Saturday, September 27, 2014
Someone posted this on the office forum:
The word Garba comes from the Sanskrit word for womb and so implies gestation or pregnancy - life. Traditionally, the dance is performed around a clay lantern with a light inside, called a Garbha Deep. This lantern represents life; the fetus in the womb in particular. The dancers thus honor Durga, the feminine form of divinity.
Garba is performed in a circle as a symbol of the Hindu view of time. The rings of dancers revolve in cycles, as time in Hinduism is cyclical. As the cycle of time revolves, from birth, to life, to death and again to rebirth, the only thing that is constant is the Goddess, that one unmoving symbol in the midst of all of this unending and infinite movement. The dance symbolizes that God, represented in feminine form in this case, is the only thing that remains unchanging in a constantly changing universe (jagat).
The Garbha Deep has another symbolic interpretation. The vessel itself is a symbol of the body, within whom Divinity (in the form of the Goddess) resides. Garba is danced around this symbol to honor the fact that all humans have the Divine energy of Devi within them.
The word Garba comes from the Sanskrit word for womb and so implies gestation or pregnancy - life. Traditionally, the dance is performed around a clay lantern with a light inside, called a Garbha Deep. This lantern represents life; the fetus in the womb in particular. The dancers thus honor Durga, the feminine form of divinity.
Garba is performed in a circle as a symbol of the Hindu view of time. The rings of dancers revolve in cycles, as time in Hinduism is cyclical. As the cycle of time revolves, from birth, to life, to death and again to rebirth, the only thing that is constant is the Goddess, that one unmoving symbol in the midst of all of this unending and infinite movement. The dance symbolizes that God, represented in feminine form in this case, is the only thing that remains unchanging in a constantly changing universe (jagat).
The Garbha Deep has another symbolic interpretation. The vessel itself is a symbol of the body, within whom Divinity (in the form of the Goddess) resides. Garba is danced around this symbol to honor the fact that all humans have the Divine energy of Devi within them.
UAE's First Female fighter pilot leads airstrike against ISIS. This is what must be called 'Poetic Justice'.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Way To Go ISRO
I went to bed yesterday night wondering if the Mangalyaan (Mars Orbiter Mission) will make it to Mars orbit the following morning. But I woke up in the morning thinking of all the work that needed to be completed in office and on personal front. All thoughts of MOM had been wiped clean. But somewhere along my morning commute to office I remembered and wondered about the outcome. Now, I am perhaps one of the last remaining people who have stubbornly refused to have internet access on their phones. So there was no way to know before I got into the office.
I checked out the TOI site even before I opened the office mail today. To be frank, I was a little nervous because I didn't want to read that the mission had failed. Turns out I need not have worried. In bold letters the headlines proclaimed that India has become the first country in the world to make it to the red planet's orbit in its maiden attempt - and at much lesser cost compared to what Nasa has shelled out.
People passing by my cubicle must have wondered why I was grinning ear-to-ear like an idiot. That too in the morning in the middle of the week. Thank you ISRO for giving me the reason for the same!
I don't mind having an extra helping of sweet at dinner tonight. The occasion demands it. To hell with the calories. Or should I say 'To Mars'? ;-)
I checked out the TOI site even before I opened the office mail today. To be frank, I was a little nervous because I didn't want to read that the mission had failed. Turns out I need not have worried. In bold letters the headlines proclaimed that India has become the first country in the world to make it to the red planet's orbit in its maiden attempt - and at much lesser cost compared to what Nasa has shelled out.
People passing by my cubicle must have wondered why I was grinning ear-to-ear like an idiot. That too in the morning in the middle of the week. Thank you ISRO for giving me the reason for the same!
I don't mind having an extra helping of sweet at dinner tonight. The occasion demands it. To hell with the calories. Or should I say 'To Mars'? ;-)
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Moremi Game Reserve
You might be wondering what is so special about Moremi Game Reserve. I remember reading in OLM magazine that the tribal Batawana people were concerned about the effect the hunting was causing on the rich wildlife in their habitat. They decided to vacate the land so that it could be used for conservation. The reserve is named after the last tribal chief Moremi III.
In this country, where you keep hearing about poaching and people killing animals that happen to stray into their villages from nearby forest areas, the story of Moremi sounds straight out of some fairy tale :-(
In this country, where you keep hearing about poaching and people killing animals that happen to stray into their villages from nearby forest areas, the story of Moremi sounds straight out of some fairy tale :-(
Haas Juice Bar, Mahim
We could have gone to any other place for snacks when I decided to meet my friend in Shivaji Park. The truth, however, is that we have tried practically every eatery in the vicinity that sells snacks. And both of us wanted to have Panipuri - at all costs :-) So we headed for Haas.
I was surprised to see a sizeable crowd at the place. On weekend afternoons I have seen it practically deserted. But this was a weekday and an evening. Perfect time for a chaat! My other worry was that only 2 people seemed to be manning the shop - one of them dedicated exclusively to making Chaat items. Will we have to wait endlessly four our order to materialize?
But there was no turning back as the crisp Puris at the counter were very tempting. So we ordered Pani Puri. Fortunately they were served in no time. Crisp puris with a perfect blend of sweet and sour taste in the filling - what more can one ask for from life? Mind you, they use Bisleri so no worries on the health front - if you choose to ignore the fact that the puris are fried.
Then I ordered Bhel-Puri and my friend ordered Dahi Sev/Batata Puri. While she turned out to be lucky in her choice, the bhel was a total disappointment for me. It was sweet enough to pass muster as a dessert, if you could ignore onions, tomatoes and sev. An ideal bhel has to be a perfect concoction of sweet, sour and spicy flavors. Sadly, this truth was lost on the guy who had prepared such sumptious pani-puri just a few moments ago. :-(
As a matter of practice, before I eat at any place, I do check out reviews about it on Zomato and Burrp. One person who had posted such review had mentioned that he had caught the guy preparing juice at the Mahim outlet adding water to it. (Is that why they post the sign saying that they don't add water to juices or milkshakes?) Since I had no way of knowing if the same guy was at the counter now, I was a bit skeptical about ordering juice and tried to dissuade my friend from doing so. However, there was no stopping her. She wanted to try out Haas's famous juices. But I did succeed in convincing her not to order anything exotic. So we ended up going for watermelon orange juice. And regretted it at the first sip. More watery than water itself. To be fair to the guy who had prepared it, it could well be because it really isn't the season for watermelons. He was so busy grilling 8 sandwiches for another customer that I simply cannot see how he could have found time to dilute the juice. The taste of the orange was dominating and it was sour.
So yes, I will go again there but will stick to eating pani-puris as far as eatables go. I do have stomach for trying out 1-2 of their juices. But if they too turn out to be equally disappointing, I will not give the juices another shot.
I was surprised to see a sizeable crowd at the place. On weekend afternoons I have seen it practically deserted. But this was a weekday and an evening. Perfect time for a chaat! My other worry was that only 2 people seemed to be manning the shop - one of them dedicated exclusively to making Chaat items. Will we have to wait endlessly four our order to materialize?
But there was no turning back as the crisp Puris at the counter were very tempting. So we ordered Pani Puri. Fortunately they were served in no time. Crisp puris with a perfect blend of sweet and sour taste in the filling - what more can one ask for from life? Mind you, they use Bisleri so no worries on the health front - if you choose to ignore the fact that the puris are fried.
Then I ordered Bhel-Puri and my friend ordered Dahi Sev/Batata Puri. While she turned out to be lucky in her choice, the bhel was a total disappointment for me. It was sweet enough to pass muster as a dessert, if you could ignore onions, tomatoes and sev. An ideal bhel has to be a perfect concoction of sweet, sour and spicy flavors. Sadly, this truth was lost on the guy who had prepared such sumptious pani-puri just a few moments ago. :-(
As a matter of practice, before I eat at any place, I do check out reviews about it on Zomato and Burrp. One person who had posted such review had mentioned that he had caught the guy preparing juice at the Mahim outlet adding water to it. (Is that why they post the sign saying that they don't add water to juices or milkshakes?) Since I had no way of knowing if the same guy was at the counter now, I was a bit skeptical about ordering juice and tried to dissuade my friend from doing so. However, there was no stopping her. She wanted to try out Haas's famous juices. But I did succeed in convincing her not to order anything exotic. So we ended up going for watermelon orange juice. And regretted it at the first sip. More watery than water itself. To be fair to the guy who had prepared it, it could well be because it really isn't the season for watermelons. He was so busy grilling 8 sandwiches for another customer that I simply cannot see how he could have found time to dilute the juice. The taste of the orange was dominating and it was sour.
So yes, I will go again there but will stick to eating pani-puris as far as eatables go. I do have stomach for trying out 1-2 of their juices. But if they too turn out to be equally disappointing, I will not give the juices another shot.
Grey's Anatomy, Season 10
It seems like ages since the 9th season was aired in India - it has definitely been more than a year. So I wondered if I will be able to follow the storyline of the new season. Sure enough, I wasn't able to recognize any of the new interns. And I don't have a clue asto what is wrong between Yang and Owen, despite reading about season 9 on Wiki. That said, a few minutes into the new season and I caught on with the story.
First of all, I am angry with Dr. Richard Weber. If he chose Meredith so that she would be able to make decisions about his health by being completely objective, then he should have informed her about it. I felt so sad for her. I envied Dr. Bailey when she was finally able to find the dead issue while operating on Dr. Weber and triumphantly yelled for someone to inform Dr. Grey that 'when you know, you know'. Such moments are priceless in a professional's life. And this was definitely one of the moments when you feel like you should have been a doctor instead.
I couldn't help but smile as I watched Meredith tell the interns how she told George's mother stories about him after he passed away. Her character maybe annoying at times but it has progressed beautifully, and if I may say, naturally, from an unsure, confused intern into a mature
woman who apart from shouldering responsibilities of two children has the energy and enthusiasm to jump in and start taking care of multiple car pile-up as they are wheeled into the hospital at the end of the fund-raising event.
I stopped watching 'House' because it was painful to sit for an hour and watch him treat others with disdain. But time practically flew as I watched these first few episodes of the 10th season. Look forward to enjoying the rest of it :-)
First of all, I am angry with Dr. Richard Weber. If he chose Meredith so that she would be able to make decisions about his health by being completely objective, then he should have informed her about it. I felt so sad for her. I envied Dr. Bailey when she was finally able to find the dead issue while operating on Dr. Weber and triumphantly yelled for someone to inform Dr. Grey that 'when you know, you know'. Such moments are priceless in a professional's life. And this was definitely one of the moments when you feel like you should have been a doctor instead.
I couldn't help but smile as I watched Meredith tell the interns how she told George's mother stories about him after he passed away. Her character maybe annoying at times but it has progressed beautifully, and if I may say, naturally, from an unsure, confused intern into a mature
woman who apart from shouldering responsibilities of two children has the energy and enthusiasm to jump in and start taking care of multiple car pile-up as they are wheeled into the hospital at the end of the fund-raising event.
I stopped watching 'House' because it was painful to sit for an hour and watch him treat others with disdain. But time practically flew as I watched these first few episodes of the 10th season. Look forward to enjoying the rest of it :-)
Monday, September 22, 2014
Spanish - Class VII
'La Pizarra' had the totally unintelligible words (as shown in the picture above) scrawled all over it when I walked in for the Spanish class on Sunday morning. From the looks of it, they were the remnants of a botany class. Wonder how the students manage to memorize these words. :-(
If I look back to my class notes of yesterday, I wonder what we did for two hours. We only seem to have learnt to answer a question in the affirmative and in the negative. Yet, we were busy the entire time. Of course we did lots of exercises. So there isn't a load of extra material to revise if the teacher does get down to conducting a surprise test on the coming Sunday. That's a huge relief.
One of the exercises in the class involved straightening out the jumbled form of words to arrive at the names of the countries and then match them to the 'las nacionalidades' i.e. the nationalities. I was so engrossed in writing down the meaning of the Spanish words that formed the question that I failed to fully grasp the question and stared at the list of words uncomprehendingly. The girl sitting next to me didn't have her exercise book but she was quickly matching the words from mine. Astonished, I asked her how she knew all of this. She smiled and said 'Aren't these words supposed to be jumbled?'. I checked, realized my stupidity and we both burst out laughing.
Another exercise involved looking at the pictures of people and matching them with their 'Profesions'. I had never thought, even in my wildest dreams, that I would be doing this again in my life! The third exercise was 'Fill in the blanks' type where we had to fill in the profession in the sentence. The word 'escuela' seemed unfamiliar (Que Significa 'escuela'?) until my neighbor said 'that means school'. I was pretty certain the word had never come up during discussions in earlier classes. But before I could open my mouth she held up her cell phone's screen. I believe she had accessed some app to get the word's meaning. Really, one of these days I have to get down to overcoming my phobia for remaining connected 24 * 7, get net access on my phone and check out this whole hoopla called 'apps'. God! I feel like a saber-tooth would feel if he is ever brought back to life in this century.
The last part of the class was total fun. The teacher made us listen to the recording of 'El Abecedario' i.e. the alphabets because she firmly believes that we don't revise it enough. In the next part of the recording a man (or was that a woman?) spoke a few words which were supposed to be names of some of the Latin American cities. Now, the quality of that recording leaves much to be desired. It also doesn't help that the class room isn't an AC one so there is plenty of ambient noise. So, we were supposed to write down the names as we heard them being pronounced. Out of the 5-6 names spoken, I only understood 'San Jose' and that too when the recording was played for the second time around. There were lots of bewildered faces and heads shaking in frustration. The teacher smiled and wrote down the names of the cities. We are supposed to find out about them. I don't know how it is supposed to help our knowledge of Spanish but that's one thing that I got to do today evening.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
California Pizza Kitchen, High Street Phoenix
There was one thing that I didn't want to eat here - and that was pizza. Not because they don't make it well. They do. But I was kind of not in the mood. So I turned right to the "Salads" and "Pasta" sections of the menu. Just reading the descriptions of the dishes made me hungry enough to eat a dinosaur and a woolly mammoth in one sitting. We ended up ordering Thai Crunch Salad, BBQ Chicken Salad and Pesto Cream Penne.
When the server brought "BBQ Chicken Salad" I was taken aback by the huge quantity - despite being hungry. 'Who is going to finish all this' I wondered as I dipped the spoon in it. But as soon as I tasted it I knew I was going to finish it all by myself. There was lots of crisp lettuce, cherry tomatoes and sweet corn - making me feel I was eating healthy, for once. There was plenty of shredded chicken too - slathered in tasty tangy BBQ sauce that I just couldn't get enough of. Strips of tortilla chips added a bit of crunchiness. The menu had mentioned that the dish contains 'Fontina cheese, cilantro and green onions tossed with and house-made herb ranch dressing'. So these ingredients must be in there somewhere, adding to that heavenly taste that made me go 'wow' with every mouthful. But seriously, I am not a big fan of black beans and so think that the salad could have done without it. At Rs. 360, this dish is simply a steal.
Pesto Cream Penne (Rs. 395) was every bit what it should be. Perfectly cooked penne (not too raw, not too cooked) in a Basil Pesto sauce with bits of sun-dried tomatoes thrown in for that hint of sourness. That pasta is going to be my choice the next time we head there.
The surprise of the day was, the Thai Crunch Salad (Rs. 365) - loads of vegetables, chunks of chicken, peanuts and rice sticks with Thai Peanut dressing. There was a sweet after-taste to it that left you asking for more. If anyone had asked me to choose my favorite dish amongst the 3, I would have been hard pressed for an answer.
The servers asked us twice if the food was good. They need not have bothered. 'Excellent' was the only word to describe it. :-)
When the server brought "BBQ Chicken Salad" I was taken aback by the huge quantity - despite being hungry. 'Who is going to finish all this' I wondered as I dipped the spoon in it. But as soon as I tasted it I knew I was going to finish it all by myself. There was lots of crisp lettuce, cherry tomatoes and sweet corn - making me feel I was eating healthy, for once. There was plenty of shredded chicken too - slathered in tasty tangy BBQ sauce that I just couldn't get enough of. Strips of tortilla chips added a bit of crunchiness. The menu had mentioned that the dish contains 'Fontina cheese, cilantro and green onions tossed with and house-made herb ranch dressing'. So these ingredients must be in there somewhere, adding to that heavenly taste that made me go 'wow' with every mouthful. But seriously, I am not a big fan of black beans and so think that the salad could have done without it. At Rs. 360, this dish is simply a steal.
 |
| BBQ Chicken Salad |
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| Thai Crunch Salad |
The servers asked us twice if the food was good. They need not have bothered. 'Excellent' was the only word to describe it. :-)
I got the following SMS from my mobile service provider:
Dear customer, don't respond to missed calls/SMS from unknown international nos with prefix other than +91 on winning lottery etc. These maybe fraud calls.
'These maybe fraud calls'? Maybe? Surely they don't mean that some of these calls about winning lottery 'etc' could be genuine, do they? :-)
Dear customer, don't respond to missed calls/SMS from unknown international nos with prefix other than +91 on winning lottery etc. These maybe fraud calls.
'These maybe fraud calls'? Maybe? Surely they don't mean that some of these calls about winning lottery 'etc' could be genuine, do they? :-)
Want to enjoy home-cooked food belonging to a different cuisine? Or cook your favorite dish for total strangers? Check out - Connect With Local.
One Library Per Village
When a Library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.
Interesting thought, huh? Check out the idea behind it - One Library Per Village
Interesting thought, huh? Check out the idea behind it - One Library Per Village
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