The Straight Hair Experiment

Hey ladies (and the occasional men who have hair problems) 😀

You can count me in as far as the list of those people who’ve tried EVERYTHING to make their mane look nice. Seriously. I’ve always had issues with my hair…21 years of frizzled up hair, lack lustre can be quite painful to a girl. Add to it hairfall and you’ve got the perfect storyline for a misery.

And you know the worst part about having all these hair problems? The fact that I was born into a family of perfect hair’ed people. Wherever we go, people are always mesmerized by my sisters beautiful waist long straight hair, my mothers jet black shiny hair etc

If we were described as wigs, I would never be called a Sonam Kapoor.

Being the fighter that I am, I decided to improvise – an oil massage of my scalp 3 times a week, once a month mehendi conditioning and the whole eating multi-vitamins thing made up my routine.

It helped. But did my hair remain straight?

NEVER

I remember one Christmas, I was soo frustrated that I actually straightened my hair and slept with my head at the edge of the bed, my silky straight hair hanging down. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much that night – too afraid to move and ruin my hair.

And that’s when it hit me ladies,

in the race of life, our hair is definitely no HARE but rather the TORTOISE – SLOW and STEADY but improving. Choosing the perfect shampoo/conditioner was my starting point. Sunsilk helped me a lot with that. Add to it stimulating my hair with oil, eating a healthy diet and keeping myself stress free only strengthened my hair.

This post is written for the “straight Hair Competition” by Indiblogger and Sunsilk.

A little love goes a long way

This blogpost was written by my 13 year old brother 😀

For Indiblogger

and Sony https://www.facebook.com/LoveYaArrange

i would say that love marriage is a better way of getting married than arranged marriage because a person would not like what their parents choose for them like 1st of all you wouldnt know what type that person is and you dont feel that much close even after marriage but is it was a love marriage(you choose the one for you) you feel perfet and you wont face problems in the future
ok let me give one example that love maggiage is way better than arranged marriage

my brother was in love with this girl ….he loved her so much that he could do anything for her ….and i would say that my brother is a really shy person and for the first time he opened his heart to that one girl he really loved and i even felt really happy seeing him happy with the girl of his dreams ……but then after he became 26 my parents came home one day with a smile on their face and told my brother that they had a surprise for him and they called the whole family to the living room and then they revealed their surprise ……….they had searched and found a girl pefect to “THEIR” expectations and told my brother that th wedding was next week …………..i could just see the agony in my brothers eyes …well like i said he was really shy ….even too shy to fight back ..and in the end he was forced to get married and he sadly never got kids because he was too shy to even look at her and he was really depressed and sadly lived a miserable life thinking about his true love 😦

Kissing in the rain?

check 😀

Excerpts from our life #1

Starring – The nerdy younger brother (Ben)

                  The crazy 5 year old baby sister (Lisa)

                   Moi (No introduction needed :p)

Background – I kinda lied to Lisa that all the kids in Junior masterchef Australia (season 1) were her age, while trying to inspire her to cook :p She promised to wake up early in the morning and make us all breakfast – fried eggs (which in my opinion are shit easy). I did doubt her ability to make good eggs though considering the fact that she rises a few inches above the gas stove and can’t even reach the salt shakers. I specified that I wanted chopped onions added to my eggs 😐 She agreed.

2pm ( while eating lunch)

Me – Lisa, weren’t you supposed to wake up early in the morning and make breakfast for all of us?

Lisa (looking angrily at my mother) – Mama didn’t allow me to use the knife :X :X

Me – Heh It’s obvious. You can’t even hold a pen properly. How are you supposed to be trusted with a knife?

Ben – Helen, the pen is mightier than the sword

Me – O_O

THE END

I wish this blo…

I wish this blog had been an anonymous one. 

It sucks that I can’t actually write what I feel and go through because I know half the people in my life will start convulsing after reading my posts :p

One day Alice c…

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)

Yousef, cats and the vagus nerve

Bonjour everyone 🙂

I never really wrote in a *diary like* format online so I thought I’d give it a go. I used to keep a diary 4 years ago but that was before my cousins mercilessly found it and read it to everyone. After that, lets just say I swore I’d never get into the habit of noting down the days events or my thoughts on particular subjects on paper again.

Not that this is a diary entry. Some things are still very confidential :p

This week had been particularly hard on me; with all the diseases and assignments punching me at the same time. It all started with innocent looking South Indian food last Sunday. I remember licking the sambhar off my plate and asking my Mom to refill my plate with idlis and chutni. Bad idea. I woke up on Monday morning with this tummy turning and twisting.

Everyone I cried to just passed it off as *girl pains* 😐 😐 One would think I would know if I was having *those pains* and wouldn’t need running around for a diagnosis. My family being the neurotic people they are started assuming I had kidney stones or stomach cancer and my younger sister strategically pointed out that I have been sleeping with the laptop on my stomach for the last 3 years so it was only obvious that the radiation had caused my stomach to go looney on me. Hello?! Ca stomach symptoms don’t appear in a day 😐

Anyway, she did have a point and I decided then and there to stop sleeping with my laptop or even sitting with it on me. Changing my sleeping and sitting position after so many years was such a crappy idea. Tuesday morning I woke up to add a new symptom to my case – neck pain 😐

Now my neck ha troubled me in the past. The result of sitting bent over laptops, journals and novels for hours at a time but this time the pain was soo bad that I couldn’t even turn my neck from side to side. I actually had to turn my entire body to look at someone when they called out to me. 3 hours and 6 massages later, I felt a lot better. Sadly the cold wasn’t doing anything to lessen my condition and very soon my entire spine was aching.

One of the worst things about me when I get sick is that I usually *wait it out* rather then take medicines so right uptil yesterday (Friday) I decided to bear the pain and live with massages and changing my diet 😐 Thankfully the elder sister decided it was stupid and forced me to take Lycopodium 200 😀 

You would think that since all my professors are doctors, they would identify a sick person when they saw one. Wrong. I literally cried through my assignments and presentations all throughout the week. 

But the worst is over. For one, Dad landed in Goa yesterday just in time for Fathers day and Moms birthday. The elder sisters elephant pillow from Baroue, Ellie got company 😀 I named my frog *Yousef Korsakoff* and the younger sister named her bunny *Chandler*. Both of them are from Carrefour.

I love how happy they look and the fact that they double up as pillows and stuffed animals and if it isn’t obvious enough, girls are never too old to have stuffed animals :p

One of the highlights of the week would definitely come from Dr Jorson Fernandes, the ENT specialist from Apollo’s and the head of the St.Johns ambulance society in Goa 😀 If anyone should be teaching students medicine, it should  be him. We did cry at the thought of having lectures from 9am to 5pm but surprisingly I didn’t sleep or get bored for even a minute. He did tell us lots of fun general stuff which I’ll be tweeting in the coming days.

Marie and I will be making gnocci for Fathers day tomorrow. I’m sure the recipe has been making quite a few rounds since Isobel from Junior masterchef made it in the first episode and she did go on to win the series (Marie doesn’t know that though :p since she’s still on the first few episodes :s)

It’s only 9:30pm and my entire family has already gone to bed 😐 I guess it’s a sign that I should go grab dinner and sit down with *Message in a bottle*

Until tomorrow,

Have a healthy and pain-free night

Helen 😀

Who are you and why haven’t you listened to Lana Del Ray?

I remember the first song I listened to of Lana’s, *Born to die*. Thankfully a friend had sent me the official video link instead of the usual lyrics video I choose to listen to when I’m streaming videos on youtube coz I’m dead sure that If I hadn’t seen the whole initial scene where she’s hugging the guy with the whole American flag and shirtless pouty thing going on I wouldn’t have had the patience to listen to the entire song :p

Just because I’ve never really been into the whole *Indie* music thing. But trust me, once I was done with the song, there was no going back. With her vocal octave ranging from strong deep notes to whispy high pitches, I was in love.

Her creative director and music director should be given due credit to as well. Listen to Born to die with bass and everything and you will get what I mean. Not to mention the video is very well done (The guy holding blood stained Lana with no emotion, fires burning #Classic)

And even though she had a bit of a hiccup with that SNL show (yes yes she sucked there but remember that she’s only human and did admit that she was nervous), she redeemed herself at all her other live performances including the live show she did for *Radio*

Other songs of hers that I recently started listening to are Radio and Blue jeans. My younger sister also recommended Without you.

I would actually recommend her songs for a rainy day drive with your only companion being a travel mug of steaming hot coffee. You’ll thank me for forcing you to listen to her 😀

Photowalk in Fontainhas :D #Photoflare2012

Bonjour everyone 😀

I’ve delayed putting up these photos for quite a while. The reason being that Marie, Adelle and I had gone for this photowalk with the photoflare gang a day before my exams *gulp*

I can honestly say that we had an amazing time even though the 3 of us aren’t professional photographers (we have a really cool camera and the place is really beautiful so maybe that’s the reason the pics turned out ok :s)

The funniest part is that we were literally arguing over who clicked what when we came home and it was time to check out the photos. So I’ve just randomnly put them up and given the credit to all of us combined.

Do you think that photos were over edited? You think you could do something to improve them? Then you’re always welcome to download any of the pics from this set (only) and work on them 😀

A little about the place – Fontainhas is one of the many places in Goa where you can see the Portuguese architecture in Goa. I’ve recently discovered that there are soo many beautiful portuguese style houses around Goa (for example there’s this HUGE WHITE GORGEOUS house with this AMAZING garden in Loutolim) but they all stand solitary amidst apartments and bungalows. In Fontainhas though, you will find almost an entire block of these colourful and cheerful little houses, each separated by narrow roads. The best part is that Tea Cafe is almost around the corner 😀

I think it wouldn’t hurt if they got renovated once in a while though, since some of the houses look worn out.

(PS – the photo of me with the camera was clicked by *the younger brother* Suyash K. :D)

Set fire to the rain?

Bonjour guys 😀

If it isn’t obvious enough, Indians are addicted to the monsoons. It’s a known fact that from the guys owning the new Audi to the barefoot beggars working on the road, when it rains, I’ll bet you a million dollars that both will be running around in the rain, happily getting drenched.

I can understand this crazy love though. If you want to know what hell feels like, come to India during the summer season. I can honestly say that other than getting severely tanned, you will feel like you are getting fried. Not that the temperatures in Kuwait weren’t high. I remember it hitting more than 50’C on more than one occasion. The thing is, the humidity in Goa gets to you so you feel like you’re in a sauna 24/7 😐

And other than the fact that the monsoons are needed to help the rice grow and stuff, it also helps add water to the water table and avoids water shortages. So after knowing all this, I should be jumping for joy that it’s raining right? For one, the weather is amazing now (check out the view from my college – the rain clouds almost touch the mountains and the breeze blows like crazy 😀 :D), people aren’t trying to commit suicide and I don’t have to curse the Indian govt when I can’t wash my hair because there isn’t any water 😐 Unfortunately the rains also spell 2 things – mosquitoes and power cuts. I hate the fact that even if it drizzles a bit, you can be sure that there will be no power for the next hour and lemme tell you, this whole *watching supernatural with my laptop dying along with my willpower to live* is getting pretty darn annoying. Now I know that with our 1 billion people population, starvation and diseases at almost every doorstep, I cannot slap the government officials wrists for something so trivial as not enough power to watch *Dean and Sam fight evil* in peace but would it hurt to not be corrupt for even a second and leave the money allotted to better the electricity dept alone?

Enough of the depressing speech though.

It’s raining right now and I’m thankful that everything is still on and running. I can hear my younger siblings rummaging in the kitchen with Grandma making hot baja’s and masala chai to be had in this cool breezy weather and i’m thinking, maybe the rain isn’t soo bad after all.