2008 was Very Special

This has been a year full of mixed situations, good and bad. The year is not ending on a high, but I am making it a point to not think about anything but the positive that has come out of this year. So I am putting in this post highlighting why this year is the most special year in my life.

This year is the year that me and my sweetheart got MARRIED!!! and for this reason alone, 2008 will always be cherished. Weddings are supposed to be a happy but tensed time. The girls side running helter-skelter, catering to the wimps and fancies of the boys side and the girl all shy and demure, anxious about her new life and the new family.

But my wedding was totally the opposite, my In-laws arranged the whole wedding, and I wanted my mom-in-law and sis-in-law to pick out stuff for me. In fact they picked out all my clothing, my jewelry everything. All I did was show up !! Fantastic.

I am blessed in so many ways, my MIL and FIL are like a second set of parents to me, and my SIL is like the sister I never had. I was so relaxed during my wedding that I was up on stage waving and blowing kisses to people who i knew, while my sweetheart was paying attention to the ceremony. I was far from being a demure bride.

Another cherished thing about 2008 is that I got to see people very very dear to me. My college buddies who I hadn't seen for 10 years, dear dear friends who have been my rocks for all these years, a very dear professor ho has been a friend and a mentor, and people I had only spoken to and had grown fond of.

Can life get any better than that? Surrounded by family and friends on the best day of your life, getting married to the love of ur life! I think not.

Let me thank everyone who has been a part of my life. I am truly thankful that you choose to be part of my life. I am truly blessed. So here is wishing you and your loved ones a very happy new year and may you be blessed with tons of love and happiness in the coming year and the many more to come.

See you all in the next year and God Bless!! Cheers!!

In Love with Mehandi

This is in response to my new profile pic. It does seem like I am posing for no apparent reason and doing some heavy Bollywood stuff.....but no, its not as bad as it looks.

Yes I am doing some heavy Bollywood kinda stuff but I am not posing for the hell of it....in fact I was posing for Love!!...

Let me explain.

I love Mehandi, Love it! I take every chance I get to look up people's work, put some Mehandi on myself (inspired by others and some original design), my mom (someone has to cooperate) in short I Love it!

Now a chance came somewhere in March of this year, I modeled for a awesome Mehandi artist, all I had to do is observe her work while she drew Bridal Designs on me, and then model for her, so she can use those pictures in her portfolio. I was more than happy to do so...For those interested you can check out the pictures Here

I am still in the stages where I am getting better, but I thought I'd put up some pics and get some feedback. In fact I am putting a pic first of a wooden Box that I put Mehandi on :)...then a couple of pics of Mehandi'd Hands.....Take a peek!

The Box





My Mehandi Works :)

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5.



6.



I have always been doing the Mehandi for everyone except the bride whenever there is a wedding in my family. I am hoping to that one day I get good enough that I can do some good Bridal Mehandi. :)

Hi Snow, Bye Snow and the Chicago Cold

S and me got away for the first time after our Honeymoon. But it was far from a 'get away' kinda trip, in fact it was a trip with a mission....a mission to be completed only in Chicago.

So we left home at 3:00 am to get to the airport an hour away for a 6 am flight, thanks to the 2 hr security check process. Anyhow the previous night to our leaving there was a warning of a severe Snow storm. We were to get 4-6 inches of snow from 2:00 am onwards. But when we flew out at 6:00 am there was not a flurry to be seen...boy was I happy. I am a person who does not like the cold and was thankful that I did not see any snow.

The flight was peaceful, more so coz I slept thru it, and woke up only when the flight touched down in Chicago. We were greeted with TONS of snow. Chicago was COLD! Everywhere we went I was begging to get inside a building, to get away from the cold. There was a foot or so of snow on the ground,, slush everywhere the wind made the conditions worse by making it feel 10 degrees less than it already was. The only good that came out of it was, that in the Cold my shoes got destroyed and I got an awesome pair of walking leather boots...cute cute cute...I always wanted those :) .....back to the main point of this post now...

Coz pictures speak louder than words (testament to the cold), here are some pictures of the Windy city after a snow storm.

On Arrival




Downtown Chicago



Frozen River - View from our Room



Another view of the Frozen River



Frozen Lake Michigan



Chicago is pretty, I loved it, we even took a bus ride to see all of Chicago (plus seeing the city from inside a heated bus makes it so much better.) Now here is hoping to see the windy city when it nice and warm in Summer

Cheers :)

Paint Domination

I got tagged my Smita...who asked me to draw a few words up, just as she had done herself. Check them out here, if you have not already.

Before you go ahead and take the risk of looking at my drawings, let me warn you, you will get addicted to my drawings, you will be forced by your heart to visit my blog everyday and seek out my drawings, you will not be able to stay away....you have been warned! proceed with discretion.

Here goes,

Vote



Rules



Engagement



Flowers



ps: here is how they actually should look :)



Keyboard



And now for the Tags...and I'll try to make this interesting.

Vee - Cowboy (:)), Camera, Beach, Chill, Sleep
Couch Papaya - Fashion, Couch, Papaya (lolz), Theater, Dhaaba
Manjula - Saree, Mischief, Phone, Movie, Drive
My Two Cents - Beard, Teach, Cricket, Sleep, Party
EISI - Sunglasses, Surfing, Time, Racing, Juice

Pass it on to how many ever people you want :)....Just don't tag me back...I dont want people addicted to my drawings :)...and that's a Wrap!

Passing It On *Hugs*

Friendship is the ship that ferries me across is ocean of worldly existence !!!! Too corny?? Yeah ok..fine....Ignore!!

But its true that a few friends online and their friendship is precious to me. So therefore as promised to one such friend that I would be doing this post.....Here it goes

First let me send out a Big thanks and a Hug to WAIN for giving me this. Love Ya!



This award is given to a blog that invests and believes in PROXIMITY - nearness
in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These
kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or
self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut,
even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these
writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and
include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.

Now time to pass this award on ....so here goes...

Smita
Mayunk
Vee
Abha
Ava
Couchpapaya
Bouncing bubble
Ratna

That was awesome!.. Before I end this, there are two more people that I want to give this award to. I met each of them before I started blogging or even going online. But both of them are special to me...for reasons known to them..here is my way of saying thanks for being part of my life.

Manjula
My Two Cents

Thank you .... all of you for just being you!...love ya!!

The Final Word

Mumbai has been attacked and wounded, 200 people died, many more injured, millions stunned and a political few ran for cover.

Its done, the media has pumped article after article out, people on the net have talked about it over and over and most discussions in the past few days have been dominated by the gruesome incident in the desi community here.

We will talk more, we will print more and we will blog about it to, yup for the next month or so we will all be talking about it, and then our own personal lives will divert our attention and that will signal the end of our concern and need for action.

Its frustrating and here is my solution to the whole deal, yeah I will take flak for saying this but we know who is responsible, we know who has reigned terror on India time and time again and then claimed innocence.

Even now after evidence has surfaced that Pakistan is the origin for these terrorists and we will likely face more of Pakistani shit in our country, I really wanna say....NUKE THE FUCKERS

But that would not work right! Coz there have to be many a good souls across the border. So how about shooting at sight all the people you see infiltrating our border, woman, child, idiot, no matter who. If they choose to cross over, then it's implied that they accept the chance of being shot dead.

And yeah another thing we can definitely do is stop pardoning killers. The vermin have the balls to bomb us, and then when the same dimwits are caught they ask to be pardoned!!!!! In addition shoot also those who rally for the killers pardon in the name of human rights.... Screw them, let them take the killer and their fucking righteousness to their own little piece of hell!!

You Heard

Obama Won...now we have a great deal to look forward to the New Year!

Hear Hear!!! for sense prevailing!

I Voted !!

Hurray!!!!!

Yup its me a supposedly responsible citizen :)

Here is story of the vote :) We have been hearing about the candidates in full force for the past few months, and by the time today came around I think almost all of us were just ready to get this thing over and done with.

So anyway, the polling stations here in the city are open from 6:00 am to 9:00 pm. The voting lines were predicted to be long and time consuming, as a lot of first time voters were expected to show up.

My family and me decided to get the voting done early in the morning to save us grief at the end of the day. We got up bright and early and headed to the Polling station after a healthy breakfast at 7:00am. We were very lucky, as the polling station was a mere 7 mins walk from our place, so we combined the voting with a pleasant early morning walk.

The polling place just happens to be Public school, and as soon as we entered we could see a lot of art in the hallways done by little kids. There was no line whatsoever. We went in, gave them our address to determine out congressional district. Once that was done we were asked for our identification, and once that was verified, we were led into a booth where we made the choices for President, Congress, Senate and Assembly.

After making our choices, we walked out of the polling place and headed back home having contributed to Democracy. And now I am back home munching on a piece of warm toast with heavenly melting butter....yummmmm

Oh did I mention I voted!!! Hurraayyyyyy!

First Engageversary!!!

It brings a smile to my face just thinking of last Tuesday. It was a day of celebration, a day very close to my heart, it was a year since me and my sweetheart 'S' got 'officially' engaged *wink* *wink* :). So well as my brother put it, I celebrated my first "Engageversary"!! ..phew that's quite a mouthful.

So yeah its not supposed to be an official celebration, but being the hopeless romantic that I am, I could not help but celebrating. I had no expectations from 'S' as I cannot really give him grief for not going all mushy for me on a day that really doesn't even have a given official name .... So after I wished him at midnight, I fell asleep and woke up the next day all happy and bubbly. My thoughts were predominantly with 'S' coming home from work and then hopefully getting to watch a movie cuddled up in the comfort of the sofa.

Evening came and brought my sweetheart home. I was in for a big suprise as he bought me.....*drum roll* Flowers!!! OMG....I was shocked...flowers?? for me?? really?...I almost pinched myself to make sure I was not dreaming :)


















After jumping around the house for the next 20 mins, I managed to get the flowers in a vase...ahhhh my heart still sings looking at the expression of love :). What makes it even more special, is that 'S' is not really a romantic like me, but just knowing what this day means to me, he picked something that would celebrate the day....awww such a sweetheart!
























The flowers are gorgeous...he did really good!...ah well...it was a wonderfully romantic gesture..and here is hoping for many many more of them :)

Love to all!

The Bad, the worse and the GRIM

I know the title sounds awfully depressing, but then all the reading I did online was much much worse, and it has left me thinking....or rather brooding.

I have always been interested in Vedic astrology, more so for the calculations and methodology involved than the actual predictions themselves. So invariably like everyone else the internet is a great source of information for me. Coz of the excessive time on hand owing to the economic downturn here, I started to read about vedic astrology late last night, promising myself not to read past 2am, unknowing to me, that was not to be.

Long story short, I stumbled across predictions for the US and the world for the years 2008 written by this guy. He predicted the Dollar falling, the hurricane season, the rising Petrol cost, rising of gold, war in the middle east (duh!), UK going into recession etc etc. Well we have seen all this happening...right! so ok all is not fine and dandy...but at least its something we are already experiencing and so not so bothersome.

But then there are other things that he predicted, Iran war, Burning of US war ships, Quakes in Indonesia and Japan, assassinations worldwide, India Pakistan tensions escalating, Us election scandal, a new deadly world virus etc etc....u get the idea. So if that wasn't enuf, I wanted to find out some more, and I went hunting for information, more predictions, and lo and behold, all I found was people predicting, wars, starvation, drought, floods, earthquakes, power hungry people, genocides etc.

This got me thinking, is this what we have to look forward to? Or is this just fear mongering by all? Do astrologers not look into the positives, is their business just based on picking out doomsday and telling us just what the path to that looks like?

I was technically up reading till 4 am, but it left me sleepless, and the little mercy of sleep that I was granted was strewn with nightmares, mainly of cockroaches running around in my neighborhood! Now maybe that should be my prediction of the coming of the plague.....how does that sound?

Well all in all, not only did all this negativity leave me wondering about our future but the future of the coming generations. Is it really fair for us to actually bring in children to this Grim world??

So much for Women being Bad Drivers

Every morning before getting into the subway, I grab the 2 free newspapers.....after all they are my only link to the happenings of the world apart from BBC, CNN, Time, IBN etc...hehehe

But me being a news junkie is besides the point. The reason I brought the newspapers up is coz, in one of them (AmNy) there was this article stating some facts about Men and Driving ..with a few statistics thrown in. So with all credit to the above newspaper here go the facts

1. About twice as many men as women are killed each year in crashes. Even though 1:1 Men tend to drive more miles....not twice as much...but just a little more.

My Take : So its therefore implied that men are twice more likely to die in a car accident...

2. More men tend to have the condition Sleep Apnea, and Drivers with this problem are FIVE times more likely to be in an car accident.

My Take : So therefore not only are men FIVE times more likely to be in an accident, they will also be responsible for killing more MEN ....wow this keeps getting better !

3. A National Safety Council analysis found that men account for 81% of all drivers with blood alcohol concentration .08 or greater who are involved in fatal crashes

My Take: So therefore not only are men FIVE times more likely to be in an accident, they will also be responsible for killing more MEN...AND they will do this while being obnoxiously DRUNK...That's 1 more for the Women

4. Men are more likely to speed.

My Take: Simple and straight...So therefore not only are men FIVE times more likely to be in an accident, they will also be responsible for killing more MEN...they will do this while being obnoxiously DRUNK...and they will do it at great speeds.....ahh for the love of Mankind!!

And just when things were going from Bad to worse here for men ... here is the aptly termed 'kick in the groin'..in other words the conclusion...which includes this line

The actual number of men killed in car crashes has declined from the year 1997 to 2007 (48/million to 45/million). This decrease can be attributed to *drum roll please* The number of WOMEN driving has increased!!

Yes you Heard it right...the world is ACTUALLY safer .... coz women drive more. I am ecstatic..this is big considering all the stupid jokes about women drivers...

How do you feel now little men??? In your face(s)!!!

That reminds me...for all the trouble Saudi Arabia is having with unruly drivers...maybe its time to let their WOMEN DRIVE!!!!...

Bumper Sticker

DON'T STEAL!!!!!

The Government Hates Competition

And I snickered at the Apple

Got dropped by S to the station to take a train to work...and lo and behold..I see a long line of people..waiting...took me a moment to realize that they were all standing there to get their hands on the new iPhone...lolz

I couldn't help myself and snickered...boy some people have time on thier hands...and to top it all off, I heard one of the guys way back in the line say he was there since 4..and was hungry.....poor chap, I almost bought him a coffee....lolz

Bhindi Masala

Ahh... Bhindi (okra) one of the most loved veggies out there. Bhindi like aloo (potato) is a very versatile veggie...and one of my fav's ...

So here goes one of my fav recipes with Bhindi.

Ingredients:

3 Pounds Bhindi ( approx 1 1/2 kgs)
2 medium onions - chopped
1 large tomato - chopped
1 ' cube Ginger - Chopped
4 cloves Garlic - Chopped
3 medium Green Chilles - Chopped
1 teaspoon Cumin Seeds
1 1/2 teaspoon Garam Masala
2/3 teaspoon Red Chilli pwd
Pinch of Turmeric
Oil to Saute
Corriander leaves for garnish

Method:

Quater the Bhindi 4 ways
Heat some Oil in the pan and saute the Bhindi will sides are golden brown, and set aside
Heat the remaining oil. Once Hot add in the Cumin and wait for it to splutter
Add in the Ginger, Garlic and Green Chillies, stir till the garlic turns golden brown
Add in the Onion and saute till the Onions turn transculent
Add in the tomatoes and saute for 3 more minutes.
Add all the Masalas, cook for a high flame for 2 mins and then cover and cook on a low flame till Bhindi cooks completely
Garnish with Corriander before serving...


yummm!

Hope you enjoy it ....as much as we did :)

5 Mins Chocolate Pie

This one literally takes just 5 mins, and turns out yummy!! Everytime I have made this one, people rave about it...and think it takes a lot of time to make :)

So here goes

1 Pack Instant Pudding (I Devil's food...even plain chocolate will do)
2 cups Milk
1 pre-packed pie base
1 pack sweet Whipped cream (yummmm)
Chocolate shavings 1/4 cup (Optional)

Method:

1. Empty the Pack of Pudding into the Milk and whip till it sets

2. Pour Immediately into the Pie Base

3. Refrigerate for a couple of Hrs

4. Top with Whipped cream (enough to cover the pie :))

5. Sprinkle a few chocolate shavings

6. Cut and Serve!

How easy is that??? Hopefully U stumble across this recipe!! Let me know how it works out !!

Intro to food :)

Now this makes me real Happy! Food...

I have a so called degree in Food and its prep..but my fascination with food started a really long time back

I still remember watching Sanjeev Kapoor cooking show as a child, and trying out his recipes.

The latest development in the area of food as been my recently acquired love for vegetarian food....this is a world that I chose to ignore when I was young. With age they say comes maturity...as I age what is coming is the love for vegetables...hahahahahaha..

Well here is to the new discoveries and less disasters in the kitchen......GO Veggie !!!

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