Shopping in Chennai!!

I have been wanting to write about shopping in Chennai for a long time but never really found the time. Last year when I was in India I happened to a lot of shopping before and after my marriage. Normally, I like to buy most of my clothes and accessories here in the USA but then this time my husband insisted that he take me out to some of the malls in chennai and see if I like something.

Most of the shopping that was done prior to the marriage was for stuff that I had to wear during the ceremony itself. I had a tough time when I was trying to pick a silk saree for my engagement as there were too many people trying to convince me to get what they liked. So, this time I took my parents alone and it made a real difference as I really could pick anything that I wanted. It was a lot of fun to actually go shopping for silk sarees. I went to different stores and found lots of varieties in different price ranges...even though it was a saree that I would wear for my wedding I didn't want to spend too much on it considering the fact that I won't be wearing them that frequently. I finally ended up picking two sarees around Rs.7,000 each from Kumaran silks and chennai silks. Pothy's was really terrible for my taste!!! And the sarees from some of the other stores looked too modern!!! (apparently thats the trend). Silk saree shopping wasn't over with that, I still had a 9 yards saree that I had to get and I ended up getting that at Nalli for about Rs. 12,000. My husband and I picked the 9 yards saree together :). There were sarees that were upto Rs. 30K - 40K but I stuck to moderate range as I won't be wearing these sarees frequently.

After all the silk saree purchase, I then had to buy mysore silk, I should confess that on any day I would prefer mysore silk over silk. As its a lot easier to wear and manage :). There was a specific brand called girija silks that my mother-in-law suggested that I get. I found good mysore silk sarees in Kumaran, Nalli and another store in Mount Rd (I forgot the store name).

My mom saved me some time by getting a few silk sarees ahead of time and since I happened to like them, things just got a lot more easier. Since, everyone told me that my sarees looked great I'm gonna assume that my mom and I did a great job in selecting them. I had to buy some churidars as well and I picked them out from some stores in T.Nagar (It's very important to have good casual clothes when you get married, cos my aunt still tells me how her DIL didnt have any good clothes to wear). I wore new clothes almost every other day :) :). In addition I did some salwar material shopping as well and by far I liked Chennai silks the most.

Now comes the fun part, shopping after marriage. My husband did tell me that I could get brand named apparel in India for a lot less than what I pay here in USA. Even before we got married my MIL did some searching to find out where I can get Ralph Lauren jeans and apparently you can only find them in Delhi. So, jeans was ruled out right there. Now the shopping was more for tops, footwear, etc...

Before going to India, some of my friends recommended that I go to Fab India for buying salwars and kurtis. But I didn't have any time to visit that place before marriage. But, luckily my MIL who was also keen on taking me for shopping had seen their ad on newspaper and showed it to me and asked if I was interested. I was excited and we all went shopping together. My MIL picked up salwar for herself and that one was very good. I got kurti tops and I really love to wear them here and a lot of ladies at work tell me they look very good. They even sell Men's shirts there and my hubby and FIL got them and they told me that they liked the stuff there. I thought Fab India was cool, because they had so much stuff and none of the tops shrunk that badly or faded. If you have the patience to go through their collection you can easily find a lot of tops in Rs. 300- 400 range. That's a pretty good price for good quality cotton tops.

When it came to Tshirt shopping, I totally liked shopper's stop and there the T-shirt variety was good and price ranged from Rs.300-400, sometimes even lesser. I think we should buy a larger size than our correct size as most of these tops ended up shrinking. Nevertheless some of them were good and again I got compliments.

I didn't like lifestyle (store at the city center) that much the first time I went there, I didn't like the clothes there at all, and I really wanted to get out of the store asap but my hubby convinced me to take a look at the sandals, which I did so that he wouldn't be disappointed. I bought one sandal and I totally loved it once I started using it. These sandals were exactly the way I wanted them, moderate heels and very light weight. I think I got a few pairs of sandals there.

In addition there was some fashion jewellery shopping that I did, I got some sets done at Narayana Pearls but most of these look more or less traditional. If you really want some fashion jewellery then you have to shop elsewhere. I found good stuff at Landmark (that was the only piece of fashion jewellery I got). But my husband's aunt had gotten me stuff from a store called Damini in Kotturpuram and we later went there to check that store out and found out that the stuff there is in high demand and that they sell out very fast once the new stock arrives!!! Other than there was a diamond pendant gifted to me and I found out that it was bought at Lifestyle. I never really got time to look around for similar stuff in Lifestyle store.

Thanks to my loving husband who had enough patience to drive me around town and get me all this stuff ;). Next time I go to India, I really know what's good there and what stuff should be got there and what stuff I should get here in USA!!! If you do have the time, then do checkout these stores. Happy shopping!!

Perfume shopping at Designer Fragrances

I was about to run out of perfume and so I decided I would do some perfume shopping over the weekend. I normally buy perfumes from one the following, Scented Monkey, Amazon, Perfumania or Designer Fragrances & Cosmetic Co.

This weekend I decided I would either go to Designer Fragrances or Perfumania at the Great Mall. I personally like the designer fragrances a lot as they happen to carry my favorite brand Ralph Lauren and they always have better pricing than perfumania. This store works out better for both men and women as they also carry brands like Armani, Lancome, etc... but if you want to try out different perfumes and pick one then you need to go to Perfumania.

There I was at the Designer Fragrances store and this time there was more crowd than usual. well, I guess more people have started buying stuff at outlets :). The store usually has perfumes on sale for as low as $10 or $20. Well, my husband and I picked three perfumes totally (Armani Diamonds for women, Diesel Fuel for life for women and Polo Explorer). We basically got all three for less than Armani or Polo's retail price at Macy's or Nordstrom :).

I'll write a separate review for each of these perfumes sometime soon. If you ever need to get good perfumes for a lower price I suggest that you first look at Designer Fragrances.

Follow-up on the rice scenario in the bay area

Last weekend I had to buy rice and wasn't sure if I should get the long grain rice from any of the American stores or first see if the Indian store has some rice in stock. I happened to be at a store in Sunnyvale and I found that they had lots of sona masoori rice bags and even price seems to have dropped by $10, to $24.95 for a 20lb bag.
Yaay, so I got a bag of rice this time without feeling very guilty :)

When was nonbu really?

Most of us Indians that live here have this practice of celebrating Indian festivals right on the same date as it is celebrated in India. In reality, the actual date of the festival is determined based on the position of the moon and it varies every year. It never occurred to me until my husband's cousin told us that. Now, that I think of it, when you are in a different geographic location the position of moon does differ and that would mean the auspicious time to celebrate a certain festival might not be the same date and time as it is in India.

This year karadaiyan nonbu happened to fall on Friday for us in USA but most people observed it on Saturday. I don't know if I'm very pious but I do like to observe the religious stuff at the right time, so at the beginning of this year, I went ahead and purchased the calender from the Livermore temple and use it to determine when to celebrate or perform all the religious rituals.

As I'm writing this I just realized that my mother-in-law had actually looked up the right day for the nonbu here and told me the correct date right at the first go :). That's really awesome that she made sure she gave me the right date.

Anyways, if you do care about doing things at the right time it might just be a good idea to either refer to the temple's calendar or purchase a calendar.

Poori

Yaay...my husband and I had plans of having channa batura at Dosa place this weekend but had to compromise that plan. In the end we decided to make poori at home. I had made poori once before, and that was 3 or 4 years ago. I wasn't 100% sure but still decided to make it as we still had some lasagna that we baked as back up.

Even though I knew the basics I was looking up for poori recipes online but the fancy ones were really fancy therefore I just stuck to the recipe I knew. Here's the basic recipe:

1. 2.5 cups of wheat flour (I used 160ml cups)
2. 1/2 tsp baking powder
3. oil (for mixing and then frying)
4. salt (0.5 - 1 tsp)
5. Warm water (3/4 - 1 cup)

I kinda like poori simply because the chances of screwing up is very less. Anyways, here's the directions

First mix wheat flour, salt and baking powder in a large mixing bowl. I typically use 2 tbsp of oil when mixing the dough. First add 1 tbsp oil and some warm water and start mixing, continue adding water as required, once the dough starts to get pliable add the remaining 1 tbsp of oil and mix well. Add water sparingly during the mixing procedure as the dough shouldn't have excess water. Once the dough is pliable and doesn't stick to your fingers it's time for you to set it aside. Just cover it and leave it alone for 20-30 mins (you could continue to make poori's without leaving the dough aside as well).

Now knead the dough once more and start making small 1.5 inch rounds with the dough mixture. Now start rolling the dough rounds that you made. Typically roll them out to have 4 or 5 inch diameter. The key to making nice poori is to have uniform thickness. First roll the center nicely and then roll around the corners so that the whole thing has uniform thickness. Even when you lift it to drop in the frying pan, the shape shouldn't change. If the dough is rolled out thin, there'll be elongations where you touch 'em.

Now heat generous amount of oil in a pan, drop the rolled out poori's gently, once the dough on the side on top rises, its time to turn the poori around to cook the other side. Poori's done once both sides are cooked. If you notice that the poori's turn to deep brown instead of golden then its time to turn down the heat. I use a gas stove so I have more precise heat control, but with electric stoves, it might just be better to have the heat set at med or med-hi.

Note: You can substitute half of wheat flour with maida if you want the poori's to be more softer.

We had a really great meal last night and I still think poori is one of the easiest dishes to make.

Orkut and Facebook predicament

Ever had to approve friend requests simply because you don't want to seem rude? Orkut and facebook as awesome as they are for staying in touch and finding old friends they pose this problem of unwanted people finding us.

I've had to approve friend requests from certain people who I know do nothing but criticize my actions or fabricate stories about me. In reality, if not for these sites I could simply get away from these people by simply not staying in touch. In all honesty, approving such friend requests never leads to anything useful, the other person probably just wants to be friend to pry.

There were times I used to feel guilty about not staying in touch with certain old acquaintances, relatives, etc..., every time I think of it, I remember this conversation I had with a friend of mine who never responded to any mails from another friend of mine. When I asked her, "don't you think you'll be hurting her feelings?" she simply told me it would be even worse if I acted like I respect and like her when I really don't. Well, she had a point.

Sometimes, I feel the same way too. Having said all this, I seriously think facebook is a little better as I can find the people that I don't want to get request from and block them completely. It's really useful simply because you'll never receive the friend request you always dread and they would never know. This way no one feels hurt probably ;)

But then, most of the time the kind of feeling (like or hate) between two people is very mutual, it might just be better for some people to not add me as friend, cos except for the initial Hi, I practically am not gonna have a conversation with them and they do the same too. I always wonder if these people ever feel bad about adding someone and then not even having the common decency to say hi to them. It's more like basic manners 101. Sometimes, I say hi and ask them how they do (so that I don't feel guilty of having ignored them or being rude) and they would simply reply saying "ya fine", I sort of find that rude, neither do they thank you for asking nor do they ask you how you are doing. Yea, they pry on me but this is what I really worry about.

I might be the only one that feels this way, as I have seen several others that bad mouth each other to others going about greeting and wishing each other. Every time I see this, I go "what a phony". I don't know how people still feel good about themselves when they don't like someone and still woo them. Well, their business is their business.

As for me, I felt like writing this and I wrote it...

Demetri Martin Game on Comedy Central

Last night since there was nothing interesting on TV to watch during primetime hours, I went to comedycentral.com to catch up on Colber Report and I got completely sidetracked and found this game.

This game put together by Demetri Martin that appears in Jon Stewart's show is basically trying to identify the anagrams using a given clue. I played a couple of levels yesterday and i completely loved the game.

I'm mostly into crosswords or any other game that has to do with english language, vocab, etc... I'm sure you get the idea. If you love such stuff this game is brilliant as there are 20 levels and it does seem to get complex with every new level :)

give it a try, I hope you like it...

Blueberry Muffins

My husband and I try a new dish every week and we had tried making muffins a couple of weeks ago they turned out great, so this time I changed the quantity of ingredients a little bit and now the muffins taste even better.

I prefer homemade muffins to store bought muffins simply because the ones that are sold in stores are a bit big for one person to finish.

I got the base muffin recipe from allrecipes.com, I prefer using recipes from this site simply because they have user rating and you also read the suggested changes that could be made to make the dish more tasty. My cousin also tried this recipe and she said it came out great...so, I here I write my improvised recipe:

Servings: 12

Ingredients:

1.75 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2.5 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter (oil can be used instead)
3/4 cup milk
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 cup fresh blueberries

Directions:

1. In a large bowl add the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder and mix them nicely.
2. Take butter and cut into small pea sized cubes and measure 1/2 cup and add it to the flour mixture. Make sure the butter is mixed well with the flour that no large pieces of butter is seen.
3. Break two eggs and mix them well, and then add milk to the beaten eggs, add 2 teaspoons of vanilla to this mixture.
4. Now pour the entire egg and milk mixture in the flour and mix until the flour is fully moistened. It's okay to have lumps, as overworking the batter might end up ruining the end result.
5. Add blueberries to the mixture.
6. Grease the muffin pan with oil and fill each muffin cup to almost full. Fill the empty ones with water.
7. Bake at 400 degrees F for 20-25 minutes, you can either insert a toothpick to see if the muffin is done or just press it lightly to see if the top springs back.

I don't use baking soda simply because it reacts quickly and causes the muffin tops to crack and makes the muffins look ugly. By replacing baking soda with baking powder we get a much better moist and smooth muffins, that look elegant.

My husband and I loved it and we use these as our evening snack and it's wonderful :)

Klipsch Image X5 IEMs

This post has been long due and every single time I start writing, something or the other comes up :(. Hoping to make some progress today...

First let me make it clear that I prefer IEM over the full-size headphones. I got the Klipsch Image X5 IEM as a gift from my husband immediately after our wedding (what better occassion!!). First of all I loved it when I saw five ear tips instead of the usual three. I finally found one that fits my tiny ears really well :)

I have pretty much listened to most of Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Dave Matthews Band, Nirvana, Steely Dan, White Stripes, Pink Floyd, etc...and I can confidently say that these are the best IEMs I've ever used. They produce excellent sound isolation. Noise filtering is just terrific, once I have these on all that I could listen is just the music and nothing else, no more distractions and outside noise when listening to music. In terms of sound quality, the X5s are truly brilliant, the highs and lows are crisp and clear, all frequencies sound just about perfect. Using these I can actually see the kind of detail at the low frequencies that the other IEMs miss out. It was quite a thrill to discover the sounds that I missed out in certain songs when I used my old IEMs.

The design of the IEMs are unique and really nice. They fit nicely in the ears without causing any ear ache and aid comfortable listening for longer durations. The housing is a little bigger than the other IEMs but then others cannot hold a candle against the X5s sound quality besides, being bigger doesn't make them uglier, they look good and unique. The cable does seem very delicate but it seems to hold up well, so I am not complaining about it.

The X5s also come with a cleaning kit and small leather box to store them when not in use. This box is one of the best storage boxes I've seen for an IEM, its elegant and nice and has enough room to store the whole thing without having to wind the cable too much.

I don't really have anything negative to say about these IEMs, its built well, looks great, comfortable to use and above all listening to music in this just blows me away. Listening to music has never been so pleasurable. Before I got this one, wanting to listen to a specific band was why I would listen to music, but this IEM has totally changed it. Even when I am not that crazy about listening to a specific band, I would like to listen to music old or new simply because this IEM sounds awesome. Image X5s have become a motivation to listen to music everyday :) (The previous sentence might not have made much sense to everyone, but I'm sure you get the point ;)).

Long live Klipsch Image X5s.

So early?

I had to wake early today morning because I had a meeting at 7 am. I wasn't very enthusiastic about this meeting, as I'm used to waking up late. I used to wake up early and used to be at work around 8:30 am and for no apparent reason I drifted and started waking up late to a point where I consider 7 am still a part of midnight.

Living closer to work might have made that difference, because my commute is no longer affected by Bus, train delay, traffic, etc... The only factors are the speed at which I walk and one signal that I need to cross.

But I would really love to wake up early especially now, simply because I needn't spend the time in commute instead I could actually water my plants, make nice coffee, catch up with the morning news and ease into my day slowly...
When I was walking to work I notice that there's more cars at 8:30 than at 9:30 and it actually feels nice to walk during that time as the warmth of the sun is still mild and there's still some cool air.

Well anyways, I would be happy if I'm even able to do the same tomorrow ;)