Year 2011 Recap

Went like a RollerCoaster ride!  :)) Or shud i say it was like watching a suspense thriller?! both would be apt.

Started skeptical(w.r.t my pregnancy)
Obsessions
Miracles
Excruciating moments
Grounds of Optimism
End of Extremity Era
Travel to India
Back to US
Busy  Busy Busy - No Nanny :(((


Needless to explain each topic! This was my year 2011's happenings. Meet you all in another wonderful year 2012.

Indolence

Gee, what a lousiness,upon living silent without any post for a long time?!
Few of my closest buddies kicked me up and been bugging me to post something new. Honestly i was blank!

I had been in the deep recesses& occasionally came to the fore front about doing something worthwhile yet I was cognizant & was silently creating my own hell. I was too busy with my usual life.... is what everybody says; just a reason to escape! and i was no different than the regular folks.

Finally, decided that I needed a change of mind ! So dusted off my old Facebook account and thought i might get into it & see whats going on after say 3 years!!!
Now, kept trying all sorts of permutation and combination of passwords ,ended up with no luck!!!
Hence had to go through the agonizing "forgot your password" page and finally got that link for request of new password.

Holy cow, there was tons & tons of emails and friendship requests, miscellaneous things happening on the facebook which I'm so new to. After a week it got bored~! Then switched to scrapbooking. Trust me its so addictive & expensive. Oh yea any hobby in America will def.ly rip off ur wallet for sure. My poor hubby!!! :))

And i jumped towards photography with my poor little canon digital camera(7.5 mega pixels). Seriously it helped me a lot on many ways. I love photography and i had been taking so many pictures but never thought i should make it as a serious hobby. And then i started to post my own pictures relevant to each article i post in my own blog. This gave me an immense satisfaction. One day, i lost that cutey little pie somewhere and that's it, i had been mourning for a long time about it. Again went to my superman! and cried for help! There you go, He bought me a Nikon D90 DSLR.....

To be continued......

Languorous London

London is one of the most diverse and exhilarating places in the world. Live here and you’ll meet people and ideas from the world over. And as with all great cities, it takes time to get to know the basics.

London is a cosmopolitan type of city, it consists of so many different communities where different nationalities and cultures live side by side.You can find Irish people inhabiting one London area next to Jewish and Muslim people. In certain parts you will meet Greeks, Americans, New Zealanders, Germans, Africans etc. With so many people living here there is a great percent of foreigners .

Travelling across London can at times be difficult, particularly by car/taxi - the average traffic speed in the West End is just 8 miles per hour! The large tube system makes travel through London rapid though at certain times of day it can be overcrowded.

Despite all these good fact there are also some downside of london , which is being the most expensive city in the world, and seems dirty, noisy or overcrowded, with no facilities for the Handicapped or people with kids especially babies in strollers , because there is on Lift/elevator for the underground tubes, its only the escalators. . Whether u like it or not, can or cannot, you have to walk over the stairs .Not a lot of public trash bins are found in the city thus the cause of the dirty scenario. Not a lot of Toilet facilities either. Taxis are highly expensive. Public transports like tubes/trams/buses are much affordable.

One of the problems of the city is , although it is made up of attractive architecture, the city is pretty dull and one often wonders whether much of it is worth the effort. Its either full of bankers or its the weekend and that too in shopping areas like oxford circus and nowhere else u can see a single person. The whole city is haunted during weekends. All the shops are closed within 5.30 pm. And theres no prefference to kids or pregnant woman or handicapped person among the public. On top of which the indisputable VAT tax. Cant really find good Indian/Asian food in central London. The wheather adds feather to the cap! .....windy & rainy most of the time.

It might be a great place just for the purpose of visiting around(tourism) but its not my favourite. No offense. Its just my personal opinion.

The Unexpected !!!

Sometimes in life we have to suddenly face situations, which we can only think of in our wildest nightmares. When we imagine ourselves to be in a difficult situation, we derive more thrills out of it, because we are actually not experiencing it in real life and at the same time we are having a marvelous adventure. The unexpected always gets us more excitement than the expected.Or sometimes it might even turn out to be more terrific.
LIFE IS a real mystery…. We don’t know what, when and where the life turns a new leaf and we are bowed to follow what it shows
So what do we do at that time?
Well the answer is ....not very easy! but it is not necessary that life will remain the same. Be prepared for whatever life has to offer you. All we can do is to simply face the unexpected thing with courage.
You might be wondering why am I talking philosophical stuffs. May be becoz im one among the scrapies who have experienced too much of unexpected stuffs in life!!!

Image Courtesy : Internet

Petty Shop Sweets!

The nicest thing is everything that brings back our pleasant childhood day memories. I spent my later childhood days in a place called Erode which is in western part of tamilnadu, close to the banks of the river kaveri. So the water there tastes better than many other parts of tamilnad, especially in chennai which is my hometown basically. Its a beautiful place , where theres a touch of nativity as well as modern amneties. Since its an economically well to do place basically through agriculture and textile, the people are more sophisticated and live in luxury.Well, thats where i was put up in 7th standard at a school called Kalaimagal, which is the best school at that time. I stayed there till my school finals.

There was a petty shop near by my school , where in , i found lot of delicious sweet/savouries which if i still think of , will make my mouth watering.... lol:-)Although my mom know that im gonna get some sweets from the shop , she will make sure that i dont cross my limits as those are less hygenic stuffs. There have been days where i ended up in sickness. But those are all part and parcel of our lives .

So let me explain the sweets that are available there :

1.Then Mittai

2.Kamar Katt

3.I dont remember the name but it will be round in shape brown in color...

4.Elantha Vadai

5.Elanatha Jam.

All these are delicious stuffs, will linger pleasantly in your mouth for hours together.

Cant forget those days which will have you wallowed in nostalgia.

I recently heard that these sweet stuffs are hygenically packed and sold in supermarkets in chennai.

Recently i got the recipe for Thenmittai , which i will be posting it in my cookbook blog soon.

Image Courtesy : The Hindu

Naming the natural calamities :

I was pretty unhappy during the long weekend becoz of two major incidents that happened in India. 1. Mumbai terror attack 2. Cyclone Nisha in Tamilnad.
The name of the cyclone, sounded funny to me at first. But later i was thinking about it and realised that there should be a reason behind it. And then did some research on it, and here comes the result. Presenting with humble, the few bits of knowledge that i read out of curiosity.


What is a tropical cyclone?
A tropical cyclone is the generic term for something like a thunderstorm activity.The terms hurricane and typhoon are regionally-specific names for a strong tropical cyclone.

Tropical cyclones are categorised below based on their intensity:

Hurricane - in the North Atlantic Ocean and the north-east Pacific Ocean regions
Typhoon - in the north-west Pacific Ocean region
Tropical cyclone - in other regions, including the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean.

How do they get their names?
Tropical cyclones are named to provide ease of communication between forecasters and the general public, regarding forecasts, watches and warnings. Since the storms can often last a week or even longer, and more than one can be occurring in the same region at the same time, names can reduce the confusion about what storm is being described.

Who name them ?
The lists are decided on, depending on the regions, either by committees of the World Meteorological Organization (called primarily to discuss many other issues), or by national weather offices involved in the forecasting of the storms. Each year, the names of particularly destructive storms (if there are any) are "retired" and new names are chosen to take their place.







Source courtesy : world wide tropical cyclone center.
Image Courtesy : Internet

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

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.

Walmart tops Fortune 500

Acoording to Fortune magazine rankings for the year 2008, Walmart is at the top . I have always admired at the companies and personalities who are at the top.
The founder of Walmart - Sam Walton (1918-1992) , was a businessman , but very unique. He is also the founder of Sam's club. was described as to be industrious, always trying to get the most out of money, and had a burning ambition to succeed. This is all apparent by: how he helped his family through the depression, started his own business from almost nothing, and how he changed the field of management. I got amazed on reading more about Sam Walton. All these people who are now at the top (atleast most of them) have struggled in their early days . And they all have same thirst to succeed in life. I think they all live for ever.
Their motto that impressed me :
"We're all working together; that's the secret. And we'll lower the cost of living for everyone, not just in America, but we'll give the world an opportunity to see what it's like to save and have a better lifestyle, a better life for all. We're proud of what we've accomplished ; we've just begun." (The Wal-Mart Story)

Image courtesy : Wikipedia & Times Magazine.

Unleashing the iconic relationships

It has recently been discovered that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is a distant relative of the late Princess Diana as well as Franklin D. Roosevelt. The vice presidential hopeful and President Roosvelt are ninth cousins, while she and Princess Diana are tenth cousins, according to Utah-based genealogists Ancestry.com.

It was a bit funny when i read it at first but i then registered @ ancestry.com hoping to find my distant relatives ! :-)) or it might be helpful for my forthcoming generations.

But i've been wondering how far would this news be true? what do u guys think?

Pls feel free to inscribe your comments .

Fall 2008

Official fall started today . Its getitng cold here. So the usual guest (FLU) would make its frequent trip to all of our houses here. Been really sick , especially my 1 yr old gets cold, once in a fortnight. On top of all these things one cannot deny the splendorous beauty of the fall. I still remember my first fall color at New Hampshire, i was wide eyed & wonder stuck because for its a new experience for a person who comes from Asian countries like India. Although it was biting cold below 20 Deg Farenheit.... I managed to come out and click few pictures. But im sorry i lost those pictures by having them saved in yahoo pictures which had been totally collapsed now. It was really discouraging to me as i had too many pictures in that. All though i moved them all to other photo management website... i kind of lost interest to even check those pictures these days. I find picassa good with lots of storage space. Anyways will shoot some nice pictures and post it later.



Here you go.... the pictures i took yesterday (9/28/08) from our patio. It was too gloomy and rainy for the past 3 days. Looks good on picture but not good on a weekend! :-((

Phtographed by myself.

Your comments are invaluable, please feel free to inscribe your remarks below

Tamil Joke

I got this one long back. I tried to save it in my inbox coz i liked it a lot. But u need to know tamil to read this email .... have fun .

Your comments are invaluable, please feel free to inscribe your remarks below

Tamil TV serial - A nudnik headache

I have been waiting for a chance to express or articulate my thoughts about the Indian tv serials, or especially tamil tv serials . Although there are a couple of them to mention about , mostly 99% of the tv serials sucks!!! I seriously doubt that all the director's brains might have been vaporised. Becoz almost all the serials follow the same set of rules like :
1) A family story with lot of characters as relations and unrelated branched stories.
2) The lead role - always a woman, will have the best characteristic features that nobody can find one in reality.
3) The Anti-heroine/hero role - mostly a woman again,possess all the worst characteristic features, will take revenge on the woman who plays the main role.
4) A definite love track.
5) A useless husband / father / brother ... the male character!!!
6)A delay of time with the dialogue deliveries between the characters which makes obvious that they does not know ABC about acting.
7) The most horrible thing is the background music which really gets into my nerves.
8) Comedy series : in which somebody will always laugh behind the scenes.(Probably the director feels that it is a comedy)
9) Some suspense thrillers which are supposed to be scary are very funny,predictable and in fact you can see these type of serials if u wanna watch a good comedy serial.
10) Duration of a serial is 30 minutes. But is actually telecasted only for 15minutes. Rest of the time is for title song at the beginning and a 2 or 3 commercial breaks in between.
11)The commercials... oh my god! i could add another bunch of points about it. But i dont wanna bore u like these serials.
And the lists does not end here... :-))

Your comments are invaluable, please feel free to inscribe your remarks below

Just when u think u're done

Criticism has been a part and parcel of our life. Some of us hate it & Some of us take it. This means, the later is matured than the previous one. Well, I would like to share some of my personal experiences and suggestions that i learnt from my life.Here is what we gotto do when people try to criticize us.And majority of the criticizer would be someone who doesnt like you. (Note: I have mentioned only a majority of them & not all) Some(minority group) critics are actually good, through whom you can learn and correct your mistakes. But im sure those critics wouldnt hurt that bad.Analyse what type of critics (Majority/Minority) your opponent is ?Well you can react two ways depending on the type of critics.
1. Reaction for the minority group: Try to understand the underlying meaning of it. Even if you are totally wrong, thats ok. You can always learn from you mistakes. If you are right try explaining them your point in a "POLITE" way.
2. Reaction for the majority group:Now taking into account the majority group of critics, they have a gut feeling that we would react back. Which makes them kind of achieve their goal. Its really hard to please every one or atleast them... :-))If they are getting into your nerves, try to swallow a bit , coz they are testing your patience which will ultimately make you a much better person. Still if you cant, better off ignoring them (again, po,itely)coz, they might be an absolute jerk!
I have met so many jerks.... :-))

Your comments are invaluable, please feel free to inscribe your remarks below