Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
Weekend Getaway - Mysore - Day 2
Day 2: Aug 16th 2008
The plan included Bylakuppe Tibetan Camp, Cauvery Nisargadhama and the Dubbare Elephant Camp. We had breakfast at Hotel Kairali, the Kerala Hotel suggested by Masky and started off at around 8.30 am. We had a helpline to guide us, and then our instincts, along with the innumerous directions given by the road-goers to lead our way. The first milestone itself was more than 80 km on the Mysore - Madikeri stretch. The Mysore - Hunsure road on SH88 was perfect long drive. There was not even a bee on the way and hence, even I got the chance to drive the smooth highway with dividers, and that too at 60-70km/hr. Not bad for me!! There were small towns in between like Periapatna en route Bylakuppe.
The Tibetan camp settlement in Bylakuppe was towards left from the main highway. There was a wide arch welcoming you, but also thronging the anti-Olympic slogans. We went in search of the Golden Temple at the 4th Camp. It was quite a long way deep inside. The green fields, fluttering prayer flags, Tibet scripts and the Tibetan people on the way made us feel that we were not in Mysore, but in Tibet. We actually were. There were not much Indian people around except for one or two. The Golden Temple will not ever be missed as there were clear indications of the way. It was much much bigger tourist spot than we expected, compared to the lonely way leading to the temple. The temple belonged to Nyingmapa Monastery. There were innumerous monks, dressed in their special apparel in shades of dark red and yellow. I was reminded of the Yodha film and the”kunu kune” song was humming on my lips. The place and the temples were very serene. The Tibetan paintings reminded of the wall paintings of the ancient Indian artifacts of both the North and the South. You realize then that, there is a uniqueness in every culture of the world. There was a shopping centre nearby, and hoping to know more about the people and culture, I searched for some antiques or books related to them. We moved on after buying a prayer wheel, rather a hand-held wheel and a prayer bell.
Weekend Getaway - Mysore - Day 1
Mysore being less than 150 km from Bangalore, was the destination of our last weekend getaway. Combined with the Independence Day holiday, we had 3 days and hence had a 3-day well-calculated plan too. The key highlights include the Opel Corsa long drive, the meet with the TE titans (Masky, Chaos and Sunny) and a surprise, the Tibetan camp visit, and the travel back to the historical ages…
Day 1 - Aug 15th 2008
There was a plan that Masky and Chaos would give us company enroute Mysore, but RK and I were late. (The previous night, it had rained in Bangalore, and the traffic made RK reach home, very very late, at around 11.30pm!) I don’t know how those people sleep late and wake up early as if they are insomniac, but anyhow, they were ahead of us and reached Mysore by 8.15am.
We started as slow as possible, within 6.30 to 6.45 am in his grand Opel Corsa, with 2 backpacks and water bottles in the back seat. The traffic was not that heavy, and once we were on the main highway SH17, the Mysore Road, the drive was really smooth. There were cars initially, but as we went further, there were even none for some time, I guess owing to the early morning timings. We were speeding low as we had to fill up the gas and air too on the way, and also had to look out for the lefts n rights we need to take long ahead. We had Srirangapatnam Temple in mind, and enroute, the green welcome boards notified us of the Silk city (Ram Nagaram), Sugar City (Mandya), and then the Historic City (Srirangapatnam).
The directions to the temple were pretty clear, but we knew of , or rather had the agenda of only the temple and the Dariya Daulat in that town. There were many other places to visit in the Srirangapatnam, but not that we got reminded of at that point. The Ranganatha temple is 1-2km travel from the right turn on the main highway. It reminded me of the Dasavatharam first few scenes and Kamal Hassan’s famous chant of “Om Namo Narayana”. Close to the temple, were the Tipu Sultan’s place of death, and Colonel Bailey’s Dungeon. I hate the reminiscence of wars and battles, and not to mention the dungeon and the pain of the people involved. I didn’t even wanted to visit the Juma Masjid nearby on the way back, as the whole history had started to haunt me.
Culinary skills!!
Milkmaid!!! I have loved this small milky thing which comes in tin from my childhood. remember the times when during my college holidays, I thought of preparing sweet recipes using milkmaid n all. I even used to have it as such in big spoonfuls! As it couldn’t be used anywhere else other than to make sweets, we seldom bought it. After all, who had the time at home, to prepare those goodies. There was the TV show in Kairali TV (Malayalam channel), which had milkmaid recipes shown for 5-10 mins, at certain random times late in the afternoon. The host was Lakshmi Nair famous for Magic Oven show. I remember trying out one of the recipes too at home.
Now being at Bangalore home, I had bought the tin last time we went to the supermarket. As I am vetti (without any work.. Ya I miss the Chennai slang! 
) at home, I thought of trying them out at sometime. Earlier I was not much into cooking and neither did I searched for them in internet, but now, I found that there is immense support for cooking newbies like me. But like any other housewife, I am not too much into it and neither that much addicted to it as yet. I do try out my favourite dishes of paneer (when there’s luck and time in your hand, why not? ) once in a while, and as RK is very much enthusiastic in cooking, I just help out at times and that’s it.
So coming back to milkmaid, I am now writing this, while crunching sweety-pineapple made of the same: Milkmaid, sugar and chilled pineapple.! mmm… Delicious!!!!
Bonus:: Last weekend had tried out Ice Coffee too.
Just blend in a mixer, frozen milk ( keep milk in fridge just few hours before you make the coffee), sugar, milkmaid, coffee powder and ice cubes and voila! Its done!
And nah, the quantity need not be mentioned in any of these small cocktails or even in the big big dishes, as there lies the creativity of every person to bring out the craft of blending various edible items into the delicious and nutritious thing called food through the art of cooking. Aint it?
Random Tidbits - II
Continued from the previous post.…
7. Its been very long time, that I had written a very long post, owing to make it easy for the readers (if any). But today, I am going out of control. Maybe its the silence within and outside looming around. People ask me if I am so bored at home, why don’t I try for job. Or they keep asking about the married life. I guess, every married girl of my age who got recently married, would have got fed up completely with such unanswerable questions they are pestered with. There is so much uncertainty about some aspects in your life and some decisions of our life, that it takes time to hit the bottom of the pit of thoughts. There are many I know who have got recently married and I am sure, they are asked almost the same questions like how’s married life or even the “dreaded question”. The answers maybe different as lives are not the same everywhere, (or are they? I mean atleast certain aspects???), but the questions are pretty much the same. I am sure, this is something which we can’t avoid from society and friends as silence is not preferred to “Wassup” and “hi, how are you” and “nothing much” and “going on” at any cost…. Those are some inevitable pool of words which binds long lost people around the world. So I guess we need to accept it and acknowledge the fact that we cannot get away from them. So no more cribbing on that part I suppose…
Random Tidbits - I
1. Had heard of tweet long before. But twitter I came to know just recently. The twittermania is spreading onto me. everywhere I am checking out whether people are twittering. There are other feeds like friendfeed n all, but I feel people likes to twitter more. There was the forums, technical and entertainment ones, and then new popular short aggravated social networking sites like orkut, facebook, myspace, hi5, linkedln, and many others, and then the weblogs or blogs from blogger and wordpress, and now the mini blogs or feeds!!! The new improvements in Internet world are remarkable. I guess the tagline of Nokia, “Connecting people” matches better with the world of Internet, if ever it needed an advertisement and a tagline. Now I have even tried out various twitter tools rebuild for firefox or browsers or in general as desktop apps. But everywhere they mention Adobe Air as system requirement. I checked it out and it seems an important part for executing any web application. Does that mean, like any other Adobe PS, Air has also been hitting various desktops and laptops these days? It seems there are many things to catch up for me in this net life.
2. Being at home is sometimes very boring, but it reminds me of old days. The times when I spent at home in Kerala. As mentioned, I am getting more and more used to the TV shows. Nowadays its hot masala shows like Koffee with Karan or Rakhi Sawant Showz or trailors and interviews and gossips from Zoom. (more…)