Smile please!

Not so very long ago, when one needed to take and view a picture, a lot of planning had to go into it. First, obviously, one needed to have a camera. Then, a film roll. Then, have the subject framed so that one could take the best possible shot in one try - hey, film-rolls don't grow on trees. Then, click the shot and hope one had done a good job of it. Once the entire roll had been used, it was dropped off for processing. After the processing-center defined processing time, it could be picked up. Finally, the result of one's efforts could be viewed. Phew! It WAS a long process and made all the more exciting for it.

Nowadays, you just need to whip out your digital camera or cell-phone and keep clicking pictures till the cows come home. Charging your device and downloading pictures is so very easy too. Maybe some of the magic of the previous process is lost; still, I love my digital camera and love taking pictures with it.

However, there's the dark side. Everyone knows at least one person who *will* send a link to some 800 pictures every time they take a trip in the mistaken belief that you will view them all. That is a minor annoyance though. After all, hitting reply with a generic "Nice pictures! Looks like you had a great time." takes probably a minute from your life.

What gets my goat is: when watching live shows like concerts, plays and dances not featuring one's kith and kin, what is it that possesses people to constantly take pictures (yeah, some times with flash turned on too) or worse, make a video-recording of the proceeding? Among annoying live-theatre behavior, I think this ranks near the top, right among formidable contenders like crying babies and non-stop commenters.

There you are, happily enjoying the dance or play or musical performance going on the stage when suddenly, the person two rows ahead of you lifts their digital or cell-phone camera and starts filming the scene thus giving you the *special effect* of having a small, bright rectangle of light in your line of sight in the best case or actual blocking your view if you are unlucky.

Seriously, who watches these video recordings once they are made? Perhaps the person doing the filming? After all, they have missed the live show due to focusing on their camera instead. But otherwise? Their family? Their friends? Heck, I have watched my own wedding video, a show where I was the heroine and the center of attention, only once. I thought a live show is special because it is *live*.

Recently, I went to a Thai cabaret show. The lady next to me started filming as soon as she sat down. All fine and dandy except that the show had not yet begun and she was filming the closed curtains! I immediately knew I was next to an obsessive filmer and sure enough, for about 50% of the show, her video camera continued to hover towards my left (after that, I guess her hands became tired). It would have been distracting but for the fact that the gentleman two rows ahead and the lady one row to the right, among plenty of other folks, were filming as well - thus, my eyes just got used to these splotches of light and ignored them.

A couple of  years back, we were visiting the Niagara Falls. We went to a theatre close to the falls which showed a movie about the Niagara Falls. Obviously, there were plenty of shots of Niagara Falls being shown on screen. Guess what some fellow audience members started doing? Yup, they whipped out their cameras and started taking pictures of the screen when these shots popped up, flashes galore. For heaven's sake, the REAL falls were barely 20 feet away! Just because one has a digital camera, one is not obliged to use it all the time.

So yeah, I love digital cameras and mobile cameras for the wonderful ease of use and the opportunity it gives me to chronicle even everyday stuff. But,at times, when I see the blatant misuse of these devices, I really wish I could grab them from the offenders and make a huge bonfire out of them. Perhaps even do a war-dance around the bonfire for good measure.

One can always dream I suppose.

Our national pasttime

Officially, it might be said that cricket-watching is our national past time. But I think that our true national past-time is people watching.

Of course, everyone does people watching. Being curious is simply human nature. However, desis take people watching to the level of an art. Where people from other nations* may look embarrassed and turn away if caught in the act by the object of their watching, a true desi would hardly acknowledge that s/he has been spotted. Instead, s/he would watch with greater confidence now that there is no need for even the token pretence that they are not watching the object.

Which is how, many a time I have caught starers in the act of watching, turned away and turned back after some time only to realize that I was *still* being watched by the same starer. It is as though once you are in public, you become a part of the landscape and hence can be gawked at.

This could also be the reason that whenever it looks like more than one person is watching something, those persons are immediately joined by more people. No one wants to miss out on any fun. Often times, it turns out that an entire crowd of people are watching *nothing* (I am desi too, so, if circumstances permit, I will go and check out what's happening too - that's how I know) but why miss out in case it is some thing genuinely interesting?

Once we were driving around Ooty with some other relatives. A non-designated tourist spot, consisting of rows of pretty trees, looked interesting. So, we made a turn into the mud pathway leading to that mini-forest. Our relatives' jeep followed us. We had hardly gotten off our Jeeps when we realized that about six other random vehicles had followed us into the mini-forest. Evidently, the people in those vehicles thought that if this spot was of interest to *two* vehicles, there must be something to it and had decided to check it out for themselves!

Recently, I had a surreal conversation with my mom. We both were enjoying a cup of tea at my parents' place. We were sitting in a room which opened out into a balcony which faced a tree. Mom remarked on how much the tree had grown since the time they had moved in.

She added, "The other day, the lady from the flat across the street said that she was feeling kind of bad that she could no longer look into our house. The tree has become too tall and shields our house from her eyes."

My jaw dropped. I looked at mom and gaped, "Really? So not only was she she spying on us, but she also admitted it to you without any embarrassment?"

Mom shrugged and said, "Yes. Apparently she used to watch us all from her flat. In fact, I think she must have been happy when I invited her over for last year's Golu so that she could finally place the rest of the rooms in the house as well instead of having to imagine where we go when we move from this room!" Both of us burst out laughing. To think that her flat was a little too far away from ours to even give a proper view. True blue desi that neighbor lady was!

I love watching other folks at the airport, train-station and bus-station. I notice what they are doing and what they are wearing. And these places usually provide such a high turnover of people that there is never a shortage of entertainment. However, I have never done it blatantly (unless of course, I am wearing sun-glasses and cannot be spotted :-P) - I probably couldn't stand the attention that being caught in the act would bestow! And I also draw the line at deliberately looking into other people's homes - that just seems a tad indecent to me.

But yeah, I love people watching too.

* I do know that people from other countries (Asian, mostly) do unabashed people watching too. Maybe it has something to do with a country's culture.

Thanksgiving

I know its almost a month past thanksgiving but hey, it is always the season to give thanks! Never mind that most of these thanks are for inconsequential teensy things.

1. I am thankful
... that we can now afford to employ a house-help to do daily household work. No more washing dishes or folding clothes. Hallelujah!

Not so thankful though
... that I can't sleep in on weekends because I have to be up to let the maid in.

2. I am thankful
... that we have a circulating library which delivers weekly/fortnightly/monthly magazines right to our doorstep to be read and returned in 2 days.

Not so thankful though
... that when I am busy, I get so guilty about returning the magazines unread that I actually read through them at a feverish pace like I was cramming for an exam.

3. I am thankful
... that festivals are such a joy to celebrate in India.

Not so thankful though
... that all the happy stuffing of yummy festival food always results in post-postprandial remorse after looking at the newly added bodily inches.

4. I am thankful
... for the abundant rain Chennai has been blessed with this rainy season. The weather is lovely and Chennai rains are a joy to get drenched in.

Not so thankful though
... about the crater-sized potholes roads are spotting these days. Seriously, do they construct roads here using mud or what?

5. I am thankful
... about our new washing machine which has an absolutely cool delay feature which lets me set up the wash before going to bed to be ready just in time for the maid to hang up to dry the next morning.

Not so thankful though
... well, this one is all good. I ain't complaining.

6. I am thankful
... that curd sets without any molly-coddling here. Seriously, you just add some yogurt to a bowl of warm milk and five hours later, the curd is brilliantly set. Only people who have tried making curd in cold climes will understand the joy of watching this happen!

Not so thankful though
... that set curd goes sour at a very rapid speed too. Ouch.

7. I am thankful for
... having both our families so close by that we can visit and get visited whenever we want.

Not so thankful though
... this one is all good too!

Overall I am more thankful than not-thankful.

Weather forecast

How does it never fail?

Two days from Diwali, so that the last of the crackers could be burst too (isn't that perfect timing?), it started raining in Chennai. Not just ordinary rainy season rains but rains due to Cyclone Jal. I woke up on Sunday morning to heavily clouded and darkened skies, gusty winds and the sound of incessant, water-fall strength showers. Cyclone it was.

Cyclone Jal was off the north Tamilnadu coast and was expected to cross into the land on Sunday night, bringing heavier showers and winds with it. Sunday noon was spent in talking about the impending cyclone and how it would affect nephew's upcoming wedding reception on Monday evening.

Then it happened. The TV news came on and the newscaster announced that all schools and colleges would be closed on Monday on account of the impending cyclone. Immediately, cheers went up.

Because this announcement meant two things: 1. All my school/college going relatives would get an unexpected reprieve from school/college. 2. The cyclone would most definitely circumvent Chennai and Monday would be a rain-free and quite possibly, a sunny day too. Hassle-free wedding reception, here we come!

For, you see, it is one of the unwritten laws of cyloning. Whenever a day is given off for educational institutions on account of an impending cyclone, the cyclone shalt not come by and normal weather shalt prevail*. This law has *always* been followed  for as long as I can remember.

Thus, today, Monday, is a cloudy, albeit rain-free day. And this is the news I read this morning.

I told you right? It never fails.

* corollary to this law is, whenever educational institutes are not closed for impending cyclones, heavy rains shalt hit with great fury and causing much discomfort and inconvenience to the full-time learning public. Basically, you can't win.

Conversations with friends - II

So this morning sis sent a forward. I found it funny and forwarded it further to a few friends. This was the subsequent email conversation between friend V and me:

On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 11:46 AM, V wrote:
BLASPHEMY!!!!!!!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:15 PM, Archana wrote:
Oh no - does this mean I am going to be smote by lightning anytime soon :-P??

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:32 PM, V wrote:
God is very angry with you right now .
You know which God, dont you... dont you, infidel?

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Archana wrote:
Um - are you talking about Jesus? One likes to be clear about such things so that when one is about to be smote by lightning one knows which name to ask for mercy.

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:30 PM, V wrote:
no, idiot - Jesus is the son of God, not God! - duh!
just God - English God!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:46 PM, Archana wrote:
Why English God? Huh, huh? Why this racism? That too, for a forward forwarded in India. Hmph. Racist Gods!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:49 AM, V wrote:
Ufff - it is the official language!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Archana wrote:
No dummy I was referring to English as in the race. Not English as in the language. Doh!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 2:52 PM, V wrote:
English is not a race.. Doher!!

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 3:37 PM, Archana wrote:
Um - so explain the term Englishman.... Dohest!!!

Much later:

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 7:07 PM, V wrote:
Yea.. there was no comeback for dohest. So I slept and took a shower instead.

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Archana wrote:
Eeeehaw .....
*Archana does a victory lap around her Gmail Inbox*

*****

And they say you get more mature as you get older. Right!

In case you are wondering, this is the forward which started it all:
There were 3 good arguments that Jesus was
Black:

1. He called everyone brother
2. He liked Gospel
3. He didn't get a fair trial

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was
Jewish:

1. He went into His Father's business
2. He lived at home until he was 33
3. He was sure his Mother was a virgin and his Mother was sure He was God

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was
Italian:

1. He talked with His hands
2. He had wine with His meals
3. He used olive oil

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a
Californian:

1. He never cut His hair
2. He walked around barefoot all the time
3. He started a new religion

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was an
American Indian:

1. He was at peace with nature
2. He ate a lot of fish
3. He talked about the Great Spirit

But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was
Irish:

1. He never got married..
2. He was always telling stories.
3. He loved green pastures.

But the most compelling evidence of all -

3 proofs that Jesus was a woman:

1. He fed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was virtually no food
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it
3. And even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was still work to do

AMEN!!

p.s. All of this is in fun. So please to not come after me wielding pitch-forks.
p.s.1 First installment of conversations here.

Chennai weather and its effects

I had forgotten that Chennai air is very humid. So much so, moisturizer-girl a.k.a me (see point 8 here), does not even need to moisturize quite so much any more. I maintained my long-perfected moisturizer routine (quite simple, moisturizer any time, all the time) for three whole days after my arrival in Chennai. After which, a number of hitherto unseen break-outs happened over my face. Ardent moisturizing then came to a screeching halt. Now I have dumped all my heavy creams, lotions and washes for lighter and much lesser stuff and no longer stock every room with ample moisturizer. Sigh. What a sad loss for the moisturizer industry.

But, one industry's loss is another industry's gain. Within a few hours of arrival in Chennai, my hair texture started giving major competition to coconut-fibres across the country. No matter how smoothly I combed my hair, within an hour, tendrils of hair would start creeping all around my head. Not to mention the rough look my whole head would take on. Remember Monica from friends? Aaaaaargh. After seeing for myself that this battle would not be won easily, if at all, I gave in and straightened my hair at the parlour after parting with $$$. Still, considering that, skin-wise, I have never been more happy, that too with so little effort, I think I am still coming out tops. Hurrah!

That said, Chennai does get really hot at times. And it is not even summer! I am still training myself to turn on the fan in any room even if I plan to be in it only for some time. I have figured that it takes a very, very short time to feel very, very hot. Hopefully, by the time summer rolls around, I will be acclimatized enought to not completely evaporate. Amen to that.

Finally, did you folks hear about the unseasonal heavy rains in Chennai this August/September? You must have also heard this saying about how it rains where-ever good people go? And of course, you know that I relocated to Chennai this August. Have you connected the dots yet :-P?

That wraps up the weather update from here.

1 dalmatian

The first time I entered S's family's house, friendly faces greeted me from all around. Only one face growled at me. It belonged to Figo, the dalmatian of the house. He took one look at me and barked sharply. Then, he pointedly turned his tail to me and ran back into the house. S's family consoled me saying that this was Figo's normal reaction to strangers, especially females (I later saw for myself that this was not true).

Things did not improve as time went by. The second time I visited, Figo repeated the growl and turn-tail act. To mollify him and bribe him into being friends with me, I fed him bones and other canine delicacies. Figo being the smart dog that he is, ate all of it and then signed his disapproval of me with a bark before sauntering off. Same thing happened when I stroked his fur and belly. He would enjoy all the attention and the moment I stopped stroking him, would get up, growl and walk away!

According to me, this was the problem: S was the first person in his family who got acquainted with Figo. Figo, though a very mild-mannered dog, is jealous and possessive by nature. He loves his family with a passion and at the same time hates sharing them with anyone else. So my theory was, his doggy instincts somehow told him that I was someone who was going to be competing (!?! - en owner-thaan, enakku mattum thaan*) for S's attentions. Hence the extra animosity.

I know - this seems like too much thinking for a dog but seriously, the way Figo refused to enter S's room (Figo's erstwhile domain) while I was there and the way he took an extra effort to growl at me before turning his back whenever he saw me told its own the story.

This remained the status quo for all my past India visits. This time too, I entered S's family's house with some trepidation. I could not decide whether to feel sad for Figo or feel amused that he would finally have to start learning to put up with me considering that the my visits would be far more frequent now.

Imagine my pleasant surprise then, when upon seeing me, Figo jumped up and tried to put his paws on my shoulder and lick my face. This was a gesture he usually reserved to welcome people he liked a lot! Then he nuzzled my hand - which was his way to indicate that that he wanted me to pet him.

Either all my feeding and petting of the previous times had finally worked or Figo had resigned himself to acceptance. Either way, I was finally his friend!

The rest, as they say, is history. Figo now trusts me enough to routinely come and lay his head on my lap or contentedly lie down and sigh while I rub his tummy. He still responds to my calls only when he feels like it and plants his feet firmly on the ground if I try to move him when he does not feel like it. But hey, now I am his family too!

* my owner, only for me. A famous Tamil song of long ago had similar lyrics

On the dark side

After the hugs and the cries of welcome, the first words my mom uttered upon seeing me and S were, "Why are you both so tanned?" Don't get me wrong. I have always belonged to the "curly hair, not so fair" species. I never been bothered about it either - perhaps I have been bothered about the curly hair part of it, as mentioned here. I used to get pretty pained when I saw the ads for fairness creams for women - who on earth mandated that being "fair" was the beauty ideal which Indian women should strive to attain? However, nowadays, I guffaw heartily when I see ads for fairness creams for *men*. Hahahah!

Anyway, I digress. Coming back to my story, I ruefully looked at mom and said, "I know. We got the first tan-coat at San Diego. Just when it was wearing off, we got a second, more-durable coat at New York city. This was followed by a third coat finish at Washington DC. By the time we reached Hong Kong, we were prepped and set for the final sealing coat."

July 2010 had been a month involving a lot of travel and sightseeing for us. While it was a lot of fun, it was also a lot of heat. I tell you, being in the Bay Area has spoiled me so much weather-wise. I imagined a similarly comfortable and pleasant summer in NYC and DC and was shocked to find that both the cities were giant ovens set at broil heat. Needless to say, we both were roasted and well-done by the time the trip was over. On the bright side, it prepped us well for the two days of Hong Kong sightseeing and for the current Chennai heat.

Now, some people, when they get tanned, get tanned evenly. So their entire skin takes on a nice, even, darker-hue. Not me, no siree. Instead, my skin gets tanned in splotches. So at the end of it all, I tend to look more like a human-cheetah or maybe a human-zebra than like a tanned-human. Sigh! Is it any wonder then that I tend to slather on copious quantities of sunscreen, at least on my face, before I go out into the sun?

Clearly, the sunscreen hadn't worked as well as I had hoped it would. So now, Mom has taken on "Operation De-tan Archu" with great alacrity. Every morning, she enthusiastically gives me a concoction of turmeric and cream (skimmed fresh off that morning's milk) - "to be applied right before showering". Then a cube of crushed papaya "to be applied to the face".

I strongly suspect that the only effect these rituals are having on me is to make me smell like day-old milk and old fruit-salad. Still, who can say no to such pampering?

Food in Chennai

Kellogg mango flavored cereal
I spotted this in the local grocery store and was thrilled. I expected something along the lines of Kellogg Special K strawberry cereal, only with real mango pieces instead of strawberry. Unfortunately, this cereal has a suspiciously bright dark- yellow color and tastes like regular corn-flakes soaked in mango Rasna. Sigh.

Guava
I *love* the guava fruit. Back in the bay area, I found guavas only in a bruised state and priced exorbitantly. Here, it is not only unblemished and delicious but is also priced sweetly. Is there any harm in scarfing down 5 guavas a day?

Groceries
To my pleasant surprise, things like tofu and mozzarella cheese are very readily available in all stores. Also, the number of ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat items available is staggering. Ready-made chappathi, idli-batter, idiappam? Yes, yes and yes. A great number of food delivery options are available as well. One thing is for sure. As long as you have the money, you can eat your fill without ever putting a toe outside the home.

Mom's cooking, Dad's feeding
It is taking a great amount of effort to not wolf down mounds of food at every meal time (and every in-between snack-time). I have now banned my parents from buying snacks from outside. That is not stopping them from plying my plate with home-made stuff like vadas and fried fish. Parents, I tell you!! I love them :-).

Smart phone

I am not much of a gadget-geek. As long as a gadget does what it is primarily meant to do, I do not care for bells and whistles that come attached to it. Thus, for the longest time, my cell-phone did exactly one thing and did it well: it was an excellent mobile phone. It had a great signal, clear un-garbled voice and good battery life. It had neither a camera nor a mp3 player. In other words, it belonged in a cell-phone museum. But I was extremely pleased with it.

AT&T finally got fed up and sent me an ultimatum asking me to upgrade my phone - they were no longer going to even support the technology my phone was on. Sigh! Oh well - I upgraded to another phone with good reviews for voice-quality and battery life. The camera and mp3 player on it were basically a joke though. No problem, I use my canon and my ipod for those purposes anyhow!

Last year, I bought an iPhone for S as a gift. S is not much of an Apple fan though and re-gifted the phone to me after a couple of months of use. I was annoyed at having to give up my beloved no bells and whistles phone. But hey, you don't keep an iPhone lying around with no one using it.

Thus, I started using the iPhone. Initially, what I loved about it was the in-built GPS. It worked so well when we concocted plans on-the-go to visit a previously non-visited destination - just google the address and feed it to the map application - nice! The next draw was the availability of so many good apps for free. I went into app-overload mode for a couple of weeks. Then I began loving the ability to check weather/stocks/email anytime, anywhere.

iPhone, how do I use thee? Let me count the ways:

1. I set the alarm for the morning wake up call and also use the snooze function extensively.
2. I set up appointments and reminders on the calendar.
3. As soon as I wake up, still lying down, I check personal email on it - reading email from family is a nice way to begin the day.
4. Checking and replying to work emails when I am supposed to be on-call off-hours is such a cinch.
5. I love,love,love the maps and GPS functionality.
6. I make shopping lists on it.
7. LoseIt is an awesome app for tracking calories.
8. I carry it to work-meetings and fiddle with it when things go too off-topic (no one knows that you are not using the phone to check work emails >B-))
9. I use it to listen to music.
10. Occasionally it has served as a stand-in camera when I miss bringing along the real camera.
11. Locating restaurants in a new area is so easy.
12. So is browsing for vetti things like what the "Congress-created dust bowl" sign you spotted on the highway means.

Oh, I could go on and on and on. I realize now: A smart-phone is one of those things that you do not miss having in your life till you have owned one.

However, I do have a gripe - the iPhone mostly does not have a strong enough signal and the voice quality sucks. Really, would that be too much of a requirement to ask of an i-PHONE?

Dance

Call me racist but I always used to think that highly flexible body movements were out of reach of Indian women. As graceful as many female Indian dancers are, I never thought flexibility was one of the strong points as far as the women were concerned.

I have eaten my words (and my prejudices) since I saw this video. Start watching from minute 3.00 if you want to cut the chatter.

http://www.tamilrain.com/jodi-no-1-season-4-17-04-2010/black-and-white-round-day-2-part-1-video_dc429fbb4.html

Isn't that such a magical performance? The girl, Sai Pramoditha, has done her puppet act so well. So bendy, springy and flexible - wow!

As an aside, the show itself, called Jodi No. 1 Season 4, features several ultra-talented, creative and gifted dancers and choreographers competing (pretty civilly, I must say) with each other to get the top spot for the best dancer couple.

What a pleasure it is to watch a reality show that showcases such deserving talent!

I like the sound of that!

My friend V once told me that he read somewhere that salsa (both dance and the food) could be so popular because people love to say "salsa". I am not sure I love saying salsa quite so much though I love the food as well as the dance. But there are other words I like the sound of. I also like the way they roll off my tongue.

Here are some words I like listening to or pronouncing:

Sugar, shoes, chalk, meal (it is always a disappointment when I realize for the n-th time that the boring chapathis and dal I had for lunch is a "meal" too), juice.

Off the top of my head, that's all I can think of.

But if you kind reader folks will post some words you like in the comments section, I would love to read about them.

I can't think of an apt title

These days, what with women's lib and everything, the old adage, "Behind every successful man is a woman" is slowly taking on a new avatar: "Behind every successful woman is a man". Still, I found this bio-profile of the Consul General of India in San Francisco, Susmita Thomas, totally hilarious.

Slightly self-trumpety as it sounds, I have no issues whatsoever with the first three paragraphs. But what on earth are the last three paragraphs doing in the Consul-General's profile? The description about her husband Ravi's achievements is even longer than her own! This chap is in no way related to the Indian Embassy other than being the Consul General's husband. How is what he did, is doing and going to do even relevant in this context? Perhaps this is how Susmita is supposed to show her loyalty to her husband - don't know! Aaaargh!

This brings me to another question: am I the only one who finds the practice of women doctors in India identifying themselves Dr. (Mrs.) Female DoctorName on name-boards odd? How many male doctors are there who have the compulsive need to identify themselves as married by saying something like this: Dr. Male DoctorName (married) on their name-boards?

New look

Finally, I tried out the new Blogger template designer. It is so much easier to change the various elements of the blogger page. Thus, in about 15 minutes of picking and choosing, my blog has got a new look. Sweet! Though I usually avoid it in interest of speedy loading, this time round I could not resist picking a background picture.

Do hop on over and let me know what you think. For the lazy ones, here is a screenshot of "The New Look":

Vidathu Karuppu

Last week S discovered all the episodes of the Vidathu Karuppu television series on some website online. If you recall, Vidathu Karuppu (VK) is part two of the thrilling Marma Desam stories penned by Indra Soundarajan. VK was telecast on Sun TV more than a dozen years ago. It was one of the very few TV series that I watched regularly. I still remember waiting eagerly every Thursday night 9.00pm for the next episode of VK.

So when S asked if I was interested in re-watching it, it took very little thinking on my part to say yes. Other than remembering the climax, I recalled nothing whatsover of the series. So we started watching it. And I realized all over again as to why I was so attracted towards the series.

Each episode is divided into scenes from the past and the present - both these parts are rivetingly done and more often than not, end in an event which leaves you with burning curiosity as to what happened next.

Needless to say, S and me were completely hooked. The main advantage we had was that we just had to click on the next button to see the next episode instead of having to wait a whole week to know what happened (man, it must have been excruciating back then to wait for a entire week - and even more exasperating to see a a few minutes of recap every week when that time could have been used to move the story further). The downside was that we were completely addicted.

On Sunday we finally finished watching the series (ya in one week we watched all 84 episodes of it and yup while working full time and everything). The series was as satisfying as ever. We are still discussing the nuances and we kinda miss the characters now - addiction withdrawal symptoms I guess. I wonder how come such thrilling serials no longer get made in Tamil these days. Instead we have these sob-fests called mega serials which go on for years together. Ugh.

Another thing I liked while watching VK was seeing how naturally the various characters were dressed. But I wondered at the protaganist Reena's clothes. She mostly wore extremely loose tops and jeans/skirts or tent-like salwar kameezes. She was supposed to be a modern young woman from Chennai - so why was she wearing such ill-fitting clothes? Then I realized with a pang - that's exactly how most "normal" Chennai girls used to dress back then. Including me. *blush*. Oh well, you live and you learn, no?

If you know Tamil, Vidathu Karuppu is a must watch series. It has aged well with time and is as gripping now as it was more than a dozen years ago.

p.s. do you know if DVDs of good Tamil serials are available for sale?

Bullet points

- The key to enjoying restaurant food is to never look up its nutritional information. Recently we ate at PF Changs and when we got home I looked up the calories in the sesame chicken bowl I had. Turns out it was 525 calories per serving and apparently the plate had *two* servings in it. So I had had a whopping 1050 calories for lunch and this was not even counting the appetizer and the soup. Gaaaaah! I am so not going to look up restaurant calorie information henceforth.

- Watched Vinnaithaandi Varuvaya. I liked the low keyed tone of the movie and the very down-to-earth, real-life dialogs, settings and clothes. Even the clothes in the dream song-sequences was something which "normal" people could wear. I enjoyed the movie though I thought the second half dragged a bit and I was not totally satisfied with the turn of events. Another outcome of watching this movie was me actually being able to stand (and maybe even *like*) the hitherto extremely annoying Simbu. Also, though I had not heard the entire soundtrack of the movie before (really) I thought the songs, though forcibly inserted in some places, sounded good on screen and have now downloaded them to hear them through.

- Is Karthik the most happening name for movie-heroes? Off the top of my head, I remember that the heroes in Alaipayuthey, Mozhi and now, Vinnaithandi Varuvaya were called Karthik. Or is it because Karthik is a very common Tam name? I had three classmates named Karthik in undergrad and have three cousins named Karthik. Don't know. I can only be happy that Babu/Bharani or some such name did not catch the fancy of movie-makers.*

- I have become a big fan of guacamole. I found this recipe which is so easy to make and yummy as well. Avocado being made of plenty of good stuff, it is a total win-win situation I say!

* I have nothing against people named Babu or Bharani. Just that I hate those names for no reason.

Spokesperson

Like I have said before, by conscious choice, I have never commuted a great distance to work. Thus I really don't need to come up with many ways to entertain myself during the drive. Usually I listen to one of the many radio stations blasting pop music.

A couple of months ago, I re-discovered the National Public Radio (NPR) and decided to give listening to it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised to find out just how many diverse topics they talk about and how entertaining as well as educating the discussions usually were. Now, I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of listening to NPR while driving to and from work.

This morning the talk was about the Tea Party. I have heard about the Tea Party (as in present-day usage) only a couple of times, that too in passing. Wiki tells me that the Tea Party movement

"is a United States grass-roots protest movement that emerged in 2009 and is opposed to the federal government's stimulus package, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009."

Anyhoo, the topic under discussion was the Tea Party convention currently being held in Nashville, Tennessee. The program host gave an informed overview of the movement, what it stood for and its ideals. Then the host started to interview one of the convention attendees, let's call her Lady, about the movement.

The first question was what she thought the movement stood for [note, I am paraphrasing the dialogs, my memory is not good enough to remember exact wording]. Lady said something along the lines of "It is against a big overseeing government" or some such. Then she bristled, "People are against the Universal Health Care bill because it is unconstitutional. It is against the law. THe government is trying to pass an unconstitutional bill."

Now, though I keep reading about the healthcare bill that Obama is promoting, I have not quite gotten my head wrapped around what its specifics are. But I was quite sure that I had not yet heard of it being an unconstitutional move. Sure enough, the radio host asked, "So in what way do you think the bill is unconstitutional?"

There was a flabbergasted silence from Lady. Evidently, whoever had filled her with passionate protest had forgotten to tell her exactly why she was filled with passionate protest! Lady finally rallied around with, "I am not sure about the exact part of the constitution it violates but if you look around in the constitution, you will find that it has a section stating it is invalid". WTH!?!

I rolled my eyes and am sure the radio host did too for he promptly switched over to another question to a different person.

My question is, when you are holding a convention, how difficult is it for you to find someone who is well-informed to talk to the media? After all, this person is supposed to be a representative of the attendees. If this is the best you can come up with, what impression does it give about the rest of the attendees?

Now I know why most organizations use only trained spokespersons to talk to the press and media!

p.s. I still don't know enough about the Tea Party to have an opinion about it one way or the other.

Benefits of blogging - updated again

Did you know there is a country by the name of Saint Kitts And Nevis? I did not but now I do and what's more, my blog had a visitor from there today!

Ever since one of my posts got linked here (before you jump to conclusions, a long while back Blogger had a link where we could submit posts from our blog which narrated some experience we had with blogger or something like that - I told you it was long ago, right? Anyways, I had no idea on what basis they picked posts but mine got picked somehow), I have been receiving one-post-stand visitors from all over the world.

So, now here is yet another benefit of blogging: you get to brush up your Geography :-).

Lost

The other day we were supposed to go to a conference in San Francisco from work. As I have said before, I *hate* driving in San Francisco and invariably take the Caltrain followed by SF Muni buses/trams whenever I want to visit SF. However, after lot of discussion, my colleague and I discovered that taking the Caltrain involved getting up at some unearthly hour if we had to make it to the conference on time. So, driving it was - sigh :-(! My colleague said she would get her GPS but I said, "Hmm - okay! I will also get printouts of the directions."

Now in this world where using GPS is the fast becoming the de facto standard and paper maps are slowly becoming extinct, I am still stoutly refusing to buy a GPS and am clinging to paper maps with a vengeance.

This is not because I hate trees and using paper maps is my insidious way of trying to destroy them. Just that, since the time I started driving and using maps to find my way around, my sense of direction has improved. A lot. This might not seem like a big deal to most of you, but not so at all to me!

I was a directionally challenged child. I would have to visit any place at least half a dozen times before the way to get there would get impressed upon my brain (and note here, I am not even talking about long distances, I am talking about stuff like "how to get to the library from my classroom"). Not surprisingly, I grew up to be a directionally challenged teenager and a directionally challenged young adult too.

Some of you may be thinking, "Ah, but everyone loses their way from time to time...."

Okay, beat this:

- When we moved to a small town near Trichy, we moved into a colony which had exactly two streets. On the way back from school the first day, I promptly turned into the street in which my house was *not* located. A neighbor (who knew that new folks had arrived in the colony - it was a small town, didn't I say?) kindly directed me down the right street.

- In the first week of grad school I trailed like a lost puppy behind two other new grad students who were temporarily put up in the same apartment complex as me because I could not figure out how to get back home from school. Don't get me started on the different kinds of grad orientation programs I was utterly uninterested in and yet had to attend because I did not know how to go home by myself!

- Within a span of five days in the same grad school mentioned above I asked for directions to the administrative building when standing right in front of it, behind it and beside it. Yup, with campus map in hand too.

- When I visited my parents for the first time in their new home, the first morning, I made the wrong turn while trying to get to the kitchen (before you get ideas about palatial mansions, this is a normal apartment)

So anyways, the point here is, if there was any way to get lost getting somewhere, you could count on me to get lost. Hence anytime I had to visit an unknown place, I asked for several landmarks/street-names etc to make getting there idiot-proof. I had more or less resolved myself to spending a lifetime of memorizing copious directions.

Then I started driving. Initially I had nightmares about getting lost along with a car. Then I noticed a strange thing. As if by magic, my sense of direction started improving. Not by leaps and bounds but certainly very much in the forwardly direction. Perhaps it was because, for the first time in my life, I was consciously noticing where I was going.

First I started recognizing which streets were parallel/perpendicular to each other. Then when getting back from an unknown place, I could pull out the reverse directions from memory. Then I could tell which freeways intersected with each other and whether to go north or south (east or west) to get to that intersection.

The pinnacle of progress (for me) was reached when I managed to guide my friends to spots around San Diego with only a normal AAA map to help me. A stellar achievement when you consider that just a couple of years earlier, my superior navigational powers made my friend drive about 15 miles in the direction opposite to Disneyland in LA.

All this is not to say that now I can get around the world with only a compass in my hand. I can't. For that matter I doubt I will be able to get around my city with only a compass in hand. But if I make a wrong turn now I can mostly figure out how to get back to the starting point and start afresh. I can also make intelligent guesses about where something is located. Which is not quite so grand in the big scale of things - but which nevertheless gives me a cheap thrill when I am right.

Ah - so where was I? GPS. Ya - the reason why I don't want a GPS is, I don't want it to dumb me down all over again and undo all my progress in recent years. I want to use my brain to do the work. Agreed that printing directions off Yahoo maps and driving to a place is not exactly a Mensa challenge but it still requires more work and direction sense than having a random female intone "Turn left in 0.3 miles".

So yup, I am not going to hop onto the GPS wagon as long as I can stand it out.
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Image from here.

Status update

I know there are at least two people who *will* read this blog irrespective of what I write in it: 1. Mommy dearest 2. SK. At least they have promised so. So I shall assume they do and keep up my word of trying to post at least once a week.

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So, what have I been upto?

- I have officially gotten green tea mania. All efforts by parents/friends to make me drink green tea the past few years have resulted in me going, "Yuck, this so tastes like boiled green leaves" except when I am downing it with Chinese or Japanese food. But a few weeks ago I got sudden inspiration (I read plenty of great things about green tea, which I have read before too - but the stars aligned that day) to inculcate green tea into my daily diet. The first few days were torture - I had to mask the taste of the tea with other condiments and had to force myself to gulp it down while scrunching up my face in a very unladylike manner. But soon the tasted started to grow on me. Believe it or not folks, I have now given up on my morning and noon-time coffee and replaced it with green tea and drink at least three cups a day - yaay! Now whether this change is actually having any effect on my health is completely debatable. At any rate, I feel highly virtuous when I thumb my nose at the coffee pot while passing it in the kitchen!

- This crazy California weather is driving me crazy. Some nights start out warm only to turn extremely cold by day break. Other nights start out cold and become all warm and cozy by day break. Since I am too intent upon sleeping to either pull on another comforter or take one off the huge pile on top of me, I wind either shivering or sweating on most mornings. Aaaaaargh!

- Adjusting to the day light savings time change this year was a breeze. I had a class to go to on the morning of the DST change and hence could not sleep in and had to get up per the adjusted time. Thus I did not have to experience the shock of finding the time ahead of what I had expected it to be all day. After 7 years of going through DST change, I finally realize that all I had needed to not feel grumpy when DST began was to get up by the adjusted DST clock as soon as it changed. Oh well, better late than never!

- Never buy that big bag of spinach from Costco unless you have to feed a family of 10 adults. Seriously, that bag is like an akshaya-patram - never ending. I have eaten enough spinach in the past one week to turn me into a green-hued human being. Yet I still have more than one third of the bag left to finish. I think I am going to take the advice of my colleagues and boil and freeze the rest of it for future use to avoid automatic gag-reflex at the sight of spinach.

- Everyone should invest some money in the stock-market and/or join some kind of fitness program just so they have something to talk about at the office lunch hour. These topics provide an inexhaustible source of conversation and also help tremendously in redirecting conversation when it starts heading towards details of how little Munna/Chutki/Poppins celebrated their birthday or starts a "my kid is smarter/is naugtier/eats worse than yours" contest.

- I really ought to come up with better topics for a blog post. I think I have caught a particularly virulent strain of writer's block. Get well soon to me!