When you want to go Left,

the World seems to like Right. What this means here is...

• When you are waiting for 25G in the bus stop you keep seeing it go in the opposite direction and on your side only M49s are showing up.
• When you are waiting to catch a Taxi in New York City, every one of them has a passenger already, and when you decided to take a walk then you see empty ones zooming past :P  
• Also just when you are late for the meeting and driving fast, you are stopped at every traffic light with a RED, and when you want RED so much so that you can turn and grab that water bottle from the back seat its all bright GREEN.  
• When you call a whole gang for dinner at a wonderful restaurant they make you wait for ever or the food is unpalatable.
• Just when you are so bored and finally beat your laziness and get off the couch and make it to the DVD shop with 2 movies in mind both will be out (!$*!).
• Or may be when you want to eat your most favorite dish and go to the only restaurant that sells it, it is closed for renovation and you decide to try another one at home instead and drive back to find that the main ingredient needed is over. 
• Even better, when you are hungry and late for a 1:00 pm meeting and hurry down to get lunch at 12:55 pm and when you try to get back all the 6 elevators are going in the opposite direction (what are the odds!!!)

Though some of these might sound implausible, only people who have experienced it would know how it feels...like the world is trying to pull a prank on you, Murphy chose you to be his toy for the day... But then there would also be days you get on to 25G with no wait, catch the NYC Taxi with one hand wave, pass through all green lights and make it to the meeting, enjoy a delicious dinner with friends, watch just that movie you want, eat what you craved to your heart's fill, infact make it to the 1:00 pm in the elevator :) and even wonder if Murphy is out sick ;)

Have you faced any of these or similar ones ever? I have.

When all at once I saw a crowd...

... A host of golden daffodils. These lines came to my mind last Monday when the daffodils at my desk were smiling brilliantly at me. Suddenly it struck me it is the same daffodils that my teacher taught me about in school!!!

Let’s do some time travel here... Back in school I love the poem by Wordsworth on Daffodils, especially because it would give me an unexplainable happiness and peace every time I recite it in my mind. I also remember some competition on reciting this poem with expressions; it was my favorite among others. Being impressed so much by the poets metaphors like "stars that shine","Sprightly dance", "jocund company" etc., I wanted to know how this flower would look like. There were no pictures in any of the books. So I asked my teacher about it and she said it is nothing but the Tridax procumbens (thatha thala vetti poo) that we see on the road sides. All the joy that filled me till then was sucked in a minute, I felt like an airless balloon... Somehow it did not make sense. Not that I have any dislike for this flower, but then for me it did not measure up to the descriptions given by the poet. I even went home and asked my dad and he said he is not sure if that is the flower. But those were the days, when kids respect their teachers above everything and whatever the teacher says is right so I decided to take her word for it, nevertheless the liking for the poem did not reduce even a bit.

Now back to the present....I love flowers, and since its spring there are flowers all over the place. I wanted to keep some at my desk and bought a pot of daffodil bulbs in a local farmer's shop on Friday. I was not expecting them to bloom for a while but they all bloomed on Monday (ofcourse with all fertilizers and other enhancer's no wonder!). Also I never thought about the "Daffodil" itself so much until this day, other than the fact that I enjoyed seeing them every spring blooming under the trees.

And here is the connection... This daffodil (Narcisseae) looks nothing like the Tridax (Asteraceae). Ofcourse both have golden/yellow color but otherwise they are not even related :) when I realized that my appreciation and love for the poem increased multi fold, I just could not stop that smile and the "Duh!" in my head that meant no wonder he wrote about this flower. It’s a stunning beauty! I felt so glad that after ages I finally got my answer. Definitely not blaming my teacher because her sources could be wrong and she may not even know it. I decided to put the pictures here so every one out there would know what it is (Looks yellow because of lighting it is golden see the other pic). Thanks to the internet nowadays children know more (sometimes more than needed :) ).., by the way if you are interested Google the poem and pictures :).

Is man really at the top of the food chain?

Wondering with man eating from a grain of rice to even tiger meat why would someone even doubt if this species that has made its appearance recently on the face of earth, be the top of the food chain? This thought did not come to me out of the blue.

After a fun filled spring weekend I was watching the series "Life" on discovery. I loved it as it covered a lot of physiology of animals, their social behavior and their evolutionary adaptation techniques. At one point they showed an amphibian in a desert like mountainous terrain being the food of an Arachnid... hey wait a minute that is strange, mmm Arachnids are spiders and pre-dates Amphibians (like frogs) with respect to evolution. A komodo dragon eating a mammal - pigs, buffalo etc., bizarre again atleast to my head.

After watching more of lower evolved animals eating higher evolved ones, I was thinking what it takes to be the top of all, Say like Simba of Lion King, It should be the collective cognitive skills of Homo sapiens isn't it? It is almost impossible to overpower carnivores like Lions, Tigers etc., and even herbivores like Rhinos, wild yaks etc by a single man, I have even seen some of the documentary on how ice age men brought down mammals for food, how they stored food to last longer and how they invented farming and have enough brain power to "create" their own food! From the evolutionary perspective that is mind boggling and that’s what makes us the kings :) mmm Just a wild thought, if dinosaurs were still roaming on earth would it have been possible for us to have born and come this far? Will there be anything in futue to bring us down? Has evolution met a saturation point? Would we adapt to even global warming? Have you ever wondered on such lines?

Happy Tamil New Year and Vishu!

.. to all out there. Here is an intro to the festival...

Tamil New Year and Vishu(Malayalam New Year) fall on the same day April 14. Even Punjab celebrates New Year on this day(Baisakhi). In Kerala they do "Vishukani" on this day, "Kani", meaning the first thing that you see, ofcourse on "Vishu", hence the term. Because of the Kerala origin and Tamil Nadu influence back home we celebrated both. On this day early in the morning we will go straight to the puja room and see the arrangement of all things like - money, holy text, gold, new clothes, fruits and flowers. Then we will have oil bath (hair wash with a pre application of oil on the head), dress up in new clothes and do all the prayers. Later we will get to eat nice payasam, vada and other delicious home made multi-course meal :). It is a Holiday so no school!!!

I was not planning on making anything grand for this day, with all the project issues and my lack of sleep I did not even get a chance to do my grocery shopping for this week. But then 2 days back I was thinking about the Pongal celebration in January and all the other festivals that I enjoyed last year and so wanted to have nice vada and payasam, for these I had the necessary ingredients at home. So in the night I kept all the above said "Kani" items in the puja table. I woke up early in the morning and did the "Kani", with that enthusiasm I made ulundhu vadai (urad dal), Kadalai paruppu payasam (channa dal kheer), Paruppu (Toor Dal tadka), Vendakai Mor Kuzhambu (okra- buttermilk curry), sakarai valli kizhangu poriyal (steamed sweet potato). It is not much but I loved it all :), took some to office as well.

Hope you had a wonderful day as well :)