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!