Jus' for Fun

Itasca State Park

2010-10-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

Ram and I made a trip to Itasca State Park - Minnesota's Oldest State Park established in 1891 during our month long stay together at Pequot Lakes. The name Itasca is a unique combination of Latin Words "Veritas" (truth) and "Caput" (head).

Though Hiking/Camping are the truest ways to enjoy a State Park, due to lack of time and experience we decided against it. We made our agenda for our day trip very simple, a boat ride in Lake Itasca followed by a visit to Headwaters Mississippi.

We boarded the "Chester Charles II" from the Douglas Lodge Pier and started our journey on Lake Itsaca.The boat ride was picturesque and we soaked ourselves in the lush greenery of the park.The 2 hour boat ride left us ravenous and we couldn't wait to get our hands on our delicious chappathis and chole that we had packed. After a quick bite. we proceeded onto our next biggest attraction Headwaters Mississippi where "The Mighty Mississippi river begins to flow on its winding way 2552 miles to the Gulf Of Mexico"

Although French and Spanish explorers had been searching for the source since the late 17th century, it was American explorer Henry Schoolcraft who finally "discovered" the great river's source in 1832. Schoolcraft was guided by "Ozawindib" of the Anishinabe tribe, the Native Americans having been familiar with the source for some time.It was hard to believe that a small stream amidst huge pine trees is the humble beginning of one of the America's greatest and the fourth longest river in the world.

After crossing the mighty Mississippi river multiple times, we stopped by the gift shop for some souvenirs and drove back to Pequot Lakes happy and contented. Next time, I visit this State Park, I'll take a trail.

Pequot Lakes - Part 1

2010-10-15T16:52:00.000-07:00

Pequot Lakes is a small city in Crow Wing County Minnesota, where Ram was posted for his assignment with Landis &Gyr. Having lived in NJ for more than 3 years, we were equally thrilled and nervous to venture into a small town that left some indelible impressions on our minds. Ram rented a small place for 6 months while I moved into Extended Stay Piscataway to continue my job with Telcordia. I made my first trip to Pequot Lakes in April 2009

Reaching Pequot Lakes from NJ was an arduous journey, It requires a 3 hour flight from Newark NJ to Minneapolis MN followed by a 3 hour drive by road. After a tiresome long flight,I vividly remember how excited I was during that 3 hour road trip, the long stretch of lonely roads lined by huge trees and beautiful lakes was truly a treat to my weary eyes. I witnessed my first Mirage - An optical phenomenon that creates the illusion of water on empty long roads. Our apartment was located right off the highway 371 bordered by a cute little coffee shop named "Lakes Latte" that served some of the best "Vegetable Paninis" I have ever had. I loved my new place and we had this very beautiful school race track overlooking our balcony that served as my jogging practice ground during my stay there.

The whole journey and this new exotic place called Pequot Lakes seemed very unreal and I was thrilled to bits. Ram was completely starved of home food and I decided to please his palate by unleashing my culinary skills for the next couple of weeks. My first trip consisted of just 2 weeks and I wanted to make the best use of it.
No wonder, Minesotta is called the "Land Of Ten Thousand Lakes". I could spot huge expanse of water bodies within a few miles from my house. Lake Sibley was the closest lake to my house. Visiting a new lake everyday preceded by a coffee at Lakes Latte became our evening ritual. There was a certain degree of calmness and peace that these lakes used to bring onto our lives that we thoroughly enjoyed.

The first weekend was spent traveling to Lake Superior at Duluth that requires a post by itself. The following weekend, I surprised myself by cooking 10 dishes and freezing them that served as Ram's dinner for the next 35 days. I left Pequot Lakes with a heavy heart. I did not get enough of it and I was back again in August for 1 whole month.

Settling down?????

2007-01-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

Entering the blogophere after a very long break.It's not even a year since I have been in USA when i am bombarded with the most ridiculous question "Where are you going to settle down India or USA" by my relatives,friends,good friends,best freinds etc etc.

In this modern IT world we are all expected to be globe trekkers travelling around the world for various projects when the whole idea of settling down does not come into picture for atleast immediate 4 to 5 years. People form a very skewed judgement about you when you mention that you have plans to settle down in USA they attribute it to financial reasons which I consider as an extreme insult.And unfortunately you are in no position to tell them when you would be returning to India thanks to the uncertainities in the IT industry.So that leaves you helpless and clueless to answer that funny settling down question.Well according to me it makes lots of sense to travel for the next 4 to 5 years wrt to seeing places,making bucks and most important gaining the experience of working abroad. After that time frame you always have your darling India beckoning you.

Am tagged!!!

2005-11-20T10:00:00.000-08:00

I have been tagged by rads so here goes my list.

7 things I will do.

1.Learn keyboard.
2.Learn yoga.
3.Learn driving
4.Develop interest to read books of all genre
5.Visit Switzerland.
6.Watch a lot of plays.
7.Make a conscious attempt to be a better person than I am today(hmmm got a little serious)

7 things I can do.

1.Yap and giggle continously with my close set of people.
2.Work on a computer for a minimum 8 hrs.
3.Sometimes talk as the most learned person in the world.
4. Keep trimming my hair.
5.Shop continously for dresses and accessories.
6.Keep listening to a couple of my favourite songs.
7.Cook rice and dal.

5 things I can't do.

1.Shake my legs I mean dance.
2.Update my blog regularly.
3.Climb an escalator
4.Work on saturdays and sundays.
5.Work on Java.

7 words I say often

1.Think about it
2.OOps should'nt have done that.
3.Correct
4.Am sorry
5.Thank you
6.Excuse Me(little louder when someone blocks my way)
7.Ohhhhhhhh

So i pass the tag to.

1.Meena
2.Megha
3.Rajesh
4.Subu

Untitled

2005-11-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

I have always yearned to watch a live 'play' for a long time.Unfortunately I never met anyone who would accompany me for it.Lo Behold! this time a very close friend of mine whom I happened to meet jus a month ago has agreed to take me for a play.

It's called 'Python Hyssssteria' a blend of 16 british comedy sketches, organized by the entertainment company 'Evam'.

Readers wait for another week to read my review about this play.

Don Quixote!!!

2005-05-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

Am not going to disappoint my readers anymore so here is this blog that brings out the philosopher in me...........

Not sure how many of you have read this classic 'Don Quixote' by Miguel De Cervantes,though even i have not read this book in the recent past,I remember listening so intently to my english teacher who spoke so animatedly about this book in my grade 7.

Recently this book has celebrated it's 400'th anniversary.Thanks to V Gangadhar's Slice of Life for enlightening me on this info.There is this particular line in the article that cought my attention "Most human beings had a little bit of Don Quixote within" very true in all sense.Every human being has his/her own share of eccentricity and madness that comes to surface only with his/her own inner circle of people.Otherwise human beings are just actors taking up different roles at different stages in a play called 'Life'.

Left Versus Right

2005-05-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

Eureka!!!I seem to find a very absurd and a funny relationship betweeen the left and the right hemispheres of my brain.I shall definitely not get into the technical nuances of the differences(no prizes for guessing why?? ;-)) but will elucidate my inferences from my personal experience.

For the past 1 month I spent considerable amount of time doing blog reading and blog writing coz the wonderful company I am working for gave a short vacation to my left hemisphere.This activity of mine put a tremendous pressure on my right grey cells.Then one fine day I find myself stranded in a mindboggling assignment causing severe tension to my left brain.Blog reading&blog writing was put in the backburner then onwards.

When your left hemisphere works ardously your right hemisphere goes in for a hibernation and viceversa.I am not sure if this concept can be generalised but it sure holds good for gayathri.

Isn't this blog a novel way of telling the world that currently I am suffering from severe bouts of 'Writers's Block' :-))

Chandramukhi NO comparison to Manichitrathazhu

2005-04-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

I had promised to write about tomatoes in my next blog but after having wasted 750 bucks on Chandramukhi yesterday decided that this blog was more apt.

Manichitrathazhu a classic malayalam movie by a genius filmmaker Fazil has been so shabbily remoulded to a typical tamil superstar movie Chandramukhi.CM is no way different from any other rajinikant movie it has a little bit of action,a couple of duet songs and a huge dose of double entendre jokes.Amongst all this we have our poor jyothika making a futile attempt to imitate Shobana in 'Manichitrathazhu'.I must admit that jyothika has stretched far beyond her acting capability in this role but she fails miserably in the climax.Shobana's scintillating performance in the song 'Oru Murai Vandhu Parthaya' is matchless to our Jo's amateurish bharatanatyam.CM might cater to the tastes of hardcore superstar fans but it brings enormous pain and trauma to people who enjoy good malayalam movies.

So here goes my appeal to all tamil movie makers,for heaven sake do not tamper with malayalam movies and make it lose it's aesthetic value.If you are in search of a good story you need to follow a long route ie. play with your grey cells.

An Ode to Onions and Tomatoes

2005-04-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

This title may sound too poetic but you are not going to read a poem below,it's jus gayathri's way of eulogizing the saviours of amateur chefs like me.After the initial fiasco of Ladies finger masala curry and Hyderabadi biriyani decided to follow the universal truth "Make simple food,it tastes yummy".This is where onions and tomatoes enter the scene.

With jus these two vital ingredients you could come up with the most delicious,mouth watering food in the world, to name a few: yellow dal,black dal,methi dal,sprouts dal,onion cucumber sandwich,onion tomato sandwich,onion cucumber tomato sandwich,vegetable stew,onion tomato masala,onion tomato chutney etc etc........the list goes on and on and on.....

Ghosh!! Can't imagine a cook in me without these onions!!!

Few tips to deal with onions.
1.Cut the onions vertically to 2 pieces and soak it in water for about 2 minutes before chopping them to fine pieces,you'll never have to shed those crocodile tears.
2.Fried onions always taste better than boiled ones.

Will talk in detail about tomatoes in my next blog till then Happy Reading!!!

The Game Of Guessing.....

2005-04-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

The below mentioned conversation is not based on any real life characters or incidents.They are purely the sparks of Udaya's imaginative mind.A big thank you for giving me the honour to publish it in my blog.

A long lost friend from my school days called me up last week. After the initial excitement of talking to each other after years had died down, she threw the bombshell...

Sri : Guess what.. I am engaged!

Me : Thats great Sri!Congrats!
Sri : Thanks!Marriage is next month!
Me : Wow!!So tell me more...how do you know him..
Sri : His name is Vishnu and he works in San Jose.. ...I am not telling you how I got to know him though ...you guess
There began my guessing game ...tough pushups for my really greying grey cells..
I had known Sri and her family very well for 5 years when I was in school..and my first thought was that hers was a traditional arranged marriage...but then she had said "I am not telling you how got to know him"...note the point.. she knew him first ..that didnt happen in arranged marriages ..
So I thought I should try other not-tooo-out-of-the-conventional ideas
Me : Is he some distant relative?You met at a family trip?
Sri : No
Me : hmm ok..he is one of your dad's friends son ..
Sri : Wrong again
Me : You met him at work?
Sri : Nope - different professions man..he is not a doctor..
At this point it struck me that I shouldn't waste my efforts in original guessing...what the hell were movies for if they didnt help me even in such situations...So I decided to pick a favourite director - Mani Ratnam...and use his love stories to guess..
So here was my algorithm - I would use Mani Ratnams movies alphabetically and try guessing based on the story line
So I started with Movies with A...well there were lots of movies with A :)
A for Alai payuthey
Me : You met him at a wedding !
Sri: Nope
Me : Thats ok I am still at A
Sri : What?
Me : No nothing
B for Bombay..Vishnu is not a muslim name - so I ditched the idea...
D for Dil SeMe : When you were travelling - you met on the bus/train/airplane/railway station/airport etc..
Sri : Nope!
I for Iruvar.hmm..falling in love at a movie set...well...sri used to dance...
Me : Hey do you still dance?
Sri : Yes I do ..why suddenly?
Me : Good . I know where you met this guy..u and he dance together right?
Sri : Whats wrong with you..what do you think I dance ...ballet??
So I proceeded with the alphabets..M for Mouna Ragam...
Me - Where you witness to some rowdism and fights..
Sri - What ?
Me - Did you meet him at the police station?
Sri - Hey..
Me (interrupting) - You had an accident?
Sri -I should be the one asking you that...you sound really weird...
Me - Shh..did you meet at a hospital?
Sri - For god's sake..No!!
She dint have a sister leave alone an elder one ...so no Roja kind of meeting...
I starting Panicing..I was nearing the end of the alphabets here..Y for Yuva.
Me : At a party?
Sri :NoMe : You share common interests maybe...some social organizations/clubs etc?
Sri : No
The movie idea wasn't very useful...
Oh well she only said she knew him..not met him...so maybe she feel in love with his voice or something...
Me : Does he sing or play some instruments..
Sri : Well ..everyone is a bathroom singer...
That sounded farfetched...listening to someone singing in the bathroom was tough enough...leave alone fall in love with that singing!
I suddenly remembered something..
Me : Oh well, is it that neighbour of yours ..Vishal right?
Sri : Nice that you remember Vishal..but wish you remembered more..he is a couple of years younger than us and I am not doing anything very unconventional here
I was running out of ideas here ...I really understood the difficulty of movie directors!
Me : Poor Movie makers
Sri : What do u mean? He is not a movie maker!
Me : Thank god!they have a tough time..
I decided it was time to shift gear...I was going to be exhaustive now..so I decided to try all hangouts and landmarks in Chennai ...
Me : You meet him At the besant nagar beach/under the banyan tree/over the adyar bridge Sri : (laughing) You sound like our second grade english teacher teaching prepositions!Anyways the answer is no!
Me : What abt the vandaloor zoo and the Children's park!
Sri : I havent been to the Vandalur zoo since the 3rd grade excursion..if I had met him then I was too young to bother!Be sensible!
I had had enough!Time for a little help I decided..
Me : ok I give up..give me a clue
Sri : I really never thought you couldn't guess this one! Anyways the clue is and I am really giving away the answer here...I met him virtually.. You have only 3 more guesses..
AAAhhh...how dumb of me..ofcourse she must have met him on the net...well..in some chatroom..I thought..
Me : You met at a chatroom
Sri: 2 more guesses and thats it!
Me (all knowingly) : On the orkut scrap book??
Sri : One and only one more guess and before you guess..its a bet..if you guess right ...I will...oh well our usual deal...
Finally it struck me.. she was talking about the matrimony sites? Must be...if I had had any brains that should have been my first guess...
Me : ok I double my stakes...
Sri : Sure ok!
Me : You met at some matrimony site...
Sri : Nooooooooo and I win
Thats it! my head was really hot now.. I was at my wits end!
Me : Hope you are not lying and your Vishnu better be worth it ok..
Sri : Ha ! ok!We met at a blog...he had left a comment in my blog and I left a comment in his and I blogrolled him and he blogrolled and me and you know...

That was something I least expected! She left me shell shocked!
May the blog counters roll and long live google!!!!!

Reflections!!!

2005-04-06T21:36:00.000-07:00

Are your blogs a true reflection of yourself??? that is something you really have think about.Offlate i have developed this new hobby of judging an individual's personality from his/her writings.Maybe too much of blog reading right now has given birth to this new interest.

I have always been under the assumption that, the kind of inferences i drew as a result of blog reading was always correct, until yesterday,when I had a heated discussion with my closest pal.Here the conflict arised not on the individual's persona but on the person's gender. She could actually hear a male voice talking behind the blog while i heard the resounding echoes of a female's voice.

Yin and the yang dramatically differ in the way they think,the way they talk,the way they write,the way they conduct themselves and most important the way they look at life.....a world of difference between the two of them.Well if blogging is used as a medium to express your perceptions,your thoughts,your take on life then it actually requires an enormous amount of effort to fake your gender.

So coming back to the blog i was talking about hmmmmmmmmm still dunno whether it's a he or a she inspite of obvious references to feminine pronouns but whoever he/she is hat's off to his/her play with words.

Priceless!!

2005-04-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

How many of you knew that you can make an embroidery look like a real painting?I never knew,till my dad got a Chinese painting or should i say an embroidery from Shanghai a few days back.Currently this exquisite piece of art with intricate patterns woven with fine strands of Chinese silk adorn my living room.

Incase this blog has made you yearn for more information on Chinese embroidery.Check the following link on Chinese Handicrafts

Changing hairstyle!!

2005-03-30T10:30:00.000-08:00

Changing hairstyle, mean different things to different people,for some it's a fashion statement,for some it's a hobby,and for some it actually means nothing at all,but i consider it as a PAIN.Wondering WHY??

For the past 5 years i have been sporting the most comfortable coiffure:a smart boycut.It's one of the best hairstyle i have ever known.....you can get ready for a party with jus 2 minutes in front of the mirror,shampoo your hair and walk on the chennai roads you save on the cost of a hair dryer and most important you are noticeable,"Oh! that girl with the short hair" but you never get to decorate your hair with fragrant flowers like the most traditional indian woman do,that's the small cost you have to pay for the comforts you enjoy.

After 5 years i have suddenly decided to increase the length of my manes why??wanted to see myself a little different in the mirror,but the transition from neck length to shoulder length is the most horrible phase I have ever been through.

This transition phase can be broadly divided to 5 stages.

First stage:Totally dishevelled hair with small curls at your back.

Second stage:These curls spread at the rate of 3 curls per day until you look like a KG kid.

Third stage:A sudden promotion from a KG kid to a musical maestro Bhagavadhar.

Fourth stage:Confused, is it short enough to be left loose or long enough to tie the wierdest ponytail.

Fifth stage:Final transformation from boycut to girliekind.

Is it really worth undergoing this pain,i need to wait and see.

Why blog???

2005-03-28T22:15:00.000-08:00

A very good friend of mine,who was so kind enough to write about me, on her first blog is pestering me currently to start a blog myself...this has been the motiving factor for my first post
Why do ppl blog???
I have been trying to find an answer to this question for quiet sometime
Find below few of my guesses...
a)Some people like writing,they express their thoughts better on a paper
b)Few of them use their blog as a medium to brag their achievements
c)People like Sidin the most acclaimed blogger,tries to hone his creativity and writing skills by blogging and sometime he even gets his MBA project done ;)
d)Many of them blog, to jus express their views on any topic under the sky...afterall there is no authority above you deciding, what you should and what you should not say...
e)Some blog to make friends,meet new acquaintances,meet like minded people and jus generally improve their social life...
That sets my head whirling,why did i start a blog??
Jus for the fun part of it,and most important rite now,im in a mood to blog