When monsoon hits in, its prudent to take care of your swimming pools for your health.Though a proper circulation will ensure cleanliness by default, one may have to make just a bit of an extra effort to continue the delightful swimming experience during the monsoons. Vivek Mishra, MD of Premium Pools suggests some ways to go about it.When it rains, the pH levels of the water in the pool needs to be monitored all the more as the first rain at times is acidic, can play havoc in addition to getting dirty and contaminated water. It can get dangerous as well since harmful and toxic substances from the atmosphere may get mixed with the pool water. Also Read – ‘Playing Jojo was emotionally exhausting’So overall, the imbalance in the chemical composition of the pool water may rise. The rains will also bring along a lot of organic materials like pollen etc that gets accumulated in the pool. Within hours of the first shower of the monsoon, a significant variation in pool’s water quality can easily be noticed. For extreme weather conditions including monsoons, one can go for a pool enclosures or covers to eliminate any kind of water contamination. Also Read – Leslie doing new comedy special with NetflixA few more things can be done on an ad-hoc basis:Brushing the pool walls : this helps in eliminating the wild shrubs that might grow within the wall tiles. Also, this would help remove any fungal growth on the tiles surrounding the pool even deck area. Regular Chlorination : Adding chlorine tablets will help in preventing the growth of bacteria and even algae. Although the main cause of algae is stagnant water, routine chlorination would help prevent against health hazards like ear infections, athlete’s foot, skin rashes etc which become quite common with bacterial growth in water. Filtration : running the filters to clean the water on a daily basis is a good practice during rains. This way the debris and dirt can be completely cleared. Also, filtration helps in circulating the fresh water added to the pool as well. the said filter should also be regularly cleaned by the maintenance personnel.
Kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has taken up a special drive to collect property tax arrears from defaulters.A civic team comprising senior officials of the Assessment department visited two premises on Topsia Road and put up distress warrant on the walls. KMC will take legal action against the owners if they fail to pay the arrears within the stipulated date. The drive has been initiated after the civic authorities failed to collect house tax arrears worth more than Rs 50 crore. There are around 7.60 lakh assesses living in the areas under the jurisdiction of KMC. Also Read – Rain batters Kolkata, cripples normal lifeThe civic officials visited 71, Topsia Road and 83/2/1, Topsia Road. The officials said that the two firms housed at 71, Topsia Road have not paid house tax dues worth Rs 71 lakh. The civic authorities said the owners have cleared 50% of the dues on Monday and gave an undertaking that the remaining amount will be paid by Friday. The owners of four firms housed at 83/2/1 Topsia Road have not paid house tax arrears worth several lakhs. The civic authorities have put up distress warrant and legal action will be taken against the owners if they fail to pay within the stipulated time. Also Read – Speeding Jaguar crashes into Mercedes car in Kolkata, 2 pedestrians killedCivic officials said the defaulters have been requested to pay their dues several times but despite reminders, the officers refused to respond. They alleged that the defaulters wait for the waivers’ scheme and if it is implemented then the defaulters can square up the arrears by paying only the principal amount, while the penalty and interest amounts are waived. The officials said unlike in the past when property tax payers had to stand in long queues to pay tax, the system of online payment has been introduced now. Property owners can go to any e-counter and pay the tax and rebate is given if the tax is paid within the stipulated time.
The theatre fraternity came together on Friday night for a red-carpet awards gala at the 12th Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) Festival. Curated by the Mahindra Group and Teamwork Arts, the week-long extravaganza came to an end as the best from the world of theatre were awarded the META at The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mansingh Road.The annual awards, which recognise excellence in theatre nationally, celebrate the intrinsic diversity and rich cultural traditions of India. The META is India’s most comprehensive award and a premier honour for the theatre fraternity, awarding on-stage and off-stage talent across 14 award categories, including the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. Also Read – Add new books to your shelfLike every year, this year’s short-list of META was diverse and showcased the best of Indian theatre. For a week, the festival staged 10 nominated plays that revolved around motifs ranging from mythology and caste to complex love stories and human emotions. The line-up featuring plays in English as well as several Indian Languages including Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, etc., received an overwhelming response from the audience as the shows ran to packed houses. The Jury for META 2017 comprised theatre stalwarts Dolly Thakore, Mahesh Dattani, Sachin Khedekar, Seema Biswas, Avijit Dutt and Maya Krishna Rao. Also Read – Over 2 hours screen time daily will make your kids impulsiveWhile ‘Mahabharata’ bagged the award for Best Production along with Best Director and Best Choreography, ‘I Don’t Like It As You Like It’, won Best Ensemble, Best Stage Design and Best Actor in Supporting Role (Female), and ‘Elephant in the Room’ won Best Actor in a Lead Role (Female), Best Costume Design and Best Light Design, giving them three awards each. The award for Best Actor in a Lead Role (Male) was jointly presented to Anirban Bhattacharya (Awddyo Shesh Rajani) and Rajendra Panchal (Katha Sukavi Suryamall Ki). Noted theatre veteran, Arun Kakade was conferred the META Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to Indian theatre. He got a standing ovation as he received the Lifetime Achievement Award. He said, “I am so happy that META has been promoting Indian theatre for the last 12 years. There is diverse variety in the plays that come here. I have staged my plays here thrice before, but at the age of 86, I wasn’t expecting any award really. I am thankful to the META Festival organisers for this prestigious honour.”Hosted by Prateik Babbar and Shilpa Shukla, the scintillating awards night saw several luminaries, including Manoj Bajpayee, Sushma Seth, M.K Raina, Sachin Khedekar, Bubbles Sabharwal, Dadi Pudumjee, Vinod Nagpal, Sanjana Kapoor, Nicholas Idier and Jim Hollington. Performances by the band Samarpan, Harpreet, Neil Madhav and Rachna Yadav further enlivened the proceedings.Veterans from theatre, cinema, music, and dance presented the coveted awards to the ecstatic awardees and noted personalities like Manoj Bajpayee, Meera and Muzaffar Ali, Aditi Mangaldas and Seema Biswas were among those who gave away awards.Commenting on the awards, Jay Shah, Head, Cultural Outreach, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd said, “The 12th META has concluded with all the drama, fanfare and applause it deserves. The 10 best productions from across India vied for the top honours in the nation’s capital. While awards were presented to just a few, each META participant has been a winner. The Mahindra Group too feels a great sense of victory for being able to establish a platform that defines excellence in Indian Theatre. A proud moment for us all!”
Applying for a new job? Just relax and be yourself during the interview, as a study has found that authenticity is key to securing an employment offer.Researchers, including those from University College London (UCL) in the UK, found that high-quality candidates who strive to present themselves accurately during the interview process significantly increase the likelihood of receiving a job offer.”People are often encouraged to only present the best aspects of themselves at interview so they appear more attractive to employers, but what we have found is that high-quality candidates – the top 10 per cent – fare much better when they present who they really are,” said SunYoung Lee from UCL School of Management. Also Read – Add new books to your shelf”Unfortunately, the same is not true for poorer quality candidates who can actually damage their chances of being offered the job by being more authentic,” said Lee.The research focused on the concept of ‘self- verification’, which refers to individuals’ drive to be known and understood by others according to their firmly held beliefs and feelings about themselves.To date, self-verifying behaviour was known to positively influence outcomes that unfold over time, such as the process of integration in a new organisation. Also Read – Over 2 hours screen time daily will make your kids impulsiveThe research shows, for the first time, that self-verification can have important effects in short-term interpersonal interactions as well, as in the hiring process.”In a job interview, we often try to present ourselves as perfect. Our study proves this instinct wrong,” said Celia Moore from Bocconi University in Italy.”Interviewers perceive an overly polished self-representation as inauthentic and potentially misrepresentative.”But ultimately, if you are a high-quality candidate, you can be yourself on the job market. You can be honest and authentic. And if you are, you will be more likely to get a job,” Moore said. The researchers conducted three studies – two field studies looking at the importance of self-verification for groups of professionals applying for different jobs and a third experimental study testing the mechanism behind the effects observed. In the two field studies, prior to job interviews, candidates reported their self-verification drive, and their quality was evaluated in face-to-face interviews. The candidates that had been evaluated as high quality had a 51 per cent likelihood of receiving a placement, but this increased to 73 per cent for those who also had a strong drive to self-verify.The second study replicated this effect in a radically different sample by assessing 333 lawyers applying for positions in a branch of the US military.For this group, high quality candidates increased their chances of receiving a job offer five-fold, from 3 per cent to 17 per cent, if they also had a strong drive to self-verify.This effect was only seen in high-quality candidates, and for those rated as low-quality, the drive to self-verify weakened their position.The third study was designed to test the mechanism behind this effect. For this, the researchers surveyed 300 people on their self-verification striving and selected those who were extremely high and extremely low in the distribution.The research was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
Have you ever wondered if that lemon twist on top of your martini or a dollop of cream on the ‘daal makhani’ is anything more than a quirk? Celebrity Chef Vikas Kumar delves deeper into the world of garnishes and shares his insights.CHERRY ON TOP So really, why are we discussing garnishes, I mean aren’t there more pertinent culinary topics that need more focus and attention? Sure there might be, but for the moment, let me tell you a story. Once when I was working for a certain organisation as a Galley Chef, I was asked if I’d want to be the ‘garnish man’. And I was like, sure! It’s just garnish, like a cherry on the cake, right? Wrong. So the job of the garnish man was to prepare all the garnishes of all the dishes across the sections – we are talking about some 3000 meals, almost 20 dishes, all intricately prepared and the garnish was, well,’the cherry on the cake’ and had to be just perfect since it was the first visual that the guest will get of the dish and will make up his own judgements before actually tasting (or not tasting) the dish. Apparently, the garnish man himself had to be the proverbial cherry just discussed, and in terms of skills and speed had to be second to none in the kitchen. Also Read – Add new books to your shelfSo let’s then discuss the ubiquitous crowning glory of the food dishes, the garnish. WHY GARNISH Why indeed? To put it anecdotally, well why do we wear jewellery/ make up? To look good, complete in a way perhaps. I’d say, same with food. If good food is the foundation of genuine happiness, the garnish on that food is what entices you towards it, makes you want it more and provides the visual stimulus to appreciate a food prior to sinking your teeth in. Garnishes are usually in colours opposite to the colour of the main dish, and to that extent provide a burst of colour and liveliness to the food dish. Imagine a plate of pasta in white sauce, white cheese and cream sitting in front of you. Now imagine it with a bright green sprig of parsley, some bright red cherry tomato and a splash of gorgeous light green olive oil. Imagine the difference. Get it? Also Read – Over 2 hours screen time daily will make your kids impulsiveThe second and a very important reason for food garnishing is that the garnishes always enhance the flavour of the main dish and complements it in the overall taste profile. Think about lemon with fish, birista (deep fried onion) on top of biryani, pistachio on Gajar Halva or a drizzle of balsamic vinegar on a salad, all these enhance the flavour of the main dish and make it taste better. Another reason for food garnishing is for the purpose of identification of the ingredients of the dishes. You will find, at most times the garnish tells more about the dish. For example, garnishing a pineapple pastry with pineapple and cherry, a dollop of cream on a cream soup, some makkhan on daal makkhani,…well you get the idea. Stop salivating! Filling up a plate or a serving dish is also quite functional of garnishes and many times garnishes are used to make the dishes look more full and complete. This is specially true for dishes that are served in a buffet or on a dinner table. A pertinent example will be a Christmas Turkey which has so many garnish components that it makes the dish look really fancy and celebratory, ditto for a salad or a dessert. Indian Food Garnishes Well from our childhoods we have seen all our food dishes integrated with their garnishes to an extent that we have always considered them to be a part of the dish itself. Think our dals without the garlic and cumin tempering, our Halvas without the tiny sprinkling of crushed cardamom seeds or a plate of chholey without the chopped dhania or the ginger juliennes. I have always maintained that Indian food is by far the most advanced, balanced and varied of all culinary styles of the world and has always been ahead of its times. Let me give you some examples of how the food garnishes have become integral to our food culture that we don’t really think much of them but they do indeed tick all boxes to be a worthy garnish and serves its full purpose. So there obviously are millions of Indian dishes that I could table here but will stick to the best known and easily relatable by all. First, the very popular Pao Bhaji – do you realize that a dollop of half melted butter, the chopped onions and coriander, tomato, lemon all are essentially garnishes and yet you will find at least all these in all pao bhajis served anywhere in the country or the world. In Bengal they serve ‘Masala Muri’ a more pungent and humble cousin of the bhelpuri and you will almost always find it garnished with some peanuts, a slice of coconut and some sprouts, nobody really thinks much but classic garnishes look good, taste good and provide an interesting contrast to the main food item. Similarly, almost all Indian food items have inherent garnishing that gives the food complexity, texture and colour. The case in point is the huge Indian Thalis that are served with a multitude of dishes in small bowls or saucers, yet all these will almost always have their individual garnishes, often different from each other. RECIPE So I have been scratching my head as to which recipe to give that will do justice to a topic such as this. Obviously, I had to find a recipe where the garnish is highlighted and stands out. To that extent, I am giving the recipe for a French dish. In French cuisine, there are many dishes that are known by their garnishes and are distinguishable only based on that. The name of the dish is ‘French Onion Soup’ and is always served with a rather discernible garnish which is a large bread and cheese crouton. FRENCH ONION SOUPIngredients 100 g Butter 30 ml Olive oil 450 g Sliced onions 500ml Chicken/Beef /Vegetable stock 30 ml Red wine (optional) 1 g Dried thyme Salt and pepper to taste For the toast 2 slices French bread 2 slices cheddar cheese 20 g Grated Parmesan cheese Method Melt butter with olive oil in a stock pot on medium heat. Add onions, and cook on a medium flame until tender and translucent. Do not brown the onions. Add the stock, wine and thyme. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 30 minutes. Layer each slice of bread with a slice of cheese, and 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese. Ladle the soup in warm bowls. Just before serving, place the toast on the soup and put under a hot salamander/grill until the cheese melts and bread turns toasty. Serve immediately.
During a time when Americans would stand in line for hours just to get a loaf of bread, one of the most massive construction projects in history was underway in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River. The great Hoover Dam stands as tall as a 60 story building. Its base is as thick as two football fields. Its construction employed enough concrete to pave a stretch of road long enough to span the continental United States — from San Francisco to New York City.In spite of only taking five years to build, it’s taller and all the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, including the Pyramid of Giza and strong enough to hold back all the water pouring over Niagara Falls.Hoover DamA worker stands by the 30 ft (9.1 m) diameter Nevada penstock before its junction with another penstock that delivers water to a turbine. Photo by Jeffrey G. Katz CC BY 3.0Apache employed as high-scalers on the construction of Hoover Dam.Concrete sluices from a bucket to a form at Hoover Dam, workers prepare to flatten out the pour.Drillers on the construction of Hoover Dam.First water to pass through diversion tunnels flowing from outlet portal of Diversion Tunnel.Hoover Dam, 1934. Photo by Bureau of Reclamation CC BY-SA 2.0Hoover Dam, Boulder City, Nevada.The behemoth building project started in 1931 — a whopping 29 years after engineer Arthur Powell Davis had the vision to build it. His goal was to keep downstream farming communities from being devastated by the floods coming out of the Colorado River.But the Hoover Dam would also provide a dependable supply of irrigation water to the surrounding areas, even as far as Los Angeles and Southern California.When the plans for the dam were finally drawn up in 1922, professional engineers deemed the building project “impossible.” Nevertheless, once underway, the project employed scores of Las Vegas men who were desperately out of work as a result of the Great Depression.Some of these men rode in from out of state with their families and waited for a year to have the opportunity to work on the project.This exploded the population of Las Vegas from 5,000 to around 15,000 by the time the project started.Hoover Dam, Boulder City,Looking down at high scalers above the Colorado River.Looking downstream through Diversion Tunnel No. 2.Native Americans employed on the construction of Hoover Dam as high-scalers.Operations at downstream end of foundation excavation.Operations at inlet portal of diversion tunnel No. 2. Invert concrete and trashrack transition base are seen.Pouring side wall concrete in diversion tunnel No. 4.Pressure grouting jumbo in operation in Diversion Tunnel No. 4.Side-wall concrete in place in diversion tunnel No. 2.Sidewall tunnel forms being utilized in forming bulkhead gate structure at inlet portal of Diversion Tunnel No. 1.Stripping operations at Arizona gravel deposit.Tamping concrete behind forms in placing side-wall concrete in diversion tunnel lining.The construction of Hoover Dam, Boulder City, Nevada.This piece of equipment, named a Jumbo Rig, was designed to speed up the Hoover Dam’s tunnel drilling process. Built on the back of a 10-ton truck, 24 to 30 drills could be operated at once.Trench at upstream toe of Boulder Dam foundation, looking toward Nevada side from top.Trimming jumbo being lowered into inclined spillway tunnel on Nevada side.On May 12, 1933, demolition crews detonated four tons of dynamite to prepare the canyon for early construction.The project was so strenuous and dangerous, approximately 112 men died during its construction. Some died by drowning, others by falling and a few men even committed suicide on the job site.The dam got its name when Ray L. Wilbur (Secretary of the Interior) named it after President Herbert Hoover at the spike driving ceremony for a nearby railroad project. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Hoover Dam on September 30, 1935.Read another story from us: George Washington’s Bizarre False TeethThough the name had been changed to “Boulder Dam,” in 1933 by Harold Ickes, it regained its original name 14 years later. Today, the Hoover Dam stands as one of the wonders of the modern world and supplies power to nearly one-and-a-half million Americans every year.