Her pets, her life

Few images linger in your mind long after you see them. Few moisten your eyes atleast for a moment.
 

This is one such photo, published in 'The Hindu' on 25 January 2008. The picture shows a woman hugging her pets for the last time, just before she hands them over to the health workers, who would eventually kill them.

The killing or 'culling' as they call it is going on across the country wherever there has been signs of the bird flu.

the photo was taken by Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury. it brought tears to my eyes, just thought i would share it with you.

Foodie alert

There probably isn’t anything I enjoy more than talking about food! Imagine my joy when I found this website that has the food joints, cafes, bars all listed down with address and phone numbers and a few reviews :)

burrp.com is a total foodie website, though very few Chennai joints have been reviewed, they do give you a fair idea of what to expect regarding cuisine and prices.

And of course, spreading the love, I am gonna do what I think I can do for the site- talking abt food. In fact, I have already written reviews for few food places in Chennai :)

It is classified on the basis of cities. The cities listed are Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkota, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune. I noticed that cities like Mumbai and Bangalore had more active people on the site.

I saw many reviews and also more joints listed there. In any case, the Chennai space is not bad at all!! I have not found any other website that’s exclusive for restaurants and cafes and burrp.com is gonna do just great for me :)

So next time you are looking for some place to have coffee/lunch/dinner have a peek at this site. And if you did visit any interesting restaurants, share your experience on the site by writing a review.

I just noticed the number of smileys i used in this post, my maximum so far in a single post i guess. Well, it happens. 'Food' is one of the only two topics that deserves so many smileys. the other one is, of course 'guys' ;)

Expert opinions. On resolutions and the city weather conditions

This morning when I went for a walk, I started sweating within about few paces. I loved that fact! My heavy duty (walking!) exercise was making me sweat!

But as I was listening to the news on my headset radio, I slowly I realized that the humidity today is 88% and that’s why I was sweating, not because of my "work out".

'Oh yeah', I thought, 'I live in Chennai'. And my beloved city is just turning to be its tropical worst; we are at the end of January and that’s just the end of the hot weather and the beginning of the hotter one. Come March and…no, I don’t want to talk about it, not yet atleast.

With a sudden rush of urgency, I realised that I had been planning a day trip to Pondy, then a trip to Thalavoi and more places that aren’t really at their best during the summer. Oh! I thought, I have to rush, those place will be unbearable by next month. I had started planning these trips ages ago.

I remember postponing these trips last year because of the summer and now here I am, again doing the same thing.

I should have taken a resolution this new year. Something like ‘I will do what I plan to do and will never postpone it’. But now January has almost ended and which idiot takes resolutions well into the year anyway??

Just 11 more months for the next new year, I will take my resolutions then. Hey, I am not postponing, its just that, this is just the logical thing to do, don’t you think? Resolutions aren’t exactly effective if they aren’t taken at ‘new year’. this aint an excuse, this is.. "Logic"! you get my point, right?? ;)

And the worst book I ever read is…

If God was a banker. Author: Ravi Subramanian. Publishers: Rupa & Co. Shelf price: Rs.195 (Rupa style)
**Disclaimer: This is only my personal opinion. this is not meant to offend anyone**
First things first. Mr. Ravi Subramanian cant write a book. Its truly unfortunate that he decided to. Rupa & co surprises me! They are the same people who have brought out great books time and again and I definitely did not expect such a bad publishing from them.

I guess the author is a banker and an MBA grad. For the only saving grace of the whole work is the tid-bits of information that he has written on banking and the few strategies employed during the emergence of retail banking in the country.

The book is so bad that it has put ideas into my head. I have been thinking…why don’t I write a book? If Rupa can publish this book, they will sure consider my scribbling, wont they? and if the book does get published, it is definitely bad news for you all, because you HAVE to read it! Dont worry about paying, i will send you free copies. and then i will call you up to discuss what you think about charecter X or the situation Y. If you say you have not read it through, I will be deeply hurt, and will call you again after few hours to see how many pages you finished reading! (evil grin)

I remember the time I started blogging, I used to worry my close friends to read the trash I used to write. My blog entries never take more than a few minutes to read, but a book? Hee hee hee

On second thoughts, since this is just the start of the year, I have decided it is not good to have such evil thoughts. This is the happy new year and such malevolent actions right at the beginning of the year may bring me bad luck, so I am shelfing my book ideas. This is a temporary arrangement and I will let you know when i cease to be good. Till then, have a happy new year!