!!!

Saying nothing sometimes says the most

Emily Dickinson

Happy

I am just really grateful that this song exists..my go to song to liven up my mood.. Thank you Pharrell.

Wildest dreams

'Wildest dreams'' currently on the repeat mode in my ipod.

Though I like the original version too, I think Taylor's rendition of Wildest dreams here is pure bliss to the ears. Watch this once and dare you say she can't sing...Enjoy!!

the original:

You make my dreams come true

You make my dreams come true by Hall and Oates has been in my playlist for more than 10 years and still I cant get enough of this song. BTW Are you reminded of duck tales when you hear this song..?? well this song came way before duck tales..maybe the duck tales track was inspired from this one.

Enjoy!

2 Cellos

Have been a fan of this duo for sometime now and I think their cover of the Pirates of the Caribbean is one of their best one yet..

Troublemaker

I feel Olly Murs is the actual troublemaker here since he makes her lose her job in all those scenarios. Haha..

Nice beat, great lyrics and a peppy plot..especially like the way he gestures whenever the word 'heart-attack' comes in the MV. I only wish that they had left out the feat by Florida. Totally not needed at all imo.

Enjoy!

Everglow

Everglow will remain my all time fav Coldplay. In times of melancholy and reminiscence, there is nothing else to beat this track!!

Enjoy!

Btw, happy that Coldplay's paradise reached 1B views in YT recently.

Well done Banksy!

Oh, I have loved him before but I love him more now... Well done Banksy!

Off the bandwagon

When the year started I had every intention of blogging regularly and making sure this place remains active. Then boom, the cambridge analytica thing happened and put me off my blogging mojo. I had actually jumped off the facebook bandwagon a few years back but had kept my profile only deactivated. The moment I saw the news I went and deleted my profile. My mojo still hasn't comeback but I have been giving some thoughts on my blogging style. So I will be making some changes to this place and keep it more subtle(!) or even shut the entire thing and continue blogging in a new place, but whatever it is I will continue on writing my tidbits somewhere for sure. So back with an update in a month or two.

BTW, immediately after deleting my fb account I coudln't help but recall what Ron Swanson did. Well, what can I say, Ron is the man!!

Over the moon

I had the best surprise ever when my niece handed me this card today.. She is just eight but had planned an elaborate surprise for me on my birthday and kept it a secret for almost a month. I was overjoyed when she handed me this handmade card and the gift box. 

 The card opens to a pop up cake with the HBD message!

 The box had scrolls with birthday messages from the family!

I was astonished and almost teared up! Thank you so much my dearie .. I am so giddy and over the moon ! What a fantastic start to the day...

Spot on,Banksy

Crocheting after a long time..

A couple of months back there arose a need for a pair of white gloves for my niece's school function. We first thought of getting a new pair from the local shops but if you do a little math of probability,factoring in around a hundred other students also looking to buy a pair of white gloves that evening, our chance of finding one in a shop was close to zero. So instead of hopping shops we took the DIY route.

I knew to crochet (self-taught) but I haven't crocheted anything in over a year and especially never crocheted a glove before yet I jumped at the opportunity to make a pair..mainly to see whether I still remembered how to make atleast a dc stitch.

I chose a simple design from youtube (where else!) which used only the single crochet stitch(for the novice,this is the most basic stitch in the world of crocheting).

I opted to do the cuffs in double crochet stitches as it would save time and also looked a bit pretty. I never did like the single crochet stitches much.

In a couple of hours I had the pair of gloves completed and all ends sewn in.

Its not perfect,there were a few hiccups while doing the fingers but not bad for a first attempt I would say. It fit perfectly too and did the task in the school function next morning. So thats that, I might not be crocheting anything anytime soon so atleast this little diy experiment reminded me that I still remember the basics in crocheting. TC.

A peek into the terrace garden

I dont know what clicked, whether it was the climate or the fresh homemade compost we added or the quality of the new plants we bought from shop or a combo of all three.The plants flourished into life with the onset of winter and then there was no stopping them.They really made up plenty for the barren state of the garden during the summer months.

I have been meaning to do a detailed post on the garden produce but couldn't do it any soon.. so I will resort to just showing some pictures for now.. 

Some of the herb harvest...

Fenugreek/Methi

Mint

Pirandai

snake gourd

French beans

Add to that the flat runner beans and the guavas from the ground garden, we were very much in content with the result we got for our work in the garden. I am ever grateful. Will end the post with a bit of color. This is just a teeny sample of what our orange rose bush was producing in a day in this winter.

Pretty cute..aren't they?

Triple Bonanza

An extraordinary thing happened recently in the lives of wannabe amateur stargazers. Yes, I am talking about the occurrence of Super blood blue moon along with a lunar eclipse on January 31st.I was eyeing to witness this once in a lifetime phenomena for over a month then but on the d day to my dismay the horizon was full of clouds.The last time such a combo of events occurred with respect to the moon was a little over 150 years ago..then you can imagine how much disappointed I was.

There was no sight of the moon until 6.40 pm as the clouds completely obscured the moon and until 7pm we were able to see only a glimpse of the blood moon now and then.The news papers and the sites mentioned the Blood moon would arise by 6.35pm and the lunar eclipse will be occurring until 7.40 pm. Luckily for us our waiting in the terrace did not go waste.A little after 7pm the moon rose above the clouds into the clear sky giving a glorious view of the super blood moon. Then what followed was a fantastic moon viewing session and we watched the rest of the lunar eclipse in awe and admiration.

I took a series of pictures.. here is a few of the pictures that came out okay as the shadow of the earth started moving away.

Almost half way...

and the brightness of the moon was increasing too..

almost going to be over..

anytime now..

Its just sheer luck that we had a clear sky atleast for the later half of the eclipse and I recall there has not been this clear a view of the eclipse happen in the recent years. I felt very privileged to witness this phenomena to tell the truth. It is indeed a once in a lifetime opportunity,one which I enjoyed immensely.

3 things

Our new year celebrations mainly involve a visit to the temple so we did just that as the first thing in the morning on the new year day .ie. Monday. At this time of the year, everybody is talking about goals and resolutions, I do have some but will talk about it in another post, for now let me show you 3 things from my past week.

CAKE.Our new year cake bought from a newly setup bakery nearby. Couldn't wait for long for such delicious looking cake,so we cut it on new year's eve evening :o).

SCRABBLE.This crossword puzzle belongs to my niece but she lets everybody else play with it too. We all had a go at the game this long weekend and had so much fun.Did I tell you that scrabble is my most favorite board game? I just *love* it.

Handmade BDAY card. We have a dear one's birthday just after the new year. All through last year I made sure each one in my family received a card on their birthday made by me.It turned out to be one of my pet projects last year and my niece is my collaborator in making the cards. This one was made in just 10 minutes and my niece suggested we feature a TRAIN in the card,which is my fathers most favorite thing. Needless to say he loved the card very much.

The front..

 and the center..

 a close up of the train..the numbers hold a significant meaning to my dad and he was stunned to see them there.

Okay,thats it for now. And oh by the way..

Happy new year to all !! Lets hope its a good one !!!

Looking forward..

In the blogging front, I had only one goal set up for the year 2017 and that is to keep the blog active as much as possible and to keep it focused on positive things. I am happy I did that. Personally I close this year with mixed feelings and I was introspecting a lot as the year came to an end. Out of pure chance, yesterday evening I joined my nephews and niece for a movie watching session. They were watching Kung fu panda 2 for the first time, I had watched it once before and did not care to join until the climax and thought of sitting with them for a minute finally and that is when I heard this dialogue. It was as if he was speaking directly to me...It was as if the Universe was sending me this message.

Po: Shen, you've gotta let go of that stuff from the past because it just doesn't matter! The only thing that matters is what you choose to be now.

This is what I will take from 2017.What I choose to be now!. No more fretting of the past, no more complaining. My conscious effort to improve will someday come to fruition and I hope in God. 

Thanks to every single person who visited this space this year, especially to those who kindly left a comment and said hello. Enjoy the new years eve and I will see you in 2018. Bye for now.

Books read this year

A quick post on books I had read this year. I had always been an avid reader. I try to read anything that is on print and that comes into my hand. I remember back when I was in school I used to read every bit of information in the package covers. Those days they mostly used only old newspapers for packaging groceries and once my mom had unpacked all of the groceries,she would hand over the interesting ones to us to read.I used to revel and feel very happy whenever we get packages done with the siruvar malar paper. And from there I moved on to weekly magazines and comics and then small novels and my reading habit slowly grew. I always make sure I have a book in my bag whenever I travel. As this year comes to an end, I started thinking what all I read this year. I had indeed bought many books this year but I could read only a very few.I opted to read leisurely and only a few pages at a time this year and read only in those late night hours when I couldn't catch some sleep.Normally it takes me only a week to complete a book. This year having taken it slow,here is the list of books I completed this year..

1.Agatha Christie:

Three act tragedy : A quick read and though I did not guess the murderer right away I had a hunch which turned out to be right at the end. 

Lord Edgware dies: A good mystery, liked the way Poirot solved it but felt a little dragging in the middle.A strong start and the finish made it a worthwhile read.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas : Guessed the suspect right away and proved right at the end. An average and a one time read,maybe because I had high hopes before I started reading it.I was hoping the novel will detail many festive scenes but it was very dry.

2.PG Wodehouse;

Right Ho Jeeves:  Jeeves decides to leave Bertie's employment.Bertie stays in a country house where he meets his ex fiancee whom he decided to help without Jeeves assistance. A hilarious read as usual from PGW.

The girl on the boat : I did not enjoy this one as much as I did the other PGW books I had so far. But still made it through till the end.Luckily this was an ebook and I did not spend any bucks buying it.

3.  A lot of TINTIN comics and TINKLE books : When I was searching for good ebooks I came across a blog which turned to be treasure trove for quality ebooks and one of the links had all the TINTIN comics in the ebook format. I was elated, it even had the very first TINTIN comic that ever got published. I downloaded them all and read one per month, so six done so far. In the book fair that happened in the city I was fortunate to find old tinkle books for a reasonable price. I had good time reading them through out this year.

4. The alchemist : I bought a tamil version of this Paulo Coelho novel and gave it to my mom. She enjoyed the book. I read it too even though I had read the english version loads of time before.

5. Sacred hearts : I wrote about it before in a post, listing it here for the count.

Thats all I could recall, I think I am missing one but the mere fact I couldn't remember it should say a lot about the the content of the book so its best to leave it,me thinks. So all in all , an average year for book reading but I had originally intended to not read anything at all this year, so I am happy with the average count.

Calvin and Hobbes

This will be the last of my Calvin posts for this year. Here is one that got published on a Christmas day (1988)..

It's Santa...

Published Dec 24,1987

Bird watching

Though I had spotted many new(i mean new to me) birds all through this Summer and clicked a quick snap too, I never had a chance to blog about them.So let me show some of the pics from my collection before this year ends.

First, the brahmini starlings. I had spotted quite a few of them this year. They were always flying together as a bunch(atleast seven in number). Here is a couple that were sat on the neighbor's water tank.

A yound Shikra sitting in the drumstick tree and this will mark my first sighting of a bird of prey in wild.

A black drango in the electrical pipeline. He is not shy,always on the lookout for worms and never gets scared of the camera.

A woodpecker that often comes to feast on the papayas growing in our neighbor's tree. So far I have spotted only a couple of them in my area.

Indian Robin.Though I have seen plenty of them around, it is very hard to photograph them. Very rarely they oblige with a non-shaky photo. This particular robin was sitting in a far away pole and thankfully did not notice me roaming around with the camera.

I might have a few more bird pictures lurking in some folders,its just a matter of finding and posting them.