Music to my ears

I love romantic movies .... I can spend weeks and decades watching my favorites ..... But at the same time , I love listening to soundtracks of Hollywood films and most of them can be always found in my playlist.So, today I am going to share with you all 13 of my most favorite songs from Hollywood films. And with this , you all know a bit more about me as they say - 'You can know a lot about a person by knowing the music that he/she listens to' ! :)

Here I present my fav 13 in no particular order... Keep grooving and keep singing no matter how bad it is ;)

1. Duets • Cruisin • Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis

2. Pretty Woman • It must have been love • Roxette

3. Dirty Dancing • Time of my life • Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes

4. Serendipity  • Northern Sky • Nick Drake

5. 13 going 30  • Why can't I  • Liz Phair

6. Top Gun • Take my breathe away • Berlin

7. Devil wears Prada • City of Blinding Lights • U2

8. The Namesake  •  Failling  • Nitin Sawhney

9. Notting Hill  •  Ain't no sunshine • Bill Whithers

10. Say Anything • In Your Eyes • Peter Gabriel

11. Never been kissed  •  Don't worry baby • Beach Boys

12. She's all that •  Kiss Me •  sixpence none the richer

13. The Mirror Has Two Faces  •  I Finally Found Someone •  Barbara Streisand & Bryan Adams

You are what you eat!

I am not a good cook at all but I do love to experiment when I am in the kitchen and have got the control(which I don't generally get when Abhay is around :P). When I got this golden oppurtunity to spend the day all by myself at home on a Monday afternoon, I couldn't resist the temptation of cooking and eating dishes what I like to eat.

My shopping list had only 1 item listed... Buy anything which looked fresh and healthy :)

I am not a good follower in terms of cooking and have never in my life sticked to the recipe :P So, for inspiration I looked at the following recipe , but soon deviated and created something of my own...

My very own 'Pasta Salad'

I know very well that the moment my Mom will see this , I will be asked to send the recipe :) Trust me Mom , its so very easy. Easier than cooking maggie I believe :D

In today's time ,when all the international food is at a throw away distance in fancy restaurants, its sometimes very important to give your taste buds a break and eat something very simple and straight from your kitchen. Its so much fun and it's very healthy...

It's beautiful sunny afternoon and after having a sumptuous lunch , all I feeling doing is stepping out in the sun and lie on the grass...

Spring is here!!!

Describe Spring season in one word???

Vibrant!

 

Cheerful...

 

Fun!

Sunny

Resplendent...

'Radiant'



Relaxing

 Bright...

 

OR

 

ALL OF THE ABOVE :)

 

When you can't focus!!

Whenever I do experiments with my camera , its interesting to see how I wander around the house in the hunt for my object of focus.... :D From a spoon to the Refrigerator, probably everything came under my lens tonight ....and while the results were not very satisfying , I wondered if its still a good idea to share the results of my progress with y'all.

 

 

 

And after trying Bokeh for almost 2 hours , I could no longer focus :P

Happy weekend to you all...

A trip to Aberystwyth

For past one year or slightly more , I used to take the 8:23 train from the Birmingham New St Station to Aberystwyth and used to get down at the third stop i.e. Telford Central ...... until today.
It is not so easy to sacrifice the Saturday morning sleep and even if my body was in mood to leave the bed so early , I got up at 5 AM and got ready to take the 6:23 AM train. We grabbed some coffee on the way and got seated in the train all set to explore some places unknown.

Realized that I am seeing a sunrise after eons :)

View from the train...

With a variety of dramatic landscapes to discover from stunning coastlines to snow shrouded mountain peaks, a journey of 3 hours across the Welsh countryside was an beautiful experience.

A view from the castle

 If the UK weather is kind of , which it was this time luckily, this place is simply perfect for having a family picnic or doing a short trek on the constitution hill with friends. Perfect place for a day trip.

After spending some time on the seashore , we walked towards the Pier and reached the Constitution Hill. We had two options a) To either climb up b) OR To take the clifftop railway ....Since we wanted to miss out nothing , we preferred to take the train to the top and walked down the hill.

View from the train

 

At 430 feet height, the view of  'Aber' from the top is spectacular!! There is a bowling alley and few restaurants but all I did was took hundreds of pictures of the breathtaking view....

 



After a bit of more sightseeing and finishing our lunch, we headed to the station to board the Vale of Rheidol train. Probably the star attraction for me as I had never actually travelled on a steam train!! :)

Cannot believe that it's still so well maintained!

 

 

A bit about 'Vale of Rheidol' Railway - The Vale of Rheidol Railway is a narrow-gauge heritage railway that runs between Aberystwyth and Devil's Bridge in the county of Ceredigion, Wales and covers a distance of approximately 20 Kms through the Rheidol Valley.

 

It was such a relaxing experience to see the countryside on a warm afternoon and travel through the woodland and picturesque mountains. Listening to the whistle sound while the train twisted and turned along the hillside had its own charm! After a journey of 40 minutes approx , we reached the Devil's Bride. The Welse name for the village is 'Pontarfynach' which means 'The Monk's Bridge'.

 

 

3 Bridges built one top of another

 

 

And if you are wondering why is it called the Devil's bridge , then you must read the Legends of the Devil's Bridge , very interesting and I love short stories :)

 

And with that , our short trip to the beautiful town came to an end! I always wanted to see this place for no reason and now that I have seen it , unfortunately I would never like to get down from the train at Telford Central anymore :)

 

Easter Egg Competition

Abhay and I participated in 'Easter Egg Painting Competition' today.

The details of the competition can be found below:

No of Participants - 2
Location .... Corridor of our house
Theme - Easter Egg painting ofcourse :P
Prize - The loser will cook the dinner for a week!!


Since we didn't have a third person to decide the winner, we have decided to let the public be the judge ;)

Even though both the enteries our quite interesting ;) Let me know who do you think deserves to be the winner...

Happy Easter to all of you and yeah! don't forget to leave your decision ;)
Love.

Goddess Lakshmi

I am sure you know what has invoked me to write this post if you have read the one which just wrote couple of minutes back. Yes, I am on spiritual quest today :)

Being a Hindu, I have spent all my life worshiping goddess Lakshmi and never wondered why is She virajman on a lotus flower? Until today!!

If you google it , you get the details all over the internet. But for simple explanation read this...

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Lotus signifies subconsciousness and even purity. As Mother Lakshmi is Pure and Holy God himself he is depicted to sit on Lotus for symbolic understanding.

Goddess Lakshmi on lotus:

To know the answer to this question we must know the symbolic nature of Trimurti.

1. Brahma - Voluntary force - Air
2. Vishnu - Semi voluntary force - Water
3. Shiva - Involuntary force - Land

Brahma is not worshiped as an independent god because he enables us to lead a bad parallel life, symbolized by demons. To avoid this, he is supposed to represent the Voluntary component of the Semi voluntary (Vishnu) force. Thus, he sits on a lotus above water, that originates from the navel of Vishnu.

The symbolic nature of lotus:
The Voluntary (Brahma) force has one unique feature. It enables us to execute an action correctly, independent of our status. This is symbolized by lotus that stands above the water.

The discrimination of people:
Vishnu is symbolic of the Semi voluntary force that maintains status quo. This force makes us equally skilled in all the activities of our life. This gives us a status based on our average skill. In fact, Lord Krishna declares that it is he who created the four classes.

Lotus - the eliminator of discrimination:
Lotus is symbolic of an action that is independent of our status. Such actions enables us to interact with people of all classes and thus maintain equality.

Thus, Goddess Lakshmi sits on lotus to symbolize that she treats all as equal.

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(Source Credits)

In mythology , everything is there for a reason and in one way or the other its all connected to us.

Complicated?

I was listening to a beautiful speech by Shri Nirmala Devi and I couldn't stop myself from jotting it down instantly before I forget it :

"We doubt a solution if it is very simple"

These 9 simple words so beautifully elaborate how complicated we have become. We, the human beings, question back if there is a simple solution to a bigger 'complicated' problem. And to help eradicate our own doubts, we wrap it with 'complicated' covers and make it apt for our 'complicated' problems!

Complex world !! :)