I am off for a week to the land of letters, latex and lakes AKA Kottayam.
Before that let me leave you guys with some interesting news..
A recent study has reveled that how much a mother eats at the time of conception may influence whether she gives birth to a boy or a girl. You can read the report here. If anyone can read and understand the study please drop in your comments. Is this study based on numbers and statistics? If 10% of all accidents are due to drunken driving, does that mean that there is 90% chance of an accident if you are NOT DRUNK? Also studies have proven that 62.765% of all statistics are wrong. lol
I am going to stop watching IPL. Why? They got plans to ban cheerleaders. OH ! now you guys know why I was hooked to IPL on Friday ! (Trust me I don’t know who won that day). Some say its degrading cricket (the bookies, the money and the hype is not) I have a few suggestions.
Let them air the cheerleaders after IPL is over. May be a different show altogether.
Or I have another opinion. Let the cheerleaders be on Sony channel while Set MAX air IPL with ‘No distractions’. . So that people ‘who don’t like cricket’ or whose ‘patience run out watching cricket’ can watch Sony. (hey that sounds like someone I know. J )
Here is the international take on this issue. The Australian. (Read on how Kamasutra and Khajuraho temples are mentioned. I am still wondering where the moral police were when a couple at Bangalore was harassed and when couples were roughed up at Valentines day!
Ban seems to be the favorite word among the politicians. They would just love to ban books, ban people, ban smoking on screen, ban cartoons, ban cheerleaders,ban cola, ban blogs, ban movies, ban songs and ban anything that comes in their way.
I came across this awesome site Animoto where you can create super cool videos.
Its free to create 30Sec videos, but you got to pay to create full length ones. You can however upload your 30sec free videos to you-tube. Try it out ! Its simple and super cool.
Check out the video I created out of my Coorg trip. (turn on your speakers).
I am not a diehard cricket fan. Let me rephrase :I don’t watch cricket at all. But the recent hype about IPL got me into a search on Friday, also known as the “The search for the lost channel”.
Nita has written about how she got hooked to IPL, while Vijay is irritated about the intervening ads during the match on friday. Its irritating I agree.
Now back to the topic “The search of the lost channel”. I can’t remember the last time I watched something on Set MAX. Do I have that channel? I am not sure. I browse through some 100 channels (many of them repeating) to find that lost channel. And I couldn’t just find it.
I reached out for my phone to call the cable guy. ‘Wait a min’ may be he will think of me of some ‘hardcore cricket fan’ (which I don’t want to be known as) or some dumbo who can’t tune his TV right. (most probably the second one). There I go, browsing through all the channels to find out that one lost channel. (I forgot to mention that all this started with Balu giving me the link to streaming IPL video and I was like ‘why waste bandwidth when I have the TV right in front of me’)
Now I went back to tuning part and there it is !!! a dark blue screen which says “Set max is available on 70”.
What?
What does that mean?
I keep on changing the frequency (manually, so that I wont miss out the channel accidently) and I finally found the ‘lost channel’.
Now you may be wondering why I write a post on this.
I don’t watch cricket.
I have never written about cricket in this blog (although I have said “how my patience ran out watching it once).
I want to write something about cricket. !!!
Now you might ask me the question that many have asked me before “WHAT? You don’t watch cricket???????”
Where are they? When I was a kid, I used to chase them around. They were beautiful, with lovely and vibrant colors. For past few years I never noticed that they were missing. I can’t find a single one out there in the garden now. The flowers look empty without them.
I asked my Dad regarding this and he says that they are almost extinct in my area, because of the heavy usage of pesticides used around.
Thats just sad.
When was the last time you saw some in your garden?
On the way we stopped at KRS dam, the site had a marvelous view with natural beauty and the mammoth man-made structure. Here are some photos of the machinery.
On our way back to the busy life in Bangalore we stopped at Rajeev Gandhi wild Life sanctuary. Although we were late to take a ride in the Park safari, we talked with the guards there to know that there is little chance to spot any animals except for deers. I didn’t believe him at first, then I saw this
I love driving, and I enjoy reading the funny one liners (you can’t really call those oneliners !!) on the back of trucks, pickups and cabs.Here are a few signs. (that we don’t really need , yet we find them on vehicles.)
Your one, my one Ours one. (That will make it three !I guess he meant to say we two, ours two.. )
NO SMOKING ( No smoking sign board on a truck?, trust me its not a petroleum carrier either)
NO Overtaking (what does this mean?.. that I am not supposed to overtake this vehicle?)
If you can read this, you are too close. (I admit this is cool).
Sound Horn. (Why do we need a sign like this?).
Horn please okay (This is the most common one of all.).
Power Break ( I am sure he meant Power Brake).
No hand signal.
Do you have anything that I would have missed out?
The coffee plantations in Coorg mesmerize you with its aroma and splendid beauty. Being from Kerala and have stayed in the middle of a coffee plantation (in Peermade Idukku Distric, near Thekkady) for years, this experience was not new. But this brought back memories of the beautiful past.
We opted for a home stay to get closer to nature. But what was in store for us was surprising.
The endless insects that crawled all over, the leeches (surprisingly none of us got bitten by them) and the storm of insects all over made me closer to nature.
Tip #1
To get rid of a leech biting its ‘heart out’ on your body, (1) Apply a pinch of salt or (2) Use a lighter or a match stick and bring the flame close to the leech, it will let go !
Never forcefully remove the leech from your body as it injects a chemical to your body and the blood wont clot.
Due to an anticoagulant (hirudin) that leeches secrete, bites may bleed more than a normal wound after the leech is removed
Try stamping on the leech you could see blood spurting all over. (I sound sadist huh?, well its my blood !)
Tip #2
How to get rid of insects?
Turn off the lights. Yes, as simple as that. The lights attract all the flies all around the plantations as there wouldn’t be any light anywhere near. I remember the times when I used to stay at the place in Peermade without any lights for 3 days in a row. The moment I turn on any of the lights it would attract thousand of insects and they invade the house!
However, during daytime you are at their mercy.
Talking about the stay in Coorg, its no big difference from Peermade. There were hundreds of insects trying to find a place to hide in my room, bags and all over. Finally we turned off the lights to chase it away. That didn’t however stop the visits from a dozen millipedes.J
But it was all worth it in the morning when I got up early to go trekking and fishing. The sight outside our room was splendid! The thick fog engulfed the morning rays and the visibility was very low.
The trip to Coorg was rewarding, the climate, the people, the endless plantations and insects that crawled all over my body made me much closer to nature than never before.
It gave some sort of a revelation that we are just aliens invading their space.
One of our stops was at the Tibetian Colony in Coorg. With all the issues surrounding, Tibet now, I wondered how they reached the Southern State of Karnataka from their cold hills of Tibet which they call home.
History
(Nyingmapa Monastery)
The monastery was established by Penor Rinpoche in 1963, following his 1959 exit from Tibet. The initial structure was a temple constructed from bamboo, covering an area of approximately eighty square feet. As of 2007, the lodging facilities alone for the school include three buildings with over 150 rooms. (Source Wikipedia)
(Golden Temple)
(Woman praying outside the temple)
Bylekuppe
ByleKuppe is one of the largest Tibetan settlements in India, around 16000 refugees and nearly 6000 monks and nuns. Set up in 1960, Bylakuppeis a small town situated 6 kms from Kushalnagar or 42 Kms from Mercara, the place has several monastries and the famous among them are the Great Gompa of Sera Je, Sera Mey and the Namdroling monastery.
The temple and the monks all around gave me a feeling that I was in Thailand again. (I have been to Thailand once). This was indeed a mind-blowing experience.
To be contd.
(All pictures taken with Sony DSC W55, thanks to new wordpress I couldnt insert the images properly)
lol
