Standing still

April 29th is Israel's Independence day and today the day before is the Memorial day in remembrance of the soldiers. Actually the whole one week starting from April 21 to tomorrow is a memorial week. Last week was Memorial day for the Holocaust (remember Hitler, WW II ?) victims. On the eve of the memorial days, entertainment is blocked, only slow and sad melodies are played on TV and radio. On the holocaust memorial day and on the eve of the memorial day yesterday, a siren, just like the war siren goes through out the country and the whole country comes to a stand still for 2 minutes. Every x,y,z stands up and observes a 2 minute silence - even the cars on the road and this is what i caught last night when the siren was on. This is just amazing, i mean, bang on the middle of the road, just not stopping their cars, but they get off their cars and stand in attention for 2 minutes. Their patriotism and love for the country keeps them so united! I dont think they will ever stop surprising me - be it eating only those crackers during the 'no bread' Pesach week, average of 4 children per family, every teenager serving the country's defence forces, gun men casually walking amongst us... the list is endless.

Definitely not a thing i have witnessed in my own country. Patriotism, blah, it only appears on Mandira Bedi's saree or when Sachin cuts the Indian flag cake, Sania Mirza's disrespect.. all of the controversies.

Hot Bombay Quiz 1

With the amazing number of weird bollywood movies and songs that i get to see on Hot Bombay here, i decided to quiz the rest of the world :-)



Can you guess the name of the hero/heroine/song/movie - any or all of it ? This should be pretty obvious because of the daring colors worn!

Cougar Vs Bear

From the Oscar nominated nature film "The Bear" (1988).

Just after sunset

Guess the skies and clouds were jealous about the way i admired the sun and the sunset, and they decided to give their best to me after the sun called it a day....

Yesterday's ball of fire

as it descended...

My chef!

Is he making a magic potion out there ??

Ayan Music - straight from Harris Jayaraj's Trash Can!

After reading rave reviews, few good and few bad i finally attempted the songs of Ayan. Hmmm not a bit to appreciate or even write about - the title of this post says it all. This is definitely not from the guy who composed Minnale and Kaaka Kaaka. Pieces rejected from all his previous compositions/film directors so far have just been recycled and put together for this Surya flick!

you know it rained

rather poured, when you spot these through my window...

S of Lights

Mithun - Maddy or Neil of the 80s ?

As Maddy or Neil Nikhil Mukhesh is to us , so was Mithun to them! Even today my grand ma who is 80+ loved/loves Mithun and says her 3rd son , my c.appa resembled Mithun whenever he sported a brown goggles. He is the one who introduced us to tulips with his pictures from Netherlands in 1980s. Paati always used to say, for an eligible bachelor in late 70s and early 80s, he had to look like Mithun, the height, the color,the charm -"Payyan Mithun madiri veluppa,sevappa,osarama irukkana ?" used to be a regular question from the bride's side. Even though a Kamal Haasan existed, they always looked up to Mithun. Now, i know why.

Happy Vishu!

Iniya Tamil puthaandu nall vaazhthukkal!
Shubh Shubh bengali new year!
Happy Varusha Porapu!

I just checked on the tamil daily sheet calendar with the little ezhuthukootti tamil i could manage and realized that the name of this tamil new year is "Virodhi"... i'm wondering what it actually means - 'unfriendly'... i hope not!

Does anyone know ?

Back to business

Yeah, its time to upload pictures from our vacation ~ outings. First of all, the week long vacation is for Pesach (see paragraph below). We drove down to some interesting places. I mean its so easy out here, the whole country is of the size of Kerala where N to S is about 450 km approx and getting to anywhere would not take more than 3 or 4hrs.

We planned to explore the northern parts of Israel - the Golan Heights, north eastern bordering Syria and then the Rosh Hanikra - northwestern bordering Lebanon. Well, little A also needs some entertainament and we visited a National Park - the Hay Park. We trekked a bit in Nimrod and Banyas in the Golan, found fossils of Star fish and experienced a cable car ride at Rosh Hanikra - they say its the place where the love story between the mountains and the sea is never ending. And at Hay Park, little A took a pony ride, spotted kangaroos, penguins and ostriches and their huge eggs!

Pictures will follow in a couple of days...

Summary of the below for foreigners in Israel - these are the NO-bread days!

Passover - Passover is a holiday that commemorates the liberation of the ancient Israelites from 400 years of slavery in Egypt (approximately 3000 years ago). Since that time, the holiday has come to represent the universal value of freedom. It is the holiday where family and friends gather around the seder table to celebrate, and by the use of certain symbols, to see themselves as commanded, "as though each one of us has also just come out of Egypt". Egypt is of course symbolical of leaving bondage for freedom.
One of the major customs of this holiday is the prohibition against eating any leavened products and the commandment to eat Passover Matzos. When the Children of Israel hurriedly left Egypt, they had no time to bake leavened bread, and thus the matzo, flat and unleavened, came into being. Whilst in their wandering in the Sinai Desert for 40 years, the people lived as Desert people, and would sit and lean against cushions on the sand, and the Haggada - the book of Pesach, reminds the participants that they too should lean on cushions at some point in the Seder.
The Ten Plagues that God sent to convince Pharoah to release His children, the Israelites, are also remembered by dipping a finger in salt water, and flicking drops of water onto a plate, reciting with each dip the list of the Plagues. In more secular Seders, the motif of Spring is also included. On the Seder night, the first night of the Passover holidays, Jewish families the world over sit together, very often with invited guests, and those who have no family to be with, to commemorate their freedom, and to recall the miracle of the passing over the Red Sea, and the beginning of a life of freedom.

seder - ritual dinner that begins the holiday

The haggadah - is the story of the Jews leaving Egypt, but much more. It also explains many of the traditions of Judaism, and the wisdom of its teachings. The Haggadah has been present at the Seder for many centuries, sometimes changing its format, but basically keeping its essence.

Matza = unleavened bread – that the Jews ate when fleeing from Egypt. We continue to eat only matzoth during the 8 days of Passover to symbolise our unity with our Forefathers.

Chametz = leaven bread - Before the holiday begins, all “Chametz" – ie. Foods that are made with flour, have to be cleared out of the house

- The Bible tells us of ten plagues The plagues that God used to convince the Egyptian Pharaoh to let

the Jews leave Egypt. The final one – the death of the first born in every family, did make Pharoah consent

Seder plate - an arrangement of the traditional foods that symbolize happenings in the Jewish history.

time for wine and vacation...

Ever seen such intellectual chocolates ?

this is real food for 'energetic' thoughts...

Hello Spring!

as it gets bright and blue and beautiful...

I guess the weather is also gearing up for a good Pesach vacation! BTW, the sea and the sky - where do they meet and merge ?

Picture perfect sunset on sunday

am reminded of primary school drawing hours - drawing 2 mountains side to side, a semi-circular sun in the midst , the orange colored rays using a ruler.... wow!

Sunday Morning Blues

While the whole world enjoys a lazy Sunday, here we are, already on the job and our week has already begun. Dad and son in their respective cubes and I am back to coffee shop and vetti times with sudoku, blog, email, chat et all...

Just one more day to go and i should be busy with my classes.

Sunday is so synonymous with lazy mornings, play, movie, eat out, beach etc... But, work and Sunday ? boo hoo hoo... Have a great sunday all you lucky souls!

1st day 1st show

.... at the kindergarten, 1st of April, yeh, i know what a day to start schooling!

The day before, i was actually imagining all sorts of hungama to happen, you know may be one like, Prakash raj in Abhiyum Naanum, where Dr. A might end up doing some drama or the usual "uwaaah, school poga vendaam :(" like anyother kid in India you know. Ofcourse, I didnt imagine myself doing anything crazy out there.. :-)

But, he walks in with his Bob the Builder bag, says Shalom! to the other fellow kids and his teachers, and one look at me and says "buh-byeee" and that was a look that very well and clearly said - "Now, you can GO!" or even "its high-time you left!"

So, i go to a nearby coffee shop and started on some sudoku. Meanwhile they served the little ones some breakfast, played to the fullest under the sky! Lunch was served at 11:30am. I get a call stating my son was refusing to eat. So, i rush to the spot, only to see him happily have a sandwich followed by rice. So i walk up to them and ask, you said he wasn't eating, well, i see he is now. They said he refused to have the soup. I was like, "Oh!" . While my brain was doing some mute talking - "namba enga, evalo naal soup-oda sapadu saaptrukom, its so ob he denied to have that" and on the days he has had soup so far , only i have fed him and he has never drank it by himself, he can only handle semi solid items by himself with spoon or crunchy items by fork. A bowl of soup and spoon all by himself was a first timer to him. He is only used to having milk+cereals, rasam mum, thachi mum or plain yoghurt by spoon, noodles, pasta, fruits and vegs by fork!

Anyways, our dear sir finishes his lunch and they declared a half-a-day. But to my surprise he was not prepared to leave and wanted to do a full time the very first day! After some kenjals he agreed to leave and way back i ask him why he refused to have the soup.

He says, "adu verum rasam ma, how can i just have the rasam alone without rice ?"

Well, A & I only had to laugh it out as we shared this conversation with all of his excited aunts and uncles and thatha(s) and paati(s).

Google's new Street View application

You never know how an application gets notorious!

London: A British man is facing divorce after his wife spotted his car parked outside another woman's house, via Google's new Street View application. His wife happened to see the husband's Range Rover on the Street View service, while she was spying on a female friend's home.

Although the husband claimed that he was away on business, the wife easily caught him red-handed after she recognised his car because of its blinged-up hubcaps.

However, the husband, whose identity is not yet known, is not the only man trapped by Google's controversial new 360-degree photo search, which covers 25 cities and towns in Britain.

There have also been other cases where wives have caught their spouses by spying on them using the Street View service. Ever since Street View was launched on March 18 this year, it has triggered a stream of complaints from people caught on camera.

"I was talking about the Range Rover case when another divorce lawyer came up to say his firm was dealing with the same sort of thing. People are getting caught out on Google," the Sun quoted top media lawyer Mark Stephens as saying. He added: "I suspect the husband's lawyers will claim it was an invasion of privacy that will cost him his marriage and the Range Rover."