Quoted:

"It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs, the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores, the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta, the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds, the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too."

The Philosopher's Path - http://www.japannavigator.com/2007/04/08/sakura-in-kyoto-philosophers-path/

'Nokia nervosa' is a condition wherein you are so overwhelmed by the events that unfold that your fingers are agigatedly trying to capture the moments -- for savouring later.

It's all about the later and delayed gratification? What happened about living in the moment? :)

Whoever said that the blank page draws blood knew what she was talking about. When you are looking for a perfect write, the perfect think disappears. So, write anyways? Better than watching vacuum take shape and dictate terms to the wannabe. When you write for a profession, why does writing for a hobby walk out of the door? I sincerely miss that; is it reticence? That one is always writing for an audience. I don't want to write for an audience - just for me, this time, without worrying or analyzing the Target Audience and the style and the presentation and the content. Enuf. To be incorrect and spontaneous.
Asafa Powell - the short distance runner, a Jamaican (most of them are from Jamaica, I wonder why?) and his life, the wisdom of crowds bringing in the next generation of social networking - ecommerce plus networking, where crowds have the power to bring down prices. Some inspirational moments.
And, then the father of all moments was trying to analyze what went into 'The Great Sardine Run' off the coast of Africa. The first time I read of bait-ball tours and diving expeditions where people went to watch the sharks and the dolphins make merry while the Sardine shoal ran in kilometers…

A pair of denims. Painted with flowers or dinosaurs (the way I like them, especially on one leg), or simply faded, blue and original. The Levis or the Pepes, the workhorses . Buying a pair has always been quite a nerve-wracking experience for me. And even more intimidating is the lexicon: tight fit, loose hip (joints?), regular (straight or gay?), bootleg, and so on…you suddenly discovered that what you thought was your waist was actually ..umm..a barrel ? and what was a hip ain’t 'hip' anymore.

Have always prayed that the shop assistants were the kind type or carried a manual on jean fits. Instead, all they did was to make me feel terribly archaic and outmoded. I soon learnt to mistrust these shop folks – especially, when they looked at the extra, unintended crease on one leg -- when you’ve tried the clothing on -- and tossed it away nonchalantly as if it were invisible and could easily be ironed out, provided one struck the right pose. What’s worse was that they actually make you believe that, too. You walk out smiling only to go home and discover that your body and the pair of denims are waging an irreconcilable war. Sometimes, it even led to some additional Yoga…

Voila: Enter the savior of all jean-tongue challenged folks like me – the denim specialist. I read about these distinguished folks in the FT the other day, a breed who actually uses your leg as a reference and not some mean-lean looking mannequin’s.

ravi neenu agasadinda mareyagi hodare indu ballali kattele tumbi nee odadhe...

what is the best first sentence in a short story or a novel that you’ve ever read?


- picked up from edrants.

Walls adorned with rows of tiny, burning lamps
Tiled, ornate roofs and clean, cold floors
Sandy exteriors
Flag posts and a bejeweled idol that you can gaze at for hours (if the priests are bribed enough)
The smell of incense and flowers and sandalwood paste
The feel of coarse ash
The sounds of firecrackers as offering to the dweller within

- An experience that resists replication outside that state.

Mizhiyariyaathe vannu nee mizhiyoonjaalil
Kanavariyaathe etho kinaavupole
Manamariyaathe paariyen manasarasoram
Pranayanilaakkili nee shahaana paadi..
Ithuvare vannunarnnidaathoru puthuraagam
Evide marannu njaanee priyaanuraagam..

a craving for chocolate always gets the better of me. despite fairly sincere attempts at stifling it. an entire bar of Mars demolished in the span of 3 mins, brandied Lindts with a magician's blurry swirl of wrists (or sleeves), home made choc mousse in the breadth of a whisper, and, a torso, similarly colored, in...a timeless moment...


It's no wonder that Ms. Cocoa Channel had this to say about chocolate:

when times are good
when times are bad
i'll eat my chocolate
with my chocolate
coated in chocooate
and topped with chocolate

After all
beauty is only skin deep
and nothing else matters
when there is chocolate.

What is it about Korean films and their cult status? (curious and ignorant)

The Korean steamboat and the associated ritual of eating from a steaming boiler pot embedded at the center of a table at any Korean (or ‘hot pot’) restaurant is an experience worth smacking about. And when your hosts take the pains to explain the origins of this dish/style of cooking in Mongolian China (the Japanese variant being Shabu Shabu – also a striptease act in some parts of Japan, they say), it makes for a surprisingly steamy, finger-licking, smoky sailing trip indeed! The most succulent prawns, baby oysters, bak choy, squid, meatballs, tofu and wontons simmering in a juicy brew of hot chicken stock are cooked in the shortest time possible and then taken out in steaming ladles and deposited into a creamy bed of peanut or sambal sauce and eaten with pickled cabbage. A communal event of bonding…

Hope is a good thing. And, no good thing ever dies.

i can't ride a bicycle. I adore Lance Armstrong, though. Not just for his attitude, performance, and the way he beat cancer, but for the inspiration he's turned out to be.

I watched the program, Choppers, on Discovery LifeStyle the other day. The guys there were building a bike for Lance - a black and yellow beauty made to look like a bicycle, but "meaner"! Every aspect of the machine was created after careful thought and tied to the owner's career and personality in some way. Watching them craft it was some experience.

LiveStrong!

Déjà do: The feeling my hairdresser has given me this cut before.

The taste of dim sum soup, when served by an old, doddering lady in a small Chinese tea house, steaming hot and with bits of spring onion and roasted shrimps floating on the top is simply incomparable. When the rains lashed the city in the afternoons, slipping out to Aunty’s shop for a hot bowl completed the romanticism I associated with rainy afternoons. I would step out into the downpour, holding a large red umbrella, and pick up my bowl and head for the nearest table. Wisps of the aromatic vapors mingled with the smell of grass and fresh rain, while Aunty doled out the dish by the dozens. Dim sum soup and Chinese tea was all they sold and theirs was the most popular shop in that particular hawker center behind Shenton Way.

Reading and writing Malayalam.

I've embarked on similar exercises before and given up mid-way coz of the lack of a good book. Something i want to attempt again. Only if i had that elusive tome...

surprising discovery: that Waiting for Godot was first staged in a prison. And, the prisoners laughed right through the enacting..!!