Fire Alarm

This happened in the first week I came to USA. It was my first test. Cooking!! My roommates were ravenous and none of them was in a mood to cook anything. I felt all eyes boring into me. Thats it.I had been trying to avoid cooking for too long. I had to take the plunge.To keep things simple I announced I am going to cook daal chawaal.
rice done, wow!!, looks fine. now second thing daal. I wasnt prepared for the events to follow. 3 hungry roommates and a rookie chef maketh a 'recipe for disaster'. I heated oil in the pan and then started making tadka(seasoning) for the daal. In the middle of all this there was a phone for me and I forgot everything about the oil in the pan. "ooooo!,ooooo,ooooo!" there was loud siren and all of us froze, I dropped the phone and rushed to the kitchen to see the oil in fumes, the fire alarm couldnt take it anymore. It was all helter-skelter. First two roommates trying to make the fire-alarm stop squealing and then all of us at it. Finally it stopped and everything was back to normal. whew!!.After much dissuasion from my roommates Finally I managed to make some food without the fire-alarm going off again. I had my lesson, no more distractions while cooking. Is cooking a tough job? Well I have come a long way since that day in cooking and now I have the guts to cook for an entire hungry army:).