I really enjoyed Rachel Swirsky's retelling of the Iphigenia story, "A Memory of Wind," up at Tor.com. Iphigenia loses pieces of herself--memories of the color of new leaves and the feel of wool--from the moment her father promises to sacrifice her to obtain a wind for Troy. The story unfolds her past and develops her character and those of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Helen, giving you increasing insight into all of them as Iphigenia's own insight increases. I especially appreciated that the morals and judgments and attitudes displayed seemed believable for the society of ancient Mycenae (insofar as I can judge, which isn't very far, I'll confess, but I do know some things).

The sharp-thorned rosa multiflora strings itself with raindrops each time it rains. So pretty, but don't get tangled up in there; you'll end up bleeding. I stole one drop and didn't get caught, this time.




Elsewhere, the bone of a long-dead tree nudged my ankle. I picked it up--it's forest driftwood, not a scrap of flesh left on it anymore, more like stone than wood now. I'm keeping it. We'll see if the ghost of the tree has tales to tell.

Thinking about Life and Unlife in my idle time, jotting down some meekly leaked thoughts out of my think tank. An invisible unknown occults as antagonist between life and unlife. So called modern world has kept this unknown to be wellknown secret. There are few extensive research in Hindu mythology, but hard to understand.

( Coding Life :) ...... )
TalksOfLife
06 - Nov - 09

It's difficult not to sound whiny, but the past fifteen days, as the gum infection has been steadily drained and dried, have been quite murderous. I have now learnt to ask for fresh local anaesthetics as the first injections wear off...but still the deep pain has been quite unbearable sometimes...and being alone in the house is NOT very nice. To be unable, at times, to get up, and yet to know that I have to drag myself to the kitchen for even a drink of water, has been very hard.

But it has taught me how difficult it must be to undergo this kind of chronic pain on a regular basis....and surely, I will be even more gentle when dealing with ill people. I will be able to bear their crankiness, because I know how cranky one feels with constant pain; I will be empathetic to their depression, as I have experienced the lows that being unwell brings. Er...all these good intentions are there now...

These thoughts have been brought out by visiting a friend whose ailing mother is now with her, and she was describing the difficulties of caring for a very strong-willed elderly person...having gone through this a few years ago, I could really understand her problems.

Caring for the elderly is very similar, in the acts performed...feeding, cleaning up, full responsiblity...to caring for a baby...but it is certainly bereft of the joys of the latter. With a baby, one is watching a person and a personality developing...with an elder, it is the waning of a person, of a childhood without any appeal to it. An elderly patient is often cranky and wilful, and also often complains about the caregivers to all the visitors, and sometimes, it's very hard to take.

I am taking a break for a month from the dental treatment, but will come back to get the root canal done...for the fourth (and hopefully final) time.

In the meanwhile, of course, I have tried to do as much as I can, and have thoroughly enjoyed meeting up with those friends who did make the effort to come home (alas, not all of them did!), went on wildlife trips, went to plays, and just....enjoyed being back home as well.

Well, a month in Chennai will bring me back even more appreciative of home....

But before I leave, a quick trip to Nandi Hills, with the BULBs is on for tomorrow! :)

1) Finished my Nike Human Race last month (Clocked 75 Min for 10 km, Few min slower than previous 10k run). A great party organized by Nike after the race.

2) Came back from YHAI Udupi Beach Trek, 3 day program. 2nd Day trek was 16 Km done in 8 Hours. Completely sun burnt and tired after that. Will never again travel in a Private Bus especially in a sleeper couch.

3) Gained weight (Again) almost 7 Kgs more than my Least weight in resent months. Diet starts from now.

4) Got a new car yesterday, Hyundai i10 Sportz. Finally i own a car. (I really don't consider my old Maruthi 800 as a car any more)

5) Planning to Quit the job. In fact the whole IT career. Hopping I could get into some other alternative career. This will take some time but some day it will.

6) .. .. ..

Hyundai i10 Sportz

A dream come true :)

From Missln

The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
( Read more... )

If

Karthik

comes, can moths be far behind?

Yesterday, he told us that this beautiful

OLEANDER HAWK MOTH

was sitting on the staircase of my apartment, so mohanvee and I went off to photograph it...





Meanwhile, he had also spotted these two...a lovely gold-and red one:





and an even prettier "pied" moth....





I guess all moths and butterflies know an expert when they see one, and consider Karthik a kind of foster moth-er....

Couldn't resist that!

Maidanahalli

is home to the threatened animal, the

BLACKBUCK

Here's the stag ...front view:





And the reverse (the, er, white butt of the black buck!)




(those white things in the pictures are butterflies!)


( Read more... )

For earlier installments, click here

Dear K--

You really must have worked some magic for us, because Dad stopped by here in the afternoon yesterday, while Aunt Christie was at work, and he hugged me in his right arm and Tammy in his left and lifted us both off the ground and told us that we were going to be able to rebuild our homes after all, right on the mudflats where they’ve always been.

Was that you? Did you make the government change its mind? How did you do it? ( Read more... )

Love, M--

Non-birders... please exkoos, as they say here.

We took a trip to Maidanahalli ("village of the open meadows") on

Rajyotsava Day

...it proved to be a birding bonanza! It was as if Karnataka just wanted to shower us with sightings and observations!


The day started with the usual CKMP (Crow Kite Mynah Pigeon)...but the raptor quotient went up sharply with the sighting of this

WHITE=EYED BUZZARD

in its rocky habitat:




Later, the bird soared in large circles:





Next came this

BOOTED EAGLE





( many birds sitting, standing or flying here )


...and the trip to Ramnagara to see the not-at-all common

LONG-BILLED VULTURE




came to mind, too...so, right now, you can, quite rightly, call me a bird-brain!

( List of birds on two of the trips )

I'd posted about my first photograph of the

SIRKEER MALKOHA

...and on the way back from Maidanahalli, we saw first one, and then, high up on the rocks, two near each other.

In an interesing switch, I got this FS (Foozly Shot) of the Malkoha taking off from the rock:




(I still like the image a lot.)


then I got this video of the bird in its habitat, where it's doing nothing but sitting quietly!






Photo with action, video with none...that's the way wildlife and birding goes, sometimes!

We were waiting at the watchtower in Maidanahalli for the appearance of the endangered Blackbuck...and I was looking around.

I was very tickled to see that three rhyming friends (or relatives or family, perhaps that's more likely) had visited:





When we visit a place, we need to leave our impress upon that spot...the equivalent of "Kilroy was here"....!

I must get down to posting about the variety of birds that we saw in Maidanahalli, but right now, I'm just thinking that dentists are a pain in the........teeth.

I wouldn’t call them unpleasant but some of my dreams are so unacceptably bizarre. I just don’t want to see them. They mess with my head because they feel so real. Sometimes wiping out traces of something that never happened can be tougher than reality.

One misty moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather,
There I met an old man
All clothed in leather,

All clothed in leather,
With a cap under his chin, singing.
"How do you do?
And how do you do
And how do you do again?"

This rustic was a treasure, as on his way he hi'ed
And with a leather bottle
fast buckled by his side

He wore no shirt upon his back
with wool unto his skin, singing:
"How do you do?
And how do you do
And how do you do again?"



...but no, his bottle wasn't leather but glass, which he dropped in his haste to follow after the ones that scattered gold as they passed by...

During my drive back home from office last evening, I hit upon an interesting idea for a play. The concept kept building in my head as I silently contemplated it. By late in the evening the concept became something pretty viable and had me excited. By the time I went to bed the foundations for the play were well laid in my head.

As I lay there in bed an odd thought occurred to me. What if I wake up tomorrow and cant remember the story at all. What if I forget it like a dream? The next moment I was up with a pencil and a piece of paper jotting down points about the idea.

Approximately an hour later I had the entire play written :) What was amazing was that I had struggled to write for such a long time that this idea truly came as my Saviour. It felt really awesome to connect with my thoughts creatively after such a long time. Now hopefully others will like it as much as I do.

In the "We Are All Connected" video, Feynman, speaking about light waves, exclaims, "And it's all really there!"

But sometimes we see things, and then--they aren't really there. lizziebelle wrote about seeing a blue-and-red clad spirit who disappeared when a tree came between them (here), and peppergrass wrote about seeing mice that turned out to be leaves (here).

I often think I see figures standing silently by the side of the road, only to have them turn out to be mailboxes or road signs. At twilight, it's hard to say how much is a trick of the eye and how much is glamour.

There's a guardrail at the edge of the road near where I live, to protect cars from falling into the marsh, or maybe to protect the marsh from careless cars. It's a new guardrail, put in after the town repaved the road, and it's got reflectors on it.

Coming upon it in a car in the late evening, I startled and nearly swerved, seeing a man crouched on the guardrail, prepared--crazy!--to jump into the road. Then I looked again, and it was all trees and branches and the empty guardrail, its reflectors winking wickedly. Mysterious strange.

What's really there, really there, is a delight to behold, but so is that which, perhaps, is not really there.

all that is seen and unseen, and half seen...

I left St.Louis, to come home and do some wildlife trips...but I did not realize that we were going to have our own wildlife there...





How rare would it be to have a Lion in St.Louis!

It was an amazing sight, as we returned from Maidanahalli, to find the sun setting to our right,





and the moon (nearly full) rising to our left...





In Tamizh, dusk is called "andhi sandhi koodum vELai" (the time evening and night meet". This was a beautiful meeting.

I'm sure not all of them can be genuine, but I'm still laughing hard anyway!





* The patient refused autopsy.

* The patient has no previous history of suicides.

* Patient has left white blood cells at another hospital.

* Patient's medical history has been remarkably insignificant with only a 40 pound weight gain in the past three days.

* She has no rigors or shaking chills, but her husband states she was very hot in bed last night.

* Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year.

* On the second day the knee was better and on the third day it disappeared.

* The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed.

* The patient has been depressed since she began seeing me in 1993.

* Discharge status: Alive, but without my permission.

* Healthy appearing decrepit 69-year old male, mentally alert, but forgetful.

* Patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch.

* She is numb from her toes down.

* While in ER, she was examined, x-rated and sent home.

*The skin was moist and dry.

*Occasional, constant infrequent headaches.

*Patient was alert and unresponsive.

*Rectal examination revealed a normal size thyroid.

*She stated that she had been constipated for most of her life until she got a divorce.

*I saw your patient today, who is still under our car for physical therapy.

* Both breasts are equal and reactive to light and accommodation.

* Examination of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized.

* The lab test indicated abnormal lover function.

* Skin: somewhat pale. but present.

* The pelvic exam will be done later on the floor.

* Large brown stool ambulating in the hall.

* Patient has two teenage children, but no other abnormalities

* When she fainted, her eyes rolled around the room

* The patient was in his usual state of good health until his Airplane ran out of gas and crashed.

* Between you and me, we ought to be able to get this lady pregnant.

* She slipped on the ice and apparently her legs went in separate directions in early December.

* Patient was seen in consultation by Dr. Smith, who felt we should sit on the abdomen and I agree.

* The patient was to have a bowel resection. However, he took a job as a stock broker instead.

* By the time he was admitted, his rapid heart had stopped, and he was feeling better.