The Tao of Pooh...

Discussing more about honey...today I had a lunch time discussion with Andy about honey. Me and Andy are so crazy about honey; we have bottles of different types of honey in the lab for tea, yogurt and salads. Discussing about honey, it was so easy for us, the two animation fans to switch the topic over to Pooh, the honey lover. He started discussing about his favorite book Tao of Pooh, he showed me lots of sites and quotes from this book. Some of them touched me very deeply, specially the description of different characters, which can briefly put as in this above image.They just reflect the people we meet in our everyday life. A very good friend of mine, is more like this ‘pontificate owl’,clever but has some unwritten dogmas of life and try to impose it strongly on people around. Then there was a day, when I got bored of discussing over dogmas,the silly 'dos and donts', which sounds absolutely stupid for me. When its so easy to live ‘just like..’ pooh! Why do we complicate our life like this owl and try to control the whole world with the dogmas, created with our little intelligence.We dont need dogmas and long lectures to know the simple way to live, every one is capable of discovering by themselves...otherwise... in terms of Pooh…

To know the Way,
We go the Way;
We do the Way
The way we do
The things we do.
It's all there in front of you,
But if you try too hard to see it,
You'll only become Confused.

I am me,
And you are you,
As you can see;
But when you do,
The things you can do,
You will find the Way,
And the Way will follow you.

I am WOW...!

I guess I am transforming to..WOW!! I was reading the NDTV travel yesterday and got to know about Sumitra, who have a club called WOW! Women on Wanderlust! Anyways I guess I can never be a part of WOW club, as I enjoy traveling alone. I am becoming a fan of NDTV, specially the way the expose the corruption and in their fight for justice..OK..Now back to my travel, my one month trip almost got a shape, the major ticket bookings and accommodation bookings are done. Thanks to Arjun, he introduced me this very nice site for backpackers. Its very nice, I booked hostels for my previous trips in Italy and Belgium through this site and the hostels were pretty impressive. The best part of this web site is that you can compare the locations and also read the review of the people who stayed earlier and choose the one which we prefer, I prefer to go for the hostel, which is more calm..more like bed and breakfast type.. then with bar and party type one. I got some pretty good ones for this trip too... I still didnt tell you guys about the country where I am going to travel...sorry you need to wait for a week to know that...Its very difficult for Uma to keep a secrets..but till now..only two of my friends know about it..of course my family and my lab..and may be the people who read my friends blog..well that's a pretty long list..anyways...

I Love Bees!

I am making arrangements and plans for summer trip, one major difference between travelling in India and Europe is the use of maps. In India you have a "Bhaya" (Brother) in every street corner, you can directly walk to them and ask for directions. Unfortunately that's not possible in Europe. so, now a days maps are my bible when I am travelling, even with good road signs and maps I still get lost in Paris, we humans are so dumb, specially more dumb comparing to these cute little Bees! Today, scientists working on bees discussed their work on bees in BBC..they are just amazing, they were able to find their way back home, even if they are left 13kms away from home, no maps ...no road signs..no Bhaya...! Also when they finish nectar in a flower, they leave some sort of chemical signal in the flower ( some thing like a post-it note ;-) to tell other bees that the flower is empty...How amazing they are..We human having sixth sense??? but not worried about losing the sensitivity of other 5 senses. More over they produce this miraculous honey, rich in nutrition but cannot be spoiled by Bactria or fungi..with some sort of natural preservative...! sorry but we have to steal it from my cute little honey! Thats the picture of cute queen bee in a famous french comic on bees called Mireille l'abeille.

No Update!

Its almost a week, no updates. Just a week to go for my summer vacation to start, Complete August no work..... Almost the whole of Paris comes to a stand still during this vacation time, you can hear more of English in the streets, less of french more of tourist. I am also going to be away from Paris for a month, Will start my ever longest solo trip... will travel, meditate and meet some friends in the most expensive neighbouring, beautiful country. I will write about it in detail later this week... just before my trip. This week is going to be crazy with deadlines for my publication and my hotel and ticket booking, planning etc. etc. BTW there is a Paris beach set up next to the river in Paris, they make a artificial beach next to the river, if I find time, I will try to sneak to the Paris Plage (Paris Beach) for some pictures and some relaxation. till...then...No updates...

Sweet Old Days...

Last month , when my mom and dad were going back to Madurai from Canada, my mom went clicking photographs in Singapore and in the Flight with her new digital camera, Later we realized that accidentally she clicked some pictures over the “Yanai Malai” (Elephant Hills) from the Flight, the hills which is in the shape of an elephant, very close to Madurai. We lived at the foot of this hill almost 27 – 29 years back and I learned to walk at the foot of these hills. There were few canals and ponds and very beautiful paddy fields close to this hill, next to my home, I was sent to school at an very early age, since I was too naughty at home, every one in that village and my school knew me as a very talkative girl and as a daughter of the engineer, who is responsible for the river maintenance and hence the irrigation of their farm, I very vaguely remember those days, going around the villages at the foot of this hill and being pampered by the whole village. Sweet old days!

Bastille Day!

In East and Mid-East thousands of people have shed blood last week, unfortunately science and religion were the reason and tools for it. The real achievement of science and religion will be on the day when it can spread love and compassion, instead of becoming a reason for hatred and war. Why can’t we find a virus to spread compassion and love, if we find one may be these deadly scientific inventions will be only used to amuse the our children and permanently remove the blood stains from these ones. On Bastille Day, last Friday there was a military parade in Paris and the children and public were allowed to have a closer look at these deadly machines. I wish not just these children but every one in the world can just see and use machines just to take fancy pictures of themselves.

Puri Jaganath Ratha Yatra in Paris

Today there was a Puri Jaganath Ratha Yatra in Paris, It was organized by the ISKCON ‘Hare Rama! Hare Krishna! group. It was not as crowded as for the Ganesh festival, infact comparatively very less of Indian crowd, but it was nice, the weather was great, me, Meena and Poonam walked alone the yatra for sometime. They served nice laddoos and milk shakes, very typical of ISKCON, always with some good food, I like Bangalore ISKCON temple for the same reason, they always serve delicious prasatham and of course also it also was nice calm place . My friends say that it’s more of a theme park and less of a temple. I just landed back at home after almost four hours of walk, I don’t have enough courage to go out and celebrate the football match, just following from home! Ok...let me go back to the match! Check out these pictures from the Yatra!

Mice Showing Empathy...

Don't be talking to the strangers... (except for 'Bonjour' and 'Merci')! ...may be this is one of lessons, the french mom might have given to their kids. During the bus or train travel I have not seen people having friendly conversations; In India by the time you finish a 12 hour train journey you may even have enough information to write the biography of the fellow travellers. When I was travelling back from Shirdi to Bangalore we made so many friends in the train that we even gave a surprise birthday party for a girl travelling with us, in the Pune platform. Its so difficult for a talkative person like me to do a long distance travel without talking, but when I was traveling in Italy people were talking to each other, exchanging food, paper, petting the other's pets etc. that's one thing which made me feel at home in Italy. But did French ever broke their silence? yes they did.... During my journey back to France from Italy, my train broke down in south of France, we need to make 3 changes in special trains to come back to Paris, people were showing empathy towards each other, translating the announcements, sharing water and food. Sometimes, Pains and suffering breaks down the cultural barriers. When animals can show empathy why not the human? Ahamar sent me this nice research article on mice showing empathy, in fact me and Ahamar noticed this behaviour in mice when we were about to dissect a mice, during our Master degree, practical class. Thanks to the Pain and suffering, which still keeps us a social animal!

France Vs. Italy

In spite me being from a football player and fans family, I am not personally a big fan of football. My brother was in the school team and played many inter school football matches and my dad, follows football matches, and only during the world cup match days we had permission to watch the TV after 10.00 in the night.Now living in the country which is going to play the football finals, I was influenced by this fever for past few weeks, even though I am bit familiar with the rules, I am not good enough to judge the strengths and weakness of a team, so my support was and will be more on emotional basis, till the semi-finals I was supporting Portugal and Germany, of course for my good friends Alcidio,Micha and for the many nice Germans I have met so far. And I watched the second half of the Portugal Vs. England match with my boss Chris (British) and Andy in a bar, they were convincing me that I should support the England at least for sake of English and cricket they gave to India. Now since I don't have a 'real'(100%) french or Italian friend, Its difficult to decide. Among the countries I visited so far USA,Canada,Belgium, Italy and France, Italy is very close to my heart. The people there are very very friendly, In spite of having the same language problem as in France, I was deeply touched by the friendly gestures of the Italians, I feel Italy as my second home. But now that I am living in France, which is less emotional but more formal and gentle and feeds me with good french bread and wine...Hmmm! very difficult to decide. Anyways..If France wins, it will Gentle 'professional' colleague's victory and if Italy wins..that will be a victory of my 'second home'....Anyways..I guess I will be celebrating this weekend. Check out these pictures of celebration in Paris, when they entered the semi-finals, taken by Umesh when the Indian group went to watch the match in the huge screen in a stadium in France. Its difficult for me to handle such a big crowd..lets see how it goes this weekend!

D'orsay cont..!

I don't know what’s so special about these statues, but I absolutely fell in love with this one and also this photo. I was playing around a lot with this photo, in picasa and in photo shop and added some special effects. Some of my friends said that this photo is too cheesy..anyways..I love this! I just cant wait to see the film version of this photo. BTW, my database problem is fixed. I wish it gets accepted.

Musee d'Orsay

Have you ever had a day, started in cloud nine(may be not exactly at 9.... at 7 or 6) and ended in deep shit! I had one such day today, after a week of tough days,with deadline for a pre-submission of a research article. I was working to catch all the bugs in the database, which I finally submitted, yesterday with Chris watching England vs Portugal match and correcting the abstract on the other had, some how we manged to submit it. I went home and had a good rest in spite of the french scramming in the road the whole night to celebrate their entry into semifinals. Today since its a first Sunday most of the museums in Paris have free entry. so decided to go to museum d'orsay. It just wonderful, I never had such an overwhelming experience in other museum I have seen so far, I also bought some work of Redon to add some colour to my dull apartment. After seeing the museum and some nice arts, I got some energy to go back to lab and fix some final tiny bugs in the database which we submitted yesterday, and guess what???...it was down!!!. reviewers will login on Monday I need to do something before that. I did sent an SOS message to the system administrators (hope they are not in vacation) just keeping my fingers cross, and hoping it to be up by Monday. Until then wish me good luck and see these pictures which I clicked today!