Wood burning

There was a news article yesterday that London’s pollution level is worse than Beijing’s and the wood burning is contributing to it to a large extent. I am still getting used to the changes in the weather here. And I feel that the pollution is much much less than Bangalore’s. So I wouldn’t be a good judge of it, but do people still burn woods? In the countryside, yeah, I can understand. When we were in Dunmanway, Ireland, in that small country cottage, they had all things available for a wood burner and we tried it one day, but the effort was too much to handle especially with my asthma troubles. So, we didn’t bother with it the next day. Went with the gas central heating instead. Where do they get wood from? How costly would that be, especially in a city? Even though I love to see a wood burning for aesthetic purposes, I don’t think I would use it for my own to warm me up. I am too lazy to clean up after that.

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Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday and Just Jot It January is: “wood/would.” Use one, use both, use them any way you would like. Have fun!

SoCS Badge by John Holton@

Glass Animals

Do you know that there is a band called ‘Glass Animals’? I chanced upon a song of theirs sometime back and since then I make sure to check out their list once in a while. They have an interesting set of songs. This is the latest song of theirs that captured my attention.

And they are from Oxford, go figure. After watching Inspector Lewis for a while I should say that Oxford is a place that is on my to-visit list 😉 One day!

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Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday and Just Jot It January is: “glass.” Use the word “glass,” or find something that’s made of it and use that in your post. Have fun!

SoCS Badge by John Holton@ The Sound of One Hand Typing

WhatsThat

Pongal – a Festival of Harvest, is celebrated today in TamilNadu. My folks always keep me updated with all that is happening over there, thanks to a Family WhatsApp group. Even though for the most part I have muted that group and pitch in only once in a while, it still is one that gives me all the latest news over there, including the movie which my brother is going to take his family to. He is the main contributor to the group along with my aunt. My mother and my husband are the viewers (ones who send out a message once a month in that group as a response to someone). Who would have thought that such a thing would exist a couple of years ago? And that my mom would be texting and WhatsApp-ing me? 🙂 Even though I am slightly wary of the technological advances, I do appreciate its effort in bringing the people you love closer to you, even without FaceBook.

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Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday and Just Jot It January is: A word that starts with “P.” Find a word that begins with the letter “p,” and make it the theme of your post. Bonus points for starting and ending your post with a “p” word. Enjoy!

SoCS Badge by John Holton@ The Sound of One Hand Typing

Coat of Arms

I am little late for SoCS but I was out and about yesterday and came back home late to watch a movie ‘Five Card Stud (1968)’, which was amazing and we enjoyed every minute of it. If you are a fan of Western Classics, you should see this. Robert Mitchum reminded me of Amjad Khan (a Bollywood actor). And by the end of it, I was exhausted to even try and login to WordPress. But better late than never 😉

I did post once about the various pubs in and around London I had seen with the word ‘Arms’ in it. My husband who has been here for close to 25 years wasn’t sure if that was a thing when I asked about him last May. Now I have got him looking for those pubs with the word ‘Arms’ in it to add it to our ‘list’ (totally imaginary 😉 ) We do get excited when we see one more. The characteristics of such pubs are a) they are at the junction of two roads (except for one, which I don’t remember the name now) b) they have a coat of arms symbol displayed, each of them unique c) they all have some lord’s names associated with them or at least that is what I think if those regency novels are to go by. It could be place names too (e.g. Devonshire, Oxford, Hawley, Harwood etc)

Whatever might be the history behind it, I find it a very amusing thing to look out for 🙂

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Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday and Just Jot It January is: “coat.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

SoCS Badge by John Holton@ The Sound of One Hand Typing

2016 – Doubly Exposed!

When I was wondering how to represent this year through my photographs which will also be depicting the important events in my life, I stuck upon the idea of picking up events and making them into a single photograph using double exposure and image overlays. Not all of them are good, but I liked the idea so stuck with it.

I used Zoner Photo Studio, Pixlr, DPP to get these results.

First, let me start with travel,

Chennai: (a photograph of the roof of one of the biggest malls in Chennai & the popular Kabaleeshwarar Temple, my first visit to these places)

Munnar: I visited Munnar twice in 2016, so picked two photographs from those trips and created this one. 

London & Ireland: I visited London and Ireland (Cork mainly) in May. So I decided to club them together 😉 

Brighton & Hampi: One is a sea side city and the other an archaeological city and of course they are in two different countries too. But I thought these two went well together. What do you think?

Now to the events:

Supermoon and Marudhamalai Temple: I wanted to sneak in the super moon photograph and found that the night photograph of this historic temple in Coimbatore made a good canvas for the same.

My engagement and marriage 😉 The place where Mr M proposed and my favorite photograph of our marriage (just the rings of course) along with the famous Khalil Gibran’s quotes made for a nice event photograph. Don’t you think so?

Departure and Arrival: A photograph of one of my friend’s son playing with one of my throw cushion when they visited me for my send off party along with the bouquet my husband got for my arrival in UK. 

And finally, my first Christmas with Mr M: A Photograph of the choir we attended and the Winter Wonderland fair photograph combined. 

That pretty much sums it all 😉 It took me around 1 hour to get them sorted out. Some of them could have been much better. But given the time crunch, I decided to just go with the first cut.

I know that people are just waiting for 2016 to get over asap. It hasn’t been a good year in general, but I am glad that I was blessed with good events in this year and I am thankful for that. And I sincerely pray and hope that the good times continue in 2017 and that it brings with it hope, good health, peace, and positivity in the New Year for one and all.

Stay Safe! Happy Blogging! Happy New Year!