birthday .. when I used to live in the US, one of the few accepted ways of celebrating a birthday was to go for a drink at the hooters bar. Once the staff there know its your birthday they convince you that you are a prince from Saudi and they are your harem, at least for a few minutes (was I convinced .. ?? :) ). deep down - in my heart - I knew there could be better things but I was not sure what .. well, I had them all today ..

well, there were the most awesome wishes on the phone/email from family and friends .. thanks to you all !!

But a few things made the day really special .. in the order of occurrence they are -

1. I had plans of going to Italy between 12-17 of July, and was trying to set up an appointment with the embassy hoping that I can renew my existing visa. The Italian embassy was kind enough to give me an appointment for 10th and the soonest I would get the visa in that case is the 17th. Cancelled my plans! Then looked at my existing visa, and then this time read the text in english, rather in Italian as I did previously, and it said my current visa is valid until september - hurrah ..

2. we applied for a project time allocation on swiss national computer center 2 months ago, and got the good news today - sweet

3. I had the wonderful company a few of my friends from work, even at a short notice, for a drink at Lanchetta bar .. of course, the card/gift were very special - awesome ..

4. my friends' 10 year old son baked a cake for me. This made my birthday very special compared to anything I had so far. It was just unbelievable that he was so thoughtful and sweet to bake it for me - touched .. !!

In summary, it was a great birthday. The icing will be continuing celebrations which I will have with a few friends that could not make it today .. !!

egg fried rice, beta version

I have lived alone, away from my family, for 11 years now, and never never had the desire the cook until recently. I used to eat all sorts of easy to eat foods from salads to eggs under the name of health, and the true reason is laziness. Anyways, for some reasons (I can tell you soon) I started cooking recently.

a new experiment .. egg fried rice .. beta version .. tried it on a friend .. the actual release is scheduled for next week .. :) I started with the recipe of the Indian egg fried rice and ended up with Chinese egg fried rice. nevertheless as long as the original motives are kept a secret, it should be fine, I guess. I think the end product is anyway restaurant quality .. so, the release is going to be at the scheduled time ..

and the Italian touch to the egg fried rice is the use of olive oil ..

time to go back to Italy/Spain quarter finals .. go Italy !!

Italy reaches quarter finals

Last night Italy made it to the quarter finals, after defeating its arch-rival the French team 2-0. It was a much awaited victory in the euro, at least on the Swiss Italian side. I knew about this game, not by watching it on television, not by reading news .. !! I was kept awake for more than 1.5 hours after the game by the enthusiastic team supporters going aroud the streets of Lugano and honking their cars to glory. Lugano is sucha small town, I strongly believe its only a few cars that managed to loop around the city and publicise the victory .. !