good blogs and good laughs

Taking a break from writing about serious things, I want to highlight some good stuff I've read lately:

Flower Girl's Rural India
Flower Girl's blog is "all about Indian culture and customs, religion and rituals". Her latest post is about the boat races in Kerala. Kerala is a state in India that's on the Arabian Sea completely on the opposite side of south India from where I always go, and where I will spend 5 days in January doing yoga, getting ayurvedic massages, and hopefully ride an elephant!

Flower Girl also has her other blogs linked to this one, one of which is a blog with all types of Indian food recipes, some of which are to die for!

India Outside My Window is all about "the colors, sights, and sounds of South India." What is nice about this blog is that there are sound clips where you can listen to the sounds of India. The one clip I listened to was the train -- I closed my eyes and listened and it took me back to my train ride from Rameswaram to Chennai, when we stopped in the stations and I heard the chai and food vendors calling out what they had for sale.

Shirley Two Feathers' blog Mandala Madness is "an eclectic mixture of mandala art, poetry, and inspirational quotes to expand, enrich, and enliven your experience in the now moment."



Images like this one can be downloaded to use as your computer's wallpaper and you can also buy mandala prints.




I've written before about Scott Carney's blog "Trailing Technology" (see blog links in the sidebar) and his latest post is about singing. In that post you'll find this link to his story on NPR radio: A culture of song in India's Tamil Nadu.

Scott says, "I love the radio in Chennai. When I'm driving around the city I always tune into FM rainbow and listen to a daily game show called Aantakshri. The game is really simple. One caller starts singing a few bars of a song. They stop and then repeat the last sound from the last line of the song. The second caller starts singing some other song that starts with that last sound. It's sort of like musical chairs, but with singing."

It's very true that if you stop and listen hard enough, you'll hear someone's voice singing somewhere amongst the cacophony of the dogs barking, the car horns blaring, and the temple music on the Chennai streets.

Home is where the heart is and my heart is in India.

If you like MadTV watch this episode . Michael McDonald's character, the rotund and always hilarious, Marvin Tikva, takes a yoga class. I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair.

For those of you who know The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, this video needs no explanation. Jamie plays a substitute yoga teacher and most of the students in the class get "X-ed" -- watch the expressions on the students' faces!



Finally, scroll all the way to the bottom of this blog and you'll see my Meez 3D ID. It's not animated here, but if you want your own little animated version of you -- and who wouldn't? -- click on the link and get your own. It's free and enter my code "lindias" so we both can get some "coinz".

Enjoy!