5 Steps to have a Fine Dining Experience without being Broke

Do not take ‘starters’; never go for that yummy chicken kebabs at the beginning of your meal. Neither have that delectable orange blossom before you eat your tandoori-rotis.

Instead, have the kebab or the tandoor-items along with your main courses. Like rotis with dal-makhni and chicken sheikh kebab. Please keep in mind that our restaurants often want us to take non-veg curry items to cheat us of the real meat. They grate everything in the curries thus cutting costs. Always take a non-veg starter along with your main dishes, never as a starter.

Avoid salads for they are mostly kept in the open in the dirty kitchens and thus are well marinated with the bacteria-filled saliva of non-discerning flies. & of course, they cost a world. So let your urge to eat greens in a restaurant be confined to taking green chillis and pieces of lime.

In spite of the incessant request of caring waiters and floor personell, don’t overorder for God’s sake. When you finish the rotis, or the rice or that hakka noodles, only then order for more. Food in hotels seems less when ordering but on the table they generally ultimately go to waste!

Last but not the least, do yourself a favor and never order soft-drinks and ice-cream or kulfi at restaurants. They give you bad quality stuff and charge tones. A good cup-ice-cream may cost just Rs 10/- outside but you may be billed Rs 50/- by the hotel. So if you want to have desserts, then go have them from some outside, non-taxing shop.

Now get the bill & see how much you have saved!

This is written for an Indian family where none drinks. But the general principles hold true for anyone anywhere.

5 quick steps to tackle inflation on a middle class pay

a) Stop eating out…eating out damages your health and forces you to spend more than you ever imagined. (Just add up all the moolah you doled out to restauranters and you’ll know what I mean. You need to put pen to paper. Otherwise you’d not really know.)

b) Switch that cell off…talking endlessly on your cell phone burns a bigger hole in your pocket than you’d think possible…use the net & write long emails.

c) Exercise a bit more, eat a bit less…these two life-style changes will go a long way in protecting you from various diseases and save on those bills to the doc and medicines. Downsizing calorific intake has been shown to prolong life. But don’t overdo it, you’ll starve or look like on those unfortunate anorexic kids walking the ramp.

d)  Keep buying Rs 500/- worth of Mutual Fund units. Now the Sensex is low, you can make a killing…try to buy a small amount of MF every month. This way you’ll be able to beat inflation.

e) & stop going out for expensive movies at Multiplexes. Wait for the DVD’s or CD’s to be out and then see them at home. Better still wait for the movie to be shown on the telly.

Hard times are ahead and if you take it easy now, you’re gonna fry, buddy…so just start on a plan to secure your future.

5 Steps to avoid in life if you want some peace

Be content with your spouse or your fiancé. The trouble is that we are afraid to dialogue. We never tell another human being our deepest longings. & thus starts, what philosophers call, alienation. May be, we fool ourselves, there is a better human being who will understand us ( read become more like us, for that is the most flattering), a better person than the one we are with who will be more handsome, more pretty et al. Believe you me, this is all load and nonsense. Try every trick in the book before you even glance at another woman or man. I believe in the power of monogamous relationships to transform our lives. Just remember: everyone gets old, and all wine ultimately becomes old wine…if you can’t be in a long term relationship, then you need help. Notwithstanding what fancy psychologists tell you: having affairs is never good for either the mind or the body. Don’t forget, the AIDS virus is out there looking for easy prey.

Never spend more than 75% of your monthly income. Put the first 25% in savings in the beginning of the month and then spend on everything including bills. Read my earlier post on how to get rich on middle-class wealth. Never keep urgently required money in equities. The stock prices may have plummeted when you need the moolah the most!

Never ever post personal information on the net. People should not be able to get to you through online information strewn in the wild. Be careful before you share your address and most importantly: phone numbers. Oh, touchy issue here; never use web-cams to chat with strangers. Your face can be morphed with undesirable fake body parts and this new picture can swamp the net. Be very careful.

Having talked about relationships before; never be ever in a hurry to marry. The old saying: Marry in haste and repent later is very apt. Take all the time in the world to marry, but once married, think not of divorce. Divorce, studies show, ruins everything: health, the spirit and finances. Elopements sound adventurous but suck in the long run. Marriages are between families, communities and not merely between two people. So one should marry not entirely forgetting one’s folks. How is it possible for someone to reject one’s dad of say 30 years for a girl one knows for 5 years? By the same logic, it is possible for this guy to reject his newly-wed wife for someone newer. Thus starts the evil cycle.

Never, I repeat never, give up those small bits of exercise that you do. Housework, walking cycling and playing tennis. Till the day you die keep on running like Forrest Gump. That way you’d be spared of so many fatal diseases. Just keep on moving.

5 Steps to prevent burn-outs from the heat with little effort

a) Add raw onion and a clove of garlic to your main meal. Your mouth will stink, yet home-wisdom sings the paean of this simple meal. You will be saved sunstrokes. Of course, you already know that you should not eat all that oil you used for cooking in the winter but it is all right to go hyper with the home-made red chilli paste. The latter aids digestion where there is humid heat.

b) Juice up on the easy to make water-melon juice. Drink the pulp too and when outdoors, take it straight from a pre-cooled bottle. Add sugar to taste. Try out also drinking lime water and oh! Avoid caffeine in the form of cokes, coffee and chocolates. Better drink coconut water than any bottled drink. Coconut water has the needed potassium and sodium to keep you doing the rounds even in this heat.

c) Take mangoes at breakfast. They are energy store – houses. Beware if you are a diabetic , then this won’t do.

d) Add tamarind to your food…they soothe the body during blistering heat waves. At 45degree Celsius I survived on fish cooked in mustard oil and tamarind juice.

5 steps to financial security with middle-class pay

Most tabloids and finance-magazines target only the super-rich. Folks who earn within Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 20,000 per month are not even considered by most financial experts. Ironically, this group is the one who needs financial advice the most. The following five steps are ways I believe that anyone on a meager income have some financial security and even affluence over the long term. There are four aspects I have especially kept in mind for such investors.

i) They do not have enough money to gamble with shares. I do not call them risk-averse because they simply do not have surplus income…

ii) Medical expenses over the years just eat away their savings and force them into debt.

iii) Retirement is often stressful with pensions unable to meet financial demands.

iv) House-building loans hound most even after retirement.

 

5 steps to avoid pit-falls in arranged marriages

 

In many parts of the world where hitherto arranged marriages were reserved for those who failed to find their own matches, arranged marriages are making a come-back. In the African and Asian subcontinents, arranged marriages are the norm. In fact, normal marriages where spouses choose each other on the basis of love are often rejected as frivolous in many societies. Each system of marriage has its own pros and cons and the debate regarding which is the better option will never be over. Instead of going into the dynamics of an arranged marriage, I’d rather tell you hot to avoid some human thorns which might be hiding somewhere.

5 steps to prevent child abuse

 

 

 

 

Does you child want to avoid any particular person? Conversely, is he or she being continually sought by any one person who wants to have time alone with your kid? Is the child scared of anyone in particular? Does she not want to go somewhere at all? Investigate why the person wants to be alone with the baby.

 

 

Is your child scared of the baby-sitter or the nanny? Are their bruise marks on the baby’s skin? Is there any chance that the baby-sitter is hitting you child? May be the teacher has hit him? Why is the child then complaining of that nagging ache in his left calf? Do not keep any stone unturned to see whethere someone is getting physically abusive with your child.

Five steps to changing your life NOW

 

1.) What are the two things in your life which needs to be done now so that you have a better life? Open your word-processor now and write them down like a) I must talk less & b) I must write that novel which I had always wanted done. Your two things must be life-altering. Do it RIGHT now. Do no delay. Don’t even read the next 4 points till you have written those two points.

2) Now, have one method each by which you can attain these two goals, write them down:

a) I shall start to talk less by keeping silent 5 minutes daily.

      b) I shall write for 15 minutes daily.
This will be your way to achieving your goals. Follow this routine for two months and then increment by twice the time. Never hurry, the trick lies in being consistent. Never ever say I give up…only fever or extreme fatigue can excuse you. Be flexible then. Remember routines are for you and not you for routines.

3) Now set down the times:

a) Silence from 10 am to 10.05 am, I shall not speak even good things.

      b) I shall put pen to paper everyday from 10pm to10.15pm , I shall do so within closed doors, no matter what.

4) Be quiet about your new resolutions. Do not yap. Tell none. Talking about resolutions or sharing them with people you know will mostly lead to failures. Remember the struggle is within and you have to take the risk of fighting yourself. Carry a small piece of paper which has these things written down in minute letters. I carry mine on the cell-phone note-pad. Everyday I set an alarm.

5) Use an online facility like Superviva.com to track yourself privately every fortnight. Just spend 5 minutes to check and comment on your progress.

 

5 steps to ward off EVIL

You may be of any faith in the world…if you are from a dualist, monotheistic religion, your religions teaches you of the presence of the demon…if you are from an oriental religion then it also teaches that there are evil forces in the world, may be the unhappy dead…if you are an atheist then this article is not for you, your conceptions of evil are limited to social and anthropological analyses of the matter…

5 steps to ending a long term relationship with goodwill

 

Never make the other person feel guilty. Just say that you think it the best for both of you to end the relationship. It is cowardly to blame your girlfriend or boyfriend for anything at all once you have decided to split. Just say something like “Sorry, Anne, I firmly believe that we are not meant to be together. But nonetheless I am glad we had what we had…” clam up now and leave the rest hanging. Do not rant. The less said the better.

If there is someone else in your life then never get into how your soon-to-be ex is worse in any way than the newbie. Honestly, admit to yourself first that you just fell out of love. Reasons are immaterial. Just say “Sorry”. Say “I have no answers…there is no comparison between you and him/her…I ask to be forgiven for hurting you…” Tell him/her you would always cherish him/her. Always. Say “Thank you for everything…”

Do not get angry at anything she/he says. Be calm, recollected and quiet. Do not ridicule your ex-partner. She/he too feels betrayed like you do. Remember someday you will miss him/her. Part as good buddies and not enemies. If she cries, be there till she makes the first move away. But do not hold her. Let her understand that she has to be alone now. Empathise with the profoundness of your ex-partner’s grief.

Promise that he or she can count on you to stand by him or her if ever you can help. Tell her that it is ok to call email you if there is an emergency ever. You cannot run away from any human being in need of help. Never abandon chivalry.

Oh, do not forget to say NO to further meetings, calls and parties… but if you have a psycho in hand…just run, run and RUN. Change your cell-number, your primary email and if all fails just call the cops. Am not joking, you must get third-party help. Watch Crush to see what might happen if you are not firm.

 

Important :

DO NOT WALK OUT OF MARRIAGES. MARRIAGES ARE FOR KEEPS. You must work very hard to keep a marriage alive…everything is NEVER lost in a marriage…Read my post on preserving a marriage. If you think that the new person in your life is better than the one you are married with, you are wrong…I understand that your spouse may be abusive, then go to the police…but DO NOT GIVE UP ON A MARRIAGE.

Read Charles Dickens’ Hard Times to understand what it means to be abused and be trapped in a loveless marriage.