~~Difference in colors~~

  I went to one of my friends place for dinner yesterday, we were discussing about the color to paint the wall. His wife was listing various colors which I cant even recollect. I remember seeing a picture in internet sometime back and searched for the same. This is how I felt.

~~Pic for the day~~

View of Manhattan's financial district taken from Brooklyn

~~Philly's Bell~~

 Phily's Liberty bell is a ding dong bell which was rung to mark the begining of US's inpendence. The bell is also famous for the crack in the middle.

  Though I have to been Philly many times and pass through the downtown I have never seen this bell. Mostly I would be having luggage in my hand and will be rushing to catch my bus. So this time when I went to dinner with D and G we walked via the bell's location. 

~~Links I liked~~

1)Caitlin's Blog
Remember my friend from US who went to work in Chennai ,she has started writing her blog. I have also added to list of blogs I follow.

2)US Foreign Policy on South Asia
  Its a long detailed post about the foreign policy of US with respect to India and Pakistan spanning over the last 50 years.

3)Baby Animals:
   I got irritated with google search today as it was always pointing me to open Google+ first, so changed to bing, there was link to search pictures of baby animals and that is what I got.

4)Moneyball Song
    Song from a cute 12 year girl from yesterday's movie.

~~Movies I saw~~

  When I watched the trailer of the movie Moneyball last month I decided I should see this movie as soon as it got released. The movie was released this weekend and I watched in AMC along with Diana and Ganesh.Written by Micheal Lewis the movie is based on a true story. Movie is about how the business in baseball is done, how money plays an important role and winning is even more important.

Brad Pitt stars as Billy Bean who failed as a baseball player even though he was predicted to be prodigy at young age. When he is the general manager of Oakland A's team he hires an economist to his team, who studies various statistics and hires players on specific individual talents which general people fail to see.After initial hiccups his team delivers and becomes the first team in major league history to win 20 games at a stretch. The movie was well taken with flashbacks in between with right sequences and dialogues at right time.

~~Ganesh's Birthday~~

Celebrated Ganesh's birthday in Philly downtown

The restuarant name was Tequilas serving awesome Mexican cusine. 

~~Ted Talk:6 apps for growth~~

 Its been quite some time I watched a video from TED. So it was refreshing to hear someone speaking sense
and involves you at the same time.  Niall Ferguson mentions 6 major factors which were responsible for growth which made west better that east.



One more thing I feel which was responsible for the growth of West during the 19th century was availability of cheap or free labor they had due to slave trade. The same can be said to the growth of China in the 21st century.

~~Visit to Brooklyn book festival(2)~~

  The book festival had lots of stalls and I was gazing through each and every one. Most of them had the author in it signing their books for the fans. Since I am living a frugal life I can't afford new books and rather be content reading from the library.

 When I was going through the stands one of the sign below caught my attention h, the author name was Goodloe Byron. He goes around US giving his book for free calling as zero dollar tour. So I picked one book from from there ;)

The book I picked was The Wraith seems like teen fiction!

~~Visit to Brooklyn book festival~~

        The Brooklyn Book Festival is the largest literary event in New York City and it was held last week. We had various authors writing all sorts genres visiting the festival and signing the books for their fans. Sunday was the last day of the festival and there were few famous authors speaking on that day. When I reached there the place was pretty crowded.

    First I went to the talk by Jhumpa Lahiri who was the  BoBi Award winner ,the event happened in the church and by the time I was there it was fully packed . She talked about her writing career and about people who influences her writing. then I went to the talk by Chris Lehmann author of Rich people things , he was talking about the US economy and the policy decisions taken by the congress.

Once the talk was over I remembered the Thirukural "செவிக்கு உணவு இல்லாதபோது சிறிது வயிற்றிக்கு ஈயப்படும்"  and went on to have a cup cake :)

~~cup cake shop~~

 Last Sunday I was in Brooklyn, roaming around in the court area. I heard one of friend said before Montague Street is famous for eateries. Since I had lunch I was not in a mood for heavy food I was looking for a snack shop, then I saw the crumbs cup cake shop, I have seen that in Manhattan before but never tried so went thought of getting one. There were lots of beautiful cup cakes with different colors and flavors making the choice of choosing little difficult. Finally I settled down with Strawberry with chocolate.

It was big and had strawberries stuffed inside and tasted really good. I got a card with 12 stars in it and one checked from the shop mentioning if I had 12 cup cakes the 13th will be free but eating one itself gives the satisfaction which will last for a whole year.

~~Pic for the day~~

~~Guess the animal~~

From the context and size of the content can you guess the animal :)

~~Pic for the day~~

~~Movies I watched~~

 There were quite few movies I watched over two weeks short reviews for those

1)Invention of lying:
      It was an ideal world in which everybody speaks the truth and they tell what they think. One mans invents how to lie then what happens next is taken in a funny way.

2)Mr Popper's Penguins:
     What happens when a group of penguin is mailed to your house. Jim Carrey played his role wonderfully in the movie and the cute penguins made this movie funny. I watched this movie with Navya and we liked it.

3)Mankatta:
      Watched this movie with Kannan and Suja, Kannan slept within few minutes ,Suja and I watched this two hours of  torture in spite of fast forwarding at many places.

4)Flipped:
        The movie is about story of boy and girl ,who were neighbours. Movie goes in two tracks one part =its shown from the perspective of the girl's side and other from the boy's side   

~~Balloon twisting~~

Whenever I used to go to central park there would be the balloon twisting person, who would make all sorts of creatures using a balloon. It is a treat to watch his crafty hands at work and within few minutes he would give us the animal we asked for. When Nithila was in Central park last month she asked for a flower with a rabbit to the  balloon guy, he twisted and turned the balloon gave one below to her in a short time.

  When I browsing through the net today I came across a free balloon training session taken by the famous 

Todd Neufeld, I thought let me give it a try.It was a free two hour session starting from 4 to 6pm near Penn Station. I looked at my clock time was past 3:30 ,if I leave immediately I would make it on time.So I sent an RSVP for the event , dressed up quickly, took the subway and was at the place by 4:10.There were around six or seven people waiting for the class to begin. Since I have the apt timing sense the class started as soon as I got in and sat on the chair.

  The first hour of the class was how to handle a balloon Todd was teaching about the different types of balloons, how much air we should have,how to bend a balloon and to break it. We have given some hand full of balloons to try it out. After learning some intrical stuffs about the balloons I started making my own stuffs with the balloon. First we were thought how to make sword then an aeroplane hat and finally a dog. Twisting and turning the balloon is easy to do but we need to make sure the sizes are right and pressure is optimum. below are the few stuffs I made my own.

The first is a hat,next is a hand gun and finally a rat!

~~Milking a cow - Hands on experiance~~

  When I went to Baltimore farm fair last week, there was a separate section where we were allowed to milk the cow ourselves. Since it was unique opportunity I wanted to try that, since most the people standing in the queue were kids I dragged Navya along with me even she hesistated a little in the begining. After waiting for few minutes in the queue we got the chance to try our hand with the cow. First we were given instructions and then we were allowed to try it out

Steps followed
1)Make sure to secure the cow in a position
2)Place a bucket under the udder
3)make sure hands are clean and apply lubricant to avoid friction
4)slowly squeeze the teats from up to down gently
5)Continue until all the milk is got or when the bucket is full

Precautions
1)make sure you give hay to cow while milking
2)handle the cow gently if you surprise her ,you will get kicked and also get to visit hospital
3)cow can kick the bucket also and you will lose all milk
4)sometimes it can drop big pie in middle of milking so make sure you are prepared for it!

happy milking :)

~~9/11 day~~

  Its 10th anniversary of 9/11 and I never knew I would be in this city when it happened a decade ago. Since the memorial is being opened today and lots of VIPs are visiting the site I  decided to skip going downtown.
   Later afternoon I was in mid town I could see the new world trade center being built. Just wondered its easy to destroy something but rebuilding it will take years. If it takes more than a decade to rebuild a building I was thinking about building a nation, it might take ages!

~~Happy Anniversary~~

Wishing my mum and dad a wonderful 30th anniversary

PS: I am still trying to reach them, let me know if somebody talked with them!

~~Trip to Annapolis~~

 Last Sunday evening we went to Annapolis where there was US naval academy, it was almost an hour ride from Baltimore. When we reached there it was crowded and there were lots of boats and yatches docked in the bay nearby.

We went inside the naval academy but since we got there little late almost most of the building where closed. Then we thought have having an ice cream but the best ice cream shop was also closed. The best thing I liked there was the below stick magnet which was available in the nearby shop.

~~Trip to farm fair~~

 Last weekend when I was in Baltimore we were discussing what to do for the weekend, I searched for events happening around the city. There was a grand prix race going in the city which I wasn't keen on to check out. There were two other fairs happening outside the city a balloon fair and farm fair. Since balloon fair was for the evening we decided to go to the farm fair.
   The fair was really huge with lots of activities for kids,lots of products on display,lots farm animals and with lots of fresh produce. We first checked into the agricultural section where we saw huge pumpkins and water melons which can be served to all people in a village.Then we went to home needs exhibition section where they were selling lots of useful(less) stuffs which will make life easy. From there we started walking to dairy and we could smell the fresh milk. We got Raven berry ice cream which was made of fresh milk. The ice cream was delicious and I have never tasted an ice cream like that. Then we into the stable where we saw cows chickens pigs ducks etc.

After spending quite some time looking at all the animals we moved to food section not the one where we eat but different types of food were on display. We saw beautiful cakes baked,cookies made and lots of other stuffs. There was a pig race but we didn't have time to watch. Since we got tired we called it a day and came back home.

PS:There were lots of stuffs to do in cow stable will write about it later!

  

~~Drama at airport~~

  Vaishnavi my sis had come from Chicago. She spent the long weekend in the city and since I was not around during the weekend we decided meet on Tuesday. It was a rainy day but even hurricane Irene can't do anything to the city what few inches of rain can do. We decided to look around central park. We reached central park around 10 in the morning, it was great day to go to central park as it was almost empty.We roamed around the park for sometime then went to Levain bakery to get cookies and then to have lunch at the dabba near my college.

Her flight back to Chicago was at 4 o clock at La Guardia airport. We started around 2 30 and since the  airport is near and traffic was less, there would be enough time to reach the airport. She told that she had to take Delta airlines. I have not taken delta airlines before but I know that Delta has a separate terminal in the airport and the bus reaches there first.

 We got down around 3:15 pm and directly went to the departure area as she was about to enter into the security check line I noticed her flight was missing in the long departure list. I mentioned that to her and then we asked the Delta official nearby she told that the flights to Chicago  will take off from Delta shuttle terminal which was at the other end of the airport more than 2 miles away. With less than 40 minutes to catch the flight we asked us to hurry up.  The options to get to the other terminal was to take free airport shuttle which comes every 15 minutes but since it had just left we had to wait another 15 minutes which we cant afford. Taking taxi was an option but the queue was really long and also no driver would take us terminal to terminal when he could get passengers all the way to Manhattan. So within 5 minutes when a public bus came we grabbed into that and thought we should make to the final terminal in few minutes but the bus was loading and unloading people at every other terminal. So when the bus finally left the central terminal  we breathed with a sigh of relief and we would reach the terminal soon. The bus inched forward for sometime and stopped ,we got down and when we were about to walk in we saw that the place we got down was cargo terminal and when we turned back the bus was gone. With 15 minutes left to catch the flight the only option left was to walk with the terminal which was still away. Even the walking had to stop as the pedestrian pathway abruptly came to an end. Now the situation looked impossible to catch the flight , I only hoped for a miracle to happen.
   
 We decided not to strain ourselves by walking sat in the bus stop and waiting for the next bus to come and were thinking about catching the next flight.Out of no where came a taxi with For Hire light on, we quickly
waved our hand and got in,we asked him to hurry up and go to Delta Shuttle terminal, his first question was how we ended up in cargo terminal(maybe he was wondering we were shipped from somewhere). He was telling us he was tired and calling it a day ,he wasn't interested to take passengers back to Manhattan but taking the taxi back home. We thanked him and got down at the shuttle terminal at 3:55. With 5 minutes left we hurried up to security queue,when she showed the boarding pass ,she was allowed to skip the queue go to security check first.I waved goodbye ,she came back and throwed my umbrella back to me.Yea forgot to mention all these things happened in the pouring rain.I saw her running towards the gate and within few minutes I got a call from her that she got in and the flight is about to start!

Moral of the story:
"நல்லவங்கள ஆண்டவன் சோதிப்பான் ஆனா கைவிட மாட்டன்" :)

~~Temple visit~~

Today visited this Murugan temple in Maryland

Back to NewYork after an awesome weekend! More about it later!

~~Beautiful Cake~~

~~Beautiful Horses~~

picture says it all :)

~~Weekend Time~~

  August 31st was my last day of the internship and the last two months went really well giving my tiny contribution to the research world. Today I went to the institute to collect the month's pay.

All work and no play will make Sriram a dull boy . So its time for a much needed break. So packed my bags and went to Baltimore for the long weekend.

Weekend started with an awesome dinner with kottu parota,upma and tacitos :)

~~where is george~~

 Today I went to grocery store to buy some stuffs , while paying for the stuffs and getting the change I got this one dollar bill.

So checked the website where it before , it was not a long journey as expected but I got it from a person from upstate new york.