Inception

One of the latest movies I saw and it was nothing short of fantastic. With Inception Nolan has created a movie beyond brilliant. The movie makes the audience exclaim, raise their eyebrows, sit up on their seats and most importantly... it makes them think.

Inception requires extreme concentration as it presents complex ideas and situations. Now, it may be complex to understand, but simply put it is one of the most amazing movies of this year and maybe many more before that.

It was only Nolan who could have made this movie. It is not for the idea alone that I give credit to Nolan, but more because he was able to explain the movie within the 2 hours allotted to him. I would expect other directors to hand out brochures to the viewers to help them decipher the plot. The movie creates a lot of ambiguity, raises a lot of questions and leads to many a discusssions. But that is what Nolan intended to do anyway. The plot is clear, it is the piecing together that is left to the audience. The director made sure that the movie did not leave our minds for a long time. Heck! it has been almost 2 weeks since I saw the movie and I am still here. I plan to watch the movie again. He creates magic similar to The Dark Knight but with an entirely different cast, plot and direction.


The protaganist of the movie, Cobb, is an Extractor. His job is to enter people's dreams and steal their sub-conscious thoughts. He is wanted by law for murder. He is given a task, by Saito, to enter a person's dreams and put in an idea - Inception. Doing this would get him freedom and he can go back, free, to his children. The movie explores controlling dreams, designing their layouts, shared dreaming and the most powerful concept... of layered dreams. In the movie, Cobb creates 3 levels of dreams (dream within a dream within a dream) to be able to successfuly plant an idea in Fischer's mind. To design the dream scenarios, one needs an architect who would create the dream worlds. She would be the only one who would know about it. Also, there needs to be a dreamer for each level. When the participants in plot move ahead a dream level, the original dreamer needs to stay back. The story revolves around the entire execution of this plan.

The ending of the movie though not twisted, twists the viewer's mind. It was a bold decision that Nolan took. The ending is not concrete. For a second, one is not sure if the movie is indeed over. But the sheer magic that Nolan has created through the movie takes over and just leaves you in awe.

Inception is a movie like you have never seen before and it will make you want to see it again and again and again.

Chicken Hakka Noodles

This is all thanks to Finely Chopped. I have tried making Hakka Noodles before at home and i have always managed to make the noodles squishy. I have also, at times, managed to make the noodles too bland or too salty. This time I was taking no chances and hence I wrote a quick message to Finely and asked him how to boil my noodles. Al dente prompt came the answer. With that and one of the recipes from his blog, I began. The steps I have followed are from Finely's recipe.

I decided I would make chicken hakka noodles after I did not get any other fresh meats while I was out shopping. I had already bought the noodles earlier on so it had to be noodles for dinner and nothing else.

I bought boneless chicken. I cut about 250 gms of it and boiled them. I added no masalas. Once they were done I shred them and set them aside. I cut one capsicum, one carrot and a few sprigs of spring onion and set all this aside.



I boiled my noodles al dente which basically means leaving them a little 'kachcha'. For this, I took a ton of water in a huge pan and boiled it. I added 250 gms noodles and swirled them around (so they would not stick) and took them off the burner within 2 minutes. I immediately poured all this out into a strainer and ran cold water all over it. This is to stop the cooking process instaneously or else the noodles can become really soggy. This is the step that I used to overlook on all my previous attempts.



I took some oil in a pan (well quite a bit of it) and added sliced garlic to it. When they were brown I added in the sauces, about a teaspoon - some soya, chilly and little vinegar. This splutters a lot so I dumped the chicken in almost immediately. Once the chicken looks like it has soaked in the sauces, add the cooked noodles. Here also add in a little ajinomoto (it does not really affect the taste), salt and pepper along with more vinegar. I mixed all this together so that the meat was spread out and the sauces had coated each strand of noodle.

I added the cut vegetables at the end so that they retain their crunch. And voila!