Around the world on a bike

Almost all of us have an innate dream to travel the world but ever thought of doing it on bicycle? Sounds bizarre? Well that’s what Philipp and Valeska Schaudy have been upto. This couple who were recently in Kochi have been on roads since the year 2006, is set to cover all continents in 5 years. They have covered in the last 2+ years Europe, SW Asia, Africa, and Australia and are going to be spending some time in India making their way up north before they cycle away to their next destination in Asia. ‘Abnormal’ is how Philipp and Valeska describe themselves on their website www.2-play-on-earth.net.

When asked about the idea behind this travel, they said “When we travel from our arm chair, we sometimes misjudge about places and its people. We draw conclusions which might not be right. The world is so beautiful and there are people just like you out there eager to welcome and share with you their bits of life. They are if not more equally warm and loving. And you get to know all this only if you travel and have a first hand experience.”

We chose bicycles for our travel because it gives us opportunity to mingle with the local crowd. It gives us the flexibility to stop at a small roadside shop to have a cup of tea and chat with the locals who we would have never been able to do had we traveled by plane/ trains, besides its emission free, added a smiling Valeska.

Working as lecturer photographer, author and guide in the Arctic (Svalbard, Greenland), Philipp plans to go back and share with all, his experiences with people at large. Both Philipp and Valeska dream of spreading a message of love at all places where they leave their footprints. There is no need to be apprehensive of people of different color or who speak a different language. It’s just a matter of extending your hand and you will be surprised how many friendly hand shakes you get, signs off Philipp.

Hello world

I am filled with mixed feelings of anger, sadness and frustration. Anger because of the current situation in Mumbai, sadness at the plight of the innocents lives suffering and frustration at our helplessness.

Can’t we all come together and do something about the growing terrorism? How many more events of terror do we go through before we wake up? When will we all feel each other’s pain and not live in fake environment of personal security? Its someone else today tomorrow it can be us.

Everyone needs to be clear on one thing; terrorism can occur anywhere to anyone, we Indians were just unfortunate.

Saluting all the soldiers who have put their lives on the line of fire….jai hind!

Hello Mr. Bhandarkar,

I watched your 'fashion' last night. Sincere effort but yet felt raw. You failed to touch upon so many subjects anorexia, slimming drugs, or is it that your research showed a skewed results for drugs and sex? Your Page3 was so much better. It was well researched and you had different stories to tell in one sitting. Corporate was over the top and I didn't bother watching Traffic Signal after the not so positive reviews.

The rushes of Fashion were alluring enough to pull me to the theater. If you ignore the acting aspect, Kangana Ranaut is looking fab in the movie. No pun intended! She will be more successful as a model. She has the poise, attitude and a sexy bod for that.

As my friend rightly mentioned Prinyanka Chopra whom we normally classify in slim category looks plum in front of her co stars Kangana and Meghana Godse. All said, all of them have done a superb job. Priyanka after her silly twittering role in Love Story 2050, showed she has it in her.

Btw Mr Bhandarkar is Koko (Konkana Sharama) and Ranvir Shorey your lucky charm? What the hell are they doing in this movie? Even calling them special appearnce doesnt justify their mere presence. It looked so out of place. I personally place Koko & Shorey in high esteem and it breaks my heart when they appear in nonsensical role which does nothing to harness their talent.

All in all, the movie was quite predictable. No surprises at all ( except for Koko & Shorey). No climax or anti climax. Just a plain story with no twists and turns and absolutely no humor.

Really Mr. Bhandarkar....you could have done with some humor to lighten up the mood. Please dont tell me that people in the fashion industry lack a funny bone!

yours sincerely

p

Travel bug

Being bitten by one, I am finding my blog up to date nearly difficult if not impossible. But the good news is that I am not planning to start a new blog focusing on travelogues....stories and more stories.

It’s an amazing thing - Travel even if you are doing it within the confinement of your arm chair. It makes you see beyond you, your city and your people. Life is about so much more.

Its fun, learning about new place and its culture, its people who are as warm and friendly, only if you open your mind and look beyond them being just as a stranger. You will be amazed to find dis/similarities in the local food and the ones we eat. Travel offers you all of this and so much more.

Till I come back my travel blog details….here’s wishing a happy and a prosperous deepawali!

Mindi!

Yup! That’s what you get when a malayalee tries to speak Hindi. I have been a witness to so many hilarious instances; thought would blog about the 2 of my favorite ones.

Take 1
My school friend’s mom (aunty) as a newlywed had to move to the north of India where her husband was posted (having brought up in Kerala, this was her 1st visit to the North). Aunty had barely picked up few words in Hindi when uncle decided to flaunt his wife’s culinary skills to his friends. And in order to impress uncle’s friends, aunty decided to pick up some Hindi which would help her in portraying herself as a cordial host. So here goes….

What aunty learnt was ‘thoda aur khayiye sharam karne ki koi zaroorat nahin’- meaning- please help yourself with some more food, don’t hesitate. Instead the dialogue that actually got delivered on the dinner table was ‘khayiye khayiye, sharam to aati nahi hai!’- meaning- eat more you shameless! Sharam being the operative word here completely changed the meaning with wrong usage in a sentence. LOL.

Take 2
Hub’s friend has had this reputation of sending anyone to splits with his Hindi from his school days. Being brought up in the north I would have never thought of inviting anybody home in shudh Hindi (pure Hindi) the way I got invited by him (the main protagonist in this story).

Padhariye Padhariye (a.k.a welcome welcome) …Aasan grahan kariye (please have a seat)…is what his mentor (wifey) taught him. But what was more hilarious was the way he remembered or was taught these verses. Assan was connected with ass, since the ass goes first on the seat it becomes assan :). Good training (read avenge) lady ;-)

Man! Did I or did I not get a momentary time machine experience! Trust me, I felt like I was taking part in some famous epic play like the Mahabharata or Ramayana!

Being posted in the land of mallus, I hope I get have many more such laughs, Amen! ;-)

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Same old news!

Be it be politics, pollution, crime rate, power shortage….over a period of time all of us have got immune to receiving this sort of news. So much so, when we pick up our morning newspaper we are kind of aware what we will get to read.

Newest addition to the list is ‘the bomb’.

Ever since Bangalore banged followed with blasts in the Modi land and lucky faulty chips episode at Surat (thankfully 20 bombs got diffused before any damage happened), the bombs have become the ‘in-thing.’

Every day we get to hear of some news or the other about bombs. One hoax call about Kerala and I was 'bomb'arded with phone calls whole of that evening. There are articles being carried in the local newspapers about how to play role of an alert and responsible citizen almost every day.

I wonder what this world is coming to. We call ourselves free, when we cannot even watch a movie or dine out in peace?

Stage race – season 95

Till year 2007…..Cycling me?? No, thanks….2008…Cycling why not??

Thanks to hubs (hubby) who introduced me to Tour de France this season. Well, I am not here to blog about this year’s race and the beauty of the strategies made by each team (will take time to be an authority on that!); just that I enjoyed the game.

My favorite cyclist was…….hmmmm?? Well, not there yet, to judge, but yes I definitely regretted not watching Lance Armstrong in action, a couple of years ago. For there wasn’t a single day in the 21 days of the competition, when hubs didn’t mention Armstrong. His wins, discovery team, their strategy etc etc etc.

I was told that yellow jersey is the most prized and that’s its each rider’s dream to win it, once in their lifetime. It goes to the overall stage winner. White jersey with red polka dots goes to the king of mountains while the green jersey goes to one with maximum sprint points.

Btw, what amazing stamina these cyclists have! Hats off!! (Smile) I still remember when we (hubs and myself) rented bikes to go shopping in Mauritius, puffing and panting we couldn’t wait to get back to our hotel….wish we doped ;-)

Now about that, what beats me about people who doped and got chucked out is, were they so confident that they will not get caught? A professional cyclist would know the line he can’t cross? Won’t he? It’s so disgraceful! I felt sorry for Ricardo Ricco’s team who withdrew from the race when the former tested positive.

Next year hubs wants to see the race in live. I am not sure how much of you can really enjoy. With the speed these cyclists ride, they will be past you before you know and technically you can’t travel with the riders right! But still I don’t mind going to France. My 1 day in Paris 2 years back didn’t do any justice to my trip at all plus traveling alone is no fun according to me. Want to explore more with hubs who shares my love for traveling.

(Btw people who are planning to travel to Europe the 1st time, can check out my tips for travel in the blog named Europe….Cheers!)

Power “less”

40 hrs per week, 2 hrs per day and ½ hrs per day….these are the details of scheduled power cuts in states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala respectively. On other hand, Bangalore is facing an acute shortage of diesel. The spin to the story is that majority of the electricity in Karnataka gets generated by hydro power. The absence of sufficient rainfall is causing shortage in power at source which in turn results in unscheduled / scheduled power cuts which prompts people to use generators, which needs diesel to run. Tada!!!

Experiencing the ½ hr cut daily I used to wonder where we are headed and what could possibly save us? But after getting to know of situation in other states, I feel blessed.

US-Indo nuclear deal talks about electricity reaching every household. What they don’t say is how many houses are we talking of here? There are some 40,000 villages which haven’t been electrified till date and what happens to the current deficit? Why is renewable energy not talked about in a big way? Possibly because of the costs? Then what can be done to ease out the burden on the customer? I know of banks who give loans to buy renewable energy products at lower interest rates, but the attractiveness of the offer is questionable. In the west where people get incentivized to pump back unused power to the grid, solar panels are not even feasible in our country.

Liberated that we may be, but there is long way to go……..

Malayalee beauty

Recently, I got invited to Miss Kerala 2008 beauty pageant that is organized by Impresario Event Management India annually.

The event was held at Le Meridien, Kochi and unlike the past trends, where the participation was limited to Kerala, this year the competition was thrown open to malayali girls across the world. And the organizers wouldn’t have been disappointed with the roaring response they received. There were finalists from Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

Having met all the finalists during the grooming session I had my personal favorites two of which got it to top 3. Anyways, the gals were good. And what a surprise package was little Ann. The youngest of the lot, this 16 year old tiny thing showed all that age didn’t matter. She was bang on, on all questions thrown at her. Besides winning the best smile title she won the 2nd runner’s up, a title she said she will use to voice her opinion on girl’s empowerment and other social activities which she is already active in. Here’s wishing her all the best. 1st runner’s up Reema Rajan with her contemporary dance performance (which completely awed me) bagged most talented, best voice, miss photogenic and best eyes awards.

Miss Kerala 2008 Shree Thulasi, a dusky interior designing student stood tall at 5’8”. Elegant, well poised and confident Shree Thulasi stands a good chance at Miss India beauty pageant if she decides to participate. This btw is completely my opinion.

Proceedings went smoothly except for the traffic blocks caused by the 1200 invitees plus those people who couldn’t gain access without invitee passes. All said, it was great to see confident and forthcoming ladies from our very traditional state, a state that staged a ‘dharna’ expressing distaste for beauty pageants (not sure if it was last year). Things are changing and changing for good!

To check out the contestants and the winners log on to their website.

Eat, sleep, shop and talk cricket

With husband pampering in mind and 1st salary in our pockets my friend and myself decided to check out the talk of the town ‘the bat and the ball inn’. Yes it’s the same place which was inaugurated by Sreesanth, Robin Uthappa and Charu Sharma recently in Kochi. Warm and welcoming, this place consists of a 5 rooms (tastefully done), souvenir shop (good collection), boutique (beautiful and economical towels, cushions and covers but frightfully expensive dresses), silly point café (which was yet to get functional) and Cornucopia restaurant (which is where we had our sumptuous dinner).

Whether it was Fish (nice) and sauce (eeeuuuu!!) or seekh kabab (yummy) and sauce (again dude!!) or the tastefully done steaks each with unique blends of red wine, fresh filter coffee or vodka the husky voiced chef was around to get the first hand feedback (both good and bad). This place might be a disappointment for those who have to couple their food with drinks since this place doesn’t serve liquor as yet (who has seen the future!).

Overall good experience, enough to go there again. And hey I forgot to mention, they end it with style too. Along with the bill comes shots of cold coffee (strong and creamy)….yummalecious..seriously!!

Must eat: salads
Suggestion: might be a good idea to reserve seats for group larger than 4

Me, Myself and the Autowalas

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Come what may, my equation with most of the auto drivers just doesn’t seem to get better ever. I changed my base from Delhi to Bangalore and then to Kochi (not because of the autowalas…plz give me a break!), but no change whatsoever in my experiences with them. Is it me, I wonder! Why is it that they would always want to charge extra bucks from me and if I dare refuse, I get those looks of – ‘go and get rich by $$ bucks!’ If not the money then it has to be the route I suggest him to take or the reason I didn’t wave my hand well enough for him to notice and stop his auto or because I am not carrying change or if none of these reasons seems apt, then I am sure with my reputation with the autowalas, they will come up with some or the other reason to hassle me.

If only the just for meter kept in the autos for the sole purpose of display worked, my life would have been much simpler.

All for a cause

In today’s times of fast cars, you might write me off as bizarre if I tell you to cycle across the globe. Well, that’s exactly what my friend here is doing. The seemingly quiet and shy Amiram is on a 1 year cycling tour across 12 countries in Africa as an awareness campaign on Global warming, climatic changes etc and inform about the available solutions to combat the same.

Amiram and his team are open to other enthusiasts joining them in this endeavor. All that is needed is that they must share the same passion for saving the environment. Check out their website for more details.

Way to go Amiram!!

Such is life!

‘Leave everything to God’, my mom was told, when despite rigorous efforts she failed to find the right match for me. But I guess my mom feared that she might still leave everything to God but what happens if God also decides to leave everything to someone else? May be this fear drove her to keep knocking Almighty’s door every day with the help of many pundits and many astrologers. They surely must be missing my mom for their daily daal and roti. No kidding!

There was a time when we didn’t need to go to a temple. Our home was a temple (pun-intended).Window shopping was the only luxury I could afford most of the times. After all, didn’t I have to save for the numerous visits to temples and for performing various Pujas? How I wished then to kick “my guy’s” ass once I meet him for making me go through all this.

Even God was amused and had his full quota of fun at my cost. It’s like this. I was predicted to get married every year starting year 2001 and ‘finally’ one astrologer got it right in 2007.

I don’t like getting dragged to a temple unless I want to and I am not an overtly religious person. But still, the time I was in Delhi and Bangalore…footloose and fancy-free (read unmarried) I like a dutiful daughter lighted up the diya (a.k.a lamp) before leaving for work in the morning.

That was then. Now that I can’t designate a separate area as Puja room, I have created a small place within the kitchen with one of my favorites Laddu Gopal and Ganesha idols.

Call it irony, God would have definitely known that one day my beer drinker atheist husband who loves to host his friends will create a bar just next to my puja corner (read near to the idols). After all it’s only God who answered my family’s combined prayers in the form of my husband. As my friend’s favorite adage goes…”Such is life!”

What do u think?

Keep it Simple, that’s what Vodafone has done with its new chotta credit ads. Crisp, to the point and (I guess) hence effective. Couldn’t have been a better time to release ads, with kids at home busy preparing for exams. It has a touch of innocence and a moment of truth to which most of us have been able to connect to. Nice ad.

Now let’s look at the Motorola ad. I wonder if the minds behind the ad have kids at home?

I mean just think of a similar situation at home. You are reprimanding your kid for his/her ‘I damn care’ attitude and s/he instead plugs on mobile headphones and nods in exhilaration. Enough to get a conniption fit! Couldn’t Motto guys think of a better way to reach the younger generation than showing something that can be wrongly connoted as “cool?” Irresponsible kid in an irresponsible ad!

What do you think?

Outstanding!!

One word to describe the story, the direction as well as the acting. Yes, I am talking about the best declared movie of the year Taare Zameen Par. What a movie!

Nothing less was expected out of Aamir ‘pefectionist’ Khan . Seamless direction and that too with all fresh faces. Standing applause for Dersheel , the main protagonist, who takes the cake. Would an oxymoron like “mature kid” sound apt for him? Guess, it would. Tisca Chopra, Vipin Sharma all did there best natural bit on the screen. Music and lyrics falls just in line with the story. Emotional ‘Maa’ sung by Shankar Mahadevan is my personal favorite. Just loved it.

In my opinion this movie should have succeeded to be an eye opener for parents of not only children who are physically or mentally challenged but otherwise too. You talk of parents, friends or teachers today kids experience tremendous pressure; pressure to just not do well but surpass. Well, healthy competition is always good. Kids emerge more strong and confident but the flip side to it they might give away to the pressure and loose all the confidence which could have done wonders if nurtured well.

Once in a while a sensitive movie like Taare Zameen Par would force parents if not less for atleast 3 hrs in the cinema hall to sit back and think if they have been fair towards dealing with their kids and if there is a better way, which in the rigmarole of daily life one tends to forget.