Water wrinkles !

The Milky Way aka Mother of Allergies

Old friends, New friends - Good times

Today' s Special - Smile

I was just reading a friend's blog and that's when I decided to post this blog today.

I met her the summer festival. I just felt drawn towards the stall, it looked so pleasant with those pink curtains and soft sunlight, and yes it was all cosmetics so I could not resist anyway.

As a rule I am not crazy about cosmetics in general, but I love going to these shops. I enjoy that faint perfumed air that lingers about these places.

Anyway as I was trying some nice milky cream and I looked up at the women at the stall and she gave me this dazzling smile. It was not one those fake ones, come and buy from my store types but just a nice cute smile. I was so awed, I had to smile back. Then we started chatting and she told me all these products were the creation of her imagination and that she has been doing this from the past 20 years. I simply could not resist asking her for a snap, and look at that - ain't she pretty ?? When I look at this picture it always brings a smile on my face and I am glad for this snap for me to cherish and remember.

So please read Shyama's blog too, smile and become a millionaire.

They were so unique :)

This week

There are only two things really worthwhile I did this week

1) Watched the entire Brazil versus Japan football match , which was brilliant, entertaining and I got to see 4 goals in 2 hours in local slang "Majjja aithu"

2) Saw the movie "CARS" last night. Pixar has completed 20 years and this is probably one their best in terms of creativity, storyline, imagination ............ etc etc I can just go on........

I have only thing to say

GET YOURSELF AND YOUR BEST BUDDY TO THE THEATERS AND WATCH IT !!!!!!!!

My weekend starts now at my favourite Greenhome :)

From Whom the Bell Tolls !

This pretty babe is called Fuchsia. And I shall pat myself on my back because this has been my best photograph till now and I have done zero post processing on it :).

Tucked into for Comfort !

This again is a picture I took at the summer festival. My first day in America and I heard for the first time this word called the "comforter" and when my friends took me to Walmart I was just amazed to see the colors, sizes and comforts of the comforter. Not that while doing your masters you get to sleep too much, but that little bit should be in extreme comfort.

Impressed by the "Made in china" comforters I looked around a little more and then my eyes fell on some 100 % pure American made "American quilts" and I flipped from them right away. Mind you this was not at walmart, but at a exhibition put up in my school. I could not take eyes of the beautiful designs, and when I understood that most of them are home made I had this lovely warm vision of my Grandmom making sweaters and shawls. OOOOOhhh I just loved the feeling.

Now I have been trying to buy an American quilt from so long but they are really expensive, I should rather say that I cannot afford them. The above picture is of a "Quilt" stall that I saw in the festival and just could not resist going up and talking to the couple. I looked so excited that the old grandpa actually got up to talk to me thinking that I am potential customer but then when I happily said that " I can never afford one" he politely ignored me. I don't blame him, I would have probably done the same.

Nevertheless before he started ignoring me he told me that the couple had seven daughters and all of them were involved in making of the quilts that you see in the background. The one they are displaying for a more financially enthusiastic customer alone costs $545, hmmmm if only I could buy one ..............Then I will curl up in it on a cold and drowsy winter day and just dream ....

How simple is that ???

I was strolling randomly in the summer festival when I came across this shop which has such framed messages. Among a few the interesting one was this, the way it was lying in a corner as if its a discarded philosophy.

I took it at that time without thinking too much, but today I had a chat with a friend and remembered this shot.

Its says so simply - choose the right path, but I am thinking when do you know you have become matured enough or sometimes even aware of all consequences of that one decision that you are confident that you have chosen or can choose the right path.

Does it make sense to torture ourselves with that question eternally ? If I look back into my life there are million things I would like to change but then I think I would not been here, maybe not even writing this blog, and that makes me wonder if there is any other place I would rather be now and somehow the answer is no because its so difficult to imagine a totally different you and totally different surrounding.

Our parents, friends, peers, the environment in which we grow influence the way we think, react, act and so many other things. Till some point we are taught the difference between right and wrong and then we are on our own. Won't you allow some time for stumbling, like a baby learning to walk and even then we may never choose the absolute right, its always relative to the situation we are in. Its amazing the way life sorts out its own messes in some way or the other, so rather than worrying about the right path maybe we should worry about what we do on any path we are on.

So this message is for my dear friend and for myself and for you who take the trouble to read my blog

" Life is a journey, forget about the right path"

Cuts Like A Knife !!

" Now it cuts like a knife
But it feels so right
It cuts like a knife
But it feels so right"

Thats the song by Bryan Adams, has been running through my head from the time I took this picture. This is one of my favourite songs, just the perfect way to say goodbye.

Sometimes its tough to make a decision against your heart, but they eventually becomes clear and concrete as time passes and then they just feel right !

Scarlett Princess !

I put this picture on Tanushree's request and then changed the name on Hemanth's request and now I will add some more information on Nihar's request because he took the trouble to find some information and mail it to me.

The broad-leaved epiphyllum aka orchid cactus which is known for its flat leaf like stems, they do not have leaves. In Chinese there is a saying "tanhua yi shian" which means "to last briefly", drawn from the fact that this particular species only blooms for one day of the year. It is also called "Night Blooming Cereus". There is a yellow variety too and on some websites I saw the name "Golden Splendour".

I liked the name Scarlett Princess, because it reminded me of the character "Scarlett" in one of my favorite novels and movie "Gone with the wind". She is gorgeous, confident and bold and she never goes unnoticed and I think this flower deserves the same status.

Mug Shot !!

Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting to you above the rarest beauty from my greenhouse. I have been waiting for almost two weeks for this little baby to show up .

My boss told me to take good care of this cactus when she saw a little bud budding on it, so there I was watching it for the entire day and for many days, giving it little drinks of water and chatting with it, but nothing. Infact yesterday I lost patience and thought what the heck let it bloom who cares.

But today there it was in all its splendor, laughing at me, you did not expect me did you ???

Well the next thirty minutes were spent in just admiring it and taking its photo from different angles and the result is present above. A very co-operative and photogenic flower I tell you.

Now for some facts, scientifically know as Epiphyllum hybrid, unfortunately it has no common name like the "Star of Bethlehem" or even "Queen of Night" but beautiful nevertheless. I looked for it on all search engines but really got nothing useful except some more scientifically and tongue twistingly long names.

So at the end of the day I am thinking, here I am falling in love with this flower and still call myself a "controls engineer". I never have been so happy seeing my research results. I should seriously consider a profession change ......... hmmm will surely do it once I am done with my Masters here.

Enjoy !!

Caught !!

I was looking for her everywhere and finally caught her on camera !

The perfect spot for some meditation, Don't you think ???

RTFM !!

Being an engineer and a girl its very difficult for me to do one thing - read a manual. I am sure all of you must have seen these so called self proclaimed engineers who think that by just looking at any gadget we can get it working within nanoseconds. Now when I started "Photographing" you can see the general trend. I threw the manual into some corner and started clicking away. Now when I look at people like Vikas's and Tanushree's blog, I am wondering "Mera photo woh baat kyon nahin hai jo unke photo mein hai", so I happily blamed my camera. You see I can't be wrong but the gadget, yes ofcourse must be crappy.

Anyway my dear boyfriend has been telling me from a long time that "Dear if you want to perfect the art then u need to read the manual" , so finally I gave in to his sweet advice and took out the manual ( took a lot of sofa pulling, beds overturning and in genral messing), but finally the fruits of my effort are above. Now please dont ask me what I did because I am still a girl, but I did something good because I just love the picture above, the central part is perfectly focused and for the first time in my life the background has gone blur :) yea yea yea yea

So people I have one advice for those still afraid of the M word

Read the F******G Manual !!!!

See Mommy I can ride a Poneyyy !!

I went yesterday to the Logan Summer festival , first time after being here for two years and had a merry time. I did a lot of photography and a little shopping ( newly discovered way to not spend money - carry your camera). My next blog will be a little more about the festival and the things I liked there.

Along the perimeters of the main festival ground was a liitle brook and across this was this Pony stand, there were some LLama too ! I just could not resist taking a picture, seeing this little kid on his little pony. Such a cute scene, I remembered my childhood when I was insisting to sit on this huge horse in a similar mela ( fair) in my birthcity and my poor dad who was afraid for my safety was trying to draw my attention away from the horse. Ohh well I never got to sit on one anyway, but no regrets :) ....

Smooochiie Smoochieee !!!!

When I took this photo I had the title "Hum Tum " in mind. When I started this post I was like gosh I am soooo filmy, so then I decided to do some deep thinking in the filmy direction and came up with this :).

So now why this title ?? Do u remember the older but not so older hindi movies wherein they became a little bolder and showed the hero and heroine coming really close, aur pass, aur pass, aur pass and then by-pass - bang there would be these two flowers touching each other and we presume the unfortunate couple may be kissing each other.I could almost imagine the young men of those times falling of their seats in anticipation and frustration.

First of all in the movies of the older days the girls had this huge towering hairdo's and men had the most exposing shirts with a forest of hair to show off in between all that color(really I prefer the clean shaven Sallu with no shirt). What an unlikely pair or rather made for each other because they had so much hair in common. Whatever it turns me off to see them coming soooo close, I am very happy seeing some flowers instead for a change.

And to say it my grandmom typical ishtyle " Aaajkal ki movies to baap re baap ", sab kuch karte hain. I rarely see a good kiss in Hindi movies. They give any kiss a lusty and slurping look that you hope Never to be Kissed !! . That jerk Imran or Arman the character who gets to kiss and go against any over-population ad , he gives me the creeps. He has that hilarious expression on his face all the time "When do I get to kiss you Baabyy" :)

I guess that's it for today, me doing research in the background of all this so let me get back to better things in life.

Blessed !!

When you wake up too early in the morning you do weird things !! It was just a random shot but
I like it :)

Flowers from my little garden

Do you believe that I get to take care of these beauties everyday !! . I am working at the greenhouse for my summer job and just loving it. The city where I stay experiences extreme climate, eight months of snow and rest is relatively hot. Basically both not very suitable for too much plant cultivation.

Anyway this lovely place has about four parts and as of now we are having an abundance of births everyday. Everytime I open the doors and I see a little bud here or a beautiful flower at the corner. Its simply the most peaceful place to work and I enjoy it every second.

So enjoy my pictures while I enjoy work !!

Yawaaaannnnnnnn !!!

Its 7.30 a.m and I am AWAKE !! boohooo, for those who wake up earlier let me tell you today is Saturday, even you must be taking holiday today and curling for hours late after sunrise .

But poor me, I have to work for the next five hours at the Greenhouse. I love the job . This is my summer job that I doing so that I can do some extra paet puja. I work all of the weekend, I need to wake up early and run to take care of my dear plants. They will all be dried up and waiting for a deep drink by now.

Anyway so its early, and I am sleepy and I hate all of you who will continue sleeping for atleast another couple of hours.

Sleep well folks ..........

Food, Food, Food .... Wonderful Food

This blog is dedicated to my first summer(2005) in US of A. I had this very enthusiastic bunch of friends and roommates and we all had two two things in common, we loved to cook and loved to eat.We had these elaborate parties wherein we would spend hours cooking and then just gobble it all up in a matter of seconds.

I increased 10-15 pounds easily during this time but it was worth every second. I have never had so much fun making Desi Khaana :).

Below is a silly poem dedicated to my friends and our efforts. If you remember the lovely Amul ad "Dhoodh Dhoodh Dhoodh" , its on the same lines.

This is few items we have prepared together. It has poori, cholle, cakes,momos, aloo chaat, Jalebii ! :)

Food, Food, Food wonderful Food, Food, Food

Indian Food, food food wonderful Food food Food

Desi Food hai so yummy

Vi-desh mein yaad aaye Mummy

Desi food for lunch and breakfast

Desi food for brunch and Nashta

Food, Food, Food wonderful Food, Food, Food

Indian Food, food food wonderful Food food Food

Desi food all the time

Makes you fat, makes you round

With a little exercise

You can be, not so very round

Food, Food, Food wonderful Food, Food, Food

Indian Food, food food wonderful Food food Food

Desi food not for weak hearted

Desi food not for color lighted

Desi food ho to, to ho masti

Desi food ke baad hai Susti

Food, Food, Food wonderful Food, Food, Food

Indian Food, food food wonderful Food food Food

Desi food is soo lip smacking

Desi food is sooo nail biting

If you love sugar and spice

Desi food is a surprise !!

Food, Food, Food wonderful Food, Food, Food

Indian Food, food food wonderful Food food Food

Desi food when you are dating

Desi food when you are done mating

Desi food leads to sleeping

Which is same as God ki prapting

Desi food for every season

Desi food for every reason

Desi foooooooood is so rightttttttttttt !!!

Food, Food, Food wonderful Food, Food, Food

Give me more give me more

All I want is more more more !

Project yah Print out !!

I am sure each one of you at some point in life must have gone through the painful procedure of a "Final Project" for some silly academic requirement, well the story is on this topic.

Now doing projects are fun, I enjoy them thoroughly and especially more fun if you have some really cool project partners who stimulate your dormant or even sometimes underdeveloped brain into actual thinking.

Now the project I am referring to was in my final year engineering and we were a team of three. The other two guys were simply the best project partners anyone could ever wish for. We had some really good times working out the project related details and you know stuff like that. Now apart from the usual challenges involved in the project we also had a competition of sorts with another group on similar project, then we had this vision of our professor to live up to, then we used to play this lovely game called hangaroo and lotts of other silly things which came along with this project.

Going into some technical details the ultimate aim of the project was to design a 64x8 Static random Access memory chip, a VLSI based project, which we did in all its splendor and glory. Now if you know nothing about chip technology, then in simple words its basically a unit called transistor which is built using the properties of silicon and doping and stuff like that. Now this transistor is very very minute in the scale of micrometers and now even nanometers and we used about 8000 of them to build our beautiful circuit. Now the deal was because of the rivalry and the need to be the best team we wanted to do a spectacular presentation of the project. Once ready the circuit on the computer occupied the entire page and basically you could understand nothing, it just looked like a messy blue and red and some yellow colors all nicely mixed up. When you consider the actual chip size its even more smaller, probably the size of .1% of nail area. At the end of one full semester you make something so small, gosh it feels bad. So what we decided was to take a print out of our circuit such that each transistor was about the size of a thumb. Well you can just imagine our excitement at the thought of such a print out, we were so proud of our work.

Project was all done and the print had to be taken and believe me that was much more challenging a process than we thought. First of all we had not estimated that the size would be around 13 feet long. Can you imagine that ?? Ha ha I still remember it took us a lot of research to find such a shop and then even more effort to go there and figure out a way to make the software compatible to our file format and the bloody print out itself took 5 hours and we were just sitting there looking at it so proudly. Mind you at that time all the three of us were so thrilled, we used to just beam with sunshine at the mention of the print out. Now that I look back I wonder what the hell we were thinking spending so much money taking not one but two 13 feet long print outs of something which could have been easily well explained with a normal print.

Now comes the hilarious part, on the day of our final presentation we had this fat professor from some vague college and our dear professor to judge us. Well they looked really bored during the first 20 minutes of the presentation so we figured lets show them the print out. What a change in his attitude, first of all he stopped yawning and all that he did for the next 5 minutes was stare at the length and the bright colors because I am sure about the circuit he understood nothing as he was asleep just few minutes before. Then came the questions, from where did you get this done?, which printer was used?, how much did it cost you ? What is the address. The concept and our 6 months hardwork all forgotten, he could care less. The next 30 minutes just went in this discussion. Really we got the best grades for the project and now and all worth it in the end.

I spoke to my project partners and none of us are even aware where the print out has been stowed away. I can never forget that it took 5 people to hold it straight and show it to the examiner.

To me its one the most funniest things I have done ever in my life, I guess being so young and enthusiastic was the reason we had that anaconda of a print taken, else now I would rarely bother to spend so much on a presentation.

But one thing I can never forget along with all the fun I had learning with Danny and Antony is the picture of the three of standing with our print out , two at each end and Antony in the middle. Miss those days so much ....

Reflections !!