To get you in the Christmas mood

I'm sure many of you have seen this a million times, but it never fails to make me smile and try to sing along!

12 days of Christmas -- Indian style

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owK5tHjL0aE

Quote of the day

Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets.

~ Gregory David Roberts

How I spend my days...

The Twenty Ten list

1. Snowboarding

2. Eiffel Tower/Louvre

3. Black finger nail polish

4. Cadbury World

5. Chips only once a week

6. Seville - April Fair

7. Long hair

8. One concert - any!

9. Sing "almost heaven, west Virginia" in Virginia

10. Holiday with the family

The cold is here

Pseudo-legalese at it's worst

People who feel they must inflate their prose, diligently combing the thesaurus to select — sigh — precisely the wrong polysyllabic clinker.

Imagine, if you will, two roommates at Thesaurus U.:

"I aspire to obtain a beverage. The vending machine is where my path leads."
"I wish to accompany you, since I have assembled a myriad of coins."
"I possess coins, as well. Let's embark."

The Secret of Happiness

A boy goes to a king to learn the secret of happiness. The king gives the boy a teaspoon full of oil and asks him walk around the entire palace without allowing the oil to spill. The boy went through different rooms and gardens and staircases. When he returned, the king asked him what he saw. The boy confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil.

This is a famous story which can be interpreted in many ways. I look at it as a lesson in living in the moment; about enjoying the journey without worrying about how you got there or the destination. You dive head on into the present; you live more, you do more, you learn more.

“We are here and it is now. Further than that all, human knowledge is moonshine.” – H. Mencken.

Hot or cold?

Which is better—to walk into a cool house on a hot day or to walk into a warm house on a cold day?

Interests...

Of the many interests I have ever had, writing is the cheapest.

Your dose of Pon and Zi

Saving the environment

I'm not really one those people who go around trying to save the world one piece of non recyclable foil at a time, but I do do my small part. I switch off all lights, reuse plastic bags, recycle etc.

But I have decided one thing - say no to dishwashers. It takes an hour and fifteen minutes to wash 5 plates and four spoons. Imagine how much water that is! And so if you're ever tempted to use a dishwasher out of extreme laziness, please remember this -- one load is 40 litres of water!

Picture of the day

Wave tube. Unfortunately, I don't remember where it's from...

Just like that...

Been filling out job applications...

How much does it matter, if at all, that texting and twittering treat spelling convention with little respect? Please limit your answer to 250 words

In a world where people have so much to say, it’s a wonder that they can manage to fit all of it within 160 or 140 characters. The only way to do this was to create a new language altogether, one of abbreviations and symbols -- textspeak. You became ‘u’, what became ‘wot’.

With the popularity of this form of communication, even people with impeccable English followed out of convenience. The debate essentially revolves around the newer generations. While older people may follow the texting language, it’s not a problem because their spellings are more established. The argument is that younger people aren’t encouraged to learn how to spell correctly. While this new language was essentially started out of convenience and speed, it is also a major cultural and style factor. A smiley is ‘cooler’ than saying thank you.

Personally, I do not see this as a problem. While in school, even though fourth grade students may have mobile phones or Twitter accounts and use texting language, this is not allowed in class work or exams. Younger people who do not know where to draw the line will learn the harder way at school.

Letters and phone conversations are as antiquated as cursive writing, or phone booths. These days you don't email pictures to Grandma, you post them on Facebook and she logs on to look at them. We need to accept that this new-gen language isn’t going away for a while and realise that there’s no reason the two can’t continue to co-exist.

Many deaths have been confidently predicted. Here are a few: paper, newspapers, history, spam (both), plasma tv, cinema, cigarettes, war, books and the blogosphere. So far, they’re all surviving. Please make two new predictions: one for something that seems to be doomed but in your view isn’t; and one for something that seems to be secure but in your view isn’t. Please limit your answer to 250 words

Social Networking Sites (SNS) - everyone is on it. If you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, you might as well fall off the face of the earth. Though we’re addicted and maybe even obsessed with such SNS, Internet gurus predict their fall soon. There’s always something new that will come along and grab everyone’s attention, and anyway how are these companies making any money?

But I respectfully disagree. I think that we need to embrace social media as a new and very important form of communication. If we want to target a younger demographic, this is the most sure fire way to effectively reach them. Maybe Facebook and Twitter will lose popularity as have older sites like Hi5 or orkut. But social networking sites have now become the newest, easiest and cheapest form of communication. You can contact friends, chat, upload pictures and videos, play games – all from one page.

However, when we speak of magazines, I have a different view. “In general, only three out of every 10 new magazines make it to their fourth anniversaries,” Slate Magazine’s Guy Short wrote in 1999. While sales are down and we hear that magazine giants like Condé Nast are closing doors on certain publications, experts says that people will never be able to let go of their paper magazines.

I am of the strong opinion that people are always looking for a cheaper deal. They would prefer to go online and read celebrity news on PerezHilton.com than buy a copy of The Sun. One wouldn’t want to spend 20 pounds on a Cosmopolitan when they could read the online version, albeit restricted articles. I think this is one medium that’s looking at a very unstable future.

How to waste time doing absolutely nothing and not feel guilty about it

Step 1:

If you're not going to learn about social networking now, when will you ever? Facebook, Twitter, orkut and some blogging. It's good to do in depth research and read every feed, photo comment, note, post, who's dating who etc. Two hours of this and you will easily pass any Social Media test.

Step 2:

Read about Balloon Boy. I mean, it's Parenting Skills 101.

Step 3:

How does Skype make money? It's worth finding out.

Step 4:

When exactly did Meredith get back with McDreamy? Must watch a few episodes of season 3 just because you won't be able to sleep for the next week if you don't know.

Step 5:

You must learn about different cultures around. Spend some time learning abt the Basque region in Spain or the IT industry in Korea.

Step 6:

It's never too late to clean up the garden. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. And you don't want to piss God off.

Step 7:

Exercise is healthy. Dance around a bit.

Ahh, now you are ready to start studying.

Autumn

The one season I wish we had in Goa - autumn. Don't get me wrong, I'm a summer girl all the way. But the colours are just so beautiful, I could be an autumn girl too!