Anneysha Sarkar

 If I could eat one and only one dish for breakfast for life, I would eat poha. (Actually, I lie, I love South Indian breakfasts - I would love to eat idli or dosa with sambar chutney too.) Idli/ Dosa is slightly harder to prepare because you would need to soak rice and pulses overnight and then grind them, but making poha is incredibly simple, therefore it is my preference.  Depending on where you come from, your poha could taste different, naturally. The best version of poha I had in my life was in Navi Mumbai. My mom also makes yummy poha, it has always been one of my favourite breakfasts. Ingredients - flattened rice (poha) * - turmeric (ground) - peanuts, whole and unpeeled * - mustard seeds, whole (optional) * - maggi masala - Hoyts herbs mix - lemon juice - curry leaves, 5-6 - coriander - onion, chopped - salt - potato (optional) - carrot (optional) * These ingredients are usually available in local Indian stores. A good place to get things in Canberra would be Bharat Internatio

 After the disastrous chicken recipe I cooked last month , I reattempted making chicken curry. This time, it turned out better than I had imagined! Here is the recipe (for record purposes in case I want to re-create the curry in the future). Ingredients - chicken thigh fillets, Aldi 4 pieces (could be literally any fleshy part of chicken) - salt - Hoyts herbs mix (from Coles) - magic Maggi masala - garam masala - pepper - lemon juice - soy sauce, I used the Japanese one but it could be Chinese light soy sauce too - chilli paste, 1 spoon OR green chillis - Chinese schezwan peppercorns (whole), 1 tbsp or less - curry leaves, 5-6 - onion, 1 chopped finely - garlic, 3-4 cloves chopped finely - tomato paste, or chopped tomatoes - light cream (could be whole cream too) - capsicum, 1 medium - OIL!!!!! Procedure Marinate the chicken: 30 minutes - Cut chicken to your preferred size. I prefer small-medium diced cubes.  - Add herbs mix, garam masala, salt, Maggi masala, curry leaves, soy sauce, p

One year ago, I was a bright-eyed first-year university student who was happy just to get involved in the things around me. In 2022, I attended the Women* In STEM Leadership Conference. The main aim of this conference is to inspire, empower and educate female, femme-aligned and non-binary undergraduate students at the ANU about leadership in STEM. In 2023, I returned to the conference as Education Coordinator and organised an Orienteering Challenge and an Opportunities workshop. The Orienteering Challenge was meant to acquaint new students with the Science Precinct on campus, and later-year students to find places and things that they had not seen before. This activity also created opportunities for early-year and later-year students to collaborate and solve a set of puzzles. It was intended to be light-hearted and fun, and it was great to see all teams running around enthusiastically trying to find clues and taking photos together.  I had a lot of fun as well while designing the puzzl

I love trying out stuff! Recently, ads from a meal prep service called EveryPlate kept showing on my feed. I decided to try it out since the first box was on sale anyway (it was about $5/meal).  Upon opening the box, I immediately realised that I wouldn't be able to follow their recipes because they required you to use the oven. I've never baked or used the oven before, so I do not have a baking tray or the confidence to use the oven without an experienced friend's supervision, just so I do not set the fire alarms off.  In the end, I decided to wing it. Here is what I started with: chicken tenderloin (about 250 g) panko breadcrumbs egg - 1 soysauce spices (salt, paprika, chilli powder, oregano) Indian spice mixes: chings masala, maggi magic masala, garam masala, and my favourite biryani masala 😭) cream tomato paste ginger garlic paste cucumber onion capsicum veggie salad vegetable stock butter chicken premade sauce (from the supermarket) I intended to make crispy chicken u

Bengali is a Heritage language for me. The last time I had some sort of Bangla education was learning the alphabet from my grandmothers when I was 7-8 years old. This year, I have finally realised that I need to go beyond the alphabet and gain fluency in written Bengali. Poems come naturally to me, so I am writing them down in Bengali. Then I send it to my grandmother who helps me with any spelling mistakes. Here is some poetry in Bengali, with English translation. বন্ধুত্ব: বছর কাটালাম একসঙ্গে   এখন আলাদা হয় চলতে হবে, কিন্তু — যখন তুমি ঘুরে দেখবে  আমাকে প্রতিবার দেখতে পারবে। Friendship: We spent years together,   Now we are on our own;   Regardless — when you turn around:   You will find me always. ফুলের খেলা খেলি: থেকে যাও তুমি অমর হয়ে, আবার আসবো তোমায় দেখতে।  Floral banter: May you become immortal,  I will come again to see you.

So I decided to try ChatGPT! ChatGPT has been making quite the buzz lately. Functionality-wise, it is Aladdin [1] that appears at the controls of your machine. If you have been in the loop of recent developments, ChatGPT has left impressions of future chatbots and personal assistants. So far, people have used ChatGPT to create games, do assignments, do software programming and so much more. In this blog, I shall talk about how ChatGPT could support a language learner, more specifically, as a study buddy. Image generated using DALL-E Testing Looking for resources on search engines can be overwhelming. Instead of having to hop around websites to find quizzes and resources to test on a topic of choice at the appropriate level, ChatGPT provides you with a set of questions in your desired question type, level and topic. Even better, you do not have to check your answers after attempting the questions. ChatGPT will do it for you. Looking for language resources online vs ChatGPT, a workflow