I never thought this day will come...

To all my readers (the 3 people that read my blog), I rarely update this blog so I have decided to discontinue it.

I will still have it up just in case I change my mind in future.

I learned so much from this blog, I was never a writer (not that I claim that I'm a writer now), but I am happy that I was able to write things here and people actually read it.

I made friends from all over the world, and no discontinuing this blog doesn't mean the friendship stops.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog for the past 2 yrs, I'll still be a regular reader at all your blogs

UPDATE: I had couple of people ask me the reason, the reason is just that the whole blog thing is not as appealing now as it was before. I don't look forward to writing anymore.... I just do it because I feel like "Its been more than a month since my last post...lemme write something. "

life on the refrigerator door

I love to read, mainly fictions and mysteries (most of you would know this after my crazy series of Harry Potter posts).

I have a list of books I would like to read, and anytime I come across a nice review or something about a book that catches my attention I add it to my list. Before I go to the library I go through my list and Google them and read reviews. If the reviews look appealing only then I get the book (Amazon is great for reviews)

Today I went to the library to return few book and I did not have time to go through my list before I went, so I happened to pick 3 random books.


One of them being Life on the refrigerator door, and I loved this book. It was about a mother and daughter leaving notes on the refrigerator door. The last pages gave me goosebumps and I got teary eyed - this has never happened to me (okay I lied, it happened when I read Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince and you know who died).

I liked this book a lot and I think picking up random books from library is not that bad of a thing.

Comfort(able) Food

When we were all kids we had a favorite food.

Mine was Ulakazhangu Mezhukuperrati, it was a dish made with potatoes. Potatoes are cut julian, then cooked in water with salt, pepper, turmeric and chili powder. Once it is 80% cooked, it is then sautéed in oil till crispy. During my childhood years I lived for this. I used to eat it with everything, Chapati, Dosa, Idly (I used to slice the idly horizontally and put this dish in between, and make my own sandwich), rice and a lot more.

I used to always ask my mom I don't want anything to eat with this, just give me this. She never listened to me always served this as a side dish. When I was 10 or 11, I remember telling her that when I get old enough to decide what to make for dinner, I am going to make Ulakazhangu Mezhukuperrati everyday and eat it by itself.

Well that never happened, till today. For dinner all I had today was Ulakazhangu Mezhukuperrati and I'm so HAPPY.

So what is your comfort food?

Vaanu Thiruonam

I have graduated from "I cook so that I do not starve" to "I'm a good cook".

I cooked a huge Ona sadya for few of our friends, they all enjoyed it and had a wonderful time.

Very rarely we invite more than 2 people at a time and my usual menu is Fried Rice/Vegetable Pulao and chicken curry. This is something that you can never go wrong with. Everyone likes it and it is easy to make.

Onam has always been a special time to me, so this Onam I decided to do it on a large scale (cooking for 8 is a large scale according to me) and invited people very close to us.

Me being my usual self had a time line of things to do whole of last week with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mainly being shopping and cleaning. Thursday was supposed to be the prep day, but something else came up and that did not happen.

Friday since I missed a day, I was little on the "I can not believe I'm behind" stage. Friday evening I started cooking and some last minute cleaning. Woke up around 6.30 AM on Saturday and cooked till around 11.00 AM and I was done. I was so happy because I never knew I had it in me to be able to cook such a elaborate meal.

All our friends came, all the girls were dressed in Set Mundu and the guys in Mundu and Juba. We lit our Nella Vilakku and sat around it and ate our lunch on Vazha ella (banana leaf).

It was such a beautiful experience to celebrate Onam with dear ones.

Happy Onam to all.

Its Finally Here

Saturday morning scene at home

• Wake up at 8.00 am - which is early for me on a Saturday
• Go to Amazon.com and track my order
• It shows it the package is in my City, so it will be home soon
• Its 10.00 AM and the package is still not here
• Its 11.00 and ding dong the door bell rings

And Voila.......

I was so happy as I tore open the package, Shekar says what if they shipped you the sixth book instead of the seventh, I gave him the dirtiest stare and told him don't even joke about it.

Grabbed the book and sat on our patio till 2.00 PM and read, ate lunch and then went back to reading. Then around 8.00 PM took break for dinner and then got back to reading at 10.00 PM and stayed up till 2.00 AM and I finished the book. No Spoilers here.... I liked the book, lot of things going on.. but still HBP is my favorite of the series.

So now I'm planning to re-read it very slowly just in case I have missed something. Little sad that the whole Harry phenomenon is over (not really they are 2 more movies and I can always re-read 1-7 ;)...).

My copy of Deathly Hallows..... looks so pristine... and I'm going to pass this on from genration to generation.. just like the Invisible Cloak.

I finally did it

We all have something about us that we like the most. I love my hair. I have typical mallu hair and what that means is a head full of wavy hair. I wrote this post about how I would never cut my hair.

Earlier this year I decided that I was going to donate my hair. I read about couple of organizations and I decided on an organization called Beautiful Lengths. This organization makes wigs and gives them to women who have lost their hair during cancer treatment.

So finally this weekend, I went ahead and cut 10 inches of my hair and now I have short hair. I'm not liking my short hair yet, it takes a little getting used too.

Here is a picture of my chopped off hair.

Upcoming week

This is a major week for all Harry Potter fans, the last book in the series is releasing a week from Today.

I'm so excited, I don't think I have ever been this excited for a book. Like I said before I pre-ordered mine on Amazon, so I'll be getting it on Saturday (morning hopefully).

Here is my plan
- Finish all the chores by Friday night
- Attend Release Party on Saturday Midnight
- Come home get some sleep, till the book arrives
- Read, Read and Read...
- Be done by Monday else call in sick, stay home and read.

I'm going to watch Order of Phoenix tonight....

Have a great Harry Potter week.

Lumos

I haven't updated this space for so long.

Main reason being, I have been bitten by the Harry Potter bug. Harry Potter has been around for almost 10 years and I never felt any attraction towards it. Few years ago I went to the library and picked a HP book, read first chapter and decided it wasn't for me.

Other day my colleague, mother of 2 kids, told me "Yes, it is indeed a kids book, but you will enjoy it." Not trusting her enough I emailed my cousin asking about HP.

His reply was "WHAT!! You haven't read any HP? Log off your email, get the first book (beg, borrow or steal) and read it and then reply to this mail."

Wow I read this and I was like it has to be good? So just as my cousin advised I logged off went to the library and picked the first book in the series and I was hooked.

Its been little more than two months now and I have read all the 6 books, pre-ordered the 7th book from Amazon, watched all the 4 movies and am planning to catch the 5th movie in IMAX-3D.

Currently I'm reading "Mugglenet.Com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7"; this is a very interesting read. I believe my craziness will finally end when I visit the Harry Potter Theme park in 2009 (maybe 2010).

Card for every occasion

Greeting Cards has been a huge part of my life. As a kid we got a lot of Christmas cards and I was in charge of collecting them after each year and saving them.

Then on rainy days when Veena and I were not allowed to play outside we played this game where we had to guess who sent us this card. I used to always win and I was the person who managed these cards.

As we got older, I used to save money that my parents gave to buy cards for friends and families birthdays. During my teenage years I was all about cards. I would send "Just Hello", "Thinking of you" cards.

Recently the whole card thing has worn out. I really do not care for cards. For me its more like just waste of money. Now when I get a card from someone I save it but have stopped sending cards.

I have started sending hand written letters to all my friends on their Birthdays.....

I have finally grown up

So do you all save the cards you get?

Clearing Misconception

I just added a label to my last year's B'day post and hence it showed on few subscriber's feeds.

And so I got a few advance Happy B'day wishes. My B'day is towards the end of April.

Thank you all for the wishes...

Spring is here

These are few pictures I took around our place.

Kattan Kapi

Kattan Kapi is one of the few items that doesn't get the recognition it deserves. There are a lot of ways to make this, it is black coffee with sugar. There are lot of variations to it, few add jaggary, few add karipetti (I'm sorry folks don't know what it is called in English), few add ghee, but the basic is just the same. Coffee powder, water and sweetener.

At my dad's house, the first thing that they made in the morning was a huge pot of kattan with no sugar. It was then poured into a thermos. Who ever woke up would come to kitchen, take a cup, put some sugar and then pour the hot kattan from the thermos into the cup. Then he/she would sit on the ari petti (it is a box found in old homes where things like rice were stored) and drink this hot kattan. If ari petti was already taken, then the person would sit on the katala (door frame). Be it grandkids, daughter in laws of the house, sons of the house, daughters of the house, son in laws of the house - every single person followed the exact same thing. When the thermos would get empty, more kattan would be made. Last thing that ammachi did before going to bed was empty the thermos, clean it and get it all ready for the next day.

Years have gone by the house is Kerala is locked. But even today when dad visits his house the ritual of kattan comes alive.

I drink a lot of kattan. Sometimes the kattan I make tastes exactly like the one I used to drink as a kid in Kerala. And till I finish that cup I become this little girl sitting on the ari petti listening to all the elders speaking and sipping my chood chood kattan (really hot black coffee).

This whole post was inspired by one such kattan that I had few minutes ago.

Gas Station in Reno

This was taken almost a year ago. The gas price

is higher than this these days .....

Tag marathon - I

Nehihal tagged be long time ago, so here it goes.

Three things that scare me
1. Drowning
2. I'll get a flat tire when I'm driving alone, plus it is dark and raining
3. Snakes

Three people who make me laugh
1. Shekar does a good job most of the time
2. I can amuse myself most of the time
3. Josh Blue - he was winner of Last Comic Standing, very original and very instant. I can re watch all his shows and laugh my heart out.

Three things I love
1. Waking up and realizing I still have 2 hours before I have to wake up.
2. Saturday Mornings - That is the day I relax, wake up around ten and just walk around not doing anything.
3. A very heavy downpour of my day off. I can just stare out of my window for ever.

Three things I hate
1. Women who depend on guys for EVERYTHING.
2. Sarcastic Remarks
3. A messy Kitchen

Three things I don't understand
1. Why are people late for their appointments?
2. Why do women take abuse from their husbands?
3. Why is it easy for guys to loose weight as opposed to us gals.

Three things on my desk
1. Picture Frame
2. Cell Phone
3. Coffee Mug

Three things I am doing right now
1. Deciding on what to do for dinner
2. Watching TV in the background
3. Thinking - kab katam hoga yeh tag?

Three things I want to do before I die
1. Go on a Cruise
2. Scuba Diving
3. Have kids.

Three things I can do
1. Organize
2. Yap
3. Sleep like a baby regardless of where I'm.

Three things you should listen to
1. News
2. Music
3. People who really care about me.

Three things you should never listen to
1.Heavy Metal Bands - I always get a headache after listening to them
2. People out there who give opinion when I never ask
3. And yeah.. me singing

Three things I'd like to learn
1. Guitar
2. Swimming.
3. Make a good Mutton Biriyani

Three favourite books
1. The Firm - Grisham
2. Memoirs of Geisha - Arthur Golden
3. For Matrimonial purposes - Kavita Daswani.

Three favorite food
1. Anything I don't have to cook
2. Love Chicken tikka Masala
3. Chole Batura.

Three beverages I drink regularly
1. Water
2. Tomatoe Juice
3. Coffee

Three TV shows/books I watched/read when I was kid
1. Mungerilaal ke haseen sapne
2. Wagle ki Duniya
3. Dekh Bhai Bekh

What I see in the morning

The is the View from our house.


Spring:
And yes, the little black and white spots are cows grazing.

Foggy:

Rainy:

So, Where are you at?

Following takes place at my work:

5.30 PM
I call Shekar: "So what time will you be getting out of work"
Shekar: another 10 minutes.

6.00 PM
Shekar has not come to pick me up yet. (We have started car pooling recently so conserve energy). So I work away getting all mad at Shekar as he still hasn't called to mention he will be late.

6.15 PM
I'm really mad, he still hasn't called or come by.

Following takes place at my home:

6.10 PM
Shekar pulls into the parking, and looks around. This is something we both do. When we park our car, we look if the other person is home. So Shekar sees my car, which means I'm home. He goes home, no lights are turned on, and the bedroom door is closed.

He assumes I'm in the bedroom and he goes turns the TV on, hangs around the living room for a while and still not hearing anything from he, he comes into the bedroom and I'm not there.

There have been instances, where I'll be on my cell phone and since the reception at my home sucks I just stay in the car and talk, so he walks over to my car and I'm not there either.

6.30PM At home
He is really mad because I came home and went somewhere and did not tell him.

6.30PM At work
I'm really mad that Shekar is late and hasn't called to tell me that he is running late My Cell phone rings I see its Shekar and picks up the phone with a furious "hello" Shekar on the other end, replies with more furious "Hello, where are you?"
Me: What do you mean where am I, I'm work, where else can I be?
Shekar: HAHAHAHA... did I drop you off at work today?
Me: You went home with out picking me up?
Shekar: I'll be right there.

Finally got home around 7.00PM.... all this for my need to save energy

Pranks...

As most of you would know, I have an Older sister, Veena who is very very naughty (even till this day). So she plays pranks on me very frequently and I rarely get to pay her back.

Then there was this day.

We both were sitting on my bed and arguing over something ( I don't even remember what it was now). She wanted something that I had and I wouldn't give it to her. I remember holding it really tight and close towards my body and Veena trying to snatch it.

After few minutes of fighting, we had strict rules about fighting:
- No pulling hair as she had nice long hair and I had short hair, so I had an advantage
- No scratching each other's faces - We girls had to look pretty
- No matter what happened no complaining to parents

So we were fighting by our rules and then finally Veena's nails scratched my eye. I felt this burning sensation and I covered my eye and yelled out "My eye My eye."

Veena stopped what ever she was doing, and made my take my hand off my eye. I told her that it was hurting. She is a very caring sister and she ran to get some cold water to rinse my eye. She came back with some water and I was still sitting with my hand covering my eyes.

She finally made me move my hand and yelled "I can not see, Oh my god I can not see with this eye."

Veena sat there speechless all teary eyed and screaming "Are you sure?". "Wash your eyes again". I couldn't hold my self anymore, I burst out laughing I was kidding, I can see well.

Well, I almost got killed that day.

For all those worried souls, my sclera (the white part of my eye) got scratched and I had a red mark on it for a week. But the joy that little red scratch brought me was just priceless.

Even today I call Veena once in a while and yell over the phone, "I can not see, OMG I can not see"

Movie Update:

• Omakara - Was kind of slow, I liked it, even though I had read Othello and seen the Malayalam version.
  
• Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead man's Chest- was a nice watch. Towards the end, left so many thing unfinished that you know a sequel is coming soon.
  
• Running scared - Very nice movie, but now for the week hearted, lot of bloodshed, lot of cursing

I know I saw a lot more movies, don't seem to recall them though :(

Another Kitchen Saga

Other day I was making fried rice. It is very easy so the only help I solicit from Shekar is to chop the onion. So I'm in my happy mood cooking away, and I'm all done other than the frying the chopped onions and garnish my rice.

We have 2 kinds of cutting boards, one plastic bigger and one glass - smaller. Shekar hates the glass cutting board as its very noisy when the knife hits the glass, so he religiously only uses the plastic one. That day for some reason he decides to use the glass one.

Just for reference, this is how our cooking range looks, it is electrical.

So I have this Tava with hot oil, put my onions in it, put the cutting board on the neighboring electric coil. I didn't realize that I was still on.

After this I'm still in merry cooking land cooking away. Shekar is back in the living room. All of a sudden I hear this boom and I see glass pieces everywhere. Shekar comes running and says "What is that explosion". It takes me a minute to realize what just happened, the glass cutting board was placed on the electric coil that was turned on, and this caused the board to break.

I felt so relived that I didn't get hit. Not a single piece of glass hit me, and I was standing right there. Then comes the major part of cleaning this whole mess up. So I start cleaning the counter, every single shelf and finally the floor. It was all done and my kitchen looked back to its usual self. Then I go wait a minute... I had all the onion in the hot oil, which is now completely burnt, because I went after the whole cleaning thing. So I finally decided to serve the rice without the onions.

Then I realized if I had decided this in the beginning I could have escaped the whole ordeal.

On the brighter side of things, Shekar never has to hear the tak tak noise of knife hitting the glass cutting board.

This is just for Taks
Movie Update:

• Inside man - About a bank heist. Very well made, very nice. Will recommend to everyone who enjoys thrillers.
• Super Man returns - Nice, shows superman as having a very sensitive side.
• V for Vendetta - Another nice one. This is one of those movies, even after the movie has ended you will still be talking about it.
• Don - Apun ka hindi wala Don. Finally got a chance to see it. I don't care what everyone says I liked it, regardless of the fact that I can not stand SRK.
• Changing Lanes - This is a 2002 movie, was just ok.
• The Omen 666 - Horror Genre.. but not that scary. Well made and loved the ending.
• Failure to Launch - Date movie, with few giggles here and there.
• Ice age (meltdown) - Amazing.
• The Illusionist - Great movie. In the beginning movie seems kind of slow. Upon further research I found all the magic in this movie was real and not CGI, and that made me respect the movie even more. Read more about on wiki.
  

Movies...

Thanks to Taks, I have something to post every day.

Movies I saw last week

Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift - Was a nice movie, you will love it if you are into cars. All I wanted to do was try to drift my car after watching this movie.

Chicken Little - It is a feel good animated movies, wait a minute all animated movies are feel good. Was fun to watch.

Rumor Has it - It wa just ok. But made me think, how much do we love our significant others to forgive them when they cheat.

Coming soon....
Ice Age - the meltdown

Weee ...Another Movie?

Its been so long since I have posted here....Its not that the initial joy of blogging has slowed down, its just that I have got a lot busier than I used to be.

It is all Netflix fault. We are so addicted to Netflix these days. When we get a movie in mail, both Shekar and I are so adamant to watch it the same day.

So after a long days work, we come home and all our evening are just the same recently.

• Check Mail
• Shekar proudly announces"Another movie came"
• I joyfully open the envelope to see which movie it is, regardless of the email I got from Netflix earlier that day saying "Little Ms. Sunshine has been shipped"
• I open and go "Yeaah...Little Ms. Sunshine"
• Cook something for dinner, something simple as I have no time to make a elaborate dish as I have to finish the movie tonight.
• Go to Gym.
• Come home shower.
• Rush through dinner.
• Then the time has arrived and we turn on the DVD (its usually 10.00 PM by now).
• Watch the movie, and then go to bed.

Hello, I'm Thanu and I'm addicted to Netflix. As a part of getting rid of this addiction we received a movie on Saturday, and we still haven't watched this.

*Thinking to self– which means we have 2 movies to watch tonight, so we can skip gym and watch both tonight. *

Books and Me

Growing up I was one of those kids who read everything assigned to them and a lot more. Close to our home there was a library walk able distance from our house and Veena and I used to go there once a week and spend an hour there, and bring back few books.

We also subscribed to lot of magazines and lots of memories are associated with them.

Chacha Chaudharay - I remember reading this book too, but do not remember lot of details. I remember how Chacha Chaudhary looks. This was the only book in Hindi I used to read.

Chandamama - I used to love the Vikram and Betal stories.

Gokulam - This was a magazine published in Tamil Nadu. It was monthly magazine and I used to go buy it at a book store. I even to this day remember few of the stories they used to publish. They had a series called 13th window, in this a family moves into the house and a little girl counts total number of windows and she finds that from outside there are 13 windows whereas from inside there are just 12. And the story is about the little girl's quest for the 13th window. Then there was this other series called Undir stories. This was stories about rat, and these rats lived life like humans and each issue had something new about the rats life (sounds lame now, but was very very interesting back then).

MISHA - This is a Russian Magazine, they used to have real thick pages and a distinctive smell. Even tough the book was thin (maybe had 20 pages total) we used to read and re-read till the next issue arrived. I guess they do not publish this anymore. This was during my early childhood days so I barely remember the stories.

Panchathantra Tales - My parents got me this huge collection of panchathantra tales and I read and re-read them all the time. I knew each story word by word and still read it.

Tinkle - We all have read this, this was mainly read when we traveled. We brought this at railway station and read it. Suppandi was my favorite character. When I got to my grandfather's place Veena and I used to act out the whole Suppandi story for him.

Wisdom - This was a book that dad made us read. We were never too excited about reading this, but we still read it. What I remember on each page, at the bottom, a quote was printed. For some reason I used to enjoy reading them and used to make an effort to actually learn that quote (what a dork I used to be).

Readers Digest - This is the only magazine that I still read. As a kid I wouldn't understand most of the jokes, I just read it because Veena read and I wanted to do everything like her. Now I have started to enjoy it, and yeah Veena still subscribes to it.

Now I still read a lot, but mainly novels. I can not get myself to re-read them again. Now I just think re-reading is plain waste of time and lost all the magic a re-reading brings.

No matter now or then books just bring joy to my life