Where The Mind is Without Fear..

Today, I was talking(in google talk) to my friend, Ahamarshan, my master's classmate and a very good friend. He is very good in poems and writing, currently doing his Phd in Oxford. He always encourages, specially when I am down, by saying "whatever you do shall prosper and no weapon that faces against thee shall prosper". He is one who believe in me more than I do on myself, and wish good luck for me more than I can dream for myself. Today as we were discussing some real serious issues about East and West,and about writing in blog, he quoted me a very nice poem from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore, which won Nobel Prize in 1913. Here it is...

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake"

from Rabindranath Tagore's Geetanjali

Men build too many walls ...

"Men build too many walls and not enough bridges." - Issac Newton. I read this nice quote today in the Paris souvenir book that we got for Assaf... Today is Assaf's farewell, we had a party in a friend's bar, with a nice Moroccan dinner. We got him few gifts, one was this book with nice pictures of Paris and beautiful quotes, we signed in different pages. I signed in the page which had the above quote and photo of one of the oldest bridge built during Napoleon's period in Paris. I felt this page was just made for me,to express myself to this man who build bridges instead of walls, Assaf is the first person who helped me as I took my first step into West! He helped me to build the bridge between East and West, Today, he is confidently leaving me behind with this beautiful bridge, lovely friends of him and wonderful memories to join Nivi in New York!

True Importance!

Today I read this short and sweet story by Paulo Coelho, His book 'The Alchemist' was big inspiration for me in a very crucial stage in my life, Also wrote a email to him regarding that and got a cute inspiring reply from him ! :-)

"True Importance!" by Paulo Coelho From his collection of short stories( can download freely from his site)Now..Here is the Story...

Jean was out walking with his grand father in Paris. At one point, they saw a shoemaker being insulted by a customer who claimed that there was something wrong with his shoes. The shoemaker calmly listened to his complaints, apologised and promised to make good the mistake.

Jean and his grandfather stopped to have coffee. At the next table the waiter asked a man if he would mind moving his chair slightly so that he could get by.The man erupted in a torrent of abuse and refused to move.

"never forget what you have seen", said Jean's grandfather. 'The shoemaker accepted the customer's complaint, while this man next to us did not want to move.Men who perform some useful task are not bothered if they are treated as if they were useless, but men who do no useful work at all always think themselves very important and hide their incompetence behind their authority.'

Nivi's Day!

It’s Nivi’s B’day Today! Happy B’day Nivi! But unfortunately she was not in Paris to celebrate it together…busy in her Art School in New York. But we got great news that her phytoplankton,Diatom cartoon titled 'zoom into the bloom was accepted for publication, along with Assaf’s Research Paper in one of very good Biology Journal. Yeah! That’s the phytoplanktons, zoomed in by Nivi’s artistic hands.

End of a very hectic week, I was completely brain drained and dead, I was about to leave the lab, just then Alcidio dropped in with his friend Micha, and had a very nice Japanese Dinner, with three very cheerful men (Iam Just posing with the sticks for the photo,never able to eat with that ;-), Brain is now completely charged up with their laughter, and excellent sushi, for a rocking weekend... Bon weekend!

Grand Ma's Medicine With Picasa!

All these days, I am really working like a nerdy scientist; it was just work and reading blogs, I saw some really interesting blogs on Pongal, had a nice chance to see pictures of Pongal celebrated across the world, try the “Blogger Search” with keyword Pongal. Thanks to Google’s Blogspot! As I was reading Arjun’s blog about his visit to china and his pictures from china, saw an interesting collage picture of him and his friends, I asked him a very intelligent question if he printed the photos and arranged it and took an another digital picture of that. I guess, as photography tutor of mine, he might have really felt ashamed of having such a dumb student, like me, he said its just few clicks using Google’s Picasa! It’s the bit of homework I did with college option in picasa, that’s Arjun, taken when he was sick and had to take my grand ma’s medicine. Milk with turmeric, honey and black pepper powder, It really works well, but by his ‘before and after’ drinking facial expression, you can imagine how yummy it can be! ;-) If you have throat infection try this medicine and Picasa, if not just try Picasa!

My Life is an eBook?

After starting my blog, sometimes I have a quick glance at others blog, Its amazing to see the people expressing themselves. When I write a blog, I remember the school days, when I go home running to talk to my mom about the exciting things happened in my school and in the later years the discussions, I had with my friends Sathish, Vidhya and Neha , with whom I never had any inhibitions in discussing most personal and stupid things I did. Now, its just me, myself,my dell(my laptop) and my google. I talk a lot with google, and it gave an interesting feedback about my 'online behaviour'.

In this new years eve, I was surprised to see the google zeitgeist, 2005's search analysis. Today,they went a step further and showed me my internet search/click statistics. Its interesting to see, when I am active over the net? etc.. Here is the screen shot of the page. Nice to know that I spare google at 2 am and hyperactive between 3-5 pm. Hmmm! Lost in the cyberspace! - Inspired by "Life is Beautiful"

Épiphanie

Today is Épiphanie, a Christian feast, we celebrated this in our lab in a traditional French way.... It goes like this, there is a special type of a cake called "gâteau des Rois" its made of almond paste ( very very delicious) and this cake have two small toys inside. The youngest of the group cuts the cake and then goes down the table and distributes the pieces randomly to the group, the person who gets this small toy(you can see one in Marc's hand) are crowned as the king and the queen.

Here are some pictures, that's Marc, the youngest under the table distributing the cake. Sneaky Marc..got the crown too..that's Marc and Agnes crowned as the King and the Queen. Festivals are always fun, its nice to see the lighter side of the serious scientists...

Banks of Vaigai to Seine..

Today I was going through some blog sites, I came across few MKU (Madurai Kamaraj University) blogs and photos.I did my Masters in Biology from MKU. I feel my life started from MKU, that was my first time away from family, was in hostel... Started seeing the 'real' world, till then I was a over protected and pampered girl, with family and drivers escorting me everywhere. Last 6 years, starting from MKU, Madurai..and Bangalore and Now in Paris..I feel my life started flowing like a wild river, without any dams, from the banks of vaigai to the seine...towards a destiny unknown...

I took these pictures from a MKU blog site, that's the main entrance of the university, popularly called as "main gate", the meeting place for the evening coffee and mid night tea... The second picture is the MuVa Hall, where I wrote all my masters exams,I still remember sitting there with a bunch of friends studious friends, asking them to tell the stories(summary) of different chapter which they learnt the previous night, specially from Sathesh who is now in a very good scientist position in NIH, USA. I cleared all my exams just by listening to the last minute stories from Sathesh.WOW! Good old days! Thanks to MKU manipulators group for bringing back the good old memories!

Frozen Paris ...

End of Last year, last Friday on 30th it was freezing in Paris, After reading about the snowy weather in Europe in BBC news and seeing "In Pictures", my favourite column in BBC news site,I was walking in the snow to my Lab and I came across these frozen horses in the Luxembourg garden. I recently had a beginners tutorial on photography from Arjun, a friend who does photography as his hobby. I was inspired to take some pictures of the snowy weather. I tried in vain sending some of the photos to the snowy weather column in BBC. In fact one of my nick name is 'BBC' , I have a good network of friends and as a very talkative person, I was never able to hold a secret with me. The one major change in me after comming to Paris in that I talk very less, may be 50% less than in India, its also because I still didnt pick up french. But still I am the most talkative in my Lab :-(

It's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

My first Christmas in Europe and Santa Crash-landed in my home. I got many Christmas gifts from my friends. A nice cap from Alcidio(check the photo in flicker), a nice sweater and a valvet jacket from Poonam( made in her fashion boutique), Assaf and Nivi gave me ‘Mary Poppins’ dvd. So, I am now out of Disney’s (2004) “Finding Nemo” addition and now got addicted to Disney’s (1964) Mary Poppins. I was seeing this movie for the last 5 days. Its just wow!!! Nice to see a movie filled with positive thoughts, one on my favorite aspect in the movie is the usage of the Idiom “look further than the end of the nose”, Is that not a good solution for most of confusions and the problem we face?

The facts and figures we learn builds up our ego and block us from looking further than the end of our nose. Is it not true that the smartest part of the brain is not the place where we store the facts and figures, but the part which makes us understand how little we know? "Lets This New Year Be Practically Perfectly In Every Way."