Thursday, December 27, 2012

A Tea Stall In Dubai!

A dusty road, not only dust, uncleaned trash bins. Its autumn and the road is almost covered with leaves without the road workers. 

"Only our road looks sloggy" said a neighbour.

 "Its waste of time waiting for the cleaners, let's do it ourselves", a volunteer raised his voice.

"He doesn't belong to our street", murmured a kid to his friend pointing towards the young volunteer.

"He may be our neighbour's guest", replied the other kid in a whisper. Everyone in the street thought so.

"Next is going to be the rainy season. Its better not to wait for the cleaners, drainage may be clogged in rain in the next week and we may get infected too", explained the stranger.

"There is a point, let us start cleaning up". Everyone in the street were excited about their team work, leaving all their ego aside and at last it worked!!

While cleaning, everyone noticed the stranger and came to know that he does not belong to any of the houses in the street. But everyone liked his attitude and started talking to him.

"Where do you live? I haven't seen you much in the town", asked an old man who was retired from a National bank as a clerk and presently spends his time in the town library reading books.

"You are right uncle. I live in the next town. I came here to sell my goods for half the rate. I saw the condition of the road and the other part in me started working towards it", he kindly replied.

"Its good to know you. You look so young! Who motivated you to do these things? How can sell goods in half its rate?", asked the old man in wonder.

"I work for the institute that helps poor and needy. Rich people give these goods to the institute where I volunteer for social service. I help them in selling those goods", he replied with a clear and calm face.

"We'll buy your things", said a lady in the crowd.

"It is for a good cause, I'll buy some too", said another.

Soon, all the goods he brought were sold.

"What will you do in future?" asked the old man when he was about to leave. "I wish to have a tea stall in Dubai", came a reply from him.

"Tea stall? Why?" asked the old man, curiously. 

"It is because my parents own a tea shop in the next town and I want to expand it in Dubai". He bid a farewell to everyone and left.

"Hey! This is the thing stolen last week from Rekha's house" said a women in her late 40's.

"This is the thing telecast-ed a couple of day's ago in T.V being stolen by a tricky thief from a city store!", came another voice.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Patriotism

 "What is patriotism?" my conscience questioned me.

 "Is it learning in a foreign country and returning back to our home land, quitting the handful of salary offered by them?"

 No I guessed. I have started to think more about it.

 We can still be patriotic to our country being in other countries by maintaining the quality of our nation and making the people around us to respect our nation and culture.

 Its not only about singing our national anthem on Independence Day and Republic Day, waiting to get a candy from elders and returning back to our home, watching special television programs and some movies.

 Its all about thinking of all categories of people, not with their caste or religion, but it is about thinking of access to facilities like public transports, common areas like theatres, prayer halls, park, etc. for differently able people.
They must be considered too with their full independence.

 First of all, I would like to question myself. How frequently can I able to find a differently able people in the public places like buses, trains and theatres in a respectful manner other than as a beggar or a wanderer??

 The answer of my inner voice is "very rare".

 I recently met a guy with improper growth of his hands. I pitied him as usual. But all his friends treated him the way they treat everyone else. He plays volleyball, works a regular job and even drives a car! People around gives him his energy and he had confidence within him. He is really a differently ABLE person.

 I was amazed.

 A sheer comparison of a similar person in our country made be really shocked. Can a wheel chair person get into any of our town buses? Can he at-least hire a taxi? That depends on how wealthy he is. Will he be respected in the same way as he treated in other locality?

 Feel free to comment your suggestions, as I am looking forward for an answer to the question my conscience asked me.

Wheel Chair

 "How about a movie?" asked one of our  friends.

 "Oh Sure!" came the reply from us without a moment delay, even if we had seen the same movie last weekend in one of the fine theatres in Fort Collins.

 We were looking for an empty parking lot, fortunately found one at last.

 "There she is!" exclaimed our friend pointing to his wife, who arrived at that moment with her cousin, a cute niece and a little nephew.

 They planned watching one movie for the kids choice, which were not of the same sort. At last we changed our plan to the kids wish and there we got splitted into two groups. One group decided to watch an epic fantasy movie as the choice of the cutie girl and the other group went for a cartoon movie with the little boy.

It was so obvious that we went to watch the cartoon movie with our friend, since we had already watched the other one.

 While we were just sharing our Christmas experience, suddenly there made a entry by the theatre manager stating that the wheel chair accessible seat has been made ready (which was previously occupied by someone else who really not in need of that wheel chair accessible area), which made our friend look relaxed.

 All of a sudden, our friend asked us a question which made a bitter minute to answer "Is there wheel chair accessible seating arrangements in the theatres in your hometown?"

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Candle Light Lunch

 I talk a lot. A lot, lot and a lot, but only to the people I know and are closer to me. Strangers describes me to my friends as "the calmest girl ever" or "what a silent girl", and in those moments my close friends would stare at me wildly. I never minded them, and I continued to talk a lot, a lot and a lot more, as usual. If I stay quiet for some time, my roomies in my hostel will find things strange and inevitably ask me "What's wrong with you Jai?"

 Likewise, its obvious to kill my husband by talking more and more, and I really wonder how is he able hear them patiently, even when I recite the same story many times, as if he is hearing it for the first time. 

 I don't know why I keep repeating some of my nostalgic stories to him but it really made me feel as if I am a Thing with wings that flies up into the sky over the cirrus clouds. 

 When I was a kid (just a few years back ;-) ) I used to celebrate my birthday every month of my birth date, and I keep telling this kiddish thing to my hubby. I didn't really know he would keep these in his busy mind.

 Suddenly, a day before my birth date, which was a month after my real birthday,  he kept on telling me that he is going to cook on the next day and I should never interfere in his kitchen work and asked only for my assistance. I was confused of this different behaviour of him and I was as he asked me to be, enjoying the things he was doing with the kitchen utensils and commodities.

 Finally he came out with delicious stuffs and arranged for Candle Light Lunch, as it was dark in the later noon. He wished me "Happy Birthday Darling" with a sweet kiss in my forehead, and later I realized how much he valued my silly talks and also realized that the cooking arrangements are not for the Christmas, but for my birth date!


 Apple and Cinnamon flavoured candle


         Candle Light Lunch

That was lovely and made me happy, happier and happiest <3

Monday, December 17, 2012

The Things With Wings

 "Its bore being a housewife " I always expressed my boredom to my husband. He took me to the university library, and triggered the reading habit of mine. And now I wanted to take some books home, I'm not pretty choosy about books and I no have idea of choosing the books. I checked out some books which had attractive cover page and gone through the font size and style in which the book is printed. It seems silly but still I did!

 After successfully completing the book "The Voyage of Frog" by Gary Paulsen, in our daily reading time, the other book which is left out in my collection is "The Things with Wings" by Gregory J Holch.

 Firstly, when I was just skimming over the chapter titles, I got bored of seeing the words "Newton", "Apple tree", etc and I thought its going to be some sort of philosophy. Thought of skipping the book but I had no other books left to study in the reading hour of our day. So I thought of reading 3 chapters a day.

 But later I found it to be a good fantasy novel and I got completely lost in the book. Now I suggest this book to be made as a movie and I'll be the first person in whole universe to be happy if it happens so. Now I want to read books of this kind and volunteered my husband to take me to the district library and found many fantasy novels, picked few for this month in my usual way ;-)


 "The Things with Wings"  gave me wings to fly out of boredom and now I found that reading is an interesting addiction.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Housewives!

 "Mom!! I got placed in an MNC!!" I exclaimed with excitement in a phone call. My friends nearby in my room knew the news only when I was talking to my mom over mobile phone. All were happy for my placement and everyone in my family were happy to know the news that I became a software engineer. Yes, first software engineer in my family. I was happy to be tagged by that name. My best friend Durga and I went to Krishna canteen to celebrate our placements.

 All of a sudden, I got engaged too. My marriage is to be held immediately after my studies. Job?? Its obvious that I had to quit my offer, because married life is given high priority in our community. I had a secret plan to get a good position in a good work place, but I found it to be a difficult task to be placed off-campus. So, for now I am tagged as "housewife".

  Housewife. Really tougher task than my secret plan. Working with four months of pregnancy may make me tired physically, but mentally I am tired being housewife. I wonder how my mom, grand-mom and many more ladies achieved this position for several years even without laptop, internet and television boxes. Cooking and house keeping doesn't require one full day; state of boredom filled my day which urged me to read some books occasionally, browse most of the time and made me as a pretty good farmer in Farmville 2. :-) I think I'll have most of the time with my kid in future, but for now I don't want to spend my precious time lavishly instead I'm still proceeding with my secret plan. ;-) God knew how to sail me in the ocean of life, whether in my tough path or in my even more tougher path.

Let me hope for the best.



Thursday, December 6, 2012

Farmville 2 - Tips and Tricks

Hello all..

 Some hate facebook, some hate games, and yeah, I was one among them hating facebook and gaming in facebook. But now I am a facebooker. I can be titled as facebooker not because of my regular facebooker posts, but I do play Farmville a lot. To be honest I play using my facebook account and also with my parent's account ;-) (obviously with their knowledge). Initially, in my college days, I was playing Farmville, but now I found myself attracted towards Farmville 2 with its additional features. Playing Farmville can help an individual in their day-2-day time management, unless and until, they are not addicted to it.  After several hours of playing with it, I found some interesting strategies to be followed to obtain higher levels easily, i.e., with easy progress in "XP" which is hard to improve as our level increases. And yeah, XP is nothing but experience.

These are some points in which I find something interesting to my farm.

Plant strawberry when the level is about to complete

 XP- We have to monitor the "XP" required to reach the next level(usually indicated next to the purple star on the top of our farm). Once we are about to reach the required XP to complete the present level, start planting the strawberry seeds or sunflower seeds, so that we are able to reach the next level with more XP gained for the next level's XP target. These strawberry and sunflower yields 13 and 14 XP's respectively and which takes about a day to harvest, if we do calculating at the end of the present level, we'll be able to harvest as soon as we reach the next level in few minutes. This is good about having progression in the levels.

Click on neighbour's farm icon (bottom left) when highlighted with water drop
 
 HELP NEIGHBOURS- We are able to gain some XP and coins by helping our neighbours. And usually when visiting others farm, it is better to harvest carrot(which is locked for lower levels) which yields more coins while selling them in market or to our neighbour's concern it is better to water or fertilize trees esp trees like pecan trees(which require 4 waters :-( ), so that they can accept our help after harvesting their trees to water their trees. Add more neighbours to be benefitt.

Craft a delicious food and sell them in market

CRAFTS- It is always better to sell the goods for good amount of coins once if they are processed than to sell them as raw goods. They give us XP's and good coins too.

 TASKS- We should always be checking the tasks given to us by zynga, it always yields us some bonus XP's and coins. We can find the task lists given to us in the left side of our farm, by clicking on them we'll find things to be completed.

Click on the icons on left side to find tasks given by Zynga. Also, see how fencing the animals restrict their movements to a confined area.

ANIMALS- Adopting animals are always helpful. They are always an easy way of earning some XP and coins. but the feed which we give them, we should be careful of the material which we make feed of. Usually olives and fig are the good  sources of feed as they are not used in any of the craft materials in the kitchen, also they aren't the good sources of coins as raw material. So, it is always better to have them as feed. It is also better to have an area fenced for the animals to be wandering else they'll be free to move in our plots which makes us to have hard time with cultivating, watering and harvesting crops.

Plant as many trees as possible. Try to arrange them properly.

TREES- Always prefer watering the lemon trees, olive trees, peach trees and orange trees as olives are very much used in the feeder machine and lemon, peach and oranges in the kitchen. It is better to water Pecan trees using our friends visit.

See a cute couple sitting on top of a hay block? They are the farmhands.

FARMHAND- It is better to use farmhands on strawberry and sunflower as it takes long time to be harvested. By using farmhands, we can harvest the crops at once.

Fertilize your crops to gain more XP and to be mastery of crops

FERTILIZER- Fertilizer's are worthy to be used on pumpkin as it weighs good and usually on strawberries. Using fertilizers makes the crop prized, provide mastery in crops and XP of equivalent weight of the crop is gained in bonus.
  
Based on the requirements wheat, pumpkin, cauliflower, seasonal crops, etc. can be cultivated. Keep checking the land to be bought next and its requirements, so that we can help with that.

This is what I found while playing Farmville 2 and thought of publishing in my blog for this time. And I'm sure I'll find some tips and tricks to play this game and will definitely share with you people.

Happy Farming!!!

Friday, November 30, 2012

My First Post

Hello all..
 This is going to be my first blog post in my life time. I'm just giving a try to write. Previously, I have no experience in writing except the ones I write in my answer sheets during many of my examinations ;-)
 I always had a thought of scribbling something in my diary, unfortunately my another inner voice said a strict "no" to that. I don't know why. But now I write because of my husband's motivation.
I think a lot, random thoughts, which many of us are used to. But now, I want to stack all my thoughts to a string of garland or a bouquet of flowers blooming one after the other in my blog. Let us see what is going to happen. Also, I'm sure I wanted to mention a thing here: oh yeah, its all about my texting language. After getting used to send messages to my friends via mobile phones I get only the short forms of the words I often use. Hope this habit of using SMS slang even in my blog will fade away certainly.
See you in my next post.