Throwback Thursday

I had this diary (was kind of empty) with me and I have started to use it for jotting down a few things recently. What I forgot was this list which Mr M found while we were packing some stuff and he was wondering if we needed this diary at all. I don’t remember writing this list but I think this must have been written between 2011-2012 sometime. 2009 Dec was my Singapore trip and 2010 October was my Canyon trip. Those two were ticked.

2013 was the year when I did my Swiss and Venice tour and 2015 was the Cambodia trip. Another three off the list. Time has flown by and I have managed to complete those places without realising that I was checking off from my short bucket list. Ironically though, the remaining items are in India. One would have thought that I would have completed them first.

I am not a nostalgic person but this blast from the past was a pleasant surprise.

Getting back to the groove…slowly

It has been a while since I posted (close to two weeks now to be precise) except for those two odd photo posts this week 🙂 Life has been as chaotic and peaceful as it can be. Peaceful at home, Chaotic outside. Perfect balance 😉 Since I am getting back to the blogging groove slowly (work starts only next week! yay!!!) here are some interesting news and events that happened.

The city I live in, Bangalore, had some interesting turn of events of late, mostly related to water sharing and violence, spoiling a lot of my plans for the two week, but eventually we figured our way around those events, as we all usually do, even though they weren’t very ideal. But at least we and all the people we know were safe. That counts a lot. Also got to show my non-Indian close friend how curfew over here looks like at least in this part of the town where we live. 🙂  He takes away with him some very interesting experiences. I hate that this happens every year and people aren’t ready to sit and find an ideal solution. Everyone want their piece of 15 min of fame and a lot of political gain through these situations when common men and women suffer (farmer or not).

Did a small trek in Munnar (was on a day trip there) which was interesting. Will share some photographs later. Witnessed a nasty monkey fight for the first time.  Now, I am very much convinced that we evolved from them. (See above paragraph for more references 🙂 )

Imagine my surprise with all that star signs and Zodiac changing news that came up in between all these. My friend (who knows astrology, mostly Indian, but he does know the difference between western and indian too) always insisted that I am more of an Aries than a Taurean because according to my birth chart (Indian astrological) my Sun is in Aries (or otherwise called as Mesha) and my moon in Virgo (or otherwise called as Kanni) and I would always disagree with him because I feel more like a Taurus than a Aries. And guess what, the new news tells me that my Sun sign is Aries. Now I would have to agree with him. Good Lord! I ain’t changing my tattoo. I feel like a Taurus than an Aries. And I stick by it. And I don’t like the name Ophiuchus. Can’t they have used a nicer one ?

Losing a baggage because of delayed flight, missed interconnected flights etc is not a good experience. Even though I haven’t been there, I got the first class view of the issues around it when my friend traveled to India a couple of weekends before through Etihad. Flight started late due to some or other issues from the source, arrived 2 hours later than scheduled in Abu Dhabi. Missed the connecting flight to Bangalore. Those in economy class were given tickets via Oman Air. So they traveled from Abu Dhabi to Muscat and from Muscat to Bangalore. But their baggage didn’t and they came to know about it only when they landed in Bangalore. Imagine their surprise. It was  very bad customer service. But hey, at least my friend only had one baggage (even though it had some important documents and gifts and we were scheduled for travel in a day or two). One of the other 65 year old passenger not only did not receive her baggage, she did not have a clue about her 75 year old wheel chair bound husband too. Since he was travelling in Business class, he was put in the next flight from Abu Dhabi to Bangalore. And the authorities weren’t sure which one (the one that arrives that night or the one that arrives the next day morning). That was much worse. We hope that her husband was back home the same evening. The baggage did come a day later for us (and hopefully for everyone else)

Sully was a very good movie to watch. We enjoyed it. As soon as I heard those folks in the movie talk about computer simulations and how they conveyed the news that the flight could have landed successfully, the first thought was…it’s just a machine, you idiot. It can’t think like a human being, at least not yet. Well… someone else also thought the same 🙂

Finished with ‘Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries – third season’ on Netflix, finally. Also finished ‘Top of the Lake’ series, which was different and interesting. I liked it. Thanks to my friend, I started on a new series of thriller , mystery, detective books by Michael Dibdin called the Aurelio Zen Mystery series. Finished the 2nd book (Vendetta) because my friend was still on the first book (Ratking). Now I have to find out the other ones and start reading them. They were quite interesting. Sadly the TV Series were made only for the first three of them. Have to watch them once I am done with the books.

Well, that’s it from me for now. I hope there is a little less violence in the world. We have enough of the natural disasters to keep us on our toes already. Be safe! Cheers.

Valentine Week Gift List – What!!!???

When I shared a photograph of two teddy bears belonging to my nieces on Instagram, little did I know that I coincidentally posted them on “Happy Teddy Day”.  One of the days where you share a cute teddy bear with your loved one as part of the Valentine Week Gift list.  Really???  On Twitter too, I saw a new search term “liketwoteddies”.  Good Lord!  How come I haven’t heard of this before?? In case you want more details on this to take advantage of ;),  here it is.  I am not responsible for any expenses you might incur because of this article and for the record,  even though this is quite funny and a little bit cute,  I think it is too much. 

It will be happier…

WordPress review was a good measurement, but I couldn’t add much to it. So here is my personal review.

Baralikadu still reigns. After all these years (That post was posted on Feb 2013…) it is still the first in the search terms and always get the max views on my blog. Never would I have thought of that when I posted those photographs of a very small and quaint place near my hometown (Coimbatore). I guess I should start charging the folks at Baralikadu some commission if my post is earning them visits 🙂

This year I crossed 1500 followers…Yay!!! Thank you all!!! And hearty welcome to all the new people who have joined this journey! Hope you find my blog(s) interesting and entertaining 🙂

I finally made my blog an ‘awards free blog’ ( more out of laziness than anything else) but then as I say on my picture (down below the page if you scroll down)

“No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.” Thanks for being part of my blogging journey.

and the best award for me is your time!

Took part in a couple of new prompts, apart from the ones I was already participating.

Finally got around to complete my Cambodia and Bali tour report a couple of days before on my travel blog. Failed to do one for my US trip I did this year (i.e. 2015) , but will finish it in a week.

On a personal level, I had to send off three of my friends to different places (and countries) for better opportunities (and I hate send offs even though I am very happy for them), was a witness to two of my gay friends marriage (can’t say how happy I was for them and I was their official photographer too , yay!!!), did two international trips this year (as opposed to one every year), ticked Sky Diving from my imaginary to-do list, got my tattoo done, tried my hands at dating and found someone too, spent more than I earned ;), worked out harder and got around to fix some of my long term health issues (will write about one particular issue in detail later) and on my way to fix a few more things for a healthier life style, took it easy at work (had to balance it somewhere), made some new friends, got a little bit more confident of self…well, that is all I think 🙂

With that, good bye 2015 and Hi there 2016! , Welcome!

Wishing you all a Very Happy and Joyful New Year. May your dreams come true and you stay happy, content, and hopeful. 

Take care and see you all next year! Happy Blogging! 🙂

Soul What?

Recently one of our friend, who is known to make funny faces in each and every photograph, messaged that he found his soulmate in Celeste Barber (because of her recent parody that sort of went viral) but sadly she was already taken. This led to a discussion on soul mates. Even though they can’t be together does it mean that they can’t be soul mates? (this question was posted just for fun…but then..can they ? )

In one of the dating site, where they ask you the questions to figure you out (how do I know about this ?? Well, I will come to that in some time 😉 ) they do ask you if you believe in soul mates. I skipped that question in fact! Because I used to believe in it and thought I would find mine sometime someday. But may be with my experience or just the age or whatever, I have become a little more cynical. Mind you, not unromantic just a little cynical in things that are termed ‘forever’. I would love to have a ‘forever’, but will not waste my life yearning for it. OK, so now coming back to the main question. Do you think soul mates exist? I know lot of us have experienced love at first sight (which I don’t believe in). So its highly probably that there will be lots of people who have found their soul mates. But how do you know ? Obviously there is no list, even though this site clearly lists 10 elements of a soul mate. Or rather is it an alien concept in this fast moving world where instant gratification is all that matters ? Did you know the story behind the term soulmate, from Wikipedia? It sounds interesting isn’t. Can we truly find someone who can speak to your soul ?