International Food Party at Amerikan College

In October, we had a wonderful party at the Amerikan College. This was an international food party where people had to prepare some food item from their own country. There are five of us here namely Vaas, Arpit, Khandu (Mayank Khanduja), Pushan Da and myself. On the day of the party, Doku had come to Leuven and so we had a 6 person IIMC-gang.


The night before the party, Pushan Da and myself developed some enthu for cooking some delicacy. As we are techno-savvy cooks, we started searching for interesting recipies. Our decision model was simple, the thing should not involve a lot of effort, raw materails should be easily available, and it should look good.

After a lot of deliberations, we decided upon Kheer. Our first choice was Sanjeev Kapur, the famous chef (of Khana Khazana fame) but recipies (those freely available) did not somehow satisfy our requirements. Next we turned to Tarla Dalal, and there we saw something worth trying: Apple Kheer


The recipie was noted down and both of us rushed to the kitchen. We grated the apples and boiled the milk and all went well until we added the apples to the milk. As soon as we added the apples, we had themilk transformed into butter and water (Doodh Phat Gaya). We were in panic and decided to file a lawsuit against Tarla Dalal. For the short term, we were looking how to make best of what we had got (Phatey hue doodh me seb).


Khandu had come downstairs and saw us struggling with the Kheer. We tried a lot of things, finally deciding to drain out the water and freeze the remaining stuff. But life was not this simple. The water along with it, drained away most of the sugar from the mixture.

On the day of the party, we took out Kheer out, added sugar to it and then put a layer of grated almonds on top. We added few other dry-fruits, and transformed our Kheer into Halwa.


We also prepared some Vegetable Biryani and Alu Matar. The African Duo of Tom and Everest had prepared bananas the African way, which tasted like Potatoes and some other combos and named it Hakuna Matata. The Hungarian group had prepared chicken which tasted like Butter Chicken. Javier made some great Sangria, Brecht prepared an intersting kind of Chocolates, Mathilde made some Belgian Custard, We also had some Bulgarian Salad, Molluscs, Polish Potatoes, Dutch Ham and Potatoes and what not. Not to mention, the crowd favourite, the Indian Apple Halwa.


The great session of food and wine was follwed by a dance session and we all got into the groove without much invitation. Later on, Arpit sang Dooba Dooba which was one of the last attraction of the evening.

Spain Vs Belgium

When I came to Europe, watching a Football Match in the stadium was one thing I wanted to do. The ocassion presented itself when Spain came to play Belgium in order to qualify for the World Cup 2006. The match was scheduled on October 8th 2004 in Brussles.


There were 7 IIMCians at the stadium. Arpit, Pushan Da, Nagraj, Hiran, Prakant Suede, Pankaj Jain and Shaunak. Apart from them, Tom, Hassan and Javier were there from the Amerikan College.

We were all seated in the Spanish camp for three main reasons:

• Tickets were cheaper
• Spanish Crowd is more lively
• Spain was more likely to win

The shouts of Ess-Paan-Ya... Ess-Paan-Ya electrified the atmosphere. We also had mexican waves going for quite some time. Unexpectedly, the first half was dominated by Belgium and they came close to scoring for three ocassion but for the heriocs of Cassius. It was the second half when things started to turn arround and Spain scored twice. What was the best part was that both the goals were scored at our end.. and the crowd went mad. The quality of Spanish play during the second half was amazing and they were getting more and more stylish as time passed.

The excitement did not end with the match, but carried on in our fight to catch the last train to Leuven. In the process, we changed 2 Metros and 1 Tram to get to Brussles-Nord. A nail-biting finish to an exciting day. The partying by the Spanish crowd, which started at the stadium, continued in the train upto Leuven.