Happy Ostara

Ostara is part of the Wheel of the Year to celebrate various important dates of the Earth's seasons.

It is part of a group of Eight festivals placed at regular intervals throughout the year!

Useful Web Tools

Store your beautiful webpages or research posters (pdf, jpegs, htmls etc) online in a zoomable format. You can do it for free at (currently free, a service by Microsoft):

http://zoom.it/

Learn to Walk Before you Run...

So I finally gave in to my longstanding temptation and purchased a pair of Vibram Five Fingers (tm) footwear. Since my old New Balance sneakers had completely worn out and had hole on one of the soles, it was time to buy new athletic shoes anyway.

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I took advantage of a 50% off sale on some Vibram models at the local Applachian Outdoors store and purchased _______________.

Meanwhile, one of the big drivers for this prompt purchase was that I had missed the bus on Friday night (the 10pm last bus from Cato Park) so I decided to walk home. It was only 60 F and a beautiful large moon was up so that walk was remarkable. For most of the walk, there were not many cars on the road so it was wonderful being able to listen to the trees, the wind, the critters of the night and the occasional Ford 150 thundering down the road.

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But I walked those ~3-3.5 miles in some shoes that are definitely not made for long walks.

Madras Bashai (Inner city language?)

Disclaimer/Warning: Do not be repeating these words mindlessly to the next Indian/Tamil or Sri Lankan person you meet. Any trouble you get into will be your own responsibility.

          This is a blog post written to "educate" people with some choice slang words used in the city of Chennai (formerly Madras). The colorful language used by the city folk (a loose parallel to inner city language used elsewhere in the world) is known as Madras Bashai. A scribd article on the same can be located here.

Some classic phrases that I learnt from my stay in Madras/watching Tamil movies:

• Bemani/Baemani - dishonest person, no scruples.
• Somari - lazy fellow, good-for-nothing.
• Dubakkoor- big liar.
• Kusmaalum - dirty thing 
• Saavugrakki - a word reserved for bad drivers who cut in front of you or pedestrians/bus boarders who come in the way of autorickshaw drivers.
• Kunthu - Sit here or sit.
• LateAvum - we will be late.
• Peter Vudaradhu - Speaking in English when the majority of the group is conversing in Tamil.

I will stop my list here, but if you want to become well versed in cussing in Tamil you can read the long treatise on scribd here or via wiki.