A quiet Diwali (now, isnt that an oxymoron!)

This was my first Diwali with PD. Diwali is my favourite festival of all times, and unfortunately we had missed celebrating our first Ganesh Chathurthi and our first Dussehra due to unavoidable circumstances (humph!) So we were determined to make our first Diwali a memorable one. Despite the fact that there were no colourful explosions lighting up the sky or sounds of firecrackers filling our ears. Despite the fact that it was all so quiet outside that you could even hear the neighbors walking around in their living room. Despite the lack of festive air all around and people going about their chores without a thought for Diwali. Undeterred, we just went ahead and had a memorable Diwali.

We set up our puja place and bought lots of candles to make up for lack of traditional Diwali diyas. I have been making a flower rangoli for every Diwali since the last few years, so much that its become a Diwali tradition for me. So we made one this year too. (I know, I know, a pookalam is an Onam tradition and not a Diwali one. But I don't celebrate Onam, and I love pookalams!) And of course, you don't celebrate Diwali without yummy festive food. So, we had pulihaara and payasam for this Diwali. So all in all, we had an awesome Diwali, albeit a quiet one!

Our puja place

A lone lantern at the door

Work-in-progress pookalam

A lit up pookalam!

Candles and flowers

More candles

The loot

I ordered a bunch of artsy stuff from Amazon and here they are! And I am as excited as a kid with new books at the beginning of a school year.

My new art materials!

On the very left are my Faber Castell graphite pencils which come in a range of 2H to 6B. In the middle are my three zentangling pens (Sakura Pigma Micron 0.25mm, 0.35mm, 0.45mm). On the right are my Derwent Inktense watersoluble ink pencils. Right at the bottom is my water brush (Pentel Aquash). I also got a couple of sketchbooks from Michaels.

My sketchbooks

Quite a few new things to try. I have never tried zentangling, nor have I tried watercolour pencils, or a waterbrush. I am pretty excited about the watercolour pencils, they seem to be much easier than watercolour cakes/tubes and provide more control. And the water brush is awesome, especially to go with the pencils. No more messy water jars getting toppled all over the desk (ask PD, I am clumsy :P)

My colour palette 

There is more stuff I want to buy - woodless graphite pencils, an electric eraser, glass paints, oil paints and canvasses.. phew. But PD wanted a "proof of concept" first i.e. evidence that I will indeed use these materials and not leave them orphaned somewhere :P So thats what I am gonna do now. And hopefully, the result will be good enough for me to put up on the blog. Yay, here's to lots of sketching and painting!

My first hike

So PD and I decided it was time to lose all the wedding fat (oh yes, we gave up all semblance of self-control and totally indulged ourselves post-wedding. I was afraid it would be a long time before I got to eat some of my favorite foods again - gol gappas, bajjis, punukulu, bobbatlu, kaju chikki... you get the picture. So, I was making up in advance. And PD got tempted by all the stuff I was eating :P)

PD loves to hike, and I always wanted to try. So we went on a beginner level (to match my stamina) hike to the Wunderlich park. Hiking is a much more enjoyable fitness activity compared to any others I have tried before. Walking (and running/biking if you have the stamina) on trails, with lots of trees around is such an awesome thing to do.

Lets go hiking!

Winding trails

I believe the park is a redwood forest (so the brochure says, I am no botanist). Apparently, John Steinback said about the trees "The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe." Well, I know what he was talking about. The trees are HUGE, and thats an understatement. They grow so tall, I actually felt intimidated by their height, pretty much like the Lilliputians felt when they first saw Gulliver. No kidding, its a little scary to be left alone in the redwoods.

Intimidatingly huge redwood trees

Once in a while you can also see wild animals on hiking trails (deer, rabbits, foxes, and even rattle snakes, going by the stories PD has told me) scampering away as you come closer (some of them would make me scamper, I guess). On this hike, I managed to see some squirrels with nice long bushy tails. They are quite nimble, I didnt get a single pic to show :| Talking of animals, Wunderlich is also home to the Folger stable, so we got to see some horses and jockeys too.

So much love between the horse and his caretaker. We saw this guy get a shave :P

This guy felt neglected, so I thought I would show some love by clicking a pic

We also visited the Folger's museum which showed the history of horse riding and of the Folger's estate - interesting tidbits about how and when horse shoes came into picture, the evolution of horse carriages, the story of how the 942 acre park was donated by Martin Wunderlich to the San Mateo county, etc. Quite interesting!

Overall, it was an awesome hike we had. We hiked about 4 miles in all, covering an elevation of about 1250 feet (the park is much bigger, we restricted our hike to 4 miles to suit my beginner hiker levels). Phew, for me - a first time hiker - that was some achievement. Oh boy, I feel so proud of myself :) 

Learning resources

Now that I have some spare time on my hands, I have been exploring online resources to satiate my thirst for learning. I know that sounds dramatic, but I just love to dabble in and learn new stuff. Especially stuff that I was always interested in but couldn't pursue as a part of my formal education. Over the past few weeks I have come across a number of free online learning resources which are incredible. The content is excellent and has good breadth, its freely available, and the best part - you can set your own pace for learning. You can also use these resources to gain brief exposure to a wide variety of fields, while you decide which fields you want to focus on. I have explored some of these, and am yet to get started on others. A few resources which interested me:

- Duolingo: Duolingo is a language learning website offering Spanish, English, French, German, Portugese and Italian. PD and I got started with Spanish a while back. Duolingo has "gamified" the learning process with points, loss of "lives" on making mistakes etc. Their mobile app (I have tried the one for iPhone) is awesome - it doesnt feel like work or learning and is pretty much fun! And its so much more exciting if you pair up with someone else who also wants to learn the language.

- Coursera and edX: Both of these are "Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)" platforms (I had to google that up :P) Each of them has tied up with a wide range of well known universities as partners. Courses are typically held through video lectures and quizes. Courses offered cover a wide range of fields such as humanities, computer science, statistics, sociology, etc. Excellent platforms to make such disciplines more accessible!

- Codeacademy: Codeacademy offers free classes in coding. I havent tried this yet, but PD has and he enjoyed it. The site currently offers  JavaScript, HTML/CSS, PHP, Python and Ruby. The site has a number of success stories of people with no coding experience who have learnt to code on codeacademy and went on to build successful mobile phone apps, programs for specifics projects/tasks, etc. Quite interesting really, and I hope to try sometime.

- Podcasts: Podcasts are quite an interesting way to learn while on the go - whether you are in the car or out walking/jogging or even while cooking. The iTunes store has a lot of interesting podcasts and a lot of these are free. A number of leading universities such as MIT, Princeton, etc. offer podcasts too. RadioLab is another good place to look for interesting podcasts. Podcasts are everywhere. These are just some that I have come across so far, but with a little bit of googling, you can find podcasts from a variety of sources on a wide range of topics.

And of course, there is the quintessential youtube.com where a number of channels focus on tutorials on a wide range of subjects - from photography to arts to science projects.

On the whole, I am quite excited about my discovery of these resources and hopefully will put them to good use.

Beach time!

Amidst the crazy time that was August, PD and I still found time to go to the beach in Vizag. This was my first visit to a beach, and I loved it (apart from all the humidity of a port town, of course)! We went to the Rushikonda beach early in the morning (a lovely drive), and we had the beach pretty much to ourselves. It was a beautiful feeling walking along the shore, sand between my toes, waves splashing up to my feet, each wave trying to sweep the sand away from under my feet. We collected sea shells, watched snails attaching themselves to the rocks on the beach, and spotted crabs. PD tried horse riding too, and he loved it!

We took along PD's GoPro camera on the trip and captured some amazing pictures. GoPro cameras are shock proof, water proof, wide angled cameras which were initially designed for surfers to capture action photos. Since we planned to get into the water, this was the perfect camera for the beach. The GoPro doesn't come with a viewfinder, instead it can be remotely controlled from your phone and can be set up for interval shooting. And, we were still experimenting with the GoPro. So, we ended up with a LOT of badly framed photos, and a few awesome ones. Here are some of the awesome ones:

A lovely morning by the beach

A beautiful shot of us on the beach

A beach all for ourselves

Majestic waves

Experimenting with the camera underwater

PD riding a horse

Badami-Pattadakal-Aihole: A heritage tour

(Hereafter shortened to BPA in the interest of typing effort)

Fields full of smiling sunflowers standing tall. An interesting set of co-travelers. A couple from Bijapur who took offence because I wasn't suitably impressed by Bijapur ("You should have taken a guide beta"). Another who was indignant that the Cholas are never given their rightful place in history books ("Cholas are relegated to a 5 mark question in history exams!"). A fairly explicit sculpture of the Goddess of Fertility. Awfully hot weather in the middle of January. An artist sketching away in a corner of a monument using the stone sculptures for models, making me wish I was half as skilled. Lots of time spent catching up with my mom. Even though BPA isn't as charming as Hampi, nor the sculptures as intricate as Belur-Halebidu, these are some of the memories I will carry from my BPA trip.

Having decided that it had been a long time since I traveled for leisure, me and my mom sat down to pick a destination for a three day weekend. BPA had been on my list for quite sometime and satisfied my criteria of  being connected by train (I suffer from a not-so-mild case of car sickness), while the name was tongue-twisting enough to pique my mom's curiosity. Train and hotel bookings done, we reached there early on a Friday morning to find out that 3 whole days was probably overkill for BPA. So at the last moment, we decided to add Bijapur to our itinerary.  

On Day 1 we covered Aihole and Pattadakal during the morning and the Badami caves in the afternoon. Aihole was a little disappointing, more so as our driver wouldnt stop at any of the smaller monuments we wanted to see ("Ye saara ek hi type ka monument hai madam, aapne ek dekh liya na.") Pattadakal was one sprawling campus full of beautifully sculpted monuments - a visual treat indeed. The Badami caves were a tiring climb, but were totally worth it.  On Day 2 we went on our impromptu trip to Bijapur, where the only noteworthy monument was the Gol Gumbaz (which had an equally tiring climb up, but wasnt nearly as interesting as the Badami caves). On Day 3 we covered the other monuments in Badami during the first half, while the second half was spent recovering from all the exhaustion.

Here are some shots from the trip:

Durga temple, Aihole

The sprawling Pattadakal campus

A recurring motif across BPA

Cave sculpture of Vishnu that is synonymous with Badami

Resting point in between some heavy-duty climbing at the Gol Gumbaz

Dancing Shiva at the entrance of Badami caves

Bhootnath temple complex at Badami

Reclining Vishnu - one of the numerous sculptures all around Badami

Resolutions

Its the first of Jan, so there had to be the mandatory post on resolutions ;) I have never really been into "new years resolutions" - I dont see any particular reason why my resolutions have to be made on a Dec 31st/ Jan 1st and forgotten by Jan 15th. I could choose to make resolutions on a May 20th and forget them by the June 5th! Jokes apart, I did make some course-correction resolutions over a year ago. I thought I might as well take stock of those resolutions, given that I am not making any new ones right now. Also given that this blog is the direct outcome of those resolutions.

About a year ago, I realized my life was completely centered around work with "no time to stand and stare", or really do anything else. During my college days, I used to be this "enthu-cutlet" girl who was always ready to sign up for every extra-curric activity, in college and outside. Not that I didnt want to be that girl anymore, I still wanted to do loads of things - I just got a little lost in my work-study-work cycle. So I decided I was going to take out time for all the things I ever wanted to do - mostly involving books, art, travel and writing. I think I have stuck to it quite fine for now. For instance, in the last one year I have:

• read more books than I did in the previous 4 years put together. 
• checked off one item which had been on my to-do list for a long time - learnt how to and made a Tanjore painting.
• signed up for oil painting classes and already made one "frame worthy" painting. 
• managed to squeeze in time for a few mini artsy-craftsy projects - a glass painting project here and a pencil sketch there.
• started exercising more frequently and believe am in better shape today than I was a year ago. 
• put a few (very few, not enough!) non-work trips. Of all the things on my list, I guess this has been the least attended to. Hopefully, will be remedying that soon.
• started blogging here. I figured its a good way for me to keep track of all the yummy stuff I have started doing. Also, it might just inspire me to start that short story series I have been planning in my head for so long.

On the whole, I think I have done well with my resolutions and do deserve a pat on the back! As a bonus, I have won back my hard earned reputation as the "enthu-cutlet" girl who is always ready to sign up for any extra-curric activities :)