Its Holi!

Its Holi today! Happy Holi ! Its the picture of Holi, celebrated with my friends, when was in Bangalore. Check out in Wiki to know more about Holi, also check some cool pictures of Holi from flickr (not my collection). This year, I am just playing around with colours in my power point presentation, preparing for my tomorrow's thesis committee talk. Anyways..Its all about playing with and adding colour to our to each others life :-) Lets get as colourful as my new friend Elmer, the patch work elephant!

Lucky Days! Touch Wood!

In spite of me going crazy with my presentations preparation, I am feeling extremely blessed and lucky for the past few days with wonderful people around. In between the crazy work schedules, having nice, refreshing tea breaks with Micha, discussing silly to very serious issues, with nice home made cheese cakes and two birthday parties with lots of chocolate cakes, weekend parties/get together in the bars... Humm! Too many things in the very short time, you guys may be wondering why there is no photos of the big events happened during the last week, that’s because my old camera refused to work anymore. And just today I got a new camera, gifted by dear brother, a nice gift for a nice sister! Got my visa to USA too, Next week this time, will meet you guys from San Francisco.

Today I got stuck with one very important analysis to finish for my presentations, I was just estimating that the program will take more than a week to run in my small computer, which means, I will not be able to present that result in my thesis committee and in the conference…. just then an Angel popped out of my Google talk…out of the blue.. and asked if she can help me, well! Now that angel is running this program for me in her Hi-Fi server in her lab, in Swiss. The angel is my good friend from my university, Vidhya. Now! I will have the results by tomorrow morning. Lucky me! Still lot more things to do, before I can sit back and relax.

Childhood Revisited!

It was bit hectic week, actually it was just a preparation for big events coming up in the next couple of weeks, Making three presentations, my annual work presentation in the lab, my first thesis committee presentation, to review my first year PhD work and the 'BIG' presentation in JGI, genome sequencing center, a little 'Diatomist' fella will be giving a speech before the 'BIG' Diatomist Sharks in the Bay Area!Hmm! Bit Scary!

Today Alcidio left for his trip in South India. He will go to Madurai and stay with my cousin's family, can't wait to hear about his experience in Madurai.Yesterday did some shopping with Micha for my little nieces in Madurai. We went to some very cute kids shops, I was introduced to many European comic characters, the very impressive one was Micha's favorite Elmer, the patchwork ,a very colorful elephant. One among few things come up to the westerners mind, when they talk about India is the usage of very bright colours in India, but first time for a change,we have the plain black elephant, unlike this colourful 'European' elephant. This Elmer is a very cheerful and optimistic personality it seems.yeah! it needs lots of courage and optimism to be out of the crowd! Will try to get hold of some books of Elmer and will write more about this 'optimist'.

My First Love!

There is a brand new member in our lab, the day I did the overnight work in the lab, last Sunday. I heard a strange sound out the window, sounded like a cat in deep pain, just peeped out and it was too dark and I just saw two pretty eyes glittering. The next day I went to see him with few cat lovers in my lab, unlike in India, it’s very rare to see stray dogs and cats in Paris, surprised to see a disowned cat, struggling in cold and hunger in my lab terrace and now we adopted him, we have a heap of cat food in our pantry to feed him. Cats and Dogs are my first love, when I was 6 or 7 years old in Salem, I remember sneaking out my house to secretly meet few stay puppies near my house. Unfortunately I was never able to own one because of my gypsy life style. (I have never lived in a town/city for more than 3 years.) I felt with this lifestyle of mine, I can never justify to my lover, if I own him...anyways...in India we find hell lot of stray dogs and cats, I always find a new love easily to any new city I move to. In Paris I never found one, for the last one year, but when ever I miss my love, I use to walk in the long street of pet shops, just next to the river in Paris, but it’s also painful to see them shut in cages! I like to let my love go free, hoping that they come back to me in some form or the other (but usually they never do...That’s a different story...) Lucky Week! With many good results in my project and much other good news, I got my First love back!

Out of the Blue!

Recently.. well!! almost two months back Arjun exhibited his photos, with this photo, taken in Rajasthan, in the flyer and titled “Out of the Blue”! Every one appreciated the photos and the title specifically, so appropriate, since it was his first exhibition and also the photos were really “Out of the Blue”. Today as I was browsing through the my favorite “In Pictures” column in BBC, they have posted the best photos of “Photographer of the year” ,winner's gallery, a beautiful photos from the deep blue ocean, with the same phrase as the title!!! I was so surprised to see the usage of this phrase “Out of the Blue”, did some research on this Phrase. Got to know some interesting stuff about its origin.(source)

Meaning:

A surprise, like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky.

Origin :

This has the feel of a Shakespearian or Biblical phrase, but it isn't as old as it sounds. There are several forms of it: 'out of the blue', 'a bolt out of the blue', etc. The earliest citation is Thomas Carlyle, in 'The French Revolution', 1837:

"Arrestment, sudden really as a bolt out of the Blue, has hit strange victims."

But for me all good Photographs are “Out of the Blue” as they always “’Take me’ Out of the Blue”!