My favourite clicks - Part 2

These photographs were shot about 5 yrs ago. It was taken from my old digital camera .Happen to find these pictures while i was browsing my album. Thought i would post few of them.


1. Long shot - Lake George , NY.

2. I just fell in love with this lovely bike with a bull's horn at the bottom of the handle bar.
(Lake George NY - 2004):

Ganesh Chathurthi at our house:

This is a private residence for Dr. Emlen Physick and his family built on 1879. The 18-room mansion is now Cape May's only Victorian house museum and is administered by the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts. Entertaining and educational guided tours of the Estate run year-round.
Took this picture from our garden , a beautiful Old-garden-rose plant on 2006:

And tried to make a garland out of the flowers that we got from the plant:

Haphazard Unelightened!

I was traumatized to hear to such news. I have noticed that such tragedies always happen during the end of the year. Our nation need serious help. The city of mumbai is in a state of misery, being attacked few hours ago ,with ongoing gun battle and blasts at several places and holding to hostages. The terrifying incident has created a sense of extreme anxiety among Indians all over. It reminds me of the famous lyrics in tamil" Endru thaniyum intha suthanthira thaagam " meaning - when will the thirst of freedom be quenched?

Its a pity to note that the resque group is not enough for the amount of people being attacked and there are no enough amneties to help the people. Especially for a prosperous city like Mumbai which is the inhibitance for most of the VIP or influential people. Most interesting thing which the whole world would expect is the speech of president/primeminister of India not being delivered even after several hours of the incident! And the most disturbing fact is that, nobody really knows what is happening around. What should i add more to illustrate the haphazard state?

Hurray Long weekend!

What shud i say . I got no time to sit and research for the blackfriday sale. As of now i honestly dont have anything big in my list especially with the ongoing economic crisis.
But im planning to take lot of pictures so u can expect some pictures on my next post. Have a great long weekend folks.

Noneother than Nambiar!

Its a true loss to the indian film industry that the great legend is no more with us.

The man who created an impression with the audience that he may be a real villian, which proves his ability to impress the audience. In reality he has been a real humble and soft natured man says his fellow actor/actresses. It is really amazing to know that he has been acting since seven generations. Actually if you think of it, its not an easy thing to make the audience like you for 7 generations. At some point we might loose interest , but this man has broken the record and has done a fabulous job. May his soul rest in peace.

Image courtesy - Internet

What is black friday?

Black Friday is the friday after thankgivingday in the UnitedStates, where it is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season.

The term Black Friday was first used to describe Sept. 24, 1869, when several financiers had tried to corner the gold market and the market crashed, and a depression ensued. Due to the depression it was observed as black friday.

You might think it contrarily describes the scene of hoards of shoppers trampling towards shopping malls. It's because it is when retailers' balance sheets supposedly move out of the red (red ink was used by accountants of old to indicated losses) and into the black (the retailers turning their profit).

Source courtesy - retailindustry.com

Children's Day - Nostalgia !

I remember speaking in an oratorical competition when i was studying 3rd grade on a Children's day Contest in our school. The whole school participated in the competition which was till 8th grade. It will be interesting to know how eagerly i waited to hear the final results as other contestants. They finally announced the results, at first they announced the first runner up and the 2nd runner up. Now there are only 2 good speech givers in the whole school and they both are my seniors. So everybody was expecting one of their names to be the winner.
And now, they pronounced my name & said that I was a winner. I was happy but not surprised. Because i was so confident. Wish i have some now. My dad was so happy when he heard the announcement. And then my dad asked me to send the speech in written format to the prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi at that time . I did what my dad said ( at that age ! :-))) And to my surprise i was happy when i saw a congratulating letter from Rajiv Gandhi's personal secretary, which came to me within a month. I still have that letter. I would definitely post it in my blog later. All such sweet memorable events, happened during our childhood stays forever. Wish we could have a rewind button in life !

veterans day2008

Im so absent minded that i finished writing a couple of articles long back, and save it. But forgot to publish it onle when it will appear in the blog to view for public. So here it is:

Its a day where they show their gratitude for the people who have served the country (in military)and to those who made the ultimate sacrifice. This is something good about the country & their people's attitude towards their countrymen. Well , this gave me an insight that , we do not have something like that in our country. Surprising huh! Though we have honored few from the huge amount of freedom fighters like Gandhiji & Nehruji & others. But why dont have honor everyone? Some might say that we have the Independence day where we honor them all. But wait all the countries in the world has an Independence day. Why would they(some of them) have allocted a day seperately & specially for veterans. I have no answer!

Image courtesy - internet.

Hate Mondays ? Love Fridays !

Do you hate Monday?
Well i hear some people (mostly men!) often saying this word "I HATE MONDAY", they just hate geting up, shutting down the alarmclock, hate the taughts of a weeks work/school/college. Sundays make them angry and depressed because a whole week has gone by and they have to get back to work/school the next day. They might also fantasize and wish mondays were a day of rest.And that fridays make them feel so relaxed.
I personalized not hate all Mondays, but sometimes i just feel a little bit lazy to start a new task in the morning esp. after a long weekend.
New research shows that people's beliefs about being in a better mood at the end of the week than at the beginning is really just a bias in the way human memory works. In reality, people's moods do not change dramatically over the course of the week, and people are not vastly happier on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings than they are on Mondays.
Stereotypes like 'Monday morning blues' and 'TGIF -- Thank God It's Friday' are largely inaccurate theories of how moods vary" day by day.
The reason lies in the difference between people's actual moods on any given day and how they remember them later, and it reflects the difference between two different mental processes. Memory is partly about recollection and partly about the meanings we associate with events. Fridays mean liberation from the chores of the workweek, and Mondays mean putting on the yoke again. Those meanings influence our recollections of our moods: When a conflict arises between meaning and memory, meaning usually wins.

Now please take a look at the funny video below:



Hate Mondays? Love Fridays







Source courtesy : Department of Human Behaviour by Shankar Vedantam.

Winter Blues

Although I had enough activities around , to keep my self busy i always felt low during winter and had a kind of unexplained feeling which would make me dull. I couldnt figure out what i was going through until few episodes. And then i came to know thru one of my friend that there is something called winter depression which is very usual to occur in western countries . That sounded strange for me, because we never had 'depression' back in India! (Or ateast until we got married! :-)) lol ).

So this is called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) - is a type of depression that is triggered by the seasons. The most common type of SAD is called winter-onset depression. Symptoms usually begin in late fall or early winter and go away by summer. Researches proved that SAD is related to changes in the amount of daylight in effect to our brain during different times of the year.

Common symptoms of winter-onset SAD include the following:

• A change in appetite, especially a craving for sweet or starchy foods


• Weight gain


• A drop in energy level


• Fatigue


• A tendency to oversleep


• Difficulty concentrating


• Irritability and anxiety


• Increased sensitivity to social rejection


• Avoidance of social situations and a loss of interest in the activities you used to enjoy

So there are several treatments for this depression which includes, light therapy, anti-depressive drugs, and counselling. Since its a new thing for someone from tropical countries like India, we find it little weird. Although most of us would not go for anti-depressive drugs/counselling it is real simple to get rid of such a feeling but invloving ourselves into as much activities as we could and make use of the day light time, from my personal experience. Well , after all, we people are super smart adaptive to any places, regions, situations!!!

Source Courtesy - webmd.com

Static

Almost all of us are familiar with static electricity especially during the winter. On dry winter days, static electricity can build up in our bodies and cause a spark to jump from our bodies to pieces of metal or other people's bodies. We can see, feel and hear the sound of the spark when it jumps. you come inside from the cold, pull off your Jacket and......there you go Static electricity makes your hair stand while removing your jacket on end. Or You walk across people, or atleast sit beside them, again you get a static shock. What is going on here? And why do static problems only seem to happen in the winter?

Everything around us is made of atom, which is the smallest part of any element that can no longer be divided. An atom is composed of charged particles called Protons, Electrons & Neutrons. Where ,

Protons - are positively charged

Electrons- are negetively charged and

Neutrons - have no charge they are neutral.

Now, positive and negative charges behave in interesting ways. You might've probably heard that the opposites attract? Two things with opposite, or different charges (a positive and a negative) will attract, or pull towards each other. Things with the same charge (two positives or two negatives) will repel, or push away from each other. A charged object will also attract something that is neutral.

So what does all this have to do with static shocks? When you take off your wool hat, it rubs against your hair. Electrons move from your hair to the hat. A static charge builds up and now each of the hairs has the same positive charge. things with the same charge repel each other. So the hairs try to get as far from each other as possible. The farthest they can get is by standing up and away from the others. And that is how static electricity causes a bad hair day! Now lets see hoe to reduce the occurance of static.

Stating eliminating tips :

1. Increase humidity using humidifiers

2.Change clothes - switch to natural fibers, since synthetics pick up more of a static charge.

3. If your skin is very dry - try an anti-static hand lotion or atleast any moisturising lotion.

Image courtesy - Internet

Source Courtesy - sciencemadesimple.com

Obama Wins !

Lately our television had a break from telecasting the same old serial stuff, and telecasted only the the presedential debates, so many infomercials, primaries, and the campaigns, because of my husband.Finally, the democratic presidential nominee Barrack Obama succeeded against John Mccain. We both stayed up until Obama’s speech last night. In the first time of history , Obama sweeps the victory of being the first black president of UnitedStates. His speech was wonderful, impactful, and most of all hopeful. And so was Mccain's, although he lost, his final speech was really touching. Each and every word he spoke shows his maturity. Especially the lines

"Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that. It's natural, tonight, to feel some disappointment. But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again. We fought as hard as we could. And though we feel short, THE FAILURE IS MINE AND NOT YOURS" I just couldnt control my tears for Mccain although im not in favour of any of them. This shows their unity.( Wish we Indians could borrow some)

Also I was blown away by footage of people celebrating all over the country and all over the world. I dont really mind who ever comes , but i sincerely wish they could do something good for the country. Good luck America & Obama.

Image courtesy : www.barackobama.com

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

What is beauty? An attractive? A good figure? Clear skin?None of that. All those things are unreal. They just appeal to the senses. They're purely physical.

So what is beauty? Beauty runs deeper than the physical. It appeals to the spirit.

Beauty is like a book, it cannot be judged by its cover! I believe the personality and the soul is what makes a person beautiful, it does not always have to be the physical appearance.

I remember an incident that happened in my life when i talk about beauty. I was doing my first year in college. Those days , I was fond of beauty and beauty care products. I gave so much of importance for beauty, that i always regretted towards my skin tone that i was not blessed with a fair shade. :-)) At some point , there was a classmate of mine , i don't even remember her name . But before going forward i should say something about this girl. She had excellent academic records and was very friendly with others; She had every thing in the world that any young woman could have; except , her five fingers in her left hand! Yes she was born with this congenital abnormality (birth defect) called symbrachydactyly where there will be no fingers in the left hand.So when i was very sad for being brownish, she came to me and showed her hand, and said "you have every thing that a girl should have ,(means - with no physical flaws) that's what we need! " I felt like someone slapping on the face and said that beauty is not just physical. I can never forget this. And from then on, i never worried about my tone.

Please take a look at the video below. I found it real funny.