Ganesha says .....

The past two weeks have been fun..especially since I and Rahul are just two weeks away from going home for our wedding..actually less than that. The excitement is even more as each day passes...well also bcoz going home is such fun.

We've been giving out our wedding invitations to all friends and colleagues here in US. We both are pretty excited about it and since we are so far away from our home in India, we are missing out on a lot of pre wedding fun. All the shopping, running around buying stuff, getting exhausted but still loving it, and inviting everyone. So we decided to have some fun here as well, giving out cards to people, people we know cannot actually attend the wedding since its thousands of miles away. But it feels good.
Today I invited my team for the wedding and everyone..well most Americans asked me about the picture on the invitation ...Lord Ganesha. I did explain he was the lord of auspicious beginnings..but they wanted more. So, as usual, I googled it..there was so much information about Ganesha but my favorite one is this picture below. Its gives a brief explanation about each of his weapons and what it stands for.

Let there be auspicious beginnings !!

Somethings Fishy !!!

Two weeks back we had been to Indiana and picked up some Pomfret from a local oriental store on our way back. Posting a picture of my favorite fish preparation.

Interesting.....

Did you know that nothing happened between 3 and 13 September 1752?

A month with whole of eleven days missing. This was the time England shifted from Roman Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar, and the king of England ordered those 11 days to be wiped off the face of the month of September of 1752. (What couldn't a King do in those days?!) And yes, the workers worked for 11 days less, but got paid for the entire 30 days.

And that's how "Paid Leave" was born.Hail the King!!!

Movie Watch - Jodha Akbar !!

The movie was pretty detailed about how or where both Akbar and Jodha were born. I must admit, it did refresh my history knowledge. The movie was ok not that great...The war scenes at the begining of the movie could have been better. The songs were ok too. What I liked is how love between Akbar and Jodha evolves. The romantic moments between the two were good. And obviously the most talked about jewellery that Aishwarya wore was amazing. It was worth watching once...

Happy Valentines Day !!!

I made cookies ..

Made some cashew cookies for the weekend. Looks good ..eh ?

"Lion King" The Broadway Musical

This Friday we saw 'Lion King', the Broadway musical which is based on the animated movie with the same name. I wanted to see a musical here and since Lion king was based on the known animated movie which itself was pretty good, we decided on this one. We parked our car and started walking towards the Milwaukee theater. The streets were crowded and people seemed pretty excited to watch the show, no one seemed to care about the snow. We took our tickets and joined the queues lined up towards the balcony. There were ushers everywhere helping people find their seats. Our seats were a little farther than I thought but the view was great. The theater was packed with audience, and to my surprise there were more adults than kids. We were handed little lion King booklets telling us everything about show, the artist, the sequence of the acts and the songs.
Everyone was finally settled in their seats, waiting for the curtains to open up. On both sides of the stage were small balconies set up for live music..and I saw a person in one of those, ok..so now I'm pretty sure I'll be listening to some live music. Just then the host of the show started talking, telling everyone to shut their cell phones off. And after some brief silence the curtain opened up.The show started with the song 'Circle of Life'. The stage was beautiful. It had clouds all over the place and then the sun started rising from the middle of the stage, and while that happened the clouds cleared up in the background..the sky turned like the morning sky and animals(not real ones) started moving onto the stage. They had a mountain emerging from the stage where king-Musafa stood with his lioness and his kid, Simba. Puppets and live actors wove a dream scape of jungle characters. A rushing waterfall was conveyed simply by a rippling stream of silk. The following one hour was interesting as the story moved forward including all the songs that the movie had, landscapes changing from the beautiful jungle to a waterfall then again to the cave of the evil 'Scar'.
All the artist performed so well. They had so much energy. It was truly an amazing experience. At the end of the show, the audience gave a standing ovation to the entire crew. We left the theater happy and contended :)


Click here for details on the show: Disney's Lion King

Scary Snow storm

Yet another snow storm took place Wednesday. "Its pretty common here in Milwaukee, the last few years have been milder than usual"..thats what people living here for years tell me. But this is the first time I have seen so much of snow ...20 inches of snowfall is a little too much. I was planning to stay home that day but when I called the office number they told me they are open. I didn't want to be the only one staying at home coz of the snowfall, so I started for work. The drive wasn't bad. I opened my outlook only to find that the office was closing down in an hour or so coz of the bad weather..ya right..they couldn't decide that when I called in to ask !! Anyway, since my ride to work wasn't that bad I was ok with it. But as soon as I stepped out it was horrible. There was no visibility on the roads, I could hardly see any vehicles passing by. God! am I the last person on this planet. ..that is exactly how it felt. Blowing snow from both sides, no visibility and slushy bad roads. I was driving at 11mph. Took me an hour to reach home. But I reached home safely...and thats what mattered.

Feels like -30 degree Fahrenheit !!!!

Its -30F today..this cold is brutal and I mean it. I really don't have to walk that much in the morning. I park the car and walk from the parking lot to the clients office. The walk is about 5 minutes. But the 5 min walk is a struggle. It was so cold and windy that my toes started getting numb & I had a running nose, all this is in spite of me looking like a terrorist with the gloves on, the scarf, the cap and my wool jacket. I had no choice but to run. It was heaven when I entered the building, all the hot air from the heaters of the building warming me up faster than I thought. Happily I removed my scarf and just then a person got ahead of me on the escalator, all smelling of cigarettes. And I thought to myself ...time for my scarf again .......

IMAX experience

This sunday was my first IMAX movie experience. The movie 'The Alps' was about John Harlin III who has been haunted by the Eiger since the day his father died when he was just nine years old. Eiger is one of the notorious peaks among climbers for the unpredictable weather changes and the deadly shower of falling rock. But more than the story its the cinematography that grabs your attention. With crystal clear images and digital surround sounds, it felt like I was almost there. Below the peaks is a town named Grindelwald. I thought to myself, Switzerland is so beautiful. No wonder all the Bollywood janta flocks to shoot movies in this beautiful country. Wonder when I will visit this heaven on earth. Not so soon probably but till then I have experienced how it feels to be there.

Trying to swim

When I was in the 7th grade I enrolled for a crash course in swimming at the Andheri sports complex pool but never managed to get past the fear of water. The course lasted only for 2 weeks and were not enough for me to overcome my fear of water...though I think I did learn to float then. Last weekend was my another attempt trying to swim or should I say.. learning to swim. I like being in water and playing in it but as soon as the water reaches my neck....my aqua phobia kicks in & I start to panic. So I happily stayed in the safe zone .i.e the area marked below 4ft.
The next day at work I was happy to know I was not the only one with the same problem, a colleague at work had recently joined a swim club to take lessons and experienced similar fears. We discussed about the breathing techniques for a beginner under water. Sharing experiences does feel good. Well, weekend is here again and I plan to try again. Hopefully I will succeed.

Winter at a glance - Whitnall Park, WI

Festive time

Diwali in US doesn't seem like the one we celebrate back home. Of course we have friends here but I do miss my family back home. All the shopping, burning fire crackers (not just watching them from a distance like in US), eating faral (chakli, chivda and all other sweets) and most of all, being with your family. Yet, we put up lights on our patio and I made some sweets (didn't turn out as good as Aai does but I tried). On Diwali day we went to the temple and later we were invited to a friends place for dinner. After some nice dinner we all sat down to play boggle. Its an interesting game, somewhat like scrabble with some different rules. Then we also played some dumb charades. Meeting up with friends did feel like Diwali :)

Seasons Greetings

Thanksgiving is the time to meet close family and friends. We initially had planned for a get-together with some friends in Chicago. But our plans did not go through since those traveling by air were unable to get tickets on time. So we decided to make our own plans to Wisconsin Dells, the water park capital. I've been there many times before but since it was winter time all outdoor water parks were closed. We picked 'Chula vista resort', a resort with an indoor water park. We did our bookings and left Milwaukee on thanksgiving day. To our surprise the resort was full. Lots of families were actually spending their time at the resort than having the traditional home cooked turkey dinner. The resort was nicely decorated for the holiday season. We had a fun time in the lazy river and all water slides. The resort served a breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets. Since we spent most of our time at the pool we had lunch and breakfast at small food joints near the pool itself. I was so tired by the end of day & was ready for the dinner buffet. It was a little pricey but the food had a lot of variety.. all kinds of pizza, meat, pasta and fish. We left the resort the next day. On our way back we saw a truck full of dead deers and realized, a week before thanksgiving was the deer hunting season. I had to get a picture.
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Christmas is here... Christmas was special this year. Rahul's cousin joined us the weekend before Christmas and my brother stayed from Christmas to new years. So we both got to know a member of each others family :)
Since both my guests were students and don't really go in for a home cooked meal each day, I decided to cook some nice home cooked meal for them. The recipes for the following days were Uppama, poha, appam with shrimp curry, vegetable biriyani, aloo paratha, veg hakka noodles, chicken masala, masala dosa etc..hope your mouth is watering by now...hahaha. So was theirs & they both relished it. We played uno at home, walked some trails at whitnall park, enjoyed some stand-up comedy at comedy cafe, visited discovery world museum by lake Michigan and visited Chicago too.
It was holiday well spent with family :D

Welcoming Winter ...

October started a little chilly which meant no more long walks by Lake Michigan. We'll now have to dig out all our winter clothes from the closet. Wash them and keep them ready for the season or buy some new ones in case they have shrunk (which happens almost every season). I love snow but hate winters. I guess we can't just have the snow, with snow come the cold winds and then the single digit negative temperatures...its a package deal. But the thing to look forward to in this harsh weather is the holiday season. Although we don't celebrate Christmas, I love the festive season when everything is lit up. Sweets & chocolates all over the place and less work ;)
It didn't take too long for Halloween to come. Pumpkins lit everywhere, haunted houses and funny costumes. We didn't really do anything for Halloween but went around town to see the way people were dressed. I'm surely participating next year...with my vampire like teeth being one won't be hard ;)

Milwaukee summer fest 07

Summer fest usually starts end of June and last for almost more than a week. Its one of the largest music festivals in Mid-west. There are many local bands playing in addition to some popular bands. There is lots of food to choose from and lots of 'beer' too ;) We bought tickets for a Def Leppard concert. Our friends from Indiana joined us for the concert and later stayed over for the weekend. I'm not a huge fan of Def Leppard but since it was my first concert I enjoyed a lot. It was fun watching crowds sing to 'Love Bites'. After the concert we all decided to grab a bite. So we headed to a restaurant by the lake and had some nice dinner.

Out in the woods - Door County, WI

Rahul & I chose the memorials day weekend to visit this place. Its about 3 hrs north of Milwaukee. The weather was really good but it did get chilly a lot of times. We went around most of the peninsula, went to a state fair (where they served nice buttery corn) & bicycled along the trails. You can rent bikes at an hourly rate. An hour was good. I was riding after a long time and was tired already. Its nice to get out in the woods once in a while. We made sure we say each bay. Had loads of fun driving around the county :) Heard the fall here is extremely good. I'm surely going to visit the place again.

Howdy !

Last year was quite an eventful year. Met my Mr.Right, met new people, made a lot of new friends and of course traveled too. Summer was good(as always). Visited my brother who's studying at UT-Austin in May, then had a fun trip to the wonderful peninsula of "Door County", north of Wisconsin, enjoyed Milwaukee Summer Fest and visited India for my engagement.

Canoeing on Barton Creek in Zilker Park
Austin Trip: This was my third visit to Austin. The first one was immediately after Amogh (my brother) arrived to US. The second was after my parents visited us in US. So I wasn't really interested in seeing the "State Capitol" a third time. This time we went to Zilker park which is a recreational park south of Austin. We took a walk along the green park, saw the Barton creek & the miniature Zilker train. Clicked a lot of pictures as I usually do. It was fun. Lunch was at Hula Hut a Mexican joint near Austin lake. Then we headed home to take a quick nap. Evening was with an old school friend who's now moved to Austin after she got married. Spent some good time at a Mexican restaurant(forgot the name) which played live music. Shared some old memories, the time when we were very good friends. Somehow over the years we lost touch but it still felt good to meet her. Then it was time to see the great movie ' Spiderman 3', Amogh and his friends were pretty excited about this one and all their hopes were shattered after Toby Maguire shed a tear...hahaha. It was hilarious. So after the great movie event we headed back home to rest for the day..well thats what I had planned but not the rest of the crowd who had lots of energy to play a game of monopoly. I wasn't up for it but the game really got interesting and we played until 4:00am in the morning. Next day was sunday which was one good thing but it also meant that I had to travel back to Milwaukee on that day. So I packed my bags to leave the 'Howdy' state. Bye for now ...see yall later.