Visceral Observations

This is last post in my Goa Trip series. I am posting this after a long gap of posting Day 3 experiences at Goa.

So back to Day 3 in Goa, we spent day exploring beaches on our Kinetic. Before evening, we realized that we hadn’t yet booked ourselves a return ticket to Mumbai. Trains were all booked. We were to spend the next day in Mumbai before catching the night flight to Delhi. We certainly could not miss spending one day with friends and family in Mumbai.

So we set out to Paulo travels office in Panjim on our Kinetics. Panjim is about 35 kms from Candolim Island. We had no clue about the roads. We asked around and used the ferry on Mandovi river to cross it. As soon as I landed in Panjim, my eyes fell on the movie theater in front. It was then playing Khoya Khoya Chand, a movie I had not watched and wanted to watch. My first instinct was, let’s watch this movie here. Of course, my friends berated me. You have come all the way to Goa just to watch a movie that you can watch in Delhi? I had no choice but to agree with them.

View of a Panjim church at night. We just passed by them.

We asked around and rushed to Kadamba bus stand. To our dismay, there were no tickets available for Mumbai at either Raj travels or Paulo travels. We asked around and finally managed to book ourselves a Volvo for next day to Goregaon in Mumbai. Our main purpose fulfilled, we decided to buy goodies from Panjim for our families.

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Nova first tagged me for this meme. Ashish also tagged me for this today.

1. Last movie you saw in a theater?
Race. It was not worthwhile.

2. What book are you reading?
The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisburger

3. Favorite board game?
Scrabble

4. Favorite magazine?
Ok…Outlook and that’s the only magazine I subscribe in lieu of free gifts as travel guides and travel pouches. I am though also guilty of reading all sorts of vain magazines like Femina, First City, Cosmopolitan and so on.

5. Favorite smells?
This is no place to list my favorite perfumes. But a rose itra works for me. Smell of dahi/lassi/mattha with roasted zeera powder is a big appetizer for me.

6. Favorite sounds?
Green Day music

7. Worst feeling in the world?
Not getting a fair deal from the loved ones

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At least six percent of Indian population is disabled. Unfortunately disabled in our country are neither aware of their fundamental rights nor they get to exercise them. In fact most, deaf and speech-challenged people do not understand this meaning of the word “rights”. At most, they would know, it means the right direction or left direction. We either view disabled people as victims or exploit their vulnerability. They are still denied of their basic rights to be able to navigate, communicate and right to education.

Often decisions about disabled community are taken by government bodies without involving a disabled in the meetings and decisions. Their logic is that what will a audio-speech challenged person contribute to a meeting about meeting challenges of the disabled. This is plain apathy to them. The concept “nothing about us, without us” is unheard by the government.

I read about a story where visually-challenged guy was applying for the job of a lecturer. The insensitive woman at the form counter seemed to be appalled at the thought of a blind person teaching. She discouraged the blind by talking negatively about the whole thing aloud to anyone who would care to listen. She said, “How would he correct the papers? How would he teach?” She was no authority, she was one of us. She was prejudiced and ignorant. We have to put a stop to that attitude.

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Don’t be surprised by the this post. I am not turning my blog into lifehack blog.

I am just writing about what worked for me when I was sad or depressed. I am not going to ask you to turn to music. Because it does not work for me. my brain completely switches off sensations to ear. Music keeps playing and I lost in my sad thoughts. Not a word goes in my ear.

1. Read: Read as much as you can. It keeps your mind entertained as well as engaged. An engaged mind has no time to think of personal sad thoughts. I did my maximum reading in this period. I went for happy, popular books. I read 1 Harold Robbins (too much sleaze), 1 Bridget Bardot (or whatever her name is, it was a bland book), 4 Roald Dahls, 3 Sophie Kinsellas (I can’t say I liked all of them) and 1 J.A. Konrath (I am sure you do not know him, I will soon write a review of his book.) I read more of magazines. I am picking up books from my unread book pile. I also picked up Adam Bede by George Eliot. I was not reading the book because it seems to be written in 4 point size (Though my friend says it could be size 8 ) and it (book) is also written in archaic, native English. All in all, I read obsessively because it relaxes me and makes me feel productive. Ah, what pleasure in counting the number of books you finish in few days!

2. Take a Walk: This certainly works. Before you take a decision in anger or frustration, take a walk. Fresh air cools and clears your head, frustration kind of ebbs aways. It gives you time to think over things in peace, prevents hasty decision.

3. Watch a Movie or Nice Show on TV: For a movie buff like me, it works. If it is good movie, you are completely engrossed for 2-3 hours. No time to think about your own “sorrows”. I can curl up in bed and watch movies in go. I watched Day After Tommorrow Part 1 and 2 (had nice special effects about global warming), Cast Away and Desparado. All old movies I know, but they served my purpose.

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I had asked in my World Earth Day post about any initiatives in India on Earth Day.

Itinerant sent me the above Greening Young Minds (GYM) initiative to involve school kids for environmental awareness. Involving school kids early is the best idea. Ish told me in comments that even with a subject called Environmental Chemistry, they were never made aware about the possible environmental hazards by chemicals. Winrock International India (WII) is the non-profit organization (NGO) behind this initiative. You can visit Winrock Web site to know more about them.

Thanks, Itinerant for sending me this.

Today is World Earth Day. Here are few one-minute videos to inspire you to go green. These videos were part of a green videos competition that was held about a year back.

The man, nature, and God video

Revive Planet

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For past few months, I have been working hard to resolve all outstanding issues in my personal life. I hoped to do two things: Get a house deal done and also to sort out wrinkles in my relationships. I failed in both. Until now.

At night, I could not sleep even with a tired body. A skin analysis test revealed that I had started developing dark circles. I fervently hoped at nights that someday someone would invent an anesthesia for the troubled heart and mind. I thought best way to be in peace would be to get shot straight through aching heart or throbbing temple. It was bad.

My parents were visiting. That should have been a good thing. But they had a business for their visit and And they were doing that business for me. They were doing their best to finish it. However, I couldn’t tell my parents about the mental turmoil I faced and I couldn’t find peace within. When they left last weekend, I felt worse.

Those of you, who have been reading my blog, know that I wanted to buy a house, I came close to doing a house deal. It went bust due to various reasons.

As if this was not enough, I dropped my phone inside water tub. My handset was working shakily when I started it after heating it slightly by the candle. However, I needed my phone to work immediately. My parents were traveling thousand miles away. What if they want to contact me?

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Yesterday I wrote about Annual Day without Google. I faired okay without Google as I used Searchmash and Sputtr that do throw up results from both Google and Yahoo.

I am linking here two search engine compilations that I came across on web after posting my list of search engines:

• List of top 100 search engines courtesy Alt search engines web site. It is sister site of ReadWriteWeb.
• Country specific list of search engines

Now a list of April Fool hoaxes:

• Top 100 April Fool hoaxes
• Google, G-day prank
• Virgle, prank by Google and Branson in search of adventure in open-source planet
• Google prank from last year: Gmail paper
• Job posting at Google Copernicus center
• Google Romantic Beta

Thanks, Harsha, for the google prank links!

Today is not only Fool’s Day but also Annual day without Google.

Shefaly informed me about this experiment. So today I am using other search images for all my needs. Needless to say, my this compilation of search engines should be a help.

I thought I must make this clear that I am not anti-Google. I have removed Google as my homepage only for today just so that I can experiment.

I am not anti-Google.

Happy Fools Day, though!

I completed a year of blogging last month (February). But I failed to write about this landmark on the D-Day. I thought better late then never. So here am I with one year reminisces.

Before I go on to take pride in fact that I completed a year, I must confess I have been a very errant blogger. I wrote only 97 posts in a year. There have been weeks (and initially months) when I never posted anything.

Crazy Stats

Therefore, total number of hits in the blog are also meager: 23, 403. However, 97 posts have 1, 254 comments! Meaning, discussion and communication do happen in this blog. Yay! I am sporting blog stats widget in my blog for two days, so that you know I am not lying. I thought this was also the right occasion to write about my favorite posts in this blog.

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