Prabha Manda’s Blog

Frontier/Midwest Airlines

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

Thought I’d write about it before it gets too late. We returned from Seattle yesterday and we flew on Frontier/Midwest Airlines. One of the Air Hosts was joking right from the beginning and because of that the second leg of our journey seemed kind of boring cos the hosts as well as the pilot did only the routine announcements. Some of the jokes he made were, we [the crew] would not mind any appreciation in the form of cash, jewelry, or chocolates but no spouses or children. Another one was we have arrived 15 minutes early so remember the next time you are 10 minutes late on a Frontier flight! The pilot made a bumpy landing so he said, please remain seated while out pilot veers just left to the gate and comes to a screeching halt. One was you can use your seats as a flotation device, just put your arms through and paddle madly to the shore! When he introduced the air hostesses he said, my wife, ex-wife and girlfriend. LOL, I don’t remember any other flight I have laughed so much [partially because I have a glum face thinking about my motion sickness, I hate flying:)]

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Concumer Care at McNeil

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

This is to say I am impressed! After the recent recalls of Tylenol and other related products, we dilly dallied doing something about the recalls having other things to do around the house. Last week I finally went on-line to see what I could do to get a refund. I saw a simple form on-line and filled it up – it was pretty simple to fill it up too. I asked my husband about how it could be as simple as filling out a form for the refund and he said they’d maybe call to confirm or something. But I was checking my mail [postal] right now and in the pile of mail that had come a few days ago, there was a check in the mail for the refund for the recalled medicines. This is very fast. I cannot believe that anything can be processed so soon.
Wish government institutions could be as fast in processing important things just as this!

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Perils of Gardening and such – 1

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Having spent so much time and energy on my garden, thought I could write more than just one blog, maybe this one will continue for a while! Just got back from another session of sweat drenching gardening. I went out at oh 6.20 in the am, to mulch my vegetable garden, thought that would keep off the grass that had grown last year and bugged me for the duration of the vegetable season. So this year the attempt is to lay newspaper and then over that, mulch. We [husband and I] did a good job by mulching as soon as we had planted the pepper area, but for one reason and another we didn’t get to the rest of the area. So, inspired by the progress that we had made on the front landscape , I finished the mulching of the vegetable garden. Some bit of newspaper is seen, but I am trusting the dear Dr Sun to pale it out and make it go into the background. Then I decided to use up the remaining manure and mulch in the front landscape around the rose and newly planted shrubs etc to keep ever hated Bermuda grass at bay. I however had to run some errands and a lack-of-continuous-sleep-so-cranky toddler kind of drained me so I gave up mentally on doing that. But after a brief nap watching a MGR Tamil movie, I was invigorated to venture out into the Golden [albeit burning sun], I did manure[I've made a verb out of manure for my convenience] and mulch some plants. Today’s job is done! I must add a note that I did not include yesterday, we have been bugged by this creeping grass that is called Bermuda grass that very villainously had grown beneath the weed sheets and more than 4 inches of rock , that my husband had painstakingly added to the front landscaping last year. I cannot believe how pointy the grass is while it pokes through the holes in the weed sheet and then spreads around. It really seems evil! A little week after we had cleared out the area and done the above mentioned task the sheet had risen [lo and behold], because of the thriving grass below. It was disappointing. We have tried to amend the area this year. If it works I will let out the secret. To top off the disappointment, our neighbors both front and back had had no problems with this grass, I am thinking this might be because of Sun sun Mr golden sun, that shines on that area, the problem area faces south and both theirs faces North, maybe that makes a difference. oh also, we have no tall trees at all. Hmm, writing all this is leading to explanations I didn’t think of before.
Anyway, tata for now!

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Perils of gardening and such!

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

I love gardening, but not having the time it takes to do a complete job, bugs me. Gardening is ofcourse an on going process, but still I wish I could achieve an amount of completeness that satisfies me mentally. The 3 years that I have lived in my new house have been spent, thinking of what more plants I can add and that thinking is put to a stop only with the seasons changing.  Spring is a happy season and weather but I sometimes dread it cos I cannot live without planting and at the same time, I lack the amount of time it takes to do that!!!. In the fall, I know that soon it will be winter so there won’t be much to do and that is relaxing . Winter is the best, cos you can talk about spring and be pleased that there are atleast 3 months of no mowing, no watering and no gardening or minimal gardening.

Today the temperatures here are in the upper 90s right now, 95 and the heat index is 101, only because there is some breeze, I made the most of the sun , my dear white cap hopefully protected me and of course some Powerade. Speaking of which, the recent Gatorade types haven’t pleased me, this being ever since I bought a sugar free version of it. So I thought I’d switch to Powerade.

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Lucky thing that I’ve a blog!

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

My curiosity: For all the meat eaters- here is my question, how do you find a dead animal on your meal plate appetizing? Its killed, drained of all blood, whatever bodily juices it has and then chopped up and then cooked? Even writing all that has gotten me  nauseous.

Get civilized.

Just got sent this:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/264043/february-08-2010/jonathan-safran-foer

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Why can’t people think rationally?

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Yesterday there was this news about a god-man trampling infants to cure them. Everyone thinks, what are the parents of these infants doing? Then think back and look back, most of them might be quite uneducated. What do individuals who are educated do ? In our small city for eg. there was a decision recently made by well known and “very educated” because most of these are doctors and professors, the decision to build a “temple” which would also house a community center. I so wished they would come up with the idea of just a community center, where cultural activities could take place [to me culture need not necessarily be related to religion or need not be related at all to religion]. But no, that wasn’t. This is a huge disappointment to me. There is another aspect that everyone has in general. Be proud of where they are from blah blah. You should not be proud of where you are from, you need to be proud of what you are, what you are made up of, what you think, not where you are from, what religion you belong to, what country you belong to, what culture you belong to, what language you speak . As long as people have, this aspect, people of the world cannot be one. There will always be this separation. On the one hand we are promoting everything to separate people by building “temples” obviously one way of separating people with religion, on the other hand, doing community sings to show everyone is one, people are same. That is so contradictory and what is defined as hypocrisy. In a world without religion, we can let current places of worship be museums for the next generation to see what it was in the past.But that is a world that is far far away.

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References to “God”

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

I continually hear people very unconsciously refer to ‘God’, in a very normal conversation even without realizing it. For eg: “God, I had so much work. “Oh God”, when am I going to get xyz done, when they see something nice”God”, that beautiful, “God”, I didn’t mean that. Why do people refer to “God” for each and every silly thing that exists? Are those references like a boxing bag or whatever they call it? It is obvious that the so called “God”is not going to respond to any of those references, why cannot people remark with more meaningful words? I have never heard people use sane expressions while showing ecstatic emotions, or joy or sorrow. Do you ever hear people say “O thank big bang”, its such a beautiful morning! or Oh Sun, its such a nice present or something like that?. People really don’t change much at all, no one makes resolutions like I will use sane expressions, use sensible words in every conversation. My daughter is 8 and she comes back from school with such words or when I hear her talk to her friends I realize that in this country [US] at least [since I am here], there is no conscious effort by people to talk correctly or use correct English. I see it more and more, people use all kinds of words , but somehow another accent is totally confusing to them. Wish they would encourage good English and correct use of words in school. I do not think such changes will ever happen, because no one ever thinks that the way things are going might be wrong. I only hope when my daughters are older and they’ll realize that. A chance of that is quite less of course, because they would have been brought up in this kind of environment.

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National telivision or Religious propaganda telivision?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

This morning I was unusually watching the morning show on NBC because my plantar fasciitis was bothering me and I needed to sit down and do nothing for a while. So I see this woman come up on TV and I won’t go into details about her story but the crux of the matter is that she is saying “it was a wake up call for me and I started believing in “Jesus Christ”. I find that such programming shows that this country needs to wake up and stop being dumb. Religion if at all followed should be a private affair. Overdoing a celebration is one thing but why propagate religion on a national news channel? Thumbs down NBC, disappointing.

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Random opinions

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Not the best blog to write on a Monday morning, but it might get better! Was watching Mr William O’Reilly Jr interview Richard Dawkins, he just knows how to talk louder than who he calls in to interview, he just throws questions and gives hardly a second to let them answer, he doesn’t seem to have the basic etiquette even to interview. I don’t understand how his show is popular, perhaps people watch it to get laughs or see a grown up man acting idiotic.

Just started watching “Aadhavan”, seems a rather stupid movie so far. Don’t know how Surya fans can be so blind and get impressed by him that movie. Nayantara fans, oh my she looks horrid in this, think she looked good only in her first movie, she actually doesn’t have many pretty features, she is just a made up lady and the said part is all that make up fails to make her look good.

Weather: has been so cold, but when it chose to rain, the temperature rose just above freezing, thereby taking away the pleasure of watching some snow. My poor 8 year old, she has to delight in little bits of drifted snow? or frozen rain on the [roofs] rooves!

Another week before we have holidays. Looking forward to doing nothing.

Meanwhile wondering how people think. We have many houses here in our subdivision decorated for the holidays, BUT mind you ‘which’ holidays – that they are very choosy about, most of the misers take the lights out , first thing after christmas, they don’t even keep it for the new years. New year is something that can be celebrated because that is what counts in our day to day lives, but oh-well its upto them to breed in more stupidity!

Question that comes to my mind seeing shoppers flock malls [mind you, I am in the mall atleast once in 2 weeks, cos I like to stroll through irrespective of the season], do they even know why they are doing all this? How come all the ‘goodwill ‘ is stuffed into this one month of December? Looking forward to the time when December will be the beginning of winter fun rather than only an unreasonable holiday called christmas.

To me tradition and religion are separate and , following traditions just for fun and omitting religion is what the future should be.

I hear my 22 mth old, so tata!

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