asi

Back home in Malacca, studying for my exams in Auckland come 30 Nov. interesting times..food: nasi lemak, sunsets (after my swim), my breakfast mates (Usop and Rameli-the stall co-owner) and Pak Ali (a character and a half..)

After many months and many trials and tribulations, find myself back where I grew up-Malacca, Malaysia.

Sunday Lunch

Lamb korma 

Recipe for Vijay's Special Lamb Korma

Ingredients:
500g lamb stewing meat, cut into large cubes
1/2 Cup blanched slivered almonds
Grind to a paste:
2 Cloves garlic
3 Whole cloves
1 tbsp Ginger, grated chopped
1 tbsp Coriander seed
1 tbsp Cumin seed
1 tsp Cardamom seed, without pods
1 tsp Crushed red pepper
1-1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon
2 tbsp Cooking oil
3 tbsp grated coconut (unsweetened)
Other ingredients
2 Medium onions, thinly sliced & separated
1 leek, sliced thinly
1 cup thick coconut milk
1/2 tsp garam masala
a  couple of coriander roots  
water as required
   
Method

1. Combine cumin seed, coriander seed, crushed red pepper, cardamom seed and cloves and dry roast with the almonds. Grind these into a fine powder.
2. Blend garlic cloves, ginger, salt, crushed peppers and ground cinnamon and 2 tsp oil with the dessicated coconut till a paste forms.
3. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan or Dutch oven.
4. Fry onions, coriander stalks and leek until brown.
5. Now add the blended spice mixture and stir 3 to 4 minutes more or until slightly browned.
6. Now add meat, potatoes and coconut milk to the saucepan, turn heat to and simmer (covered) for at least 3 hours or until meat is tender.
7. When almost done, stir in fresh coriander leaves and adjust seasoning to taste. The meat should be falling apart now.

Serve with aromatic basmati rice or roti. You can even have this dish with plain bread.


 

Our veggie garden looking good

the constant weekend gardener, Mel, my lovely partner..

BRUMBIES won!!!!

 Well done, The Green Machine..

A little nice story

My story

I was interviewed by the Canberra Times more than 2 years ago. The story read “Doctor makes dough to pay medical fees”, or something to that effect. A month or so before that, I had just walked out of the university, where I had been since the summer of 2001.

I sent in my (immediate) resignation letter at 5.45am to the John Curtin School, then started working with John and Rosemary. The warm and friendly couple run a grocery store at the ANU. I have known them since 2004, when I was still a student. Very nice people, they understood my “plight”. This is paltry (really), compared to poor kids anywhere, that don't have food for days on end. Rosemary, once a nurse, still cannot understand why it has been so difficult for me to get to work as a doctor here. John is a calm and collected, all round-nice guy/golfer. A mad Geelong AFL fan, he completely detests the system. He mutters, “It's all about the money” and simply shakes his head.

My story (if one could call it a story) begins way back in 1968. I was born to two high school teachers who'd never been to university. My mum, who taught me how to read (yes, in English), instilled in me noble values: truth, hard work and kindness. Hell, even now (she is 73) I still have problems hearing what she says. She is just so soft-spoken. So was I, till I came to Australia. More about that later...

My late father was a strict disciplinarian. The first time I dropped the “f” bomb, I was fighting with my brothers (as kids at the age of 10 do). So I yelled out “XXXX you!!!”. Mum was nearby. “What did you say?”, she asked. I looked up proudly at her (thinking I could show off a new word) and said “XXXX you”! I had no clue what the word meant, but had heard that it was handy to use when fighting. “Wait till your dad gets back”. She left it at that and I get triumphant. Finally. I'd leaned a new word, or so I thought. Dad had gone, once again, to umpire hockey, badminton or some other game. Dad was a sportsman through and through. So were all 3 of us.

At 5.30pm, Dad walks in. Mum, who was in the kitchen, yells out “Cha, come here”. She addressed my dad as “cha”, which is short for Pancha, which in turn, is abbreviated from Panchanathan. “Ask you great son what he said”. Dad looked at me. I looked up and blurted out “XXXX you!!!”. Bang! My cheeks stung so hard and I fell to the floor. Tears welled in my eyes . As I ran upstairs he said “Don't use any word you don't know the meaning of!”. Pretty succinct, I thought, years later. And that was that. For that moment, at least.

Ever the scholar, I creep into the small library at home. Gingerly, I reach for the Oxford English Dictionary. The look on my face afterwards could win medals at Cannes.

Two years later, I won the state (albeit a small one, quite a bit like the ACT) Under-12 badminton championship. We were driving home, 20 mins away from the badminton hall. “So, you 're a champion now. You must be so proud of yourself, son”. “Oh no, something's coming up”, I think to myself. What had I done wrong now? Dad never called me son, unless something was really, really wrong. “If I were you, I would give up all games and just concentrate on your studies” (as I type this tears are in free-flow down my cheeks). I had come first in class for the entire duration of my primary school. I (thought) I had no reason to worry. As usual, I was wrong.

The next year, I stopped playing all sport. In 1994, I graduated from medical school. As I received my scroll from whoever it is that gives out scrolls, I look for my parents in the audience. There, in the midst of the crowd, I spot my Dad. Dressed in his only coat, he is the only one standing, taking a photograph of me. I never did get a chance to see that photograph.

My first posting was as a medical officer was in Penang Hospital. Starting at 7 am, I go through the ropes, etc. that need to be gotten through when interns are “inducted”. First day on call, I am called down to Casualty to see a 15 year old girl from an All-Malay residential college nearby. She is in pain and her skirt is soaked with blood. It is now 7.30pm, so school would have finished hours earlier. She has this embarrassed look all over her face. Together with my female chaperone, we establish that she had tried to please herself “down there” (her words, not mine) with a glass test tube. In the midst of all that, the tube broke and cut into her. We nearly lost her.

A month later, I had delivered 4 babies every night I was on call. Calls were 3 to 4 times a week. I thought this doctor thingy was quite enjoyable..

Then, disaster struck. I was doing (what was meant to) a be simple routine delivery. I had to" break the waters" of the mother. She'd had 9 deliveries prior to this and 3 of them did not turn out well. So, I preform the procedure confidently but to my horror, not only did liquor come out, but fresh blood as well, lots and lots of it...OMG! I immediately summon my seniors. They call their superiors. In no time, the Consultant is there, gowned up, delivering the baby. The baby was blue and could not be revived. I had quite literally killed the baby. The worst was not over. I had to do my professional duty and explain to the mother what had happened and worse still, why. Good God, I had turned white, but I still had a job to do. The consultant called me aside and was very kind. All of us doctors and nurses knew exactly what had happened and why. By the way, I had leant everything I knew as a doctor from the nurses. I was sent home and given the week off. Instantly I hit the bottle, but not after doing the rounds in my ward and working till noon. My superior senior Medical Officer Bala picks me up and off we wander into the sunset.

Another incident was hilarious. I'd been on duty all night at Casualty and it was fairly busy. Six in the morning, we change shift. I walk back to my quarters and suddenly feel the need to relieve myself, of the “big” kind, if you get my meaning. One, as you can imagine, does not get much time for such luxuries when working in Accident and Emergencies.

So I sit, and strain, and strain. Suddenly,crack!! The commode breaks and cuts deep into my butt. Ow!!! Shit splatters all over the floor. I quickly get a towel and stop the bleeding. Then I put my shoes back on and limp, with the towel and only a T-shirt on, back to Casualty. On sighting me, everybody there is falling over laughing. That went on and on and on, for what seems like forever. My face, had I been a wee bit fairer, would have been plum red. Ten stitches was the result and it hurt for almost a month. I shuddered every time I "went" during that period..

Nine months later ,I head back to KL to work with Professor Tikki Pang, my lifetime role model, the only person to date that I still call “Prof”. By the way, he grew up in Canberra. An extremely smart man, he taught me microbiology, more specifically, immunology, in medical school. Those days, our medical students considered “microbiology” and “immunology” as one and the same. How wrong they were.
His first tutorial went like this. He comes in with his tennis gear and pulls up a chair and sits, the wrong way round. “Any questions?” he asks. No one budged- everyone was afraid of him. So he gets up and leaves. Not another word. We students look at each other in shock. The next tutorial, my hand went up straight away. “Yes?”, he asks. “What is the meaning of life?” Everyone laughs. Tikki and I end up having a one on one conversation on Schopenhauer, Bach, tennis, Fred Hoyle and you name it. Everyone else is silent- they still are, God help them! This went on for the next 5 or 6 tutorials. When someone else took over his place, I skipped microbiology tutorials. I knew then that my life was to be in research.
Sometime in 1995, Prof (as I still call him) met me at the E & O Hotel in Penong. I told him I wanted to come do research with him. He quipped “WHY????” But, he managed to get me a scholarship and off I went, back to KL, to work with this so-called genius in research in Malaysia. I had fun in his laboratory, where I (literally) stayed. I slept on the ng -20 degree freezers at night, with a T-shirt rolled up to fashion a makeshift pillow. That did me, it was luxury at the time. Made friends with the security guards, who came in to the labs late at night to play donkey-Kong or whatever video games were “in” then. I'd do my washing in the side room in a pail with bleach and hang it up to dry on the balcony. One day I got into deep trouble. My underwear blew off and landed smack bang on the Dean's window. Guess who gets summoned. No , not me, but Tikki. HE was not happy when he came back. “Can't you find somewhere else to hang your laundry???”, was his only response. Ooops.

At lunch, I'd swim 40 laps of the swimming pool daily and perhaps more at night if I had the energy. It was literally, my home (“Home is where the heart belongs”). Twice a week, I gave my Boss lessons on how to play badminton properly. He was, in hindsight, insofar as badminton is concerned, quite a slow learner, with his so-called tennis background-bias.

We used to buy him chocolates for his birthday, the 30^th day of October {1904} (Halloween for you Americans). But he nonchalantly put them in his drawer, his typical professional self. One night we got hungry at the lab (everyone worked late, way in to the wee hours of the morning). We ate it all. It was not my fault- the troops were hungry and needed to be fed and the simplest option was...One of the famous questions I used to ask him was “Does a bacterium have a mind?”. He barked, “Ask me when I am sixty!!”- I am still waiting for the answer – only one or maybe 2 years to go now...Postscript: It turns out he is 62 now, but still no answer forthcoming.

Whilst doing my Masters with Tikki, I worked as a locum GP in a remote town called Dengkil. One patient I remember fondly was the local Imam, who was well into his 60s. He'd heard of Viagra, the long blue pill that had then been just released. Of course, such a remote clinic had no such drug. I told him to wait. So I walk out of the consultation room, into the in-house pharmacy. I grab a handful of Vitamin C pills and shove them in an envelope. Then I go back to him and explain “This is better than Viagra- I got this from the local university” (everyone in the town of 50 knew I worked at the uni). After that shift, I went to Europe to visit my then girlfriend and stayed for close to 5 months with her. About 8 months later, this same Imam comes in with his wife, now heavily pregnant, for a follow up visit. He winks at me when he walks in with his wife. After the consult, he sends his wife out and pleads with me “Could I have some more???”. Whoever said that the placebo effect didn't work? Hey, you Cochrane guys.....

In the year 2000, Tikki headed for the glory of WHO in Genf. I came to Sydney. No, no, not for the Olympics, but to start a PhD in Immunology with Guna Karupiah and his wife Geeta, who also grew up in Canberra. They introduced me to the Aussie way of life and literally took care of me like another son. I spent most weekends at their place and most of my cutlery at home now is still theirs. I loved research. The 2Gs, as we called them, were very good teachers and complemented each other. I learned heaps. In 2001 we moved from Sydney University to the ANU.

The scene now is Llewellyn Hall, ANU. It is graduation day. Circumstances are different from my graduation from medical school. Very. This time, in the audience are my two mates, Mick and Warren, both ex-Sydney University from the late 1960s. S Warren was the first person I met at the pub in Sydney and Mick came later that night. Mick brought me a fridge the next day. Together they taught me all I needed to know to survive here.] This fine graduation day, Mick has his shoes on, a rarity - probably borrowed. They did and still do warn me about how low temperatures can get in Canberra. As I type this it is zero Celsius outside.

So, I graduated with a PhD. Things changed again, overnight. Suddenly I was a junior researcher expected to perform, i.e. publish. Anyone in research would fully understand my predicament. My career in research slowly but surely went from bad to worse, to psychologically-unbearable.

In 2010, I went to Europe for a conference and visited a few labs. I gave a few talks and met lots of our collaborators (and some very nice girls). I had a lot of time to think during the journey, but I was still very distressed by work. My partner Melissa almost left me as I drank and drank, in a vain attempt to ease the tension at work. So, I quit. Didn't complain. Didn't fight back or anything like that. Just walked out.

Like magic, I changed, literally overnight. The stress was gone. So was my research career, but I simply didn't give a rats. I had agreed earlier with John to help him out for the month of June and the timing was perfect. His wife Rosemary was going to Europe and he needed someone to stand in for that period. John was and still is a super-Boss.

One Friday, my friend Torsten (TJ) takes me for a drive. He says, "It's a surprise, don't you worry". The next thing I know, I meet Owen Saddler and Marilyn Chalkley. They are blown away by my qualifications and wonder why I want to work at Dream Cuisine. I say simply that I am out of work and need the cash. That was my first day. I had heard of macarons but did not have a clue on how to make them. I learned fairly quickly, as there were only the 3 of us. I learned to pipe macarons, to make crème brulee, to make different kinds of pastry, etc etc. These were fun tasks. Marilyn was very experienced had just retired from The National Health and Medical Research Council. A fellow Piscean, she has such a motherly nature. She is kind and fair, open to discussing just about anything. Owen, the very definition of top bloke, did not finish his Engineering degree and could not find a job. This, to this day, don't understand why - Owen is one of the smartest people I've ever met. It was Owen, that in a way, got me the interview with the Canberra Times. This was mid 2010.

I soon delivered macarons to wholesale customers. I sold our products at the local farmers market. I met more and more people, almost all of them nice people. Our team expanded, first with Lowie the chef, then Dan the Face, then Samara his wife. No, sorry, I stand corrected. Samara came first, then Danface. Later, Leon (the quiet one) , Rachel (the sportscar girl) , Cristal (the hard-working one), Callum (the cool tattooed chef), Zuzanna (the mad barrista) and Angelique (the French pastry chef, who does not mind a pint of two of Wild Rabbit after work) came on board. One big happy family, we have so much fun at work. I get up from bed so looking forward to going in to work.

Two years after joining, Vijay Panchanathan is now the business manager of the patisserie called Dream Cuisine. He is madder than a cut-snake. He has attempted to be a medical doctor (again) but Big Brother (The Australian Medical Council) won't let him take the exams. So he tells them to kindly take their business where the sun don't shine. He has an Aussie wife from Young (who he met at Moose) and absolutely adores Canberra (and her too). He swears like a trooper, especially after he's had a few cold ones (Thanks, Canberra). He thinks he is mates with and admires (from afar), a roo called Skip, who visits his backyard when the sun goes down. He loves Slim Dusty, Paul Kelly, Barnsey, SplitEnz, Jane Rutter, Philip Glass, 666 ABC Canberra: Willow and Baylow, Macca, Ross Solly, Genevieve Jacobs, Louise Maher, Alex Sloane, MJ Tate, Richard Fiedler, Margaret Throsby, Adam (Shirldog) Shirley, not to mention The “Butch” Lindbeck and The 2 Tims: Tim the Yowieman and Tim Gavel. He is Raiders and Brumbies-mad; except when Crusaders play Brumbies. He probably is the only one who is forgiven for turning up clad in his AllBlacks guernsey at Edgar's Inn in Ainslie. Don't even bring up Skywhale- he's helped roll it up. Canberra is his home and he ain't goin' nowhere any time soon.

He's just got back from a business networking meeting, where he did not get to tell his full story. Two or three weeks ago, with his mate Pravin, he started a bioscience consulting company, P & V Bioscience Consultants. Last week, they created a subsidiary, Ace Editors, to take care of the science editing aspect of the company.

If he got flattened by a semi-trailer tomorrow, never the matter. He has never been happier. A lifetime supply of nice people and there are just so many more to meet in Canberra. Thank you Canberra. So, folks, that's my story. Well, at least so far.

Thank you.

My future:
http://vijaypanchanathan.wix.com/vijay-foundation

skip comes back..

Skip came back late last evening and announced his presence, by his poo..a nice lovely trail of where he's been. By morning, Skip pissed off, but leaving his trail behind, he approved of my or our website..life goes on,

Back from lovely trip to Melaka, Malaysia. Had some beautiful quality time with Mum and Mohan

Skip's gone..eaten all the grass, left all his poo all over the place and gone to greener pastures...Good Luck
Skip..come back soon...

Skippy's been all around the garden, skirting the veggie patches, and now settled down somewhere for the night.

And now the layout is taking shape..

A new dawn has begun- the creation of a blog of ideas, thoughts, happenings and all things fun.