It starts tomorrow!
Yeah, I know it will only be the pre-season. So what? It is better than nothing and I way too excited about “The Mavericks, Reloaded” that I cannot wait!
Have a happy and fun Halloween while enjoying the carnival at the Blog Mela - AnarCapLib: Blog Mela. Jhoomo, gaao aur mauj manao!
Need something to read over the weekend? Check out the selestion of best posts from the Indian side of the blogosphere here - Metablog #12: Blog Mela: The Final Cut!
How cool is this! So many lives would be saved and so many vaccine doses saved from getting wasted because this little invention.
Nature’s trick helps millions of children beat diseaseNow a British company has devised a way of immortalising vaccines by wrapping them in sugar molecules and excluding water. The trick is used by plants, animals and by yeasts to survive when drought strikes. Some plant species, such as the Resurrection Plant, Selaginella lepidophylla, have come back to life after more than a century of hibernation just by adding water. “Within minutes or hours they turn back into active, fully-functioning plants,” Bruce Roser, of Cambridge Biostability, the company behind the development, said.
Yep, the Libertarians lost me. This morning. When an SUV with a Badnarik bumper sticker had the nerve to cut me off in the rush hour traffic.
I saw my first Vietnam Veterans against John Kerry bumper sticker this morning too. I noticed from the back that the driver’s head kept bobbing from side to side as he was driving. I pulled beside him so I could see what was going on - turned out he was shaving while driving…That was a first for me too. The freakiest I saw was a man reading a book while driving.
Of course, if there was ever someone who deserved to die an ignominous death, it was this fine specimen of manhood!
Veerappan lost his men, was cornered - The Times of IndiaVijaykumar said the brigand had 106 cases filed against him in Tamil Nadu, 70 in Karnataka and allegedly killed 44 policemen. Asked who was entitled to the prize money of Rs 5 crore announced by the Karnataka government and Rs 50 lakh by Tamil Nadu for Veerappan’s capture, Vijaykumar said, “Our chief minister J Jayalalithaa wanted to enhance the prize money, but I asked her not to. Now she is ready to give any amount.”
Tony Blair said it better than I could in the quoted passage below how I feel about the kidnapping of Margaret Hassan. If these guys are really interested in the welfare of Iraq and not the return of Saddam to power, how does anyone explain the kidnapping of a woman heading a charity helping Iraqis? She is a native, for Gods’ sake! What is killing her going to achieve? How is it better for anybody in the whole world if this woman who has dedicated her life to helping Iraqis lead a better life is murdered brutally? I don’t give a damn about the cause - just explain how this one woman’s murder is going to better anything for anybody in Iraq!
Aid worker kidnapped in Iraq“This is someone who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, someone who is immensely respected, someone who is doing her level best to help the country,” said Blair.“It shows you the type of people we are up against, that they are prepared to kidnap somebody like this.”
A Care International spokeswoman said she had no idea who kidnapped Hassan or what their demands might be, but was keen to stress Hassan saw herself as part of the Iraqi community.
“She sees herself as an Iraqi. Iraq is her home. She has been living there for many years and would never consider coming back to Britain,” the spokeswoman said.
Update: So how do you guys explain this video plea by the kidnapped lady? Is that still for ransom?
Who says we don’t listen to our commenters? Based on Al Mujahid’s suggestion, here is the place for you to post your favorite kinds of food and the restaurants where one can find it at. I think that would be great since it will give people ideas of new restaurants and foods to try - Comment away!
I will start -
Favorite food:
Thai food
Indian (South-Indian, Hyderabadi, especially).
Favorite restaurants -
Roy’s Hawaiian Cuisine (Plano) for the best Misoyaki Butter Fish ever (pricey place with $10 sakes)
Piman (Irving) for the best Thai food and shrimp wafers ever. Awesome Panang curry!
Pasand (Irving & Richardson) - for the best gulabjamun in Dallas!
Al-Markaz (Lewisville(?)) - Pakistani restaurant that makes really good lamb and chicken biriyanis. Very good Kadahi chicken!
I know The Velevet Hookah had been open for a while but my husband and I finally got some free time this Saturday, so we went there for dinner. A few of our friends had recommended this, so I was really pumped to go check it out. It was not too far from where we lived, so that meant we could get a little tipsy and still drive home safely. Anyways, here it goes -
Neighborhood - We thought we were lost by the time we came upon this place, it was located so out there. Nothing of interest around here - cannot walk or sit outside - we found out why once we went inside.
Ambience - The thing is, this place was more of a bar/nightclub minus the dance floor than a real restaurant. I know it was stupid of us to just rely on our friends’ word and not check it out in the Digital City guide. You need an ID to get in, so be sure to carry your wallets and purses with you - all of you. It was pretty dark inside and there was some good music with fast beats playing. They strung up a bunch of chiffon (I think) sarees all over the place to create a Middle-Eastern kind of look.
There are tables only in the bar area. The rest of the place has a a carpet you will be sitting on and a bunch of pillows that you can lean on. It can be quite uncomfortable, especially if you have on tight jeans like my husband did (heh!). It does feel quite cozy though I hated being almost shoulder-shoulder with the people sitting next to us. There just wasn’t enough room or private space.
Food and Drink - I was so hungry by the time we had showed up at the bar that I wanted to dig into something good right away. Unfortunately they served only appetizers, that too a limited variety. We ordered the chicken satay - three skewers with three chicken pieces on each, served with three apple slices, a few grapes, and soy sauce and spicy peanut sauce on the side - and some roasted red-pepper hummus. The food was good, but barely enough for the two of us.
I ordered the M3 which was really good and that was the only drink I had for the evening.
The Hookah - We ordered the menthol hookah, but I suspect they gave us a vanilla one initially by mistake. It was pretty mild and tasted kinda like the Vanilla Mints you get at the Starbucks. There was barely any smoke in it and I failed to see the fun of it. They replaced our hookah with a eral menthol one later and this was pretty strong. I liked menthol in my throat but the minute the smoke hit the back of my throat I was coughin so hard my husband was embarrassed to be seen with me. I guess there ended that experiment.
Overall, it was a pretty fun and different experience and I think we will definitely be going back. The bill was about $80 for 4 M3s, 4 Amstel Lights, 2 Chicken Satay and 1 roasted red pepper hummus, so it wasn’t that pricey. Check it out - you might like it.
Update: I forgot to mention there was belly dancing. They also charged us extra by $35 on our credit card and my husband is taking care of it right now - be careful!
It is up at MadMan’s blog and is filled with some real virtual delicacies…MadMan’s Web: Bharteeya Blog Mela.
All said and done, when you finally erach the voting booth and are about to vote for one person or the other as the President of the USA what is going to be driving you? What is your single biggest issue or your list of issues in the order of importance?
I don’t know what to write about specifically, I am just going to post about what I think about the day’s headlines.
CNN.com - U.S., Iraq to probe missing N-equipment - Oct 13, 2004Washington has said it will join Baghdad in a full investigation into missing machinery from Iraq’s nuclear facilities, and Iraq’s science minister has invited UN inspectors to the country.One of the things that had really bothered me about the war was the botching of the guarding of the possible WMD sites. This made the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on dangerous material so much more real that it terrifies me. It is good to see finally someone woke up and decided to do some thing about this.
U.S. agency taking spyware to court Woo hoo! I curse the moustaches of all spy-ware makers! May all your computers be infected forever!
India ranks 55th and Pakistan 91st out of 104 countries according to the World Economic Forum’s Growth Competitiveness Index.
Of course, they found another mass-grave in Iraq filled with women and children - “The body of one woman was found still clutching a baby. The infant had been shot in the back of the head and the woman in the face, the BBC reported.” Saddam? Just drop dead!
Oh, the Lakers lost to the Seattle Sonics 80-87 yesterday in their first pre-season game - if this is any indication of the season to come, Kobe will realize sooner than later that he ain’t all that without Big Daddy Shaq helping him out.
- I think Raj Bhakta is kinda cute in a weird sort of way and am watching the Apprentice to root for him. I don’t know if he will win (Kelly and Kevin seem pretty strong to me), but he does have a good chance. Go Raj, the anti-stereotypical Indian guy!
- I hate Survivor - how can you vote off the one and only eye-candy, Agent Brady? Boo!
- Watched “The Forgotten” over the weekend. Spoilers below, so don’t look unless you wanna know (that rhymes!)…
OK, this was one of those movies that I think as a mom I was supposed to get real moved by and cry buckets in. Unfortunately, I didn’t do so. Here is a brief synopsis - Julianne Moore plays Telly, whose son died in a plane crash 14 months ago. She still loves him and cannot let go, so she keeps seeing a therapist (Gary Sinise). One fine day, all traces of her son in her life start to disappear - pictures in albums, video tapes, etc. She first suspects her husband of doing this to cure her, but turns out her husband doesn’t believe she ever had a son as does her therapist and her ex-babysitter. She finds the dad of a little girl who dies in the crash with his son, but he doesn’t believe he ever had a daughter. (You get all this from the trailer - the spoilers are in the extended entry)
I really liked the premise of the movie and was very prepared to like it when I went to watch. The ending was hokey crap about the bond between a mother and her son being greater and better than evil aliens! Yes, I said evil aliens - don’t even ask! I don’t understand why she was the special mom who didn’t forget and why the other moms promptly forgot their supposedly dead offspring. What is different about Telly? The only thing I can think of is that she actually remembers her pregnancy - how stupid! Every woman remembers that! If this was billed as sentimental pap I would have bought it but thriller, this movie ain’t! Skip it!
Yeah, I know it will only be the pre-season. So what? It is better than nothing and I way too excited about “The Mavericks, Reloaded” that I cannot wait!
Thanks to Blogstreet for featuring us as the Blog of the Day today :) BlogStreet India : Blog Profiles, RSS Ecosystem, Blog Tops, Search and Directory of Indian Weblogs - Now I wish I had written something good recently to deserve the award :p
Aniruddha Mahajan, email me and claim your prize. Congratulations!
Remember, we will have a combined poll for all this month’s weekly entries to get vote for the best entry of the month.
update: MadMan is hosting this week’s Mela, so go forth and submit your entries to him, all ye who want to be featured in this week’s Mela and be secondary recipients of the Instalanche :)
Go check it out at Ravages place this week - Selective Amnesia: Bharateeya Blog Mela (v. whatever).
Sudan: The Passion of the Present: Eric Reeves in the Boston Globe today (Sunday, October 3)
One hesitation on the divestment campaign idea. Unles it focuses on Chinese, Indian, and Malaysian comanies, I’m not sure it can have much effect. Western companies such as Canada’s Talisman Energy have already pulled out of Sudan. It is really the Chinese, the Indians, and the Malaysians who are supporting the regime by helping build up the oil export business. And it is the Russians who are supplying the most high tech arms to Sudan’s military, including aircraft.How does India end up on the wrong side of every bad thing that has happened in the world in the past two centuries? Siding with Russia under Stalin, Saddam in the first Gulf War and now Sudan while they are in the process of genocide?
Has Arundhati Roy found a single terrorist group she will not defend? Not really, as this post’s content demonstrates - Michael J. Totten: Left-wing Fascism Watch (Updated). Remember that the “insurgents” she so dreamily supports and backs are the same ones who also killed 35 children…for what again? God of small things? Goddess of major evilbeings, is more like it!
via Niraj.