Happiness

My life is full. And I am happy.

Power of Three

Windy Day

Tractor by the Sea

Rahm's Menagerie

Look at those Antlers!

Feeling a Bit Batty

How we send letters now

Public. 1 sentence. Impersonal.

Old Car

Lemon Rice

Lemon Rice is also called Chitrannam and is a South Indian recipe. Spicy and tart at the same time.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups basmati rice
3 cups water

1 tablespoon canola oil
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon husked black gram dal (urad dal)
2-3 dried chilies (optional)
1 tablespoon peanuts or cashew nuts (optional)
I sprig curry leaves (can leave out if not available)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon salt
Juice from 1 1/2 – 2 lemons
Cilantro leaf to garnish (optional)

Method:
Wash and drain the rice. Add water and bring to a boil, simmer on low for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and leave for an hour to cool or spread out on a plate to cool faster. Set aside.
Heat oil in a pan on medium-high and add the mustard seeds. When they begin to pop, add black gram dal, curry leaves, cashew nuts and dried chilies. Saute for a minute or two until the black gram dal turns light brown. Remove from heat and add salt and turmeric. Add the lemon juice. Toss in the rice and heat through. Allow to rest for 10 minutes so all the flavors blend. Garnish with cilantro leaves.

Serve with papadums and hot pickles.

Kale...bleeh!

The texture is all wrong: bubbly and rubbery. It has many health benefits but I just can't do it.

Kale is considered to be a highly nutritious vegetable with powerful antioxidant properties and is anti-inflammatory. It is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and reasonably rich in calcium. As with Broccoli and other brassicas, it contains sulforaphane, a chemical believed to have potent anti-cancer properties, particularly when chopped or minced.

The Doppler Effect

I have always loved this idea in physics. Like how a sound changes as it goes by. The Doppler effect (or Doppler shift), named after an Austrian physicist Christian Doppler who proposed it in 1842, is the change in frequency of a wave (for example, a sound wave) for an observer moving relative to the source of the waves. It is commonly heard when a vehicle with a siren approaches, passes and recedes from an observer. The received frequency is increased (compared to the emitted frequency) during the approach, it is identical at the instant of passing by, and it is decreased during the recession. The vehicle is pushing up against the medium in front (air) as it goes making it "thicker" and creating a lag behind causing the waves to elongate.

Hands

I was looking at my hands, off-handedly, this evening and realized how much is accomplished by these amazing parts of the body. I remember, many years ago, seeing a model of the human body at the Natural History Museum in London with the various parts sized proportional to the number of nerves they possessed. The hands were by far the biggest.
M.C. Escher performs the ultimate sleight-of-hand in the mystifying “Drawing Hands.” Escher (1898 – 1972), a Dutch artist who worked with lithography, woodcutting and mezzotints, created optical illusions that defied concepts of infinity by manipulating space and geometric patterns. His works all employed advanced mathematical and scientific principles, although he lacked training in either field.

Downward Facing Dog

(Original image from Cecilie's Moto Journal)

Bhangra

Lately I've been very interested in Bhangra as my kids just did a play that had a couple of Bollywood dances that they really got in to. This great image is from vickysingh.us and it looks like it was originally a black and white print that was colorised by hand. Baisaki is a dnace festival in Punjab where the men perform Bhangra, an energetic dance that is associated with the ripening of crops.

The Seven Chakras

Making a Paper Boat

Birthday Party in Beverly Hills

Balloons, bouncer, basketball and lots of amazing trees.

Crossing a Bridge

Bipasha carries Priya on a hiking trip to Switzer Falls in the Angeles National Forest.

Here and Now

Artwork by Cate.

Tandoori-Style Chicken

Ingredients
8 chicken thighs (skinned and boned)
1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons tandoori masala
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon salt

1-2 tablespoons canola oil for cooking

Method
Traditionally, tandoori chicken is baked in a Tandoor oven. This is a quick cook method that results in a moister consistency. Marinate the chicken in a mixture of the ingredients for 1 hour to overnight. Heat the oil in a frying pan and carefully place the chicken pieces in one layer. Fry chicken for 5 minutes per side and then turn often so that the pieces become coated in the thick gravy (approximately another 10-15 minutes). Drain off any excess oil. Num num!

Two by Two

I like this phrase in light at an entrance to the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball Center. Especially because my identical twin boys seem to have embodied this sentiment right from their inception.

Birds on a Wire

This photo, appropriately taken by my musician husband symbolically brings music into a gloomy day, the birds' bodies creating notes on an urban stave.

Doesn't look so friendly...

I know this sign is meant to welcome children to play at this park, but the high fence and strange bear look a bit creepy to me.

No Voice

This world is no place for no voice.

Mother's Day

Ladybug in Ivy

My Boys

The Triangle

Nerd Question: 1. Which geometric shape is the strongest?

Nerd Answer: The triangle has a characteristic shared by no other polygon, it is rigid. As force is applied to the vertex (or top peak) of the triangle, the force is deflected down the sides of the structure. The sizes of the angles do not change because the bottom (side opposite the vortex) holds the other two sides in place.)

Nerd Examples in Nature: It seems that they are very uncommon but here are a few examples:
- The fractal patterns on some cone shells
- There are some tetrahedron shaped crystals (fluorite)
- In the arms of starfish
- Orca fins are pretty triangular, as are some shark fins
- In the geometry of spider webs
- Carnivorous Incisors (sharks)
- Serrated leaf margins (maples form a fractal)
- Triangular stems (Yellow Nutsedge)
- Cross section of fruits (orange)
- Star fruit

Om Ganesha!

Even the miniature idols are beautifully carved. This one is made in silver.

What's for Breakfast?

Apparently the painted rocks are eclairs.

Graduation Invitation Segment

School Play Program Segment

School Play Poster Segment

Tickets for a Play

'Tis the season for the end of year school play. This year there are three performances and here are the tickets.

An Irish Love Story

It is awesome to discover other people's design. The above photograph is from an Irish blog called In Photos dot org. And right now I'm obsessing about a song and its design (by Spandau Ballet from 1986). It is a Romeo & Juliet-style love story set in a troubled Northern Ireland. A boy and a girl, one a Catholic and one a Protestant, betray their families and their upbringing to meet on the bomb sites and the no-man's land between divided communities. The setting is given away by the drum and pipe marching music, so reminiscent of the parades mentioned in the second chorus. Like Shakespeare's play, there is a tragic ending. The "hearts go to their graves," but it is not clear whether this refers metaphorically to the end of the affair or a suicide pact. Incidentally, the phrase "a terrible beauty we've made" is very like "a terrible beauty is born" from the W. B. Yeats poem about the 1916 rising in Dublin.

Through the Barricades by Spandau Ballet

Mother doesn't know where love has gone
She says it must be youth
That keeps us feeling strong
See it in her face, that's turned to ice
And when she smiles she shows
The lines of sacrifice
And now I know what they're saying
When the sun begins to fade
And we made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

Father made my history
He fought for what he thought
Would set us somehow free
He taught me what to say in school
I learned off by heart
But now that's torn in two
And now I know what they're saying
In the music of the parade
We made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

Born on different sides of life
We feel the same
And feel all of this strife
So come to me when I'm asleep
We'll cross the line
And dance upon the street
And now I know what they're saying
When the drums begin to fade
We made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

Oh, turn around and I'll be there
There's a scar through my heart
But I'll bare it again
I thought we were the human race
But we were just another border-line-case
And the stars reach down and tell us
That there's always one escape.

I don't know where love has gone
And in this troubled land
Desperation keep us strong
Friday's child is full of soul
With nothing left to lose
There's everything to go
And now I know what they're are saying
It's a terrible beauty we've made
So we make our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

Now I know what they're are saying
As hearts go to their graves
We made our love on wasteland
And through the barricades.

Public Announcement Sample

Hate is a hateful thing

Shoebox

The packaging was as cute as the shoes.

My Grandfather

My grandfather used to sit
On a simple wooden chair
Outside his small room
In a dusty, ancient Calcutta tenement building.

Broken sunbeams lay on the ground, brilliant.
Interrupted patchwork of shadow and light in the open plaza,
Within enclosed cement and tile
umber and gold, muted.

My Dadu was a proud man
Era of Indian Independence in his blood
Freedom and veracious ideals.
He filled his chair with girth and authority.

With cane in hand and ominous presence
He would sit toothless
Central
Brooding
Observing.

Remember I a small child, running down the long dark crooked alley
That wove inside and through other crumbling buildings
Shifting and cutting angles. Abrupt.
Then unexpectedly huge
His dominion.

And I would stop in my tracks
and shuffle past. Quiet. From a different world, a different generation.
Afraid again to say
“Dadu, I love you.”

Uncontrolled my tears
The last time we said “Goodbye”.
In his perfect Oxford English
He said I would never see him again.

I wonder now what he used to think…
Perhaps about his youth
And how success had shown him
Her generous hand for a few brief years
And how in a game of karmic trickery
She closed her bright eyes,
Turning away from him
Leaving only the reminder of golden light
Intangible at his feet.

Layers

Mosaic

One square is geometry, many squares make poetry.

Mayfly In April

After this photo, I left my delicate subject alone. She is absconding somewhere in our residence.

Two Towers

The place where I get my car washed is opposite the Disney towers. As I waited for my car, I remembered that in late 2002, we had watched an air display of fighter airplanes in formation from the black tower building. And a sick thought had come to mind. What if those planes had flown into the two towers as had happened in New York a few weeks earlier?

Too hot to play

Statement as of 6:14 PM PDT on April 20, 2009 ... Preliminary record high temperatures set across southwest California...

A record high temperature of 100 degrees was set at downtown Los Angeles (usc) CA today. This breaks the old record of 96 set in 1958.

A record high temperature of 95 degrees was set at Los Angeles Airport today. This breaks the old record of 86 set in 1986.

A record high temperature of 100 degrees was set at Long Beach Airport CA today. This breaks the old record of 93 set in 1986.

A record high temperature of 99 degrees was set at San Gabriel CA today. This breaks the old record of 98 set in 1958.

A record high temperature of 86 degrees was set at Santa Monica pier CA today. This breaks the old record of 79 set in 1958.

A record high temperature of 99 degrees was set at UCLA CA today. This breaks the old record of 94 set in 1958.

We come and go

Recently, I found a letter from my late father typewritten on an Indian aerogramme with little pictures of planes going in opposite directions printed on it. Things in the universe peacefully move from one state to another. Departing and arriving. And in so recognizing, nothing can really ever be lost.