1. MJ is no more. Came as a shock! RIP MJ...

The King is Dead, long live the King.

As a kid, the first English songs i listened to were those of Boney M, Abba and MJ....

Was touched by Nokia's tribute in today's newspaper.

2. Meghu is back!!! My partner in crime is here. I'm soo happy :)

It seems so long ago as well as not so long ago at the same time.

3. Enjoyed thoroughly while preparing the treasure hunt for Deepi yesterday.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

4. Sahana got engaged last week and it was nice.

An event marking a transition phase in "Namma Gangu".

This is the book that i completed reading yesterday.... It was a pleasant change, as I'm not used to reading classics, especially in the romantic genre.


Even though I'm not much of a feminist, the strong character portrayal of the female lead, Sinjun/Joan impressed me much. I found the initial 2/3rds of the book to be interesting , after which i felt it a bit draggy and seemed to lose my interest.


The story line is that of Colin Kinross, an Earl of Scotland who is at the threshold of rags, unless he happens to wed a rich heiress. He leaves to England in search of thee and meeting Sinjun in one of the parties. Her childish infatuation and their story....


I don't have plans of reviewing the story.Just few observations from the book that stood out

- The rapport between Sinjun and her sister-in-laws was truly amazing. Have never heard of stories where the sister-in-laws escape from home to help Sinjun,who is in distress...all without the knowledge of the brothers.

- The smart manner in which Sinjun wins over Colin's children, Dahling and Philip.

- The extremely childish phases and contrarily mature instances displayed by Sinjun.

- Her unconditional love of Colin... truly nice.

- Last but not the least, the ghosts in the 2 castles which are extremely helpful at difficult times.... never heard of it right??

Overall a nice one-time read.

The hottest topic of the season is undoubtedly the upcoming LokSabha Elections. It is currently "the topic" everywhere. In parks, at hotels, at office, during coffee breaks, etc... anywhere you go, you are bound to hear something or the other about elections... Every party.. every contestant is leaving no stone unturned to make sure they win as much votebank as possible.

Today at 5pm the (official) campaigning comes to an end! Amidst all the dhaam-dhoom, i notice that there is not a single hoarding or poster or any sort of campaigning near my place!! 

Strange....

My locality is quite well-developed(though not fully developed) with a decent population. None of the candidates from parties X, Y and Z have taken ample interest in campaigning in our locality.

1. Is it because the candidates are confident that wooing the rural votebank is sufficient to decide their fate ??!

2. The percentage of votes from our locality is in no way going to affect the end result of the constituency??

3. Considering that the locality has been a strong hold of party X, the other candidates have not bothered to campaign here and the candidate from X has been complacent enough?!

No idea...

Awaiting the day when the educated class has a say in the country's politics. Only then the political system can be cleansed of all the corruption based, caste based practices and head towards work based, leadership based, issue/cause based politics to attack country's problems.

In this year's elections, a see a step towards this regard... May be small, but in that direction nevertheless... 

- JaagoRe is doing a great job in this regard. Compelling and educating the youth towards voting.

- People seem be more aware of the responsibility of the electing their leaders. Though the  exact root cause is not known, i opine that the terrorist attacks, inefficient administration have affected people's minds in one way or the other .

(I hope that) As a direct-effect of the above realistion, the parties are forced not to ignore the youth and the educated class in these elections. Modern methods of campaigning through SMS, telephonic calls (on the lines of USA??).. Inclusion of IT related issues in the election manifestos...etc.

Amen.

Here's my compilation of few lesser known facts:

1.The thin line of cloud that forms behind an aircraft at high altitudes is called a contrail.

2.The device at the intersection of two railroad tracks to permit the wheels and flanges on one track to cross or branch for the other is called a frog.

3.A depth of 2 fathoms (3,6 metres) is called a Mark Twain. Originally a fathom was the space reached by with two arms outstretched.

4.The back of the human hand is the opisthenar.

5.The pin that holds a hinge together is called a pintle.

6.Someone who habitually picks their nose is called a rhinotillexomaniac (rhino=nose, tillexis=habit of picking at something, mania=obsession with something).

7.The Swiss flag is square.

8.The dollar symbol ($) is a U combined with an S (U.S.)

9.A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened.

10.Pepsi originally contained pepsin, thus the name.

11.The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

12.If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000 times, but more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.

13.The one-hundred eleventh element is known as "unnilenilenium"

14.The oldest word in the English language is "town".

15.There are 22 stars surrounding the mountain on the Paramount Pictures logo.

16.Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power factor of about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a 5! Though it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of total tetonic destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.)

17.There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs six times: Indivisibility.

18.The two lines that connect your top lip to the bottom of your nose are known as the philtrum.

19.Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.

20.No words in the English language rhyme with orange, silver or purple.

21."Bookkeeper" and "bookkeeping" are the only words in the English language with three consecutive double letters.

22.The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.

23.The "ZIP" in Zip Code stands for "Zone Improvement Plan."