Vikash Gounder

Thai Baked Fish with Garlic Bread

It has been a while since i did cooking for my mum and wife. So i decided to visit Nausori Market and i managed to grab some fresh fish (Sabutu). So for lunch i decided to do my version of Thai baked Fish. And to top it off, my wife decided to make Garlic Bread.

Ingredients:

• Fish of your liking
• Tamarind or Lemon Juice
• Thai Coriander Paste
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Red Hot chillies
• Onion
• Fresh Coriander
• Salt
• Fish Sauce
• Soy Sauce
• Rice Vinegar

Preparations:

• Scale and gut the fish
• Wash the fish really well, pat dry with kitchen paper
• In a basin soak tamarind in water, leave it for 10mins. Once soft, squeeze to create thick juice.
• On a large tray pour the tamarind juice over the fish and inside the fish – the purpose is to neutralize the odor and soften the fish
• Refrigerate for 20mins

• Create a Garlic, Ginger and Chilli Paste using a mortar & pestle – or blender (quantity depends on your taste)
• Chop some chillies
• Chop some Onion
• Chop some Fresh Coriander
• To create the marinate, in a basin, pour some
  - Thai Coriander Paste
  - Garlic, Ginger & Chilli Paste
  - Chopped Onion
  - Chopped Coriander
  - 1tbsp Fish Sauce
  - Soy Sauce depending on taste & requirement
  - 2tbsp Rice Vinegar
• Take the fish from tamarind sauce and stuff the marinate inside and all over
• Garnish the fish with chopped chillies (optional) before wrapping in aluminium foil
• Heat oven 20 mins prior to baking time
• Place the wrapped fish in a baking tray and cook for 20mins at 200°C
• Serve with Munched Potatoes or Garlic Bread

Garlic Bread

Ingredients:

• Garlic
• Fresh Coriander
• Salt
• Butter
• Sliced Bread

Preparations:

• Using mortar and pestle, ground the Garlic with Fresh Coriander into a paste. Add salt to taste.
• Apply butter to the bread and lather with Garlic Paste.
• Toast it in a Toaster.
• Serve it warm with Pizza, Thai Baked Fish or just with warm milk tea

Finally got a invitation to test Google Wave and first impression of it is just awesome. It runs very smoothly via Google Chrome even on a 256KB Broadband in Fiji.

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More information coming later

Tags: broadband, Fiji, first impression, Google, invitation

These last couple of days my mum and I have been really busy running around since my grandmum who was 100+yrs old passed away on Dec 25th, 2008. It is very hard for my mother since my father passed away 4 months ago and now grandmum. Lucky she has got me here with her, otherwise it would have been very hard for her.

My grandmum has 9 children; 3 has deceased and 6 are currently alive residing in Fiji, Australia and Canada. Grandmum wasn’t a Indentured Labourer from India, she was born and raised in Nausori, Fiji. I think my Grandpa was a son of a Indentured Labourer and he was 7-10yrs old when he came to Fiji from Calcutta. For more information about Indentured Labourer in Fiji, follows these links:

• Girmitiyas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians
• Indian Indenture System
• Girmitiyas in Fiji

This year would be very memorable for me, since alot has happened in my life in the last 6months. This Christmas has been a sad one for me and same with the New Year. For all the readers, Wish u all a Prosperous 2009.

Tags: Fiji, Girmitiyas, Indian

Recently I bought a new Nokia E71 and it turns out it has a really good battery lifetime. Understandably battery lifetime depends on the usage of your fone. So i decided to test how long the battery lifetime will last and had intended to monitor it too. Unfortunately I totally forgot the monitoring bit and my fone was out of juice this morning.

After charging and switching the fone on. It asked for a SIM PIN which I totally forgot and after 3 failures it asked for a PUKS code; I have no idea what my PUK code was. So I decided to visit www.vodafone.com.fj and on the lower-right is a Live Chat.

I managed to get my PUK code and able to reset my SIM PIN within less than 7mins, way faster than standing in line for a Customer Service. I have to applaud their Live Chat Customer Service and the person who chatted with me was Sailasa. Attached is the transcript of my conservation:

Vodafone_transcript

Tags: E71, Fiji, Nokia, PUKS, Vodafone

Just yesterday while trying to login to Gmail, i noticed on the Gmail Home Page on the New Feeds that Gmail Zurich office has rolled out themes which was so long overdue. Previously i used to Greasemonkey to rollout skins when login into Gmail.

This morning when i logged into one of my Gmail accounts, a popup came up mentioning the themes into my account and i used for the preset themes Gmail provides and one word to describe it “AWESOME”. The theme plugin seems to be light and hardly any overhead especially since I’m checking my email from Fiji on 256KB Broadband.

I think they are rolling out themes on the account creation time basis or maybe on the server, since i have another email account with Gmail and the themes tab doesn’t appear under Settings yet. Just looking around to find a way to port own themes and uploading to the server or maybe someone has already done.

But the new theme feature is really nice and superb way to customize your own Gmail account. Excellent Work Gmail Team.

Tags: Fiji, Gmail, Themes

Today is my first day at work at HRmonise in the ICT Park Campus, Statham Campus, Suva Fiji. Since I’m in fiji for the next couple of months, may as well get some work done and earn money. Well currently the company has 4 employee’s including me, 3 developers and 1 tester. Well as always first day @ work is really boring and takes time to get used to the new environment. Work hia is ok, mostly ASP.NET work, i will have to get used to the ASP.NET work, since majority of the work i have done is Open Source mostly, PHP, Perl, Mod-Perl etc etc.

Well i will be posting lot more of the programming stuff later on during Nov and Dec.

Tags: ASP.NET, Fiji, Mod-Perl, Open Source, Perl, PHP

When returning from LA to Nadi on 8th, the Air Pacific route seems to be taken up by United Airlines. Review on the United Airlines especially on long flights.

• The Boeing 747 was really old and no inseat tv set.
• catering service is really crap
• especially some of the germans who were vegie’s ended up with either Beef Pasta or no me
• and breakfast came with pork n beef which 90% of the travelers were non-pork and non-beef eaters

I think majority of the German tourists were really pissed coz of the crap catering and so much turbulence. Another major price change in baggage especially with UA flights, i remember when flying from Sacramento, LAX to Nadi n i was carrying jst 1 camping luggage bag, i was charged US$15 and this time round i was allowed 2 bags free and remaining US$25. I hope not to do anymore long distance flying with United Airlines anymore, i prefer Air Pacific over United Airlines.

Tags: Fiji, Food, USA

I have not updated my website for a while, finally i managed to find some time to update my blog. Well i got married in May 28 and moved with my wife in Sacramento, California. I have been traveling back and forth to Fiji and USA since my folks are currently staying in Fiji. My dad passed away on August 23rd and so i had to spend almost 2 months in fiji sorting some paperwork regarding my dad’s property in Fiji and now my mum is currently living in Fiji.

Right now I’m in LAX airport waiting for my flight back to Fiji. My wife and i are taking some time off so that i could spend some time with my mother in Fiji, since she is only survived by me, she is not doing really well emotionally being alone in Fiji. So i will spending the next 4 months with my mother in Fiji. Hopefully this sorrow period passes soon as it is getting to me.

Will be updating my blog daily from now onwards for the next 4 months.

Tags: Fiji, USA

One of my former workmates and good friend Marijke Wilhelmus had a problem with a flash file and a drop-down menu. Okay here is a problem, the website she was working on a drop-down menu and below that was a flash file, on IE the drop-down menu seems to work fine without any overlapping. On Firefox, the flash file would overlap the drop-down menu. The original HTML flash code:

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<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="570" height="200" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="quality" value="high" />
         <param name="LOOP" value="false" />
         <param name="src" value="someflash.swf" />
         <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="570" height="200" src="someflash.swf" loop="false" quality="high"></embed>
</object>

I surfed on Google, found few solutions and recommendation, most didn’t seem to work. The solution is within the flash embedding code rather than the layout. The original html code was missing the

which actually helps and makes the drop-down menu/flash file behave the way we want. With some small tweaking, here it is:

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<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="570" height="200" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0">
	<param name="quality" value="high" />
	<param name="LOOP" value="false" />
	<param name="wmode" value="opaque" />
	<param name="src" value="someflash.swf" />
	<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="570" height="200" src="someflash.swf" wmode="opaque" loop="false" quality="high"></embed>
</object>

And another factor to note is the order which always is a problem, but with most older browsers it may be a problem. Seems to work fine on IE/Firefox/Safari.

Below is the Before:

This is after the tweaking:

Tags: Flash, Google, HTML, Programming