The Sun

Here are the materials you require for coffee painting:

• Canvas sheet cut to the desired dimensions
• 2B pencil
• Sieved Coffee powder ( I used Nescafe)
• 3D outliner
• Flat brushes (I have used size 10 for varnishing, 8 – for the base, 3 and 1 for painting the darker shades)
• Camlin’s Fabric glue and gloss
• Camlin’s Paint Varnish

Procedure

In order to set the base of the canvas sheet to a light beige, I mixed a pinch of coffee powder to 2 teaspoons of water and added 2 drop of glue and painted the base of the canvas. Let it dry for about 2 hours.

Sketch a design on the canvas and retrace the outlines with a gold colored 3D outliner. Let it dry for about 2 hours.

Now depending on the shade of brown you prefer, keep adding coffee powder to the water + coffee + glue mixture already prepared and paint the areas.

Once done with the entire painting, let the canvas dry for about 4 hours and then apply a generous coat of varnish to protect your painting from dust.

Hope you find this useful.. happy painting!

When V and I discovered recently that there is a pool opened for public just a stone throw away from home, we were overjoyed. It has been close to a month since we started swimming and each evening we have been like 2 little kids high on sugar ready to jump into the pool.

Takes me back to the days when I was training – the strenuous laps, the somersaults in water, the dives from the 16 feet deep end of the pool – just makes me feel alive
Swimming always wraps me up in this delicious, pleasant, languorous feeling, and I can never have enough of this sport. On hindsight it is true of every sport I have tried so far

It is a lovely glorious feeling of just being in water! I hope I get better at the strokes along with having fun in the pool.

So the story was I had to get my Dubai visa extended for a month and I had to visit the visa processing agency. I had already made a visit late last week and they bluntly handed over a checklist to me and asked me to get all the missing documents even before checking through the list of documents I currently had despite of me asking them multiple times. So there was this 1 additional document I noticed was missing and today I visited them again hoping it wont take too long. Now they came back asking for an insurance coverage for the extra period although I already have an open valid insurance until I reach India. None of it made sense to them so I grit my teeth and went to the govt office to get additional insurance.

I was awestruck to say the least! First of all, there was a ladies only queue to take a token which was hardly anything compared to the men’s queue. Although I didnt want a special treatment, I was informed that women could not be a part of the general queue!! So I decided to use the privilege and get work done..

Once the token was given, they lead me to a room that read – Women’s Office. As I entered, it was nothing short of a 5 star hotel room with massive chandeliers that lit the high roofed room, hookahs at every corner, artistic arab jugs with flavored water and warm, soft leather couches with pretty colorful cushions on them For a second I thought I was in the wrong room..

After enjoying a hot cup of tea, I got done with the job pretty soon although I would have loved to get a royal treatment and spend the rest of the day there

Once I was back in the visa office, which is by the way in the departure terminal of the airpot, [talk about being so close to getting on the plane back home ] I submitted all the documents they had requested and the lady in charge started to speak as if she was doing me a favor by granting me an extension! Well, I wouldnt blame her entirely because since morning I had been seeing a lot of Indians who looked extremely desperate to get a visa. But to me, this moment.. this very moment was when I lost it. I asked her to call her manager and gave her a piece of my mind saying I would be more than happy to go back home to my loved ones and reminded her that she was not doing me a favor – it was her job.

There were people peeping out of the cabins to take a look at what was happening while my job got done under an hour and not a word more from them!

Just proved that the more desperate you get, the more advantage people take of you.

Considering the limited time of 9 days we had for the vacation and how vast, beautiful and unique every part of Thailand is, it took a lot of reading and discussions with near and dear ones to boil down the places to visit. And so we zeroed in on Bangkok, Krabi and Chiang Mai. I am glad that both V and I like trips filled with activities and adventure so we decided to backpack to Thailand and did a lot of activities like snorkeling, kayaking, mountain biking etc. We took almost all modes of local transports – local buses, overnight trains, overnight buses, boat rides and they were all very unique experiences. I hope that the coming years don’t wear us down.

Upcoming posts on the details of each place we visited, stay tuned

Below is the collection of some of my favorite photographs from our travels of the year that just went past.

Snow blowing from the mountains enroute Cataloochi ski area, Atlanta, USA

Times Square at 3 AM, on a cold February winder night. Truly a city that never sleeps- New York

Coffee flowers in full bloom at a plantation in Yercaud, India

Avalanche Lake, wedged between the dense forests of shola trees near Ooty - India

Kadalekai Parishe or the "ground nut" festival held every year in the heart of Bangalore - India

The peaks of Tadiyandamol shot from Maatara, that borders Kerala and Karnataka - India

Sunset from the Mullayanagiri Peak - India

A buddhist wot in Bangkok - Thailand

A 15 m high and 43 m long Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho in Bangkok - Thailand

An artist performing fire show in Railay - Thailand

Splendid colors of the sea in Koh Phi Phi - Thailand

‘Yakshagana’ is Karnataka’s folk theatre form with a long history of close to 400 years. It is a harmony of musical tradition, eye-catching costumes, authentic styles of dance and acting with its extemporaneous dialogue appealing to a wide range of the community. When you witness it in person, it is a vibrant and a vigorous form of theatre art. It is unique to the Malenadu or the coastal regions of Karnataka, India.

Costume: Male artists wear kireeTa while the female artists wear pagaDe (headgears) that are very unique and artistic.

Stage setup: The play has a narator who either narrates the story by singing or through character dialogues backed by musicians on the traditional music instruments.

Theme: More often than not, small stories from the Indian epics such as Mahabharata and Ramayana are enacted.

Here are some glimses from the concert.

Abhimanyu

Krishna & Subhadra

I was completely engrossed by the performance and got to learn more Mahabharata. Appears that the concerts take place all through the night and the audience are kept entertained throughout. I now know why my father in law likes Yakshagana so much

With Yakshagana’s gaining popularity, it has begun to be compared to the opera of the west!

Thanks a ton for the sketch! You made my day!!

If you were to ask me which is my favorite movie – its got to be unmistakably the musical of 1959 – The Sound of Music. The movie begins high in the misty Alps and is about a free spirited young Austrian woman, Maria (Julie Andrews – the main character in the movie).

Just to give you a perspective of how the song relates to the situation now – In the musical, the lyrics to the song are a reference to things Maria loves, such as ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens’. These are the things she selects to fill her mind and are the things she loves.

Not only is this the movie I have watched the most, I vividly remember spending my entire early life in Libya imitating Maria and living in my own imaginative world.

Other than the daily chores of going to school and playing, I distinctly remember spending every waking minute of my childhood watching, singing and dancing to the tunes in the movie.. quite literally! I also used to fantasize that someday I was going to run up and down the slopes of the boundless green Alps. Maybe someday I shall..

Here are my favorite tracks from the movie… Enjoy!




So long, farewell!

We made candles!!

S has been very enthusiastic about candle making and has all the necessary tools. The most exciting thing about candle making is you get to experiment a lot with different colors, engineering techniques and art And to add to it, V loves experimentation.. be it his entrepreneurial journey, cooking or music! So he was as excited and all 3 of us got our creative minds at work..

I will write about the candle making techniques that S taught me in my upcoming posts, but here is a glimpse of the art work today!

This one is the highlight of the project..

Tricolor Gel Candle

Thank you for teaching me S, hope we get to do many more of these!

For a brief while now, I have been running 3, 4, at the max 5 miles. I was eager to touch the 10K mark soon. So I was determined to run my first 10K on this beautiful bright sunny saturday morning. V and I have been doing a lot of running on the roads and in various parks in the city lately. But I was keen on running this one in lalbagh for many reasons. I first started running with V in lalbagh when we met initially. Those were some special moments and so was today’s run.. so I wanted to run where it all begun And I digress..

Back to my run. I was so pumped up to run my first 10K that I woke up even before the alarm went off, had my playlist ready with my favorite songs – some carnatic, some mushy, and some power songs. I began my run slow and steady at a pace of 11. But strangely the first 2 miles was the most difficult, I broke into sweat early on and I was doing a 9 min run, 1 minute walk routine until my body got used to the run. From mile 2 onwards I was determined to stop only after I achieved my goal. At times, I ran slow alright, but I needed to recover and gain my pace back while on the run. My best pace was between 2 – 4 miles at 9.5. The sheer excitement of visualising the feeling of having achieved my first 10K took me through the last 2 miles relatively easily. I completed 6.33 miles in 1 hour 10 mins on the dot!

The most surprising part is I was not as tired as I had anticipated to be, which means there is potential to do more Not to mention the rest of the day went by in treating myself to guiltfree yummy masala dosa and chaat