Insults to die for :-)

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
Winston Churchill

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"
Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."
Moses Hadas

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
Abraham Lincoln

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
Groucho Marx

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
Mark Twain

"He has no enemies , but is intensely disliked by his friends."
Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend... if you have one."
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."
Winston Churchill, in response

"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here."
Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."
John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."
Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."
Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy."
Walter Kerr

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."
Jack E. Leonard

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt."
Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge."
Thomas Brackett Reed

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them."
James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."
Charles, Count Talleyrand

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."
Forrest Tucker

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"
Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
Oscar Wilde

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination."
Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."
Billy Wilder

Housekeeping travails

When you buy extra milk, the carton in use will go on and on, much like the fish in the parable. But if you were planning to make an almost-empty packet last one more morning, the milk will mysteriously disappear.
You will be able to compose a grocery list only in the shower, or some such inappropriate place, where you cannot get to a pencil and paper. Of course, once you pick up a pencil and paper, you will never be able to remember the list.
You will carefully craft a grocery list and then leave it at home when you set out for the market.

Clean hands - read on

Keeping hands clean is one of the most important steps we can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs to others. It is best to wash your hands with soap and clean running water for 20 seconds. However, if soap and clean water are not available, use an alcohol-based product to clean your hands. Alcohol-based hand rubs significantly reduce the number of germs on skin and are fast acting.

When washing hands with soap and water:
Wet your hands with clean running water and apply soap.
Use warm water if it is available.
Rub hands together to make a lather and scrub all surfaces.
Continue rubbing hands for 20 seconds.
Need a timer? Imagine singing "Happy Birthday" twice through to a friend!
Rinse hands well under running water
Dry your hands using a paper towel or air dryer.
If possible, use your paper towel to turn off the faucet

Remember: If soap and water are not available, use alcohol-based gel to clean hands.

When using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer:
Apply product to the palm of one hand
Rub hands together
Rub the product over all surfaces of hands and fingers until hands are dry.

When should you wash your hands?
Before preparing or eating food
After going to the bathroom
After changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has gone to the bathroom
Before and after tending to someone who is sick
After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing
After handling an animal or animal waste
After handling garbage
Before and after treating a cut or wound

Wedding countdown begins

I'm back

After sitting on my ass from so long and then being unable to log in, and find this blog, I'm finally up again.
PS Never realised how much I would miss blogging, but I DID!!

Is this movie any good?

The answer to that, as long as it's not an Indian movie, is www.rottentomatoes.com

Then, rent the VCD/DVD at www.clixflix.com

Do good

Click and help, it just takes a few minutes

www.hungersite.com

Serious thoughts...

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If you can attend a religious meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death, you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can read this message you are more blessed than the over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all.

As you read this and are reminded how life is in the rest of the world, remember just how blessed you really are!

Puts it all in perspective, doesn't it?

Sweet moments

Every Christmas, I would 'help' my grandma (Mama) make sweets. She made some (milk cream, neuris (karanji), kulkuls, dal sweet, once she made nankhatai) and we bought some (marzipan, baskets and rose cookies) every year till she died, after which we only bought sweets.
We usually began operations two weeks before Christmas, with me helping to stir the dal sweet (and clean the pan and spoon later by scraping and licking it clean) and assembling the individual neuris by filling the dough circles with coconut and raisins.
While doing this last job, I would announce: "I'll make one (neuri), and eat one (raisin - which I loved), only to have my grandma swoop down on me and warn me sternly against it.
Another job I really liked was rolling kulkuls on a comb or the red mould we acquired later. This was the safest thing to give me to do, my grandma realised, as I would never deign to eat them till they had been swirled in the sugar syrup - the last stage of the operation - before they were done.
The other poignant memory I have of this time is of watching my grandma like a hawk after she came back with our order of sweets, to see where she was hiding them. Poor thing, the house only had so many hidey holes, so my sister and I would discover them sooner or later, and then gleefully wolf down some sweeties, which tasted even better as an illict pleasure than on Christmas morning, when we were lawfully allowed to have them.

My thoughts turn to Christmas...

It's that time of year again, when I begin humming carols and start dreaming of marzipan. I don't know about New Year's resolutions, but of late years, I have made many Christmas resolutions - I will send out my cards on time, I will try and make sweets from scratch (instead of sourcing them from someone else), I will make sure to play carols everyday, I will decorate the house in style - and inevitably, as the end of the festive season nears, I find I haven't done half these things. But this year... there I go again.