Roses are Red

Walking down 65th street near Hunter College, i came across a board with something written on it ..

'Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
Don't Leave Behind you cigarette stubs
And your Doggie Too '

:)

Friendly Subtalk!

Guess what? I found someone to share my subtalk today on the 1 train ..... a beautiful old lady , who was as young at heart as could be!

She came in at Lincoln Center and sat beside me and gave me a smile , which was quite unusual ! So i returned it gladly.

After a while i heard a little murmur . I saw her reading a poem which i had read a few days back on subtalk! its was an interesting poem by Shakespere from Macbeth .

And then we started talking ... she said she really liked the lines because it went , tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow , repetitively!

Wow! I found someone to share my subtalk ...what else could i have asked for? We had a small discussion on the poem and its meaning :)

I was amazed to see her reading without glasses ....Well she was amazed too! She just had a cataract operation done and was enjoying her brand new eyesight

She asked me if i was Indian . I was suprized again ! I asked her how did she identify me... and listen to what she said.... " You are charming ....(so you got to be an Indian!) .... I was properly flattered :D and proud also ... Then she told me of her visits to Mumbai and Delhi ...

It was a lovely experience talking to this "young" old lady who got off at Columbia University leaving me with a BIG SMILE!

Tomato Soup For the Woman's Soul!

Well Well .. I am a veggie ...so can't say Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul. this is the veggie version in the literal sense of the word!

After a long day at hunter college , a tired brain and soul and a slightly sore throat, I yearned for a warm drink , but not the same old tea or coffee from the vending machine. Luckily had a packet of ketchup lying around from lunch, a few packs of salt and pepper...what else could i have asked for?

just heated up some water in the department microwave , added the ketchup , salt and pepper and here we go , steaming tomato soup tomato soup - to rejuvenate the 'tired' woman's soul :)
It tasted like the soup we get on trains in India --- but even that was warm and heavenly with some strong pepper !

celebrating bike month

After a month long search for a bike , the auspicious day finally dawned. Nithya and I managed to buy a cute looking ladies bike .Won't brag that its a great bike but its fun to ride.

It was a great experience riding it after so many years! and still better because it was in the beautiful neighbourhood.

Tibbett avenue is full of greenery and flowers now and we hope it will continue to remain a pleasure for the next two three months!

So here's to our little mauve bike and here's to the bike month of NYC


my bike looks something like this but jazzy mauve!

Cornell Daily Sun and New York Times!

The Cornell daily sun (my cousin sushee) decided to rise in New York city for a change last weekend! And that was great news :) for New York Times (anu) !!

So the Cornell Daily Sun and New York Times got together n painted the city red!

We found two friends of her's who showed us places in the city which even i haven't seen after coming here.

The food festival in China Town was amazing and so was the view of Brooklyn Bridge from South Seaport.

It was brrrrr... chilly and Starbucks coffee by the Hudson Bay had no power to save us from the biting cold :(

The bull at Wall Street gave us a warm welcome and so did President George Washington with whom we had the privelege to click photographs!

It was a dull and foggy evening at Battery Park but nothing could dim the dazzling Times Square!!

We enjoyed a movie 'Interpreter' ....which scared me a bit too .
But anything shot in NY city has to be gr8 ,right??

The cornell and new york beauties (self proclaimed) hopped back into the 1 train drenched by the pouring rains and sped back home to have nupur's recommended rainy day supper--- hot khichdi and kadi!

Global Positioning at Hunter College

Ever since i started going to hunter , i have been using GPS regularly . No , not the GPS instrument thats gives you location on the earth , but i have been making friends from all over the globe! Its a great experience to talk to them, to get to know their lives, their backgrounds , their cultures.

Hunter college doesnt have many Indian students and that really turned out to be a blessing for me . I have Korean friends, Japanese, Chinese, Greek, Spanish and so on .... Most of the are Asians though and they have a culture very similar to Indians. Its nice to know little things like how they grew up , their ideas about their parents, about family , about religion , culture , about neighbouring countries and of course...the most important thing to me... THEIR VEG FOOD RECIPES :)

While I always liked to meet people from different countries and know them , this experience has been more wonderful than i imagined.

A different view of the world which cannot be had from facts and theories or from books

So here and now at Hunter College , do i position myself globally!

The Rock Philosophers

Every monday i have a class at the graduate center opposite the empire state building . its a nice place but i go there just once a week to listen to the research that my colleagues are doing.

Its interesting to see how people pick up such diverse areas of research ! today's proposal presentation was on geology . I shall not go into the nitty gritty details , but it will suffice to say that this presentation piqued my interest on the geological history of the earth

The journey back home with Damayanti was an experience of the geological order! She took me back 4.5 billion years ago into the Pre Cambrian age and then brought me to the present with interesting titbits of information on how sediment cores are drilled from ocean beds and how geologists count diatoms to obtain valuable information about the past!

I shall not delve more into scientific details of mass spectroscopy and carbon dating and make this a boring blog ...( thats assuming that its not already one hahahaha)

But strangely the discussion ended on philosophy! the motto of the geologist is

" THE PRESENT IS THE KEY TO THE PAST" & " TO KNOW THE PAST IS TO KNOW THE FUTURE!"

Some "rocky" philosophy this one!

Another interesting concept of geologists is that of "time scale"

Rapid or sudden to us is something that changes within a few hours or days . Rapid to a geologist is that which changes in 10,000 years or 1 million years depending on the era under study

So next time you bump into a "rock person" and he says I am in a hurry ... you know what he means ;)

Got a moment more to spare ? Take a look at this toilet paper timeline ;) and see where we humans stand on the geological scale!
TIMELINE