34. When pictures speak

Devil decided to bug me again, and tagged me. An 'Angel' in disguise I should say, for that brought me here, back to blogging after a looong gap.

* For the 20 questions that have been asked, write down your honest answer (in a few words).
* Type your answers, one by one, on an exactly-as-written-on-paper basis, in the search bar of any image search engine that you prefer (Flickr / Google Image Search etc.).
* You MUST MAY use the same search engine for all 20 answers.
* For every answer, only from the FIRST page of the search result, save exactly ONE image.
* Once you have a list of 20 images, each corresponding to one answer, compose a post in line with this post that you are reading right now.

I tag: Hari, Crazy, Lx, Multiboy, Chrony


1. My age:


twen'teen' (yea...i still refuse to be an adult)

2. I am passionate about:

The Living Word!

3. My favorite place:
ma room(Ah!...)


4. I have a thing for:
dairy milk


5. My comfort zone:(read relief zone)
(Need i mention?)

6. My favorite animal:
chick(en)(Yumm....)


7. My kind of art:

abstract

8. The town where I was brought up:

Trivandrum

9. The town where I live:
Calicut

10. A past pet:
love birds(RIP...sniff!)


11. A past love:
sigh(Dont remind me...)


12. Current love:
Shhh!(Ha! you thought i was gonna say?:P)

13. Best friend's nickname:
The Devil(Do I have an option?:P)

14. I want:
More(Am I being greedy?)

15. Screen name:
Blah


16. A bad habit:
Nose-picking(Yuck!..disgusting)


17. A dream:
Landing on Moon(Will it ever become a reality?)

18. First job:
Structural(I think....)

19. I miss:
School Days(I never thought I ever will...seriously)

20. What am I doing right now:
Typing(Duh!)

33. 40 Blues

I am nearing 40…and it’s nagging me by the day…Yes, I’m confused…I’m worried. Lines (of concern) have already started showing themselves on my temples…. The thought never was a matter of concern to me –though it used to bother others pretty much (…..my parents, bro, grandparents, uncles, aunts and the rest in the list of people who know nothing better than to worry over you…Ya ya..i know it’s all cos they love me). But now, things have changed; I cannot close my eyes to this anymore.

The stubborn pointer refuses to budge to the right. After weeks of steady decline, now it is as though it’s stuck at 40.If what they say is true, my worry can be rightly justified, for I ought to hit 50 within a span of the next 7 months –a virtually impossible thing for me to accomplish. How the heck am I gonna make it??

Apparently, only then, can I get placed in a decent core company from this college!!!What the *beep*??!
Rumors--true or not, I being the only one in this precarious position among my colleagues, I really need to work on this… all by myself….

So what am I supposed to do? Should I change my college, and go to another where there are no such restrictions? Or should I ditch my branch and take up some software job, and prove a traitor to my branch? Or will I be compelled to go for higher studies so that I’ll have more time to reach 50? Or should I bribe my medical examiner to switch the 4 with a 5? Or should I sabotage the damn weighing machine which refuses to budge? Or should I just eat and grow fat???

32. Tah Dah!

Yeah! Finally after days of contemplation, and battling against acute laziness, my blog decided to shed its maiden skin!:D

Though it has been quite sometime since the “to do or not to do” process began, the peer pressure(from fella bloggers) was so immense that I finally decided to do it!(It would be improper at this juncture, if I fail to mention multimenon who used to yammer away about the “dull-mundane-out-dated” template of my blog, every now and then, as though he had absolutely nothing else to talk :P)

For those of you who were aware of the fact that I had attended a course on photoshop during the vacations and are nodding approvingly thinking that it had done me good, well hold on…for I never had any role in the creation of this new template:P
All I did was coax Leela(a photohsop whiz) well enough, until finally she gave in and sent me the template as a belated B’day gift:D…Talking about Leela, she is this friend of mine, who I like so much for the ways in which she makes me feel a lot heavier(:P)Though she looks like a 13 yr old kid, her writing skills have made some people wonder whether she’s a 30 yr old litt grad!Yeah that’s enough of publicity for her I guess;)

And talking about birthdays, my ‘big’ day was on 12th August, so if anybody else feels like sending me similar B’day gifts, do send ’em ASAP before 1 more candle gets added to my B’Day cake;)

31. Onam ’08-When traditions contravene …

Okay, first things first,some intro…

Onam is the biggest festival in the Indian state of Kerala. Onam Festival falls during the Malayali month of Chingam (Aug - Sep) and marks the homecoming of legendary King Mahabali. Intricately decorated Pookalam, ambrosial Onasadya, breathtaking Snake Boat Race and exotic Kaikottikali dance are some of the most remarkable features of Onam - the harvest festival in Kerala.

So there came the much awaited Onam ‘vacations’(that is, if you can call 4 holidays, including the weekend, a vacation :( ), and I made my way to the capital city of God’s own country. But what awaited me there was not any of the aforementioned breathtaking, exotic stuff…

To begin with, my house was in a state of extortionate mess. Our housemaid who has a knack of ditching our household at the most crucial times, did it again---just when I was home to enjoy the hols. Hmph! And the result –I had the honours of spending my hols tidying up the whole place and helping mom with kitchen work!

After the rain-drenched month of Karkidakam, with its privations, Chingam is a welcome month for people in the state of Kerala. The festival is the harbinger of spring — signalling the start of the harvest season.

But the way onam this time turned out was like, it might have made Mr Mahabali wonder if the calendar system in the ‘paathalalokam’(Hell-world) had gone haywire and had sent him here in the middle of the Karkidakam. Yeah man! It was raining cats and dogs during the very first day of Onam!!! But the cats and dogs apparently decided to give it a break and the next two days it was sweltering hot, sooo scorching hot that it made me wanna run back to my cool, cozy hostel room(yea for once the campus seemed to be appealing:O)

During Onam, the feast and festive mood of the people, dressed in their best, is conside

red reminiscent of the prosperous and truthful life of the subjects during Bali's flawless reign. People wear new clothes (Vastra) during Onam. The significance of wearing new clothes is about making the heart new by removing all bad thoughts and feelings.

Talking about new clothes, thanks to my spree of wearing new clothes during the last one week, I exhausted all my reserves of new dresses. And so on the big day(Thiruvonam), I found myself wearing, an old pair of jeans and my bro’s old t-shirt :|

What’s the new dress for anyway, when one is stranded at home. Well, dad developed this cervical spondylosis all of a sudden and he is to wear this neck collar for a couple of weeks. He is supposed to wear it 24*7 other than in bed. But because of his ‘acute shyness’ to walk around with the collar, he takes it off whenever other people are in the vicinity. This gave mom no option, but to have him house arrested. Needless to say that meant my house arrest as well :|

Onam epitomises the newfound vigour and enthusiasm of the season, and is celebrated with traditional fervour with visits to temples, family get-togethers and lots of merrymaking. Carnival of Onam lasts for ten days and brings out the best of Kerala culture and tradition.

Ah! but all the get-togethers that happened was that of the 3 of us(Mom,Dad pinne njaanum:D) assembled in front of the idiot box, from morning till evening :( and all the culture and tradition that I got to witness was that shown in the mallu movies, which seemed to have undergone a time dilation –for, the supposed to be 2 hr long movies didn't seem to end even after 4 full hours painfully ticked away. But one couldn’t expect more when they show bits and pieces of filmstrips in between the seemingly endless chain of ads.

Another speciality of onam is the ‘Onasadya’ or lunch, which consists of at least a dozen of pure vegetarian dishes, eaten from a leaf. There is a saying, "Kanam Vittum Onam Unnanam" which means "We should have the Onam lunch even if we have to sell all our properties" which shows the importance of the grand lunch on the Thiruvonam day. Even the poorest of the poor manage to find something for himself to celebrate the national festival in his own humble way.

Our first ‘Onasadya’ was from a neighbour’s housewarming party. It was as if they were having a non-veg fiesta out there –chicken, beef, fish…… That must have been the first non-veg onasadya that I ever had. Poor dad(a pure veg) had to adjust with just rice and daal. And for dinner that night, we had kanji(porridge) :( No complaints though, cos I know that it would backfire and would get me landed up in the kitchen. However we didn’t have the heart to screw up the Thiruvonam day’s onasadya as well. And I spent the evening, grating coconuts and cutting vegetables. Grating coconut…hmmm…that is one helluva task! Compared to it, filing at mech workshop seemed like a piece of cake…at least you had guys helping you out with it.

Carnival of Onam encompasses a spectrum of fascinating activities. Traditional people of Kerala even go out of their way to celebrate the festival exhaustive of stipulated customs and traditions in full grandiose. The mood of the people is upbeat all through the carnival and the high spirited people of Kerala are ever ready to indulge in merriment.

Yeah, so guess my Onam was indeed a ‘spectrum of fascinating activities’, lazying at home. But wait! What’s with all the whining and bickering? Isn’t being at home with your loved ones after 2 whole months, and being able to chat away to your old friends without having to worry about your phone balance, one celebration in itself? That was one lovely Onam after all;)

30. The last sting!

Bzzzz…zz.z….
Time:11:55pm
Location: an undisclosed beehive, in an undisclosed place.
Bzzzzzzz…….

The hive is buzzing with activity. The QueenB commands her workers to do this and to do that. Mr. B was summoned up and given orders to explore new sites for nectar-flowers. The exploring-new-flower-patches work has to be done at night, in the dark, without taking the risk of being spied by the bees from the enemy base-comb. And this was Mr. B’s first work, outside the comb, at night…Oh yeah…he was a bit excited and nervous of course…

So Mr. B takes off from his base-comb at 00:00hrs and sets out for his mission. It’s a pitch black no moon night, and normal visibility is quite poor. Mr. B switches on to night vision mode and scans the entire area. Soon it spots a shimmer of light near the rose shrub patches in ‘quadrant nine’. The light seemed to be coming from a building and Mr. B hovers around the building to find out the exact location of the light source, wondering how there could possibly be light after the sun had set.

Soon Mr. B reaches a window of the lighted room, and peeps in. Holy Honey! This is where the sun comes to take rest after setting eh?–reduce into a bulbous shape and hang there just like that?? Hmmm…interesting…

Mr. B extends his gaze further into the room and spots a female homo sapien reclining on a bed…Is she asleep? Ha! Hope so…humans are our enemies…they steal our hard earned honey…cruel heartless creatures…Hey but no, she is not asleep. She’s doing something with a ‘TV’ like thingy…but no, this is not the idiot box…I’ve seen enough of ‘em around. This looks like something else, and I think she’s reading from it…Ah! who cares?…let her do her job while I go fetch some honey…so…where are the flowers?

Mr. B enters the room through a small cleft in the wire meshed window, circumnavigates the whole place, and spots a bunch of bright red juicy flowers. Hey this one’s planted in a fancy pot. Never seen one like this before. These human females...they are so funny and fancy. Oops I musn’t linger around here for long. Should test these nectar samples and report it to her highness ASAP. Oh honey! here I come… and Mr. B darts towards the flowers when, Ouch! My fangs! Yuck! what is this thing? This aint real flowers…eek plastic!! Grr...dumb female! Hmph! looks like I entered the wrong territory. Gotta get outta here and go get some real honey.

Mr. B circles around the whole room, to find an exit. Oh no! How did I get in here? How do I get out? Mr. B keeps circling round and round and round till it gets exhausted...Low honey-level! low honey-pressure!…gonna crash…and lower and lower it went until THUD! Mr. B crashed his last and final crash…

Lying on the floor, taking his last few breaths, Mr. B reflects his whole life. Flashes from his life pass by through his mind...childhood, fun moments, loved ones, high and low times of life, the human attack on their base-comb…it regretted even on its death bed, not having taken any revenge on the human species…it felt its stinger twitch and sighed at having made no use of its powerful weapon at the rear. Suddenly the world around him began to quiver…it felt a mild tremor…OMG! what’s this now? An earthquake? Oh No! it’s the human. She’s got out of the bed…and Gulp! She’s heading this way…I’ll be crushed under her feet…What am I gonna do??? But all of a sudden, as the human feet neared the bee, his face broke into a sinister grin………

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

I was lying flat on my bed after a day’s work of chatting, orkutting, and blog hopping…My 4.8kg lappy on my tummy, and my head rested against 2 pillows, I was trying to read myself to sleep. I was struck by the writers' block yet again, and hence had downloaded a dozen of arbit blogs, so that I could get inspired to write again!

The sweet ‘honey-heavy dew of slumber’ was slowly descending upon me…just enough to lull me into sleep. It’s not very often that I get to get good sleep. Sleep often comes as a reluctant visitor, after sessions of twisting and turning around in the bed. In that blissful slumberous state, when I was all too eager to give myself to Morpheus’ hand(dun misunderstand me...its just an expression, I recently learnt from The Hindu literary section) I slowly moved to turn off the light, and was returning to the beckoning bed when, OUCH! Oh my foot!Aaaaaaa...........

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

That was yet another of my numerous encounters with the poly-legged/winged freaks. In the subsequent days, two other XplorerBs followed suit and met with the same fate as their predecessor…Also my foot ended up having 3 hideous swellings…for the next couple of days….grr…DumBs!!!

29. All for a guy?!!

I've been lying lazily in this same posture for the past 50 minutes watching amusedly the antics of my roomy. She has been in front of the mirror for the past 45 minutes or so…(please note that this is her second rendezvous with Mr. mirror today, having had a similar but a lengthier session earlier in the morning, when I was just taking my first few winks of the day). My other roomy having gone for some practice much earlier, i was left alone as this roomy's sole make-up-commentator(Sheesh! just my luck!!). Got tired replying to her never ending "How do I look?"(What can I say?),"Is this necklace too gaudy"(How do I know??),"Is this 3 inch long red stone studded ear-ring too much?"(did she really expect me to be honest with her???)"Does this hairstyle suit me or that?"(lol...who's she asking to? me eh? me who chops off my hair every now and then not knowing what to do with it!!)

Pfft!! thought that I was done with the viva session in the morning itself.But I was wrong ...
there comes another volley of questions...Oh no! not again! Why me??"Can you put the eyeliner
for me?"..Oh No!I'm getting outa here.....

"You will understand it when you get a guy"...Miss know-it-all+have-experienced-it-all starts off her 'how-to-be-a-good-gf-exhortation'!"Wait and see when you get a guy, and you go out with him, you will be doing the same thing"...

Ya right! I close my eyes; a faint smile plays somewhere around my lips... Ya right; you can say that again....

PS:to my roomy if u ever happen to read this...I chumma posted this here.. I was running out of topics for blog.. and couldn't help it watching you doing the same stuff for all 3 days...No harm/insult intended k?? Cheers! :D