Bye bye 2010!

MySpace-Countdowns

Its that time of the year again... Time to say goodbye to an amazing old year and 'OLA' to a new one!

Hoping each and every one of you had a wonderful 2010, with beautiful memories and wishing you a Blessed and Magical New Year 2011!!! ^.^

May the spirit of the New year fill your homes and hearts with peace and love!

Thanking you for your love and support!

~Elaine and Esther

(OMG!!! This is our LAST official post for the year 2010! :o :D :P See you all in the New Year!)

Dont write off the Local Transport yet

Esther here  ^_^


Every time I tell my friends that I love travelling by local buses, they roll their eyes and think I've lost it! They tell me that if I traveled by buses everyday, I would get the real picture and start hating every second of bus journeys. I beg to differ.

I remember when I first asked my parents if I could travel by bus, I had to assure them A MILLION times that I was travelling with experts who would get me home safely and that in the 15 minute journey I wouldn't get myself killed.

I don’t blame my parents for worrying. We often read bone chilling stories of girls getting molested by 50 year old perverts, people reportedly getting on buses and never reaching home, etc.

Unfortunately for me, every time any of my elder family members board a bus, something weird and funny had to happen to heighten their beliefs.

Anyway, back to the point– would you be surprised if I told you that till date, in my 2 years of bus travel, nothing bad has ever happened to me? *touch wood*
Quite the opposite!

Take the example of yesterday, we were trying to get from St Inez to the Panjim bus stop..it was 2am and since we couldn't find a rickshaw anywhere, we decided to take the bus. When we finally got a bus (after Carlos and I ran like mad people through the traffic to stop it while my siblings calmly took their time in getting to the bus -.-) to our shock, we realised that Elaine hadn’t boarded the bus. So imagine, after initially hearing fellow passengers grumble for making them wait FOR 2 MINUTES, we stopped the bus again . I got off , only to find Elaine happily buying a REINDEER PEN from a stationary shop. We were so grateful that the conductor and driver had actually waited for us, even while a line of cars and buses honked furiously behind them.

Forget waiting for us, another time when I was travelling from the Goa’s commercial capital Margao to my house, I took a local bus. It was about 2:30pm on a Sunday and the bus was PACKED. Fearing that I wouldn't be able to reach the door at my stop and since I was already suffocated by the crowd, I decided to get off the bus a stop away from my house. The weather was beautiful and I love walking so I didn’t mind the 15 minute walk home... To my surprise, the bus went forward for about 3 secs and reversed all of a sudden. The conductor actually opened the door and told me to get in. Most of the people in the bus were commenting on how this wasn’t my stop and since I hardly travel, I must have gotten confused *Yea right*.

Pretty sweet right?

To conclude, I have found that *MOST of the time* if you dress and behave decently, people generally DO NOT interfere with you.    ( ^ , ^ )

Fearless...

I know this is a pretty old song but I love it  :)

It is one of my favorites  :)

P for Petunias

 Im passing through my 'Go Green' phase, where all I want to do is buy flowering plants and watch them grow  :P

And so, when the 'Flower Man' came by today ( Hes just this guy who comes by now and then with a cart full of plants to sell), I ended up with a pot of purple Petunias  :D

Now in case you guys didnt know, Petunias are the most popular annual plants today because of their easy availability and their gorgeously cheery blooms. They come in a variety of colors and types, to name a few, the Hedgiflora 'Wave' Petunias that grow in a carpet like fashion and is the pride of any plant lover's flower bed!

Hedgiflora 'Wave' Petunias

Then there are the Multiflora petunias, that have smaller blooms and hold quite well in the rains.

Multiflora Petunias

The Milliflora Petunias have the smallest flowers!

Milliflora Petunias

And then theres the Grandiflora Petunia with bigger blooms which is pretty much common. They do tend to get destroyed easily by rain  :(

Grandiflora Petunias

Now, a little on Petunias:

1. They're annual plants which means they grow, flower and die in a year or a season.

2. They LOVE the sun  :D  They grow best when fully exposed to the sun or kept partially in the shade.

3. They need good, fertilized and well drained soil.

4. British Horticulturists have recently come out with a BLACK petunia!!! They're calling it 'Black Velvet' and are selling them under the catchline 'Black goes with everything'. They're said to come out next spring!

Black Velvet

 5. Petunias need regular tending to else they'll get 'leggy'. A good way to prevent this is to pinch part of the stems from time to time. This also encourages more blooms ensuring a fuller look to your plant!

6. Another way to help the plant produce more blooms is to DEADHEAD the petunia. This simply means taking off a flower thats dead or injured! Thought I'd show you how  :)

Its a pretty simple thing to do! In this picture, you'll notice that two flowers have withered and died.

So what we're gonna do is just take hold of the dead flower.....

... and give a gentle pull....

.... and separate it from the stalk!

Easy, isnt it?  :D

And just like that, your plant will produce more blooms  :)

Its finally here!! :D

Ola everyone!!! Heres wishing each and every one of you a.....

Hoping the Magic of Christmas fills the lives of you and your family and brings you all that you desire today and all the days to come!

In or out of Vogue ?

I still remember when I bought my first edition of Seventeen magazine- the Amisha Patel issue- glossy pages filled with color smacked pictures and interesting girly articles- the complete fill for a magazine crazed person like me.I remember how addicted I got to it.I used to wait for the new issue to be out at the start of every month and harass everyone to take me to that one shop in the market where I knew I'd get my copy for sure.

 Unfortunately for some stupid unknown (to me) reason, they stopped publishing seventeen and ever since then, I had been on the look out for a monthly to feed me.Thats when I came across Vogue.

I'd always known about Vogue, but honestly never felt the need to buy it..partly because it was weird (according to many around me) to spend (waste) that much money every month buying something like a fancy newspaper which will eventually collect dust.

My mom even pointed out that I could infact acquire the same information, see better pictures ONLINE..but no, I said..I wanted something I could hold. The happiness of flipping through the pages of a magazine can never be compared to the boring CLICK you put in while going through pages online. And how could you even think the two could be compared??... The internet is an OCEAN of information- one has to swim through it all to get what they want, facing the good and the bad and mostly, unfortuantely, you waste time sifting through rubbish. Magazines are so much better off in that way- they have specially hired trained professionals to go through that ocean, discard the crap and the pick out the awesomeness.

Anyway, point is, I came to Vogue. There were 2 options- the Rs 100 indian version or the Rs 300 International edition. For a while I could indulge in the International edition but then as the months flew, it kinda became obvious that I had to buy the local edition as most of the stuff shown in the International edition werent being sold in India and being the sensible spender that I am, I decided to switch to the cheaper version  :P 

When I first got my hands on it, I was in awe.... Seventeen now seemed childishly colorful in comparison to Vogue. Vogue was beautiful, breath takingly beautiful... pictures of lanky, gorgeous people all over, wearing clothes that looked tailor made for them, standing in the most perfect poses, pouting just enough to look right... every word on every line written to perfection- like Pulitzer worth articles... I was in Heaven!

Unfortuantely, this article is written not with the intention of making you wanna run to the store to grab your copy asap. Vogue, like most beautiful things on earth, is completely useless... atleast to normal people. I wonder who Vogue thinks they are writing for anyway coz i dont think there are many people around us who can just throw away Rs 2,50,000 on a Sergio Rossi clutch winter. The fact that its got the tag "winter" attached to it makes it more useless cause for half the entire year, one wont be able to use it ( keeping in mind the fact that if you bought it, you are fashion conscious.) And if you are in Goa, there isnt even a proper winter! :P

Half the entire magazine is spent on advertisements and that too, most of the things you see on them are all over priced anyway. And those 'Pulitzer written articles' are very few, hidden in the jungle of ads. Infact, other than the few words in the editorial, you flip through the numerous ad pages and you could very well feel like you are looking at just another compilation of catalogues.    -.-

To spend Rs 100 every month on catalogues of stuff which you will never buy according to season and trends is not normal... Im sorry Vogue, but if you wanna be a womans proper guide to the fashion world, Im sure you could put middle class range stuff in your pages. The fact that we dont roam naked clearly proves that we must be buying something affordable from someplace, right? Maybe you could help us out in that direction?

And so, I label Vogue uselessly useless as my monthly.. frankly, fashion isnt the only thing I wanna read about every month, that too 'blink- and- you- miss' fashion.

Come on Vogue, suprise us... not that we're waiting!     ;P

And a look at their site :P :P

A call from Santa? :D

When we found this totally cute site via a Twitter friend way back in November, we knew that it would be an instant HIT this Christmas.So we decided to try it out on our baby sister Ellen, and lemme tell you, she totally LOVED it.So we thought we'd share it with you!

Its guaranteed to make any tiny tot extremely happy :D :D ( Hell, it would make anyone happy :P)

Santa's personal number

My Milk Teef

Ok, so Im online and I come across this site www.livingcute.com and going through it, I find out about this adorable blog www.mymilktoof.blogspot.com.

The blog follows two milk teeth Ickle and Lardee on their many adventures.

Thought I'd share one on our blog  :)  :)

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did... and be sure to check the blog out!!!

xxxxx

Up and Away

"Oooooohhhh."

"Let's do this, Lardee!"

Fishy Talk ><.">

My dad and I had an interesting discussion today on aquarium fish  :) 

I recently developed my love for fish after visiting a pet store one day and emerging from with with a fighter fish in a plastic bag well hidden away in the sun hat I was supposed to be using  :P

I named him Percy and sadly, two months after that day, he died  :(  :(

                                              A blue Veil Tail Fighter Fish

Im pretty sure I inherited this love for fish from my dad. He used to love buying new fish, in particular, neon tetras and the gourami!!   :D

                                                      Neon Tetra

Now this gourami he owned had a particularly odd habit of swimming to the surface whenever my dad called his name and responded more to him than anyone else in the family! One day, my uncle happened to be on tank cleaning duty and as was the routine, he put the gourami into a bucket of water while he washed the tank.

Just then, my dad walked in to check on him but had hardly walked towards the bucket when my grandmother called out to him.

Meanwhile, the gourami, having heard his voice, swam to the surface once more and not seeing him there, resorted to other means ( in my opinion! ) 

He jumped out of the bucket and lay there till my dad found him... he died in my dads hands  :(  :(

Since then, dad has not even looked at another fish....

                                             An Opaline Gourami

We are who we know (-.-)

Bonjour everyone,


Recently we heard a very colorful story from a friend of a friend of a friend of a certain friend who got a job having been turned down by companies nationwide, he finally decided to come back to his hometown, bow down to the evils of influence and acquire a JOB.


Influence is something very common in life…a certain someone of yours will always know a certain other someone who will be able to do wonders for you!! Let’s think of that someone as a magician, someone to make things happen when all seems dull and bleak…


‘Mom? I’ve travelled all over the country looking 4 a job, appeared for a million interviews and STILL haven’t got the dream job that allows me to be with the girl I love!!’


‘Don’t worry my son, remember that uncle of yours who once sold his sister- in- laws kidney in the black market and nearly joined forces with Bin Laden? Well, he knows a guy who knows a guy who can get u in somewhere here itself, u know how scared people here get when they find out he knows a terrorist! Tell your girlfriend not to start looking for someone new yet!’


N POOF!!! D magician uncle waves his magic wand (or influence) and the job is yours!!!


Good for u, u lazy piece of trash!!! I hope you’re proud of yourself… No wait, your uncle!!


So the story goes on like,
‘Hey uncle who I haven’t met in years n haven’t bothered calling cos I need all the balance I can get to spend on my over demanding girlfriend ( don’t tell her I said that) cos she needs to hear from me every second of every day or she’ll think I’m running after my ex again who btw, she’s facebook stalking!!’
‘OMG!!! I HAVE A NEPHEW????.. U sure you’re not an imposter trying to marry my divorced daughter?’
‘Ugh no! I’m as real as that German Shepard in your garage! OMG!!! Is that Spike??? He was just a baby when I came here last!!!’
‘Err… Well, yeah, that was 10 years ago, it’s called growing, I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed you’ve grown taller 2!’
N blah blah blah etc....


When influence is used by people who genuinely deserve it, it’s ok.. in situations where in
“ Baba, this is your grandmother…these people at the insurance company are taking years to process your dead grandfather’s files and I have no money to pay for all the medicines and food… please call someone and do something”.


I’m talking about the major LOOSERS who do d same, it just isn’t right! U get a high post when u really can’t handle the job n u end up disgracing yourself!! Wake up 2 d reality dude! Ur just not good enough! If u can’t get in properly, it means you’re not qualified for it! U need to take up jobs more suited to your speed (and your over demanding girlfriend).it’s not fair for all the people who have the actual capability, talent, experience etc…


And then we have the weirdo’s who use influence for totally rubbish reasons…
I often hear delightful stories of how certain teenagers aren’t afraid to do anything including speed racing with their latest bikes on the highway (drunk) at 140km/hr because they know people in high posts who can *DO SOMETHING or get them out of situations however tight they are..


N we all know the smaller cases wherein
“My son isn’t getting a seat in Goa Medical college because he’s a dunce but because me n my wife need to keep a name in the society I’m going to do whatever’s in my power, even if it calls for making a fake OBC/ST/SC certificate and robbing a really needy person of their seat”. This unfortunately happens a LOT  and works out pretty well because of heavy influence.


Thankfully people are noticing such things and taking strict actions…n in the cases of higher authority it’s no more, He’s a minister – let him get away with it..They like every other normal person are slowly getting their punishment according to their crimes. (*Power to the people  )


Sadly, influence is hardly something which can be eradicated so easily…too many people are involved and to a certain extent it will always be in use…and in cases like that of the grandmother, let me point out that there is no need for influence if the insurance company actually does its work efficiently…


So in the end we see, if there is any possibility that everyone in society behaves and functions according to his what his role requires, influence will die…until then, we will have to live with it..Just like we do with the hair on our toes.