The International gems and jewelry show

I had been to the International gems and jewelry show at the Dallas Market Hall here in Dallas. This show for the Fall season started off at Washington on August 19, has been through many cities and reached Dallas from October 21-23. I went to the show on the last day, with the hope of finding something good to shop for my trip to India in December.

I heard about the show through one of my friends, who was very enthusiastic about the event - I could understand that - she being a girl (I do believe that girls like jewelry - whatever the form they are in!) and she is visiting India this December too. So, I thought I would give a visit to the show too - but I went there only after confirming that there was good stuff there - my friend went there on Saturday; after getting here feedback and looking at the stuff she had bought there, I decided to go for the show on Sunday.

It was a very chilly Sunday - the temperatures being in the early 50's I guess, dropping suddenly from the usual 80's and 90's. We went to the show at around 3 in the afternoon - well we took our time to get up in the morning, sorry, afternoon ;) - had lunch and then left for the show. As expected I found that there were a large number of Indians at the show. Of course, there were Americans too, but they were going for the large, gaudy gems! Well, I do not like them!

I went to the section where they were selling semi-precious stones (I cannot afford to buy the precious stones like ruby or diamond yet - I am still a student!). I loved some of them which I thought would look good (I think I am quite good at choosing stuff) - so I ended up buying garnet, amethyst, mystic topaz, corals shaped as roses and jade shaped as leaves. I also bought a pair of ear-rings that looked cool.

Garnet has a variable color averaging a dark red.



Amethyst is a transparent variety of crystallized quartz that typically is purple or violet in color.



Mystic Topaz has a mysteriously shimmering sparkling beauty - I bought the ones that have a darkish shade.



Coral roses are pinkish white stones, carved from the corals. Jade leaves are greenish stones carved out in the shape of leaves. These two together would form a great necklace!



I spent about $150 for all the stuff! Hope it is worth it!

Massive shopping for Groceries!

We had been short of groceries for two days and we had to go to Walmart for shopping - everything from milk and curds to vegetables were out of stock at home! Finally we went to Walmart and did a massive shopping! Can you imagine how much we spent on our groceries? It was $211 - the highest we have spent after moving to this house I guess. If I convert this to rupees, it will be a bit too much - we usually do not use conversions - if we do that, we can never afford to buy anything I guess!

Yeah - we did buy quite a lot of stuff - more in quantity as well as variety - but I guess this was a bit too much! We bought fruits - bananas, apples, red and green grapes, pomegranates, oranges and what else! And a variety of other stuff too - cookies, biscuits, cakes , chocolates and such fun stuff to washing liquid to deodorants to cough syrup! Well, I am not going to write out the whole list of things we bought - that would be really boring! Anyway, we had fun buying all the stuff! Thanks to my friend for taking us shopping!

Delicious Weekend

The weekend was great fun - we were involved in cooking great stuff on Saturday. We prepared "Aloo Sabji Bonda" (Potato curry stuffed in flour and fried in oil). It was really tasty and reminded us how easily we could have got it done if we were at home. Anyway, it was worth the effort - we spent about two hours preparing the stuff! In addition to that we also prepared the ambrosial "Carrot Halwa" (Sweet dish prepared using carrots) - it was heavenly! And to give the final touches, we had these dishes watching "The Pirates of the Caribbean" - the movie was great, especially with the great food we had! I really forgot to get the snaps of these dishes - will make it a point to take snaps whenever we prepare something good.

Anyway, we were quite bored to cook anything on Sunday - so went out to have food. We went to "Masala Wok" - an Indian restaurant... I had "Fried Rice" there - that was good too. It had been quite some time since we had been out for dinner - the short outing was fun. Here are some snaps we took there:



This snap we took outside the restaurant - just to show the "name" of the restaurant! ;)


We are inside, waiting for the food...


Hmmm.. our food has arrived and I have already savoured half of the fried rice!


We are done and ready to return home! Other than this, I had to read up on some papers, since we have to submit a report this week! Overall, we had fun this weekend!

Hail Netflix! Hail Blockbuster!

I became one among the many of us who subscribe DVD's from the movie rental stores such a Netflix/Blockbuster. I had known about this earlier, but the idea appealed to me now because of the acute shortage of movies to watch! It is difficult to imagine this - Bollywood is not able to produce movies at the rate we are consuming them. And we are not "supposed" to download new Hollywood movies - sometimes we do that as well - but few are available. And the small set of Kannada movies we got has expired recently (meaning we have watched all the 20 odd VCD's we had). A deadlock situation in the producer-consumer problem --> and the solution I found for this is to get another source of movies - namely, a rental store such as Netflix.

I got the idea from a friend that you can subscribe for a free trial of 15 days. That's what I am doing now - we are trying to optimise this - get 3 movies, immediately rip them and send them back the very next day, if not the same day; so that we can get the next set of movies! And watch the movies slowly, as and when we have time! We have already got about 18 movies in the queue - most of them Hindi.

The hard disk of my laptop is filled with movies - so I am now writing them out into DVD's so that I can leisurely watch the same movie again some other time. Movies have become the main source of entertainment and pastime for us. Well, if we are not busy with studies or if we are not out playing, it is almost a hundred percent sure we are watching some movies, with popcorn/icecream/chips/some other food in our hand! And as a contingency plan, I think I will subscribe for Blockbuster after this 15 day trial! Hail Netflix! Hail Blockbuster!

Down with Fever

After a long time, I was down with fever. It's been quite some time - I guess I've not fallen sick for about a year and a half now. Well, finally I did fall sick - but just for a day. A slight bout of fever invaded my body - fever, accompanied with cold and cough. As they say, an adaptive mechanism, fever is the body's reaction to pathogens; it attempts to raise core body temperature to levels which will denature, debilitate or kill the pathogens. I guess my body was so full of pathogens that they had to be killed - and for that I had to get "FEVER".

It has been three days now and I feel better - the fever was there just for three days or so - the second day was real bad. I was sleeping the whole day - the sleep was so intense that I could not even manage to differentiate between dream and reality - my mind was full of dreams - I just answered a phone call and within two minutes, I was having a dream! I guess I was continuously in a state of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) which is a period late in the sleep cycle in which the brain and body become active, increasing heart rate and blood pressure and it is most often associated with dreaming, for most dreams occur during this period. Well, I had a lot of dreams - I can just remember that the dreams were all good - many of them being fantasies!

Getting fever has its own bag of gifts - you get to miss school or office - I did get to do that! And you get looked after as if you are a king - well, I missed out on that - I am not at "home", you see. Anyway, it was a pleasant change from the routine - I can say this only because the fever did not affect me much and did not last longer!

After a long time!

I've not blogged for quite some time now. I've been very busy these days. Work here at my internship is quite hectic and the research work at school also kept me busy. I submitted a paper for a conference last weekend - haven't worked in my lab much since then. But, I had to read up some papers for the other course I have taken! Overall, a very busy month! So I thought if it is going to be this way, I better start blogging again... else I may never blog as it will remain this way for a few more months.

Well, what have I done this month other than the stuff I said above... I have called up most of my friends back home - just spoke to them after a long time. It felt really good. I have gone and watched some Kannada movies in the theater - yeah, Dallas has shown some Kannada movies recently. Also, I got my cell phone - so I am supposed to be "mobile" now! I attended a career fair at school. That was good. Hopefully, my resume will get noticed and will land me a good offer.

My professor wants me to continue at school for my doctoral degree. Well, I do not want to pursue PhD as yet... I would like to work for a year and maybe then get back to school. I have told him that, but I think the conversation on that has not yet ended... I will have to convince him that I do not want to go in for more school work as yet. Hopefully he gets it. Well, I guess that's it for now. I will try to blog more regularly starting today.