This song has gone completely viral on the net.

With over 30M views (that’s very very rare for an indian composition) and is currently the 37th of Top 100 music videos of Youtube.

Pizza Hut Mauritius has been giving out free pizzas quite often, lately. For instance, last week itself, they launched 4 “challenges” on their facebook page and gave away many free pizzas to the winners.

Friday afternoon, I came across their 4th challenge which was as follows :

Suppose you have to create a REAL MAURITIAN pizza. What would be the name and the main ingredients ?

Since, I love cooking at home, I thought why not give it a try and let my imagination do the rest. I posted this :

Name : “BBQ Rougaïzza” (as in Rougaille)

Toppings : Lychee/litchi (bring in some sweetness in a unique way), stringy white mozzarella, tomato sauce for flavour (a bit of lycopene in ), crushed garlic, mushrooms, green bell pepper (or roasted), slight amount of corn, caramelised onion (done in olive oil), grilled chicken breast (pre-marinated in a BBQ sauce), baked cashew nuts (cashews on pizza are just great)

Top finishing layer : 3-4 tomato (or sun-dried) slices, a couple of jalapeño slices, 2 slices of eggplant on the top finishing layer, sprinkle some shredded parsley and dried oregano on top.

Shape : Circular (the classical one) or square pizza like the ones they serve in Rome or even Heart-shaped pizza.

Pizza base : Current Pizza Hut base (thin or thick crust)

Serve with some good hot Tabasco® sauce

For those who adventurous in culinary, you can even replace the chicken by some local salted fish of ours

Ten most creative ones (winners) were announced this Monday morning. More than 30 recipes were posted and mine was among the best 10. To my surprise, “BBQ Rougaïzza” was selected by the Pizza Hut team as the best among the 10 best. 

I just got my voucher/code for the free large pizza, perfect ! Pizza night tonight, I guess.

However, the best pizzas are definitely served in Italia. The big square pizzas they sell in Rome are just too good and different (those I tasted there). A bit fatty but the best in the world, for sure

Step 1 : Open Task Scheduler

Step 2 : Create a task

Step 3 : Fill General details

Step 4 : Create a new Action for the task

Step 5 : Choose the program to launch

Step 6 : Define the conditions for the task

Step 7 : Define the Settings for the task. Click OK to create the task. You can also define if you want to run another instance when you launch the app again.

Step 8 : Verify task has been created and ready.

Step 9 : Create desktop shortcut for your application

Step 10 : Modify the shortcut properties to run the task you just created. Use the name you entered in step 3 (don’t forget to enclose in double quotes if it contains space). You can modify the icon to show the original icon of the program you are creating the shortcut for.

(Target : C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /run /tn “QC Explorer”)

That’s it! Just double click on the shortcut on your desktop to run the program as administrator! J

(courtesy Jeffrey Ah-Chong)

C’est incroyable ! Unbelievable.

Les hommes ont des pieds pour rester sur terre mais quelques uns (insoucients, imprudents) préfèrent aller surfer en mer là où c’est plus dangereux. Résultat, ils se font tués par des requins. Le Préfet / Sous-Préfet de la Réunion a décidé, malheureusement, à mener des opérations pour justement tuer ces requins, jugés dangereux pour les hommes. Le requin tue l’homme et l’homme tue le requin en retour.

Le requin, qui vit tranquillement dans son monde, est menacé de mort par les terriens. Ces requins ne sont même pas venus sur terre pour tuer ces hommes. C’est toujours le contraire qui est vrai.

L’homme continue à pratiquer la surpêche et parfois on se retrouve dans des cas où les prédateurs marins sont obligés de se rapprocher des côtes pour trouver de la nourriture. Des fois, il leur arrive de confondre un nageur avec l’une de ses proies habituelles.

Il ne faut pas oublier non plus que chaque année, de 30 à 70 millions de requins sont tués, principalement pour leurs ailerons (Shark Finning), très appréciés dans les soupes chinoises. Résultat : plus de vingt espèces de requins sont aujourd’hui sérieusement menacées d’extinction. Voir la vidéo d’un requin laissé-pour-compte, sans ailerons.

Je ne comprends jamais comment on peut tuer un animal (qui est dans son milieu naturel) pour le plaisir de l’homme (surf ou autre). L’attaque sur l’homme est devenu, pour certains, une échappatoire pour tuer les requins, prisés pour leurs ailerons. À noter, que chaque année, on a en moyenne 60 attaques mondialement et très rarement des morts.

Et dans tout ça, le requin n’a pas son mot à dire, mais moi je le fais et fais le toi aussi. J’espère que les requins vont se cacher et ne seront pas tués, inutilement, par ces humains, dans le jours qui viennent.

http://www.linfo.re/-Societe-/L-operation-de-prelevement-de-requins-se-poursuit

http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xlcgw6

Maya Hanoomanjee fer Rajesh Jeetah gaga lor Radio Plus. Ou bizin écoute moi kozé avant do !
Rajesh Jeetah so programme : “Deeaaarrrr prrraaavinnnddd” !

It’s good to laugh once in a while with such local actors. Bollywood / Tollywood même fail la.

I’m sure many of you must have come across some popular facebook status updates like :

Every person has 1000 wishes.  A cancer patient only has one wish, to get better. I know that 97% of my friends won’t post this as their status, but my (true) friends will be the 3% that do. In honor of someone who died, or is fighting cancer – post this for at least one hour….

To start, I don’t think someone has like 1000 wishes, very untrue. On the other hand, a cancer patient does not have only one wish but many. 

Now, I consider this message very aggressive the way it’s been written and is, to my humble consideration, far from being effective on people. 

I do not understand at all how can such updates on facebook help cancer patients or the cancer cause. Instead, I find that work on the field, being close to the cancer patients, contributing to organisations fighting the cause, empowering patients/parent by your personal (real) investment, gathering resource, these are concrete actions that should be done. 

I have lost dear ones with cancer within the last decade and I know what that suffering means to a whole family including the patient. It’s better not to lecture me on that. But, it’s not for that that I would post such aggressive messages on facebook.

There have been other status-update campaigns like :

I like it on the edge of the toilet seat or I like it on the edge of the table or bed .. etc

At some point, it was popular to make others aware of the color of your underwear each day (to fight cancer) on facebook. I mean that’s really bullshit. How can crazy messages like these help the cause ?

My message to all people who want to really help the cause (and not just passing time posting status), you can help a patient in your local hospital or donate online to organisations like http://www.cbcf.org/en-US/home.aspx or http://supportus.cancerresearchuk.org/donate/

I’m sure 90% won’t do it because it’s more easier and cheaper to update a facebook status than to do actions on the field ! (no disrespect meant, whatsoever)

It’s never sufficient to talk just for the sake of talking but you should walk your talk too ! Stop with such social hypocrisy.

There are so many halal committees nowadays that each committee tends to claim superiority over the other. Now there’s this new one, named “Jummah masjid halal council (JMHC)”.
When you ask them about the status of Pizza Hut, KFC, Nando’s, McDonald, Debonair’s, Steers, FAIL, other restaurants, their simple answer is DOUBTFUL !
Now what’s that supposed to mean ? I wanted an answer halal or haram, and I get “doubtful”.

For sometime in the past, their main problem was with KFC. All they wanted to have was the recipe of KFC before issuing the certificate and I wonder why
Come on, that’s its business secret. How do you expect them to share it with you ?
I’ve recently visited some Arab countries and there was KFC, McDonald’s, Hardee’s, Pizza Hut everywhere with the official halal status. Do you think KFC shared its recipe with them ?

There’s much hypocrisy on this subject and maybe some hidden agenda too.

When I eat at these places in MRU, I ask if it’s halal. They say yes, with the certificates. So, I eat freely without being DOUBTFUL. Some people don’t eat at these places because the JMHC or the Halal Research Committee (HRC) of Mauritius has not issued them a halal certificate.
My question : are the JMHC or HRC the only authentic halal committees on this planet ?

People tend to complicate simple things; that’s what we do best. Anyway, I think to be 100% sure that your meat is halal, you should raise the cattle yourself, slaughter it with your own hands or watch another person do it and lastly, cook it yourself.
Despite the JMHC/HRC issuing halal certificates to slaughter houses in Mauritius, how can they be sure that on any particular day the slaughtering is being done as required ? Are they present 24/7 there ?

As you see, we should do our own research too because with so much halal committees cropping, we can never be sure ! Moreover, there exist corrupt certifiers too, due to the financial gain in this sector. I was, myself, duped in Europe, by a muslim restaurant-owner, affirming that it’s halal (he had certificates) and later I learnt it wasn’t.

This debate will never end among some muslims; meanwhile, I’ll continue eating Pizza Hut, Debonair’s, Steers, Pizza Hut, KFC, McDo and at other halal restaurants.
God, alone, will judge me and no one else has the right to do so!

I was there around 18h and the McDo parking was nearly full. At the entrance, there was a paper with a notice on it saying “We are not able to sell any Beef products temporary until further notice” (ed. ongoing case in court). When I entered, I was amazingly surprised to see all the communities of the society, sitting and eating. There were many Hindus, Christians, and Muslims.

While at the queue, there were two Hindu boys in front of me waiting their turn. Suddenly, one of them started talking, a bit loud, to the other saying

Guy 1 : “this place is not too ok to sit and eat, though …” He continued “it’s got glass panes all over and people from outside can see us”.
To which the second guy added “yeah true, if my dad comes here and sees me.. gonna be in trouble. we can try sit in the corner (not that visible from outside)”.

But, finally, there they were, all burgers on a plate and walking to a table.

I, furthermore, noticed two police officers, on duty, in front of the McDo building. It’s the first time I saw this in Mauritius, where you got 2 police officers outside a restaurant for security purpose.

On a final note, today I heard that the Kranti group is calling for a boycott of Phoenix Commercial Centre, entirely. This made me smile while thinking that if people are not even boycotting the McDo outlet there, how can you get people to boycott the entire mall ?
We just got to wait for the court’s decision next week (previously 29/03) and hope that everyone gets satisfaction out of this. If McDo will be forced not to sell any Beef, fair enough I think, compared to a shut-down order.

For info, I ate my meal over there in a secure, hygienic and relaxing environment. The restaurant was nearly full, inside (raining outside). I guess all the recent “segas” about McDo did a great free publicity for this American QSR.