~~halloween kids~~

  This is my first Halloween in new york and I remembered to stock up few candies for the kids to give. When ever a kid knocks for trick or treat I engaged in small talk before giving out candies. First I tried guessing out what they were ,talked about their costumes and finally gave the candies. One cute girl was dressed up as a kitten and I asked her where is her tail, one of my neighbour's kid dressed up as a Japanese animation character and I asked her to speak in Japanese. Finally there was a small five year old kid came along with his mum, since he was shy to speak I started the conversation, looking at white powdered chubby cheeks and red lipstick all over the mouth I told him you looking cute as a clown. He was about to cry and said no I am a Zombie, then I acted to be frightened and gave the candies. Evening went better than expected :)

~~Snowy mess~~

  Yesterday due to unexpected snow storm things went haywire. First I had to get my winter cloths from the loft and couldnt find where I kept my gloves. My friend who was here on a short visit didnt bring any winter clothes like jackets and boots. She had to catch her flight at night in JFK, I lent my sneakers and she layered up with her remaining clothes to protect herself from the weather. When we entered the subway it was Halloween time as many people dressed in weird characters ranging from a pregnant pig to zombies. I told my friend with the layered costume and luggage she will surely fit as a homeless person.
   Given the snow and rain the subway system was going slow, my friend got tensed as she might miss the flight as her flight was in two more hours. I was sure the flight will be delayed in the given weather but she didnt want to take risk. So we got down and took a cab to the airport. Once there she checked in the bags and asked the people whether the flight will be on time, they said there will be few minutes delay. I said goodbye and left back to home.
  On the way back I caught the air train to get down at metro station. I found a family not getting down at any terminals. I asked them what they were doing, they said they are from Argentina and they were to go to their relatives place in New Jersey but because of the snow storm the trains are cancelled and they are staying overnight in the airport. They are taking the train for time pass.
  I got a mail from my friend that her flight finally took off after 4 hours of delay and she missed the connection flight and reached home taking 2 other flights.

~~View from my apartment~~

  I think this is the first time I am posting a picture of the street where I used to live. This is pre world war brick buildings. My building was build in the year 1905.

 Anyways why I am posting this picture today because when I woke up today morning I was surprised to see it was snowing outside, it was only October,trees are still green and felt weird to see it. Last year it was sometime mid december it started snowing. 

~~Movie I watched~~

  It is Friday night and I had company so went for a movie. Since it was a Halloween weekend there were many horror movies to choose from but filtering those options only thing left were Puss in boots and Like crazy. We decided to watch Like Crazy, it was a romantic story about a British college girl falling  for an American student, only to be separated from him when she's banned from the U.S. after overstaying her visa.

  Then they try to work out a long distance relationship which leads to lots of complications.I personally felt the movie to be a drag and didn't see the purpose of these two people to be together when they were well settled in their respective countries. Anyways as title suggests you would love the movie when you are like crazy!

~~NY METS~~

  Today I went to a super market near my place. The place is called as METS fondly named after the New York baseball team METS. This team is in a poor form at present and is topic of jokes on all ads and newspapers. When I visited the shop today they celebrating the 25th anniversary of the team getting their world series title, with posters like "you belong to the city of 1986 METS", "no team has been loved like 1986 METS" etc. They were taking pride in their old glory.

One of the key matches was the game 6(even a movie was released based on that) they were playing against Boston red sox. With scores tied match went to extra innings and Sox scored 2 runs in the 10th, Mets were down to the final out and it seems even the digital board flashed Congrats Red Sox world series champions for few seconds. But then the impossible happened METS turned things around and won the match ,making one of the most thrilling comebacks of baseball history.



PS: Found the video clipping  just for Sundu  :)

EDIT:
Seems all game 6 are exciting, I got a call from my friend in Texas to talk about the game 6 which was being played today, he was thrilled as Texas Rangers were on the way to win their first world series as Cardinals were down to their final strike out. But from there things changed Cardinals equalized. In the extra innings Texas again took a two game lead and brought Cardinals to final strike out only to find themselves equalized by Cardinals again. And finally Cardinals finished a game with a home run breaking my friend's heart :)

~~SRI KANDA SHASTI KAVACHAM~~

Found this on youtube , when I was kid my grandma thought me the whole Kanda Shahti Kavasam such that I could recite the whole thing by heart :)



Hearing this after a long time!

~~Happy Diwali~~

WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY AND COLORFUL DIWALI!

(picture when I celebrated diwali in Trivandrum)

DIWALI FACT 

 In Nepal, Diwali is Known as "Tihar" or "Swanti". They also celebrate diwali for five days like Indians but with different traditions. 

First Day, crows are given offerings because they are divine messenger. 

Second Day, Dogs are given food for their honesty. 

Third Day, Laxmi Puja is performed and businessman clear there accounts. 

Fourth Day is celebrated as new year. 

Fifth Day called as "Bhai Tika", brothers and sisters meet and exchange gifts. 

~~Diwali Sweets~~

  For some people they have to make sweets for diwali, for others they need to go to shop to get them but for great people like me think of sweets it will come right in front you. Today morning I woke up to Sheila's Badhusha Blunder post , I realized its diwali time and thought it would be nice if I have some sweets in my place. I am too busy to make sweets and too frugal to buy them. Guess what happened.

  Today afternoon my friend came from Azerbaijan for an official trip, she gave me a box full of sweets made from her country. So this diwali I am eating a new variety of sweet :)

~~Living in India~~

  I am regular reader of New York times India blog post, where readers share their unique experiences about India. Since many people share their thoughts we get to read diverse views from different set of people. Two days back I read a post from a person who had left India again. The person describes the experiences he felt while returning back to India and elaborated the reasons he decided to go back.
   Most of what he has written was pure ranting though true about India but I am not sure what else he expected his life to be here.  There were lots of thought going in my mind  as soon as I read the post but never had the time to pen it down. Today I read two more blog post from Chetan Bhagat and Sharnell which was good reply to the post and conveyed my thoughts in a better way.

~~Link~~

For all the people who think I had fun doing my masters check this link :)

~~Pic for the day~~

Took this picture in Veli beach, Trivandrum 2006

~~Grand Army Plaza~~

Last month when I was in Brooklyn I went to Grand Army Plaza. It is at the entrance of the prospect park built to denote the defenders of the union during the civil war of 1865.

It was good to see the bronze statues sculptured with great detail. Quality pic here.

~~Room keeping~~

  Making my room a more better to live ,I got சாம்பிராணி from road side on a nice deal. Got 16 for a dollar and I got to choose from different varieties.

They also had ஊதுவத்தி  but since it will make the room messy I didnt get it.

its pleasant to enter my room these days.

~~Walk across the George Washington Bridge~~

  George Washington Bridge is a 1 mile long connecting New Jersey and New York. This was the bridge through which I enter New York city. The bridge has an 8 lane traffic on upper level and a 6 lane on lower level. Apart from that there is small path way for bicycles and pedestrians. When I was doing my summer internship I used to travel via this bridge everyday and loved the view of the city from the bridge. I decided to take a walk on the pedestrian path once.

The bridge was around 2 mile from my place, there was a separate exit for the pedestrians which leads to the bridge, I took that and walk over to the bridge. I took some picture near the entrance and walked over to the middle. Since its a suspension bridge and given the packed 14 lane traffic there were vibrations and as I walked towards the middle of the bridge I could feel the effect of the wind. I tried once to look down at the river it was really scary and I never bothered to look down again and restricted myself to see the people taking a walk across the bridge. All in all it was great walk.

PS:Picture with higher resolution

~~Trip to Quincy Market~~

  When Sheila told me that a trip to Quincy market is a must I was imagining the place to be like huge whole sale market but it turned out to be a cute little building with forty different eateries inside the place. In front of the entrance there were lots of street shows going on ,we stopped and watched few of them. I have seen quite a few of them in New York, it always amazes me how these artists involve the crowd when they perform and make the show interesting.

Then we went inside the market looked all around and settled for quesadilla from one of the Mexican stores. The quesadillas were good but not as good as I make. Once we finished that we went around the market to do some window shopping saw lots of knick knack shops around. Then we walked back to the north station took the train back to home. Next morning I took the bus back to New York. Thus ends my trip to Boston which was fully sponsored by Priya :)

Edit: My mum at Quincy market in the fall of 2002

~~Parade and shooting~~

  Last Sunday when we got down at Boston north station first we decided to goto Quincy market but while going there we saw few people crowded at a junction and the roads where completely blocked with cops diverting the traffic. When we walked little closer we saw that there was a major accident in a junction with two trucks and a car collided together. When we arrived at the spot we found it was a mock accident and it was used for shooting a movie.

We waited there for a while since there was no action we started to move suddenly we heard drum beats as we hear in tribal movies in other direction. So we decided to check that out and saw that there was a parade going on ,it was the Taiwanese parade portraying their relationship with US and Boston. It was a long parade and would have had more than 1000 people participating in it.

While walking through the parade we found the red line as told by Sheila.Following this line led to different old buildings statues graveyards and granaries. After

~~Boston Statues~~

 Apart from lots old building in boston there were lots of statues put up in various places in the park. There were statues in the pathway as well as in park bench.

So here we go again , Sundu/Sheila can you recognize these statues :) . Better quality picture is here.

~~Boston Buildings~~

  Last Sunday we went to Boston downtown ,took the freedom trail and few lots of old building of historical importance. Below are few of the buildings

Lets see how many Sheila and Sundu can remember.

~~Fall Colors~~

  As per Sheila/Sundu's suggestion took a drive to Kankamagus highway located in white mountains in New Hampshire to see the fall colors. The weather was wonderful and we had record high temperatures after 42 years making trip all more pleasant in October. There was trees with different colors from green, orange ,red and  mix of all the other colors.

As such pictures can't do justice whats seen by the real eyes but any ways above are  few of the pictures we took today.

~~Movie I watched~~

 This weekend I am spending in Boston. So while travelling on bus I thought I would see a movie based on that place. So I am came across this movie.

The movie is based out in Boston. The movie beings in October 2003 a girl meets a nice guy,they fall in love and enjoy the winter. Her friends say this guy is too good to be single for such a long time, she says couldn't find one. The following spring she finds out he is a crazy red sox fan attending each and every game. This jeopardize their relationship. The movie goes along the famous 2004 series and was good to watch during the ride.

~~Pic for the day~~

What is a medieval festival without owls!

~~Steve Jobs~~

  Steve Jobs a guy I admire for not the products he gave but for the way he lived his life coming back like a pheonix which was burnt to ashes. He had an amazing vision and his annual speeches will always create an excitement on what new product he is going to unveil. I will remember those.

   When I was doing my undergraduate our college computer lab used to few macintosh systems in between hundreds of normal PCs. Those machines looked exotic and students had to register/require permission to use those. I never had the need to use to those during my college days. Then when ipod was released few of my friends were giving wonderful reviews about it,so when Sivaram came to India I asked him to get me one, he got me i pod shuffle which was sleek and easy to use as we can pin to our sleeves. The trouble I had with ipod compared to normal mp3 players was when I connected to PC I couldn't directly copy paste songs  from my music folder to i pod but I had to rather add the songs to itunes library and then the player picks it from there, a complicated process.  For hearing songs I thought it was a usless process to waste time.

     Afterwards apple introduced many products but for my frugal way of life I considered those luxurious and stayed away from those. The only thing I can afford now is the one below.

But whenever I see that I will remember Steve Jobs!

EDIT: I was listening to the speech gave by Steve in Stanford during 2005. Quoting few of his words
"you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the wellworn path, and that will make all the difference."

~~Wooden swords~~

There were lots of weapons on display and I was getting a feel of it. The below was a wooden sword made out out of single piece of wood.

Below you see a woman molting iron to make weapons. 

Apart from these stuffs there were also stuffs like making pottery bee hives etc 

~~Dentist in olden days~~

     Last time when I went to medieval festival I spent most of the time gazing at how people dressed and visited the medieval museum. This time I spent more time in the stalls put up there and listened to what they have to say.There was a stall put up on how dentist worked during olden days.

People in olden days where told there demons inside the tooth and they were told to take proper precautions and should make sure it is not coming out. The tools used looked frightening as you can see hammer crowbar kinds of things used in the tooth if at all a cavity arises. Good we have come a long way from that.

~~Visit to Medieval Festival 2011~~

  Its been like I went to the medieval festival 2010 few months back, a year has gone by and I was there back to Tryon park to attend this year's festival. Last year I didn't plan the schedule correctly so I missed few of the key events but this year I made sure I attended those.

Tried taking video with my camera , not sure whether  it plays quicker because when I heard it music was little different.

Will post few stuffs in coming days!