Tricks to cut back on wasted time with house chores!

I had this email sent to me by a friend and thought it would make a great post for all of us who scurry for time everyday.For me my day never has enough hours in it for everything I would like to do and end up rushing and cramming more than I can handle most often.

These little aids help to cut back on wasted time in homes and I know many of them will be a great help personally for me!

The first one is naming cables with the plastic selas used to keep bread fresh. Another is fixing a magnetic strip to stick our clips and pins. Another is to put our shoes into shower caps found in most hotels rather than pack directly in our clothes. And the last and most useful for me is to put the sheet and one pillow case into one case and neatly stack them. I waste so much time finding the second case or even the matching sheet!

Creativity unleashed with veggies and fruit!

Was sent these pics by email and was totally tickled with the mushrooms on the see saw, the bunch of grapes, the watermelon piggy and the cutest of all - the chow-chow being coy with a kiss! Enjoy!

Now Water Melons growing in Hoskote!

Yesterday we went to have a dekho of the tomatoes growing in the farm and check when we can contact Safal to buy the crop. It's our first try and I wonder if we will get any money in return!

Narsimappa has also put down a field of Water melon which as you can see in the pic have begun to fruit. They are tiny and yet already have the trademark stripe on them. I am sure like the tomatoes which are organic these too will be delicious!

The scientist and the journalist!

Always, whenever I have worked with scientists, I have just read their stuff and looked for a story and then never really connected. They were faceless academics who touched my life for the period of working my story and we never ever met one another again.

Then I worked Gopi Sundar's story. Gopi a scientist who works out of India and Minnesota and then suddenly he was coming to Bangalore. Kindly and generously he agreed to speak to my class in St Joseph's and what a great interaction that was. The kids initially were in awe of him, but after a while they relaxed and quizzed him no end.

I hope the interaction makes a few of them want to be environmental journalists. We desperately need a few more in India to fight for our poor planet which is in dire distress and sensitize the world about the loss of the flora and fauna desperately trying to stay alive.

Submerged by music!

It was a marvelous two evenings - one after the next where I was asked to cover two musical events in the Alliance de Francaise! When Mini gives me these events to do, it forces me out of hibernation where I am happy just reading scientists papers to write stories from. Or just laze infront of the TV watching junk!

But the second event was even more fun because I asked my students to come for the event and get a blast of fusion music which I was covering. It was their first time going for a music show and they were thrilled to be witness to something they had never enjoyed before. Four fresh faces, armed with their note pads and cameras came and felt like royalty which we journos are treated like at shows -- as we are given the best seats in the house which are reserved especially for us.

I have sent off my piece with the pictures I have shot -- lets see what they write. It's nice to get a fresh perspective to these shows from the younger generation of journos!

Those scented Lilliums!

No celebration for me is complete without flowers and preferably scented Lilliums! Patricia from Daffodil florists outdid herself this time and made the most exquisite arrangements for Bonnys 60th birthday! Look at the pics, people were floored with the beauty of the arrangements.

I saw an orange variety growing in hot houses in Coonoor. It was such a stunning sight seeing these orange blooms growing in such huge numbers and cut in large bundles every morning to be sent to grace our homes in Bangalore.

This particular magenta/pink variety is a stunner. Much nicer than the white and the scent, I wish with all my heart, someone creative learns to bottle it!

Date Palms are fashionable!

Amazing isn't it? How humans see opportunity in the areas least expected.In the last two years or more I have been watching malls shooting up in Bangalore and our lowly date palm which we all ignored in scrub areas, suddenly become centre of attention! Landscape gardeners have found them easy to transplant and even at 6 feet and over they overcome the trauma of transplantation and thrive in their new homes!

Ofcourse as usual we humans are interfering with nature for our benefit, as they are easy to maintain and don't create too much litter which needs daily cleaning.Never thought I would see the day when these palms played natural decorators in the city and though they do not offer too many benefits in terms of cutting back on pollution, at least they are real trees and our own domestic beauties rather than imported exotic varieties.