A first tryst with Gardening

Back at home, while we were growing up, we lived in a pseudo farm house, where my mom was deeply involved with Gardening and all things associated. We got most of our veggies from the garden and our lawn – Oh! it was so lush, green, filled with flowering plants... an paradise onto itself.

However, looking back, I realize that though I savored in the benefits of having a mom with green thumb rather readily, I myself never took to playing around in the mud, planting or growing those every so amazing flowers.

Nahh! A typical teen, I just enjoyed myself without a thought at the hard work behind it.

Now, looking at the sorry state of our new digs, we decided to do something about it. So off, we went to HOME DEPOT, our current favorite store and had a discussion with one of the lawn experts there. The net result: Acknowledgement that our lawn probably needs a lotta TLC this year without receiving the benefits of the basking in green.

We are now proud owners of a spreader, pruning scissors, garden rake and a bag of deweeder plus fertilizer.

Armed with these, we decided to physically dig out some of the Dandelions, chickweeds, before we use the de-weeder and fertilizer.. so off we went digging, me with my hat, S with his cap… and R (our 1 year old) walking/falling/ohhing/ahhing along our side.

And then came the turn of pruning, my mom (who is here with us for a few days) showed us how to prune.. so click click click went our pruning scissors . and by 4 pm in evening, we had just finished pruning the plants at one end of the house.. the other 3 sides still remained. But gosh, the side where we worked, did look much better than when we started on it… worth the effort we spend there. Makes me actually look forward to next weekend, when we finally put in de-weeder on the lawn and prune rest of the plants around the house.

So herez to the first step in many more to come : our first day at Gardening, 4/15/2012

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Vs IPad 2

I am in the process of buying my mom a tablet. And her requirements are rather simple: Ability to browse, download pictures from emails and camera, do simple picture manipulations, skype, Google video chat, watch videos, WiFi.

Given the price tag of $499 for the new IPAD (ipad 3?), and that the key difference between the two versions being the retina display, I think that IPAD 2 at $399 may actually be a good option for her.

However, the fact that you still can't remove the battery, there's no HDMI out port, and no expanding the storage with an SD card, makes Galaxy Tab 10.1 very tempting. The built in stereo system, in build GPS, most importantly the easy transfer of data between SD card and windows PC makes Galaxy very attractive for the given needs

I will be the first to admit, I am not tab junkie, I have very little knowledge when it comes to tab. I use Kindle (and AHEM! Love it! .. ) and for mail etc, use my laptop or my phone (an Android based one).. so perhaps my confusion stems from the fact that I hardly have used IPAD/IPhone the way it ought to be .. real extensively.. my limited experience with these devices have been for listening to music, browsing.. which I think I can do as effectively else where in android based application.

And of course the price parity does nothing— the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and iPad 2 each cost $400 (as of March 2012) — and hence the additional dilemma.

But again, the fact that half the world and one very good friend of mine, Kanishk, is such a HUGE fan of IPAD leads me to lean a bit towards the IPAD.

Well, the conflict is on.. at this point the scores are as follows:

Galaxy tab : 1 / Ipad 2: 1.25

UPDATE: Based on further analysis and a strong recommendation from my friend Kanishk just ordered the IPAD.. . now waiting to see my mom's reaction to it

Blog revival

I have been thinking on and off about reviving this blog, it has been dead for a while with a post or two in between.

I struggled with this internally, and had to battle with the thought of no one reading the blog ! I found myself constantly pining to pen down those thoughts and struggled with possibility that I would find no one interested in it to read these thoughts, comment…. . form a comradeship based on these random ramblings.

Finally I looked real deep and went back to the roots of my reason for blogging .. and poof! It struck me hard that this was supposed to “MY Medium” for sorting/thinking/writing down things which matter.. my introspection, my view point..

And just like that, I had made the decision… to move forward, to let my doubts lie and start again on this journey, let the words flow and let them talk …

So with a bang, here I am declaring to world “YES, THIS BLOG IS ALIVE” .. KICKING and ready to go… here I am writing again! Yay!

Herez to a new start! Cheers!!!!