Different cokes for different folks

Opinions on drinking coca cola:

Me: "I am addicted, damn it"

Poonam (scowl): "First you crib about getting fat- then you drink coke"

Amma (seeing me with coke): "........." (speechless with anger)

Kerala Govt: "Coca cola the villainous capitalist that is polluting groundwater. Get Out!"

Baba Ramdev: "Coca cola should be used as toilet cleaner"

Colleague: "At McDonalds yesterday, I told my boys that unless they promise to finish their coke, they won't get the happy meal. Usually they only have 30 ml or so.  Anyway, they finished it somehow and I was happy."  

It takes all kinds!

PELLI MUCHATLU 1

SVSR(sr) MARRAIGE

SLN(Sr)performed the upanayanam and marriage of his son Subbarao with Rangamma(think his niece and belongs to navaluri family) and his daughter Bhramarabas marriage with his menalludu ,Dhulipalla Sundara Ramaiah in May 1900 in Kavali in his own residence(The date on he invitation is 09-05-1900).SVSR(sr) was born in 1889. So he was 11 years old and Rangamma was 8 or so.Bhramaramba was his younger sister and must also be around8. she was beatiful, educated and highly intelligent.Sundara ramiah was older. there is an entry in the account book that he was sent to Narsaiah school on 10-3-1888(Sarva Dhari Samvathsara Adhlka Chaithra Sukla Dasami.)The famous incident of him jumping wih joy and saying "where will she go?she is mine."after the marriage was described earlier.

The invitation was addressed to Matukumalli Ramanaiah, don't know who he is.

Stanford Prison Experiment

In my random ramblings across the web, reading about the psychological explanations for ragging, I came across the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram Experiment. I was familiar with the Milgram experiment from our MBA leadership class used to help us understand the influence of authority but I learned about the Stanford experiment for the first time.

Here is what Dr.Zimbardo, the professor who ran the Stanford Prison Experiment says about the experiment.
"What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University.
How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. "

Here is the website for the program. http://www.prisonexp.org/ It is a fascinating read.

I admit I am no psychologist, however, I question one aspect of the experiment. Are the people truly "good people" or is there a self selection mechanism involved here?Are the volunteers already those predisposed to violence attracted by the word "prison experiment"? Is it the cause for police brutality, Abu Ghriab abuses and police encounters? And are those already depressed that sign up for more abuse?

We are making great strides in understanding human body, but we are woefully behind in understanding the brain and psychology. But how ethical are such experiments, even if performed on a voluteer basis, when the psychological implications are unpredictable? There are control mechanisms for drug trials, where unproven drugs are given when all other treatments fail. What are the control mechansims for these experiments?

Done with my shopping already!!!!

No need to wake up early, stay up late, or stand in line.
I got my luggage set, pea coat, a few winter clothes and a jacket for Adi, all online. They will be ready in the store to be picked up in a couple of days. I decided to pass on the cookwear set, and buy only the 2 pieces I need.

One thing I bought, and I really feel bad buying is a printer. I bought a printer last year for $50, and I have been using it all year. Now it is out of ink. Replacement ink for that printer costs $35, and a new printer costs $25. Imagining the resource wastage pains me....I might just cancel that order and buy the ink for $10 more.....

Past few weeks I have been trying my hand at baking bread at home, without all preservatives that go into store bought foods, with great success. I made yeast bread with milk which is slightly more dense and slightly more sweet that a typical store bread. Now Aditya and Srinivas are hooked on the homemade bread and want me to make it regularly. So I decided to buy the Zojirushi breadmaker, a Japanese brand one. The cost was down about $130 by buying today, to about $140, as this is somewhat an expensive appliance. But it is worth it to inhale that fresh baking bread fragrance and eat warm bread right out of the oven. Apparently it can also make homemade jam, so look forward to some culinary experiment posts from me.

COMING SOON !!!!!

Tales about mother

Tour diaries of Singampallis

Pelli muchatalu starting with SRM,some deails about pelli choopulu ,marriage details of svsr,sln, srn,dsk, sgk,svn

Some rare and interesting documents

Beauty and Beast

Beauty is the oranges, reds and yellows of the fall colors, brick houses and green lawns. Beast is biting cold and chilly rain. Beauty is hats, snow boots, jackets and gloves fashionistas on the street were wearing. Beast is hats, boots, jackets and gloves I had to wear. That is New York - Beauty and Beast.

Even though I stayed just 2-days, I can see why people love New York. Walking down Broadway, I could not help but get excited by the wonderful shops and displays. I bought a very nice pair of shoes from Aldos( open toed. The sales lady tried to cheer me up, saying "you can still use open toes shoes, see that picture, where the lady is wearing them with tights", until I told her I come from California, where I can wear open toed shoes year round, whence it was her turn to feel morose), spent time in Dean & Deluca tasting all the delicacies such as Strawberry Pannacotta and Raspberry Rugalach, walked into the Scholastic store and bought author signed copies of 39 clues for Aditya, forgetting the fact that I had only a small bag with me.... At the same time, I was exhaused from walking in my heels, wearing a heavy trench coat, a scarf, a beanie and a pair of gloves, all of which I had to remove as soon as I walked into a store since the heaters were blasting heat.

I had planned to visit Lower Manhattan on Thursday and go to Liberty Island etc, but being Masses Day of Occupy WallStreet, I had skipped that. So I was able to glimpse Lady Liberty only from a cab window on my way to Newark international airport, while chatting with my stereotypical cabbie from Dhaka who is studying mathematics in Queens college on the weekend, while driving a taxi during weekdays.

All in all a quick and busy trip that definitely whetted my appetite to go back and spend some time in New York....

Stuck in a hotel room in beautiful NY

I am on a one day trip to NY to meet a customer. I flew in from SF, leaving home at 4:30AM and reaching my hotel at 5:30PM. After responding to emails and eating a very late lunch, it's already 8PM and its cold and rainy outside. Being the Bay arean I am, I forgot to bring a hooded jacket, so I am just staying in the hotel room in Chinatown, which at $300 a night is worse than many $75 hotels I stayed at.... Tomorrow, after meeting the customer, I fly back to SF, reaching home at midnight.....grrrrrr Well, one thing I did see, in passing, is Flushing Meadows, the US open venue as well as the filming location for the ending of the movie Men In Black, with the two towers and the globe.

My maiden monochrome mural

I painted this one in mummy papa's room. Appreciate mummy's guts for allowing me to experiment on their nicely painted walls :)

http://psimagine.blogspot.com/2011/11/monochrome-mural.html

Need some fun in life.......

The wintry and rainy weather put an end to our weekend hikes and life has become a bit boring.... Any topics for a hot and steamy discussion??????

My Black Friday Battle Plans

The Day of/After Thanksgiving ( Typically the last week of Nov) kicks off the Christmas Holiday shopping frenzy. These 5 weeks make or break most retailers, so everyone is competing for the consumer dollars. The Friday after Thanksgiving is when most retailer's accounting books turn "black" ( as in profit, instead of "red" for loss, typically the rest of the year), so this day is called "Black Friday".

If you really need some things, this is the time to buy them, as most stores deeply discount certain popular products, some times below cost ( they are called "loss leaders") to bring you into their store.

I use this opportunity to buy certain household necessities and of course,  some unnecessities :-) One good thing is the return policy of most retailers, so if I get buyer's remorse the day after, I just return the products unopened for a full refund.

So, here is my planned list this year.
1) A pair of shoes,a pair of sandals and sleeping socks for Aditya
2) A heavy and a light jacket and  gloves for Aditya
3) A trench coat or pea coat and gloves for me
4) A set of luggage ( Our luggage was bought when airline allowance was 70lb instead of the 50lb now, so I need to buy a lighter set)
5) A cookwear set ( I generally buy inexpensive cookwear every two years to account for Nabeela's rough handling.....)
6) A rotating waffle maker
7) A router
8) A cable modem

On the unnecessities list is a Table Tennis / Pool table........

To give examples of price differences, a luggage set that sells for around $120 most of the year will sell for about $45 and the cookwear set that might normally run around $50 is sold for about $25.

Most stores open at crazy hours like midnight, 1AM, 4AM etc...and have these low cost items in very limited quantity, so I need to perfect my plan of attack and recruit some allies to divide and conquer.Unfortunately, Sudha is going to be in St.Louis, and Srinivas refuses to get in the game, so I am already starting the battle handicapped :-(

Odd Thomas

A book by Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas, was a gripping read after a long time. Odd Thomas is about a young man who can see ghosts and uses the ability to solve crimes and prevent disasters. This is the second book that I read in the last month, and both were in the domain of dark fantasy. The other book was American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which was also good, but too dark for my taste. Both authors have a strong command on the language, use similar styles of juxtaposing anecdotes with the  main plot line to build the main characters in the book and are good at similes & metaphors. It seems that good writers have decided to make a living out of surrealist and dark fantasy type of books, which is a pity. It is difficult to read such books after a time, as they get to be depressing.

Odd Thomas was good enough to for me try Dean Koontz once more...but it is hard to find good fiction nowadays.

Dangers of Too much National Geographic and Telugu TV

I recently started subscribing to more magazines to keep up with Aditya's reading needs. Right now, we get Tinkle, Tinkle Digest, National Geographic, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Wired.

Of course, I read the artiles first and "sanitize" the magazines, but still enough information slips through for Aditya to make the following comment.

We recently subscribed to Telugu channels on TV in an effort to get Adi more exposure to Telugu. He was watching a movie, where couple of guys don the diguise of a cow. He was laughing when a drunk milkman tried to milk the fake cow etc. Then a bull in heat enters the scene and the fake cow starts running. So Adi asks me why the guys are running. I told him its because they are afraid the bull will chase them. His response, "oh, so the bull will try to mate with the fake cow?"!!!!!!!

Appa Naan - Aditya

Aditya's music teacher taught him a new Tamil song. Anyone who can translate? Nanna? Maadhav?

Lyrics:
Appa naan vendudhal kettarul puridhal vendum
Aaruyirkat-kellam naan anbu seyal vendum

Yeppaarum yeppadhamum yenganum naan sendren
Yendhai nina-dharut-pugazhai iyambidal vendum

Seppadha melnilai mel suttha siva maargam
Thigazhndh-onga arul jodhi seluthidal vendum

Thappedhu naan seiyinum neeye poruthal vendum
Thalaivaa ninai piriyaadha nilamaiyum venduvane

HBD

Happy birthday SRN and Manasa.

I ate all your Halloween Candy!!!

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/halloween-youtube-challenge/17wqbudlj?q=jimmy kimmel&rel=msn&from=en-us_msnhp&form=MSNRLL

Watch the end, it's hilarious!!!!

Fusion

Karthika Deepam inside Halloween pumpkin.