The gods didn’t have it easy either
charukesi April 28th, 2008
Not tonight, dear, I have a head-ache…
[spotted on a wall in a Bombay chawl]
Clearly, being a god doesn’t come with any guarantees either.
Archive for April, 2008
Engrish!
charukesi April 17th, 2008
Came across these super-funny signboards on Point of reflection - and then went on to the original site - engrish.
In just over ten minutes on the site, I have come across - Human Woman, Meet products, Breast Room, Today is under construction - thank you for your understanding.
And some lengthy ones that defy understanding.
Such fun. And nice people too, those at the engrish website - The webmaster has taken great pains not to point out the faults of others or have a discriminatory tone - just to have fun with the results. Engrish.com does its best to stay away from any type of “ha ha – these guys are idiots” lines or insinuations. You will also find that the vast majority of the English examples on Engrish.com were produced by companies - not individuals and that most of the Engrish found within the site is not an attempt to communicate, but are examples of English being used as a design element.
The last time I had so much pointless fun on the internet (excluding those hours and hours I spend on facebook five days a week, taking self-discovery quizzes and writing on people’s walls, i.e.) was when I first discovered google translator - and wrote the highly insightful make with others…
Belated Blogger Appreciation Day
charukesi April 15th, 2008
Blogger appreciation day…. came and went. And I had no clue. That may have been because I have not been blogging or reading blogs with any regularity (does speed-reading through google reader once every few days count?) Anyway, as it happened, I missed blogger appreciation day, which was April 14th - and came across the idea just now, today being that day of the week when the google reader gets a clean-up. Thanks, Sailu at Indian Food for pointing this out to me. This whole appreciation idea 9informal, he stresses) comes from Darren Rowse (whose latest video post is on - How to Come Up with Topics to Write About On Your Blog - and if anyone needs tips on that right now, it’s me)
Says Rowse on his blog -
I’ve been chatting with a few bloggers of late who’ve been feeling a little down in the dumps about their blogging - so perhaps everyone could do with a little lift.
Lets spend today doing a few random acts of kindness and encouragement for our fellow bloggers.
We’re in it together, blogging is about collaboration and together going further than we can by ourselves - so why not help another blogger today by shooting them a word of encouragement, a pep talk, a congratulations, an idea to help them improve or some other positive constructive message. Better still, do it publicly on your blog and tell the world about another blogger who you appreciate.
What a good idea! I know I have been feeling down in the dumps about my blogging - or lack of it. And just this morning was talking to my husband about getting on top of things and discipline and other key words that he normally associates with my resolution to diet and therefore ignored promptly.
Anyway. Here goes. My appreciation for bloggers, blogger friends, blog readers - people who have made my life so much more fun in the last four years. A big thank you. Especially those of you who write in to me after stumbling upon my blog. And those who write or call to ask when I have not been blogging for a while.
Here comes a longish list then, of blogs I love - the usual suspects - Newsmericks, Harini, Shoefi, Nano. Jalsa and Indiequill who were THE discoveries of 2007. And Arun, who writes down his travel experiences with the kind of discipline and passion I can only admire and envy from a distance. And Dina, whose blog who I used to be, and still am, in awe of.
And then those I wish blog more often. Or just get back to more regular, more frequent blogging - Uma, Dilip, Annie, Reshma, Smugbug, Blogpourri, entelechy, Sunil (why this sudden slack in blogging, people?)
A special nod to the most prolific of them all - Patrix (also because the two of us love to get together and talk about the “good old days” of blogging - when we used rediff and blogger respectively!)
And a huge thank you to Madhu Menon who keeps this site up and running. I only reach out to him when something has gone wrong here. Thanks, Madhu!
And a few not-so-usual people too I must mention here - photobloggers - Phil Douglis, friend and mentor at pbase - Phil has been teaching photography for some decades now. He travels with his wife for a few weeks (months?) every year - when he was in Bombay last week, I could not meet up with him as I was away in Thailand. It’s our anniversary, Phil, I wrote to him, Seven years. Phil wrote back congratulating us on the anniversary. And he added that his wife and he would be celebrating forty seven years together in July. Forty seven years! A special toast to you, Phil. And thanks for a wonderful year at pbase.
Julie too - I had written about Julie three years go when I had first discovered her photo stream at flickr. Julie was seventy when she discovered photography. I recently exchanged emails with Julie and she points me to her new English blog (she used to write in French), dedicated to her recent move to London. And she ends saying, I feel younger now that I did three years ago. Cheers, Julie!
So to end, discipline. Yes, that is what is going to drive this blog from now. Regular posting, if it means only links to interesting or just plain funny things. Go see then - The Hidden Half: A Photo Essay on Women in Afghanistan - click on the photographs, read the accompanying text and feel stunned. Just as I did.
Happy blogging! And do pay it forward.
Massage and marriage in Bangkok
charukesi April 10th, 2008
…neither of them mine. hah! gotcha.
If you have heard great things about those Thai massages and are dreaming of pretty young things softly caressing your skin with fragrant oils, here is something to make you pause and reflect. Sure you can choose to walk into a dimly lit massage parlour and live out that fantasy but chances are you will end up with some such rough-kick-boxing-meets-sadistic-massage routine and then where are you?
I tried a “relaxing” shoulder and neck massage (right, that is how optimistic I was, given the sorry state that my neck and upper back have been for years now) - I sat for maybe one and a half minutes before the ouch! OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! finally got through to the masseuse (I think I had fainted in pain by then) and she stopped, giving me just enough time to make a run for it. And this was after several minutes of detailed instructions and requests for a “soft massage” - absolutely no pressure please, see the surgery scar here? and so on.
After all this, I still went ahead and took a foot massage when mall-hopping got too tiring. And I am happy to report total bliss, everything I had hoped for (pretty young things excluded, of course). An hour of feet pampering and I was ready to hit the shopping scene again.
And on the road, this. I have no idea what this means though. And all within twenty minutes!
Match made in the heavens?
Back from a break
charukesi April 7th, 2008
This blog has been silent for a long time now. For the last week or so, I have an excuse - we took a quick holiday in Cambodia and Thailand for our anniversary. It was an exciting, exhausting trip, given the heat and dust of Siem Reap and then the frenzy of Bangkok. Angkor Wat is every bit as awe-inspiring as one has heard, though I personally preferred the Bayon temple with its human faces carved out of rock on all sides, and the other smaller temples of Ta Phrom and Bantaey Srei.
Sunrise at Angkor Wat - some things in life are worth waking up early for…
The reclining Buddha
At the touristy floating market
The photographs are getting uploaded slowly… And the posts are still drafts in my mind.
Till then, read my piece on Lepakshi that appeared in the April issue of ‘Windows&Aisles’, the inflight magazine of Paramount Airways - the temple that time forgot
