One minute it was this gorgeous looking, beautifully carved Strawberry Mousse cake and the next it is a flattened, smashed, tarnished, sad looking mushed THING! Such is the efficiency of Veena the CAKE KILLER.

This was the day I re-joined lab after a scientific burst of information at a conference in San Diego at the Salk Institute ensued by an EXPLOSION of unlimited fun in San Francisco…in short the Gorgeous Mountainous California. I was barely getting over the fact that my teeny weeny vacation (actually any vacation seems less) had culminated and while just about when I was reorienting myself to the CST and the lab premises as opposed to the gorgeous ranges and the Red colored GOLDEN gate bridge my lab-mate informed me of the most enticing and delicate looking, meticulously prepared strawberry mousse cake (reiterations are essential in an effort to assert the beauty of the cake)prepared by the tech in my lab who had recently begun exploring the baking world! My very first instinct was to run amok, get a piece for myself and devour every crumb of it to the best of my capabilities. Instead I chose otherwise…..I decided to be a bit LADY LIKE and wait unto eternity a.k.a let my salivary glands prepare for the big event, suffer before I actually introduce them to something wonderful so as to make them appreciate it better than they normally would. Finally the moment arrived when I could wait no longer, resist no longer and decided to take the plunge. I went into the coffee room, walked to the cake box, and while talking to the person who made it, I tried opening the box but for some reason the box was unyielding making me more anxious than ever. Trying harder to make the box succumb to my pressure was a terrible idea for the box slipped. Trying hard to not let it fall on the ground was even worse for the box toppled even further, went upside down and SPLAT on my shoe. The beautiful Strawberry Mousse Cake NO MORE. There was a momentary 2 minute silence in remembrance of the mighty cake followed by a forlorn face and strings of apologies flying everywhere. The tech gave a shrieky shriek and then went into peels of laughter. Momentarily I thought that watching the cake undergo the drastic transition made her insane and that any moment she would pounce on me and eat me alive. Fortunately I was wrong and she was genuinely amused for there existed “NOONE…..NOONE who could’ve performed such a difficult task to such a perfection” (as stated by the post-doctoral fellow in my lab).

One dire deed sweeps thousand virtuous ones. Killing the Cake flounced every noble act I had amassed in the times of yore. Standing on square one I now wait when I have yet again accumulated a thousand noble acts but this time striving hard to preserve its integrity! Whether or not I would see this plan being victorious is for time to tell.