Gold and Beautiful

And I cry watching movies....Not necessarily the Hindi melodramatic ones but many times highly courageous or inspirational ones. I don't know why but somehow a soul stirring movie about a courageous deed or a highly inspirational speech can bring me to tears. And not to forget the highly melodramatic Hindi ones...For example when I was younger, Sunny Deol's rabble rousing speech in Damini had that kind of effect on me. Fortunately by the time Sunny paaji came up with similar things in Gadar , I had grown out of Hindi movies. But other movies like 10,000 Black Men Named George and Remembering the Titans or even Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson's court scene in A Few Good Men (I have no clue why I get emotional when I see that ???) too.... The list is long but in short any well shot/well acted scene showing the triumph of good over evil makes me cry!!!!! Funny eh ?

..... with Shilpa :-) It was not completely DIY.....I bought the pieces from a furniture store and then we assembled it at home...But hey, that's a big deal too.... esplly if you are used to having someone around to fix things for you!!! Although not a completely do it yourself project, it still required a bit of skill, labor and patience (just like looking at maps, I never know whether I am looking at it the right way !!)....But finally its done and now I have a new coffee table and two end tables that I assembled....... with Shilpa's help!!!! (Feels great..)

It's difficult for me to choose my favorite Celine Dion song....Two of her songs are my all time favs....No points for guessing that one of them is the Titanic song....It is beautiful and nobody could have sung it better than her. But today I am more in love with my other fav....This is how part of it (rather my fav part of it) goes: When you want it the most there's no easy way out When you're ready to go and your heart's left in doubt Don't give up on your faith Love comes to those who believe it And that's the way it is When you question me for a simple answer I don't know what to say, no But it's plain to see, if you stick together You're gonna find a way, yeah So don't surrender 'cause you can win In this thing called love The lyrics are great, very inspiring......And well, its sung by Celine Dion, what other reason do I need?

This weekend was for touristy sight seeing...... So off we went to Ruby falls, rock city and incline rail in Chattanooga, TN. Of course the drive was not as beautiful as it would have been in Fall, but nevertheless the destinations made the 2 1/2 hour drive worthwhile. I was under the impression that the Ruby Falls are called so because you can either find rubys down there, or there are some kind of red stones through which the waterfall flows...Alas! the Ruby Falls got their name from the wife of the first owner of the place (obviously called Ruby...duh!!!). The one hour guided tour through the caves, 260 feet under the ground was great if you had wild imagination. The limestone deposits formed draperies and different shapes. In an anti-climax of sorts the Ruby fall itself was decorated with colorful lights (red being one of them...). The waterfall was tall and I badly wanted to get under it just like we all did when we went to those caves in Karjat.... The next stop.... Rock city.......

Saw this amazing, touching documentary about the Lost Boys of Sudan Quite a few thoughts rushed through my mind. The first one was about India's independence and partition. Over the years I have had so many conversations and many many arguments about Gandhi, Congress and partition...... Many people said how Gandhi, Nehru were responsible for the riots that are still going on between Hindus and Muslims, how we shouldn't have given all that money to Pakistan and so on. When I saw this movie, that was the first thought that went through my head. When the British decided to leave India, they had no stakes in our country, were tired of the growing unrest and just wanted to get out. They gave us a date when they would be leaving and we had to solve matters before they left. Our leaders had few options. One was to let Jinnah be the prime minister and avoid partition, which Gandhi was ready for but not the Congress (thank God!!). The other option was to keep arguing, not make a decisio...

I always loved my parents and knew they were always correct (I am not saying I listened to them.....). At every important cornerstone of my life, I knew I should be listening to my mother. Whenever I did not follow her advice, I did not fail miserably but I could have done better and I always knew I should have done it her way. One thing I was good at though was sticking to the decisions I made and facing the consequences, whether good or bad...... I never took my parents for granted (thanx to the good things that they taught me), but after living on my own for many years and realizing what other things existed in the world I just think I should be putting my parents on a pedestal and worship them for everything that they have done for me. Yes I know, all parents do everything they can for their children......Or do they???? I am not so sure!!!!

Another of my favorite one from Shashi Tharoor's A-Z of India: UP: or Uttar Pradesh, is a state in north India, which accounts for 10% of our population, 20% of our industry, 40% of our pollution and 80% of our prime ministers.

Spent the last three Christmas vacations and birthdays in California. Not that I have anything against California...On the contrary I love California, especially San Francisco.....Of my 3 bdays in California I celebrated 2 at Stinking Rose, an amazing Italian restaurant that has a completely garlic menu (even garlic ice cream!!!)...This year for a change I was not in California...Although I did miss spending time with friends and was really cold, I still had fun shopping all day long in Georgia. Especially if your cold day of shopping ends with a hot sake and sushi and ice cream cake with close friends, what else could you ask for? Maybe a similar celebration next year ???

Spending money as if it is going out of style is out of style. -- Some car commercial!!!!

What are you doing for the rest of your life? - Niles on Frasier

A few months ago I was watching an interview of a journalist (don't remember her name..) who said she was so used to typing that she couldn't write with a pen anymore. I remember thinking that's just dumb, how can you forget how to write and other such things......And now I am experiencing the same thing... Not that I cannot write, but my writing just stinks big time.....When I was in school my handwriting was decent, not award winning but nice enough...In the past 7 years I have hardly written anything....I sit in a meeting with my laptop and am typing down notes as fast as I can.....If I ever have to use a marker in my class, that's it.....I hate it. First of all the white boards are a little high, so I cannot make the best use of it...I use only the bottom one-third of the board :-( and then when I write, my handwriting is legible but not good and I feel an uneasiness while writing, as if I am just starting to learn how to write.....Makes me feel terrible. O!!! that ...

We have all heard this one, "Life is short, so live every day as if it were your last".....Also reminds me of the "Life is an ice cream, enjoy it before it melts" version that I so loved in school. But I think that's really not true....On the contrary life is long and you have to live with the choices/decisions you make for the next 50 years or so!!!! Hey, but I don't mean to dampen your spirits at all......I decide which philosophy to adopt based on what I want to do.....So if I wanna go sky diving or bungee jumping then I go with the life is short philosophy, but otherwise (especially when it comes to relationships) tread with caution!!!

Some psycho shot 8 shoppers in a mall and then killed himself.....CNN and other news channels are busy covering it all day long and they will keep talking about it for the next 10 days....Seriously, these news channels really need to get global.....The same thing happened during Virginia Tech incident. For at least 2 weeks all that I could see on web sites and TV was the image of that depressed kid with two guns/rifles (whatever!!!) in his hand. And I am thinking to myself why on earth would you publish and re-publish such images and give out the details of how he got the guns??? To encourage other depressed/dejected/rejected individuals to do the same?? Don't you think you are glorifying the wrong idea? That is exactly what this mall shooter did. His suicide note said he wanted to go "in style".....So he decided to go into a mall right during holidays and shoot 8 innocent people. For a long time I used to think that human life was not valued enough in India and after the...

Final week of classes, final presentations n loads of stress!!!! Whether you are student or a faculty it feels the same.....I was very pleasantly surprised as my class delivered their final presentations today... Some of them had videos in their presentations, just like I have in my lecture slides :-) I spent all my weekends looking for relevant videos on all sorts of web sites during last semester. And to actually have my students pick that up was really satisfying. At least they learnt something from me!!!! Way to go......

I went to play paintball on Sunday and it was great fun.... It reminded me of when I was a kid and we used to play Holi in Dombivli......Used to be fun, throwing balloons and colored water at other people from our terrace and painting everyone's faces with color.....After doing all this for half a day, the rest half of the day would be spent in the bathroom trying to get rid of all the color, especially from your hair......Well, paintball is not really the same, what with all the protective gear you wear (check out the pic...the one in red sleeves is me). It was hard for me to pick up the gun (boy, was it heavy!!!), duck and run and then on top of that aim and shoot...I did not excel at the game, but I managed to have fun, shot a couple of people, got shot and also successfully stole the horse..........yeeeee!!!

Is it possible to forgive and forget??? Ideally that's what you are supposed to do, especially if you love your own peace of mind.....but is it as easy to do as it is to preach??? I once read this quote in the Chemistry dept at Tulane. It said "People will forget what you said to them, they will forget what you did to them but they will never forget how you made them feel" I totally agree. I can very easily forgive, but does not mean I am going to forget it....Depending on the gravity of the wrong doing I might not really be able to forget, meaning I will never ever repeat my mistake.... Once bitten, twice shy!!!!!

These are my favorite (man!!! I still spell favorite with a "u") socks that I bought from Sock Market in San Francisco.....First of all San Francisco is a very beautiful city....It's my favorite place in the US. I am a city person and I basically like cities.....I like NYC because it reminds me so much of my days in Mumbai....and then I like LA, that's another nice city with great weather...but SFO is the most beautiful. It definitely tops my list and places like the Sock Market just add to the number of reasons i like SFO.....Did you ever imagine that anyone can actually get excited about their socks???? I did not! But this place is really pretty kool. Its a small store on Pier 39 and has some really funky designs, colors (there comes my "u" again) and textured socks. Check out the store (and my kool sneaker socks) here .

Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving...good food, lots of shopping and hopefully a wonderful 2007 to be thankful for....Suma aunty sent me an email wishing "Happy Thanksgiving" and I replied back wishing her the same, etc... and said I did not do nething spl except for dinner with frnds...and then she replies back saying "that's great, you have frnds with whom you can spend Thanksgiving!!!!" And I thought very true...reminded me of the Thanksgiving episode from "Friends"...neways, Xin and Annie were nice to invite us for dinner where we had some traditional Chinese food "Hot Pot" (Doesn't it look yummy even in the pic??? The last one is Indian though, "Gulab Jamun") The healthiest Thanksgiving dinner ever. I have never ever had so many steamed veggies that tasted so good!! And then Suma aunty's email got me thinking about all the things I need to be thankful for this year....Let's see....Great frnds (in beloved NOLA) ...

Thanx to a nice friend I was able to get scholarship when I left India for my higher studies. That scholarship paid for my one way ticket to the USA and although I was not in a situation that if I hadn't got that money I wouldn't have made it, but it did help me a lot, or rather it helped my self esteem a bit....Not having to ask my parents for the money, definitely made me feel better, what with all the middle class background and 22 year old girl going alone (instead of getting married!!!!) emotional pressures from outsiders (Thank God for my parents!!!). Anyways, long story short the scholarship was good....and eventually I was able to obtain an updated list of all such trusts in Mumbai that give scholarships to students going abroad for higher education. I am providing that list here for everyone who wants to use it. Remember one thing, most of these are Parsi trusts and their goal is to fund as many students as possible. So if you get funded from one trust, you won't g...

I was just reading an article in TOI about Madhur Jaffrey and she mentioned sipping sugarcane juice at Taj.....Sugarcane Juice !!!!!!!! I was crazy about it for so long, at least as long as we lived in Dombivli....It's been such a long time since I had sugarcane juice. My grandfather passed away when I was still in school. But when I was a kid we used to visit him and my granny every summer (thanx to my maasi, who did not mind taking care of all the cousins during the summer break!!!)....And there were only so many things you could do in that village. Once a week, get up really early and go to the weekly bazaar...Then in the evenings go to one temple everyday. There was one ice-cream shop in the village, so one trip to that place (mango, pista and one more flavor ...I forget....mango was my fav!!!). Then there was a sugarcane juice shed/stall...So one trip there and loads of mangoes at home!!!! Those were wonderful days. Once in that entire trip, would be some spl puja day and all ...

Everyday on CNN and other news channel I hear them talk about the rising gas prices. Every morning on the news I hear them talk about traffic problems and everyday on different channels and in different commercials I hear them talk about the green revolution.....If everybody is worrying about traffic problems, environment pollution and increasing gas prices, I am wondering why are they not doing anything????Haven't you heard about public transportation???Look at other nations, even a developing nation like India has better public transportation. And this country somehow does not want to go that way. Instead they prefer to buy bigger SUVs and Hummers with no gas mileage whatsoever........You complain about oil problems but you don't want to do anything about it. Obviously the politicians don't want to address that issue, because their personal financial gains lie in oil.....I just saw this yesterday somewhere, the blind (oops!!! the visually impaired) people are complaining ...

Another WWII movie.....I don't know why I am obsessed with these movies, gotta blame Arun for it (actually gotta blame him for all of the gud things :-)). Anyways, really nice movie and along with all the usual thoughts that run in my mind after watching such movies, another thought crossed my mind was how would a Bollywood director make the same movie? It would be impossible for them to make the same movie or even a remotely similar movie....Can you imagine a Hindi movie about a great Pianist caught in a war and survives merely by hiding and getting help from other people. Even when there are small Jewish revolutionary groups trying to attack the Nazi soldiers (somehow the word soldiers does not go with Nazi....just feels wrong!!!) he is hiding in his flat and watching all these people get killed .....I mean cmon.....our Bollywood hero would never ever tolerate that. Sunny Paaji would bend the bars in the window and jump out of that sky scraper's window, land on one of the Ger...

Everything looks so beautiful in Fall.....The trees in my apartment complex are all yellow, pink, red....Every time I get out of the house I remember that I should have my camera next time and take some pictures. I never really did that, but fortunately last weekend I had an opportunity to go hiking once again. This time we went to Green Mountain with a bunch of people we had never seen before (aahhhhh the wonders of Internet!!!!). The hike was really good, only 6 miles, the weather could not have been better, the tress were all beautiful colors and the people were great....Unfortunately when we reached the lake, for the first time I realized the extent of drought in this area. I had been hearing about it for quite some time now on the news, but when I walked in the middle of the lake (look at the pic), I realized why people were so worried.....Hope we can survive this season and have more rainfall next year....keeping my fingers crossed

...... the morning hug and a cup of coffee in bed :-(

Just read one of the headline news on TOI where Mayawati said that Gandhi divided the nation on caste and that the term Harijan was unconstitutional. Are you serious? Do you even know the meaning of the word???? I would really like to know what these so-called leaders have done for the lower caste people other than of course exploiting them and stealing their money in all sorts of fodder scams and God knows what other scams......I think we should have a law as to who can give their opinion on Gandhi.....I am not particularly pro or anti Gandhi.....But he definitely did a lot for the common people of India and for our freedom. Mind you, I am not saying he was solely responsible for anything, but he had a huge hand. And all that most politicians after him did was to pillage our nation some more....He did more good than anyone else and I don't think anyone should be disrespectful. Of course we all have our opinions on everything and we have a right to express those opinions, but there...

Every time I sign up for an account on a networking website this scary question always stares me in the eye "About Me"...I never have a clue about what to write. I mean, come on!!! I am from India. We don't talk about ourselves.....We talk about others :-) After thinking really hard it just clicked.....Linda Goodman knows me perfectly well.....I relate extremely well to her description of a Sagittarian woman. So from now on whenever I have to write about myself on any social networking website, I am going to write: A perfect sagittarian. Here are some of the things from Linda Goodman's Sun Signs that I think apply to me: She's not always going to say the kind of things you want to hear Now and then she'll say something so special and splendid it will make you feel like singing. Never lies, is always frank and outspoken to the extent of being a tactless speaker Independent, travelers, may live alone How she feels and what she thinks are identical with how she ...

The SGA took 35 lucky students to Six Flags. Obviously when you take students for an off campus trip, you need chaperons. So, 14 lucky faculty members were requested to accompany the students. An amazing trip......Of course I knew the students were not eager to hang out with faculty, but some of them did manage to surprise me......It was good to spend some time with the students and enjoy rides at Six Flags with zombies, witches, ghosts and skeletons walking all around the park, trying to be scary and at the same time posing for pics with the crowd.....I hope the Halloween Extravaganza next week is successful too......

I saw a commercial for an anti-depressant on TV yesterday. As in all medication commercials, this one also talked about the side effects of taking this product. One of the side effects of this product is suicidal thoughts . Are you serious????? You are advertising an anti-depressant and its side effect is suicidal thoughts???? How do you exactly help the patient???? Over the years I have seen numerous commercials that talk about different products and their side effects and I am not sure what are they thinking when they make these commercials or even products......It just seems senseless to me......If I am depressed I would rather stay depressed than have suicidal thoughts after taking some medication!!!!!!

When I was in India, I would spend half of my Sunday reading Times of India. That does not mean I was very well read or aware, but rather I would be busy reading Sunday review, which was pretty decent actually and my favorite columnist Shobha De. Her Hinglish isshtyle writing was definitely entertaining.....That trend sort of discontinued after coming here. But I still try to browse thru the online version of TOI. Now I don't have enough time to go through Sunday special, but I still manage to read Shobha De once in a while. For a change I once read Shashi Tharoor (of course, after he became the official Indian candidate for UN Secretary's position)....He now has this amazing glossary series going on where each column is about things that define India discussed alphabetically. I have read a few of these articles and they are great. My favorite is I for Indira, Illiteracy and IT . In this column he puts a really positive spin on stereotyping of Indians by saying "The stere...

Most of my friends don't like Jim Carrey. They think he is too loud. I absolutely agree. I am not a big Jim Carrey fan, but I did think he was perfect in Mask. And then he was super cool as Count Olaf in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events . There's nothing really different about this movie. It's a typical kids' movie, but has amazing graphics and Jim Carey in various disguises does 100% justice to the role of the wicked Count.

I am currently reading this biography of Hitler written by Ian Kershaw. I did not read the reviews of this book before buying it, but I liked the idea that this book was written about the rise of Hitler. It has events leading to World War II, nothing about the war itself. I had already seen so many movies and documentaries about WWII that I really did not want to read what happened, but mainly to read why it happened. I am not even halfway through the book yet, so can't say much about it, but while reading the book I remembered that I had never seen Speilberg's Schindler's List. So I rented the movie and saw it and really liked it......After that I was talking to a friend who reads Marx and Tolstoy and he said that he thought that he did not like the movie and it showed only one point of view. For example when According to him when Marx or Tolstoy write about something they take a neutral position and write objectively. I haven't read either, so I have to rely on his op...

I keep adding new songs to my iPod every now and then and keep listening to the new ones over and over again. Yesterday for some reason I decided to listen to some older songs and decided to go for Jhankaar Beats . I had completely forgotten how much I used to like this song: Dil ne tumko chun liya hai Tum bhi isko chuno na Khwab koi dekhta hai Tum bhi sapne buno na Dil ye mera tumse kuch keh raha hai Suno na.......... Not only had I forgotten all about this song, but I had also forgotten what a hardcore romantic I used to be. I don't know what about this song affected me so much.....The lyrics, the melody, the singer (Shaan, who else?), I guess everything about this song touched my heart. The past few years have been tough and I guess I sort of came to terms with it, but in the process put some of the old sweet memories somewhere in the back.......When I was listening to this song I was thinking, it would be so nice to have someone sing this for you.....And then suddenly that Pand...

When I wrote my TOEFL in 2000, my essay topic was whether I would like to live in a house or an apartment. Having grown up in a small apartment and exposed to big city life, at that time my preference was an apartment. Surprisingly enough after living in the US for so many years that has not changed. When I can finally think of buying my own place, I think I still want to live in an apartment. My parents live in a spacious apartment on the 6th floor, which according to my standards then was a high rise. Whenever I buy my own place, ideally I still want it to be a contemporary spacious condo in a high rise, though high rise now means at least the 20th floor. For some reason I have never understood the obsession that people have about buying a house or a bungalow as we call it back home. In a place like Mumbai, of course its a status symbol because space is so limited. But even then I feel if I had loads of money I would still buy a penthouse rather than a bungalow . In Pune I have s...

This weekend was another hiking weekend. This time we went to a smaller place (smaller in terms of hiking, more touristy!!!) called Stone Mountain....supposed to be Georgia's answer to Mount Rushmore. It is the "world's" (of course!!!!) tallest granite stone. We had to climb the mountain to reach the top and it was a li'l strenuous but worth it. The view from the top is beautiful and the breeze was much needed.... There are other ways to get to the top, viz the Skylift...The skylift reminded me of old Hindi movies; Shammi Kapoor singing Akele akele kahan jaa rahe ho......... or Raj Kapoor and Vayjayantimala in Sangam...But those trolleys (I think that's what we used to call them then) were so cozy and romantic, accommodating only 2 people. America loves money and so obviously the cable cars at Stone Mountain were for the masses, carrying many people at a time, everyone standing!!!!! That sight just ruined my desire to get in one. Well, hopefully the sight fro...

There is this amazing reality show on Food Network that I try to catch whenever possible. It is called Ace of Cakes and is about this bakery called Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, Maryland. The owner of this bakery is chef Duff who is an insane baker.......He has a team of equally talented bakers/engineers (yes...they make these amazing structures as cakes). First of all he makes all sorts of wacko cakes, along with the regular, beautiful, 7 tiered ones. The wacko ones are of course more fun to watch. I have seen them make all sorts of things from baseball fields, a military tank, a bar, a go-granny convertible with the granny in it.....People send them their stories and they make cakes that sort of capture the sentiment. Its pretty kool. Check out their cake designs at Charm City Cakes

The Last Comic Standing is one of my favorite shows. Stand up comedy has always been something that I enjoyed. Even when I was in India I remember having a ball of a time at Shirish Kanekar's "Majhi Fillumbaaji".... I still remember all those amazing jokes about gajar ka halwa and baingan ka bharta.....And of course he was not the only one, Johnny Lever was probably an all time star when it came to stand up or Live Comedy as we call it back home. And the more recent addition Raju Shrivastav. I sort of just caught a glimpse of his performance but he managed to me make me laugh........Of course coming to the US meant expanding my horizons in all fields whatsoever and I have thoroughly enjoyed the numerous options in stand up that we have here. My favorite : Eddie Izzard (although he is a Brit). Check out his "Dressed to Kill". He is amazing......hilarious and intelligent. Comedy Central and shows like LCS are too kool to miss. I was following LCS's this seaso...

I love my new mac, but unfortunately some applications either don't support mac at all or are not tested for it. For example, when I type a post for my blog I cannot format it. The formatting toolbar does not show on Safari. blogspot has been tested only on IE and Firefox. Of course there are other round about options, but all the things that I was so used to and always took for granted are now not that simple. Have to look for alternate browsers, alternate media players etc......Finally I had to download Firefox to get the formatting options....

I recently saw this ad on TV, one that the govt airs for public awareness. It said "Talk to your kids about sex. Ask them to wait till they get married." Hmmmmm..... Did I hear correctly? And they said India is 50 years behind the west!!!! Looks like someone is coming a full circle.....

It is very hard for me to see someone making a mistake and not say anything. Especially when it comes to my students. There are always a few in the class who just never understand.......These are somebody else's kids and my heart bleeds to see them do all these things that they are going to repent later. Wonder what will I do when I have my own????? When I was growing up, I was never questioned, especially if I managed to maintain my grades. But I never forgot that I had more freedom and more opportunities than others around me. My parents made innumerable sacrifices for me and my sister. Even today whenever I am doing something I always think about my parents. And even if we don't agree, at least we try to communicate and listen to each other. Not sure if it is nature or nurture!!!

This weekend I went hiking to Tallulah Gorge State Park, a couple hours drive from my place. Luckily (unluckily for some) for us (I went with a bunch of friends and friends' roommates) the water release was scheduled on the same day. So nobody could swim, but we got to see an amazing waterfall. Most people usually use the steps and go down to the gorge and then climb the steps all the way up to different overlooks. Of course we did that...but before doing that we decided to hike and complete a loop. So we trekked 5 miles to a beautiful lake, enjoyed the breeze and the serenity and then trekked back another 5 miles. Of course, some of our friends were tired by the time we reached the lake, so they decided to hitch a ride with some nice country men fishing in the lake. Although not everyone could stick to the plan and enjoy the woods, some of us managed to do it. I guess, since we planned on going to the gorge at the end, that sort of was a motivator for us......I can sit at places l...

Today I realized there was another advantage to living alone....I always try differnt recipes from the Internet. As Raymond's mom would say I am not a "real" cook, because real cooks don't need recipes :-). Anyways, so whenever my trials failed I would feel terrible about wasting food and/or putting my roomies through the whole terrifying experience of eating it.... But now I don't have to worry. If my experiment fails, I don't have to feel guilty, as I am the only person eating it and the quantity is so little that if I end up wasting it I don't have to feel guilty thinking about hungry kids in another part of the world, although that never escapes my mind (thanx to my dad...). Life is getting better and better :-)

When I successfully defended my dissertation in March, everyone told me to enjoy my summer vacations, because it seems when you start working you miss your student life and you won't have any fun, etc, etc. So, of course I had a blast, did not do anything for 3 months other than traveling. Fortunately, it's been a month since I started working and I am still loving it. You might think one month is hardly anything, but I know I am going to feel the same for a long time to come. I have wonderful students (can't remember the last time when I had problems with students....), great colleagues, I still live like a student (sleep in front of the TV, work during weekends), enjoy my new 1400 sq.ft gym and take time to even go hiking. On the downside, I now live alone, so I have to clean the entire house by myself (miss you Arun :-(), I am the only person who cooks (miss you Shilpa :-() and I don't watch movies (that I don't really miss). I am still trying to figure out how t...

I spent 2 days without Internet and I was already going crazy!!!! I can manage without TV, even without people sometimes but I cannot do anything without Internet........And 6 years back I did not even have access to Internet. Now 6 years might look like a long time but considering the fact that for 20 years I lived very well without this technology it's just mind boggling to see how this technology has so quickly become almost all my existence (and livelihood.....). I am pro technology and believe that mankind has advanced leaps and bounds in the last few decades with the advancement in computers, Internet and other communications media. But as I was sitting in the auditorium today along with other (older) faculty members I heard somebody make a really good point. As today's generation is getting these advantages of mobile and remote communications are they actually going away from the social support system that they can and should be making use of? As this faculty member righ...

Miami Ink is my favourite TV show. I would personally never get a permanent tattoo and I don't encourage abusing / defacing your body, but looking at tattooing from an art perspective is completely different. I haven't seen too much of other tattoo work and before watching this show had never appreciated it, but I must admit these guyz are great........ They are really super kool!!! One of the good thing about the show is that they all have their own style, they are all different from each other......and I think Kat was an important team member......The kind of black and gray portraits she did were amazing........So it was a li'l disappointing to see her go......Garver does good portraits but no one does them the way Kat does. The mermaid tattoo was done by Ami while the other one by Kat.....but you really have to check out her gallery to see some really great portraits. Follow this link if interested http://tlc.discovery.com/fansites/miami-ink/kat_corner/index.html Maybe ...

After spending three wonderful years in New Orleans I am now moving to Atlanta and the feelings are mixed....... Fortunately I had amazing roomies (trust me...there are no words to express this, u gotta live with them to find out). Of course I am excited about the great new opportunities that are coming my way but its hard not to think about all the wonderful times that we spent together watching movies all the time, enjoying Mardi Gras parades, eating Tira Misu n drinking wine for no apparent reason and at any time of the night, the Tom and Jerry fights with Arun (this one's my all time favourite!!!!), the workouts / running and all those amazing trips to California..... Some people leave a long lasting mark on you and in some way become an inseparable part of you. I learned a lot from both my roomies. I used to think I had lots of patience before I met Shilpa.....Now I have redefined patience.....And although it's hard to accept Arun's constant censure of almost everyt...

The Indian Idol fever is getting to me. This is the first time I am following Indian Idol and my favs are Amit Paul and Ankita Mishra....Agreed that Amit and Emon are gr8 singers but the gals are definitely putting in more effort....They are not only singing well but are also better performers than the guyz....and isn't the whole show about finding an all rounder???? At the end of the show the winner will get an album contract with Sony....So whoever the audience chooses will be all over the TV featuring in their music video.....Ankita is not only gr8 to listen to but also an absolute pleasure to watch on TV.........So I am rooting for ankita.......The gals are giving gr8 performances and they deserve a chance........So VOTE 4 ANKITA!!!!!

All that I have been catching on the TV last entire week is how Lindsay Lohan was arrested for driving under influence and in possession of cocaine. As if that was not enough, now they are talking about Nicole Richie being arrested......These are today's teen idols....I know of teenage kids who idolize these startlets . Sometime back I heard that a texan teenager's father spent loads of money on getting Paris Hilton for his daughter's sweet 16 as the daughter idolized her. A few years back I used to admire actors like Lindsay Lohan, 16 - 18 years old and have already achieved so much. When I was 16 years old I think I was lallu as compared to these extremely confident and motivated younger lot...... But now 19 years old and already a rehab regular ???? I remember when I was a kid I used to read books titled "Guni Mula" (Virtuous Kids), which had childhood stories of Lokmanya Tilak, Gautam Buddha, etc... And these stories did actually influence me to a great extent...

I have been growing my hair for the last one year so that I could donate it and finally I did!!!!! I chopped off most of my hair this morning and it is now on its way to Locks of Love. This is a non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to children under 18 suffering from hair loss (based on financial need). It's very simple to donate your hair and that's the least I could do. At least my hair will grow back (maybe in 2 years time...) If you wanna know more check the official web site www.locksoflove.org If you donate 10 inches or more, some little gal will get a nice hairpiece, if you donate 6-8 inches of hair they can sell it to cover their manufacturing costs. google for participating salons and you might end up getting a discount or even a free haircut. If you are in New Orleans, the Paris Parker salon on Tulane's campus is a participating salon. You might wanna get your friends in on this.....Growing your hair together and then donating it can be one more grea...

So here I am......Have been thinking of doing this for a long time, but never really got to it. And when I got to it, I couldn't decide what the title should be. I am not really sure what I am going to write about......so deciding on the title was all the more difficult. Finally this is what I came up with. The literal translation of my name. Well, not really literal. Literal would have been Golden Beautiful and "goldenbeauty.blogspot.com" wassoooooooo tempting.....but didn't want to go that far :-) Looks like I got off to a good start.......