Breaking the blogging fast on a happy note!

Hello guys!

Sorry about the brief (actually not so brief) pause! I am sure many of you would have decided that I am dead by now. Maybe I was, but anyhoo I have sprung back to life now - with renewed enthusiasm! And the reason behind this uber enthusiastic spirit you ask? It’s simple! I am going home in two days. TWO DAYS! yaaaayyy! :D
I have been doing a happy dance in the shower for a week now, smiling everywhere I go and generally sharing my happiness with everybody around! Ten weeks of loneliness has finally come to an end...
Every experience teaches you something and the last ten weeks has made me appreciate my family and friends all the more. Sniff sniff! I am getting very emotional now.
Anyhoo, here's a quick update of what’s been happening at my end:

* Roommate visited me one of the weekends. Had an awesome time with her. Went to Statue of Liberty and Empire State building, Central Park, Wall Street, Times Square. And this time I did go into Tiffany's! Clicked 216 pictures in 17 hours. So that translates to approximately 12 pictures/hour! :D Those interested in seeing the pictures, let me know - I will send you the link.
** The next weekend was spent entirely on shopping. Bought tons of stuff for myself. Wheee!
*** Wrapped up my internship projects. High five!
So those have been the highlights of the last few weeks. You didn't miss much, did you?

Alrighty guys, I am signing off now - next post will be from Kolkata! Woohoo!!

The one in which I blog for the sake of blogging

Have blog. Will post.

P.S This was posted on popular demand only!

M's day out in the city

Finally! So finally I did some touristy stuff after being in NYC for 7 weeks. I could have done it earlier, but I thought it would be best to wait for my camera to arrive so that I could click pictures. Yes dear readers, yours truly is finally the proud owner of her very own digital camera! And this is after months of browsing for deals and talking to a zillion people for advice. Click here for the specs.

Anyhoo, so I took the downtown train straight to Wall Street. Now we imagine things to be in a certain way before we see them, or we imagine people to be of a certain kind before we actually meet them. I often form a mental perception of things. So I had imagined Wall Street to be a crowded, busy place where I would find investment bankers dressed in Armani suits strutting around. Instead what I saw was a narrow street swarming with tourists. Obviously because I went on a Saturday! So I found myself in the middle of Wall Street, with the Trump building and Tiffany’s on either side.





And with the Trump building on my right and Tiffany’s on my left, I caught a glimpse of Trinity Church:



I walked towards it and at the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street I saw a huge United States flag looming in front of me. And that my friends is NYSE:



And at the intersection, on the left was the JP Morgan building:





And on the right was the Federal hall with a statue of George Washington in front:



I walked further down Wall Street towards Trinity Church on Broadway and I found myself on the other side of NYSE:



I went across Broadway and inside the Church. At the entrance of Trinity Church:



Here are a few pictures that I clicked inside the church:







And this was the cemetery on the side of the Church:



Here's how Wall Street looks from the entrance of the Church:



Doesn't it look really narrow? Sort of reminds me of Burra bazaar in Kolkata. Ok don't laugh. I couldn't help but notice the similarity! After all, both are business districts! :D

And then I marched towards the charging bull - the moment that I had waited for ever since I set my foot on NYC soil was finally here:



I walked towards the WTC site on the other side of Broadway and I saw this cube outside Brown brothers Harriman:



So I had to do this :D



After demonstrating my strength at the cube, I proceeded to the WTC site. I cannot even begin to imagine the kind of panic that would have set in on 9/11 when the two towers came crashing down in the financial hub. Construction of the new towers is in progress:



For a $5.00 student pass, I browsed through the gallery started as an initiative by WTC survivors and families.



Inside the WTC memorial gallery - two guns, both 357 Magnum revolvers, encrusted in melted concrete, were recovered from Federal evidence lockers at the World Trade Center



Photos and puppet salvaged from the home of a Battery Park City resident



An actual elevator sign board from one of the WTC towers



Names of people who died in the 9/11 attacks



Pictures of people who died in 9/11 attacks



This quilt was prepared by young children and became a means of emotional recovery for them and the firemen who received it post 9/11. It expresses their appreciation of things that are important to them in their daily lives. Pretty moving huh?

Oh I also saw the American Stock Exchange:



and World Financial Center:



Waterfront at Battery Park:





The sphere behind me used to be in the plaza between the WTC towers. It's deformed now.



Eternal flame that was lit on September 11, 2002



Then I proceeded to take the Staten Island ferry. It takes you from Manhattan to Staten Island and back for free! On the way I saw this:



That's a real man! He had painted himself. And was standing in that pose for hours. At least I saw him twice in 2 hours and he was in the same pose. And that's how he earns his daily bread. And we think we have a tough job!



Finally saw the Statue of Liberty, albeit at a distance! Here's a view of Manhattan from the ferry:



And one of Brooklyn bridge (Again, it reminds me of Kolkata's second Howrah Bridge!)



and when I got off the ferry, this man was still there in the same pose!



And thus came an end to M's day out in NYC. Oh I forgot to mention that I snacked on a burrito bowl at Chipotle. So at the end of the day, even though my feet ached for a massage, I was one happy soul! :)

The one in which I scold my readers

If you are one of the diligent readers of this blog who almost always leaves a comment, then you can safely ignore this post. Others read on…

I have observed something. The blog audience only likes funny posts. They do not enjoy anything that is remotely serious such as my post on divorce or even regular posts. So you are asking how I discovered this profound secret? And you think it’s from the number of comments on my posts? No way. It is obvious that most of you people who visit this blog do not bother to leave a comment despite all the subtle hints that I have dropped in my earlier posts. I wonder why. If you are taking the time out to read my posts in such detail, you might as well leave a comment to make me happy. You thought I would never know right? But I do. Thanks to my good old stat counter. The picture below shows my blog stats for the last week.



As you can clearly see I had 40 unique visitors on the day I published my post on IPR’s cats. On other days, number of visitors has ranged from 1 to 10. The only thing that was different about this post was that it scored highly on your humor scale. But when I had started writing it, I had no inclination to make it sound funny. In fact, when I set out to write something, I usually have no idea whether I am going to make it funny or ordinary or serious. I just go with the flow. And these blog stats will in no way affect my decision. If I choose to write about something serious today, then that’s what you will see and if I choose to put on my thinking cap, then you will have to put up with that as well, and on days when my humor quotient is running high, you will find posts such as the one on cats. It’s similar to how we, as kids, ate whatever our mommy put on our plates. At least I did! So dear readers, be good children and read whatever I post, okay? okay. And as stated in my very first post, this blog is going to be a mixed bag of my emotions. If humor is your only cup of tea, then you are welcome to not read my blog. Also, if you want to continue being rude and not leave comments on posts and be a silent stalker of my blog, then so be it. I have nothing to teach you, you ill-mannered readers! Hmph.

Divorce

On my way to work, I see a particular hoarding every day. I haven't been able to click a picture because I pass by it when I am on the bus and my awesome phone isn't sophisticated and advanced enough to be able to click pictures at such far distances. So I googled for a similar picture and here it is:



I find it mildly amusing as well as a bit appalling. Amusing because – just imagine one fine day you find out that you are no longer married because your spouse filed for a divorce and you had no inkling about it! Appalling because it makes me ponder – should divorce really be that easy that you don’t even need your spouse’s signature, let alone a court appearance? In some cases, yes! I strongly feel that one must be able to break free from an abusive marriage, legally and otherwise, without any hassles. There is no point in being stuck in one. It’s not worth another day of your life. So I leave out this category. But I am talking more about everyday divorces where normal couples break up just because they don’t get along with each other anymore, they don’t understand each other anymore or just because they are bored of the monotone that their marriage has become. I really wonder how minor tiffs and peeves such as ‘He always leaves a wet towel on the bed’ or ‘She always has the last word when it comes to TV’ can lead up to a divorce. Don’t these couples remember their wedding vows of being together till death do them apart? And I find it even harder to believe when love marriages end in a divorce because of such reasons. Here they don’t even have the excuse that their families had set them up against their wishes. They, as mature (I hope) adults (I really hope!) had chosen to come together. Nobody had forced them to. In fact, they were madly in love. Those were days when everything seemed right as long as they were together. Nothing else mattered. How can the memory of those days be wiped out by wet towels and TV remotes? At least for the sake of these memories, couples should make an honest effort to sort out differences and make it work. If despite that, things don’t seem to work out, please go ahead and go separate ways. But allow yourselves some time to figure things out instead of letting these small, every day issues overcome your life and make your decisions. Otherwise there’s always divorce for $399!

P.S Even divorce is expensive. That should give couples enough reason during recession to stay together.

I heart google!

I am sure we all have our 'I love google' moments. I had mine today...again! So lets back up a little bit and let me give you a quick brief about what happened last Sunday. I had put some rice to cook in IPR's pressure cooker. You know the prestige/hawkins kind? These pressure cookers are a blessing. Everything cooks so quickly in them! So on that day I had put the usual quantity of water in the rice and expected that it will cook within the usual twenty minutes. But within ten minutes I smelt something burning. And you can imagine a hungry woman's dismay and frustration when she sees her dinner stuck to the bottom of the cooker. The rice had turned as black as one of IPR's cats and It was an ugly sight. So I scraped out the rice or what was remaining of it and let the cooker soak for a bit. Then I began the difficult task of scrubbing and cleaning. And I kid you not, but the cooker was charred and there were even outlines of rice grains on it. And I kid you not again when I say that I scrubbed it for half an hour straight. But nope, the charred cooker was stubborn. By then, I was getting really worried. So what will I tell IPR?! After all, pressure cooker is a prized possession of almost every Indian in US. Pressure cookers are insanely expensive to buy in this country so every Indian will guard their pressure cooker as they would any treasured possession. So then I did what I usually do when I don't know what to do. I googled how to clean burnt pots and pans! I found a remedy recommended by quite a few people. Here it is:

"Fill the burnt vessel with an inch of water, add 1 tbsp of dishwashing liquid, 2 tbsps of baking soda and 2 tbsps of vinegar. Bring to boil on the stove. Then set it aside for an hour or so. Then use a steel scrub to scrub it."

I wasn't too confident but it's not like I had other options. So it was worth a try. I felt like I was back in my chemistry lab, mixing up all sorts of chemicals. I used to really enjoy doing that. I distinctly remember the distinctive smell of the chemistry lab in school, my teacher explaining the experiment of the day, the rotten egg smell of Hydrogen Sulphide, pH test, titration experiments, yadda yadda! I remember my excitement when I was assigned my 12th grade chemistry project. It was analysis of soft drinks and I thought it was the coolest of the lot because I got to buy all varieties of soft drinks from the canteen and do all sorts of experiments with them. Its a different issue that I don't remember any of it now.

Anyway, so back to the problem at hand. I didn't have any of the ingredients for this home experiment so I went out and bought all of it, including the dish washing liquid and the steel scrub. I came home and proceeded to do exactly as mentioned above. And voila! it worked! Ok, I had to repeat the procedure three times. So you can imagine how stubborn the problem was. But it worked like a charm. And I know you guys won't believe me if I don't give you a proof. So here's a picture after the third round of experimentation.



I wish I had taken a before-the-experiment picture so that you could have appreciated this better. But I didn't! Sigh...

Anyway, so now I have a remedy to pass on to my kids and grandkids and so do you. You're welcome! For now, I will sign off in 'Powerpuff girls' style...so once again the day was saved by Google! Anybody remember powerpuff girls? Blossom? Bubbles? Buttercup? Anyone?

P.S It is essential to use the steel scrub. The other scrubs didn't do the trick.

Spot the difference!

As a kid, I would wait eagerly for the newspaper man on Sundays so that I could grab the Sunday magazine before anyone else did. Of course, my sister found that habit extremely annoying. I still do this when I am home. And my sister still finds it very annoying! Anyway, the Sunday magazine featured a couple of pages of cartoons, word puzzles and along with that a puzzle that I loved - 'Spot the difference'. For the uninitiated, this basically required you to spot six differences between two images that were seemingly identical. It was always easy to find three or four of these and sometimes five, but I would almost always struggle with the last one. My mom also loved it and after we were both done, we would compare to see if we got all of them right. As years have gone by, we have graduated from 'Spot the difference' to 'Sudoku'. But last week I was reminded of it again.



This picture was clicked on my way back from work last week. You might need to maximize it so that you can have a closer look. Now compare it with the one below:



Now go ahead and spot the difference! :)