Out of chaos, comes order (and also a perfect cup of tea)

(This might be a repeated theme in this blog, but somehow I feel that today's deeds hit the high levels in the craziness meter)

It is not everyday I wholeheartedly set out to study. Today was the day to atone for watching an entire season of House of Cards in a record thirteen hours. As I watched House of Cards with my jaws slackened and devoid of any animation, I was already making elaborate plans on how to finish half semester worth of Math in eight hours of undivided attention. I was even prepared to use the art of meditation that people tried to force me into before my 12th board exams to zoom through two hundred pages of disquieting Matrix algebra. 

If nothing, I am all about super-human goal setting. 

Just ten pages through my book, I decided that I should be washing the dishes. As I was doing the dishes, I realized there were so many in the sink because I did not have space anywhere else in the kitchen and had been dumping things into the sink; and into the fridge. (It reminds me of this answer I read in Quora for the greatest software misuses on how people use recycle bin to store files) 

Suddenly the prospect of cleaning the fridge became quite appealing given the task I was currently up to, was rather slimy. I didn't quite calculate the odds of the next task being equally, if not more slimy. Whistling a merry tune, I abandoned the dishes and set off to clean the fridge, which is where I discovered the stuff I had been looking for months. I found empty plastic containers, which to my surprise were stacked neatly in the corner of the third row. I also found an entire loaf of bread in the vegetable tray. This was the elusive loaf that I had been looking for, every morning, in desperate need for breakfast, before scrambling to school in hunger. 

I kept a stiff upper lip and decided that I needed an organization strategy to deal with the situation. And so, I decided to clear out the pantry to make space for the things that had absolutely no need to be refrigerated but somehow had found their way into the fridge - like the empty glasses, the bag of potatoes, salt shaker and a couple of kitchen knifes stuck to apples in a rather threatening way. The fridge, meanwhile, lost all hope and went back to its melancholic whirring.

While cleaning the stuff off the pantry (or a "larder" like how Enid Blyton would call it), I disinterred a bag of cardamom and cloves that I had gotten from home. I was sniffing the bags for a good couple of minutes, taking in the heady aroma of these spices. This must have tripped some internal circuit in the old noodle as I suddenly started having an intense craving for a cup of Masala Chai. Now, there is this quaint little shop called "Arasan Sweets" in Madurai. Up until now, I have never had a cup of Masala chai that tasted better than the one they serve at Arasan Sweets. I have made it a point to visit Arasan Sweets every time I go back home and slurp the tea standing amidst the gang of Indian government bureaucrats who haunt this place for their notoriously long pre-lunch, post breakfast tea break. 

This gave me a new mission. I went online and fifteen odd clicks and ten websites later, I had a general idea of how go about making the Masala Chai. A dash of cloves and cardamom, a sprinkle of cinnamon, a smack of ginger and a generous dab of attention deficiency turned out to be the secret ingredients required to make the best cuppa Masala Chai. 

I hope to iterate through this crazy loop over and over until my homework, dishwashing, clearing-out-the fridge, cleaning the pantry, drinking more tea and incoherent-post-tea-rhapsodizing - all get done.

What is life without some optimized parallel processing, eh?