Documenting Observations

When drying clothes in the sun you often need a rope or wire tide on poles and dozens of clips to keep them from flying away in the wind. Clips often made of plastic don't last long in hot weather countries. The sun soon makes the plastic brittle it just breaks into pieces. Even ropes made of plastic do not last long. I do not know if this is a phenomenon of the third world countries like mine (India) where only substandard things are brought into the market by the goods suppliers. Most other products are. Whatever is the case the fact just remains that clips do not last. Even wooden clips are no different. Now the prices of clips keep soaring each year as if it is to maintain quality of the product, which by any way is sub-standard. The breaking away of such substandard items keeps increasing the plastic waste produced in the country. Though wires are a good substitute for plastic ropes and may last longer, people living in tropical areas with space only on their terraces f

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Machines do a lot of stuff for us. So much so that we sometimes do not think what they do for us. This however, takes away our opportunity to personally touch and feel a lot of stuff: Think of washing and packing of various food products. These might include various seeds, fruits and vegetables. Now when you do that with hands, different seeds will give you different feeling. I guess, this in the past might have given people several ideas about various material types. For example, coriander seeds feel like thermocol when soaked in water. There never seems to be enough water even if the bucket you are washing them may overflow. Wheat on the other hand would feel heavy and you really need to dig into it. Most people would die without experiencing such things and would never come up with ideas that they could have come up with. If Newton, really did discover gravity by seeing an apple fall. Today's generation never gets to get close to nature. No wonder, science gets limited to l

When you buy a flat make sure you get these original documents: Possession Letter Society Share Certificate Agreement for Sale (Between Builder and you) Make sure you get copies of these: Society blue-print (It's the plan layout of the entire society and not just of your individual flat). It's requires a big xerox machine to take a copy. The document is asked for by some banks. If you eventually plan to sell your flat the new buyers bank may insist on a copy of the blue-print. You might be told that you could file an RTI and get the document. However, avoid the fuss by keeping a copy right at the time of purchase.  Agreement to sale (the one the builder gets when they purchase the land)  Commencement Certificate (approval for building the society)  Copy of Development agreement (Landowner to Builder)  NOC from the developer NA Order Layout Sanction Plan Society Registration Certificate  Completion Certificate Some of the above documents are found in the b

It is good to involve property dealers when selling a property but you must watch and be in control. If you do not then you must learn to be happy with the deal they get you. In my experience, the evaluation of the property is your job. If you cannot locally inquire, you are at the mercy of the brokers word. But if you are able to be on location pretend that you are a buyer, meet some brokers and check the rates of property they have on offer. You get various details among them the price being the major information you need. You get to see the good things about your property in comparison to others. Build on the  pluses and learn to talk about it. Check the local newspapers and find more about the prices. This would help you fix a price for your property based on square feet rate. Now, take a break if possible and advertise your property online - return at a later date. A months gap should be fine. Check the local newspapers again, affirm the price you want for your property. It&#

Martin married Mercy and takes her to his parental home, a home that is built on a rocky farm hilltop, one that overlooks a church beneath the hill. Martin wants to show his newly-wed wife his farm. He takes Mercy on a stroll the following day. He leads the way and Mercy follows him. Suddenly, something heavy - like a coconut - falls on Mercy's head. She turns around and looks skyward but finds no big tree from where a fruit could fall. Neither does she find anything on the ground. Though she is in good pain, she feels that she might have just imagined things and does not talk about it to her husband. She does not want to make him feel that she is crazy. Mercy comes from a family that is poor. Her father is a daily laborer and had managed to give her Rs 30,000 in cash and about 10 grams of gold to help her settle down in her new life. She had no options to return back to her family incase of troubles in the family where she was given in marriage. She must face life on her own

The  imperfections we perceive in the world around us are in reality the ingredients of the fine tuning of the Creator for our world. Our dis-pleasures in this world are the result of our failure to acknowledge the presence of the Almighty God leading us to ignore the moral standards set by Him. (Refer to Deuteronomy 11:13 to 11:15).

I often wondered why a beetle nut palm leaf would break down close to the trunk as the the last stage of its bonding with the tree. The answer was found when I looked up on the tree from a distance at the level where the leaves are bundled. Perhaps, the the little growing beetle nuts get a small protection from weather and sight. Now, scientists might be fooled to think that this is evolution. I would rather say that this is in fact the design of the Creator. However, insignificant the design - the small imperfections that our minds perceive, is in fact the perfection of the entire system that we know as the world.

March has been complete dry while April has been frequently wet. However, there is one thing that has not changed in these two months. Red medium sized ants have been all over the place. On roads, dead leaf spreads, on rocks, inside home or in short wherever you look. Luckily these don't bite even if you step on some of them. They climb on you and run around. Sometimes you would feel that a thread or string has got tangled on your legs, when you look down, you would see their circular motion causing the feeling. It's interesting on how the mind gets tricked.

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Hens seem to like one part of the jackfruit than the other. The seed of a jackfruit when pulled out from the fruit has a covering. Hens seem to like this part more than the rest of it if it is not feed the fruit in itself. Now if you have big seeds, the covering will make a little pop sound when the seed is pushed out of it. If you have hens around you waiting to be fed, they seem to identify this pop and seems to be more alert and waiting for the drop from your hand than otherwise. This is more observable when you have just one hen waiting and there is not much sound in the surrounding.

1. Priests visiting home for prayers demand for an image before the prayer could begin. Do they not know the second commandment: Deuteronomy   5:8 Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: Deuteronomy   5:9 Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, 5:10 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. Looks like the lords mercy is not sought in the RC world. 2. Sabbath is observed on Sunday instead of Saturday. Many work and make their servants and animals work ignoring the fourth commandment: Deuteronomy   5:12 Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee.  5:13 Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work: 

My wife has been a teacher at a couple of schools. So the three stories that are narrated here are actual incidents that terrified both parents and the school staff. No schools are named here and the names of the children involved have been changed. #1 : After school Nishchita is brought back home by the aaya at school at 3:00pm. She has been doing this for quite long. However, on that fateful day her parents were not at home. She waited for sometime and then knocked on a neighbor’s home. The neighbor knew the child and the child knew the neighbor. The aaya found the neighbor ready to take custody of the child and so she left the child there. She returned to school but did not share with anyone of the incident. Nishchita’s parents who did not return home until 5:00pm had not bothered to call and inquire of their daughter until then. When they remembered of their daughter they called up the school authorities to enquire. Panic started when the school authorities responded that Nis

I never get irritated when the phone rings. Even when people try to pester selling products over the phone, I sometimes, take delight to talk to them. However, recently one call started annoying me at my office desk. I have changed the name of character involved in my narration. “Am I talking to Amir Abraham?” became a constant inquiry everyday. Initially, I tried to look for the person in question on the company intranet. However, Amir was always offline. The caller wanted to reach the Amir as his SBI credit card dues were not paid on time. One fine day when I got the call I found Amir online. I started to chat with him on the online communicator while on the call. I got Amir’s mobile number and desk number and passed on the information to the caller asking him to contact him directly. The next day however the question was repeated, “Am I talking to Amir Abraham?” Every call from SBI would come from some new guy. So I checked with him if he had the new numbers updated the day bef

My wife had this burning sensation above her stomach during both her pregnancies. During the first the doctor simply said it can occur in some cases and she suffered it all nine months. The second was with a different doc and she asked her to stop food that are sour & tart and that which are hot. She stopped with such food and so did her burning sensation

Has your child started vomiting non-stop suddenly and you find medicines from doctors ineffective? Well this happened to our first born child Aaliyah. An old Tamilian lady who taught my wife stitching happened to hear this and suggested that this could have happened as the baby stomach may have got displaced and moved upward while she might have been turned upside down during play. Well, I had turned her upside down recently while allowing her to drop behind my back. I had held her legs in my hands and she was upside down for more that 30 seconds. Well what’s the solution I asked? She came home demonstrated us on how to massage her stomach. She moved her hands gently downwards from her ribs for sometime and asked us to repeat it for two more days. The vomiting gradually stopped. The lady also mentioned that this happens mostly when children are not turned upside down (hanging them upside down holding their feet firmly in hand) during the massages given to them when they are n

Pregnancy is a time when allopathy doctors do not prescribe medicine. My wife was suffering excessive cough and had to be prescribed mild and so called safe medications. This however, helped very little with her ailment. While at the hospital for regular checkups we heard a lady in waiting for the doctors call talking to her husband.  “This girl looks like my friend Fenobin”  “I am her twin sister.” my wife responded.  This lady seemed to have gone through the same coughing problem with her first delivery. She tried various things and got rid of it by eating boiled egg dipped in a little concentrated salt solution overnight for three days.  My wife tried this but gave up when she vomited the first one. She could not stand the salty taste. Nevertheless, it worked for her twins friend and hence deserves a mention in my blog.

When our son was born, he had a dry scaling skin. My wife happened to report about it to Elizabeth aunty a distant relative of ours, on a phone call. “Were you taking hot stuff always? Hot food, hot drinks etc.?” she asked. My wife had a sever cough during her second pregnancy. She was on medicine and was advised to eat and drink warm stuff. She followed the instruction religiously as her cough was quite scary. Isn’t it awesome on how much information of this kind may be hidden inside the heads of mothers all around the world. Elizabeth aunty is herself a grandmother and from wherever she had this information it’s amazing on how quickly they recollect and can educate the next generation. The dryness of the skin has now vanished. Intake of warm stuff does not seem to have long lasting side effect.

Kodam Pana is the Malayalam name of the tree of this topic. I know a picture would have be helpful, however, thanks to the non-reliant technological things that we may end up purchasing sometime. I cannot share with resources, that I have now. However, there is one interesting fact that I would wish to share: This enormous tree with enormous leaves stops taking nutrients from the soil once it flowers. It’s trunk contains all reserves and it may flower about 5 times using the reserve in it’s trunk. The yield from this tree is an alcoholic drink. And the leaves are a favorite with elephants. The tree dies when it’s reserves are exhausted. If this is a scientific fact it is astounding to hear it from people who narrate this story with non-reference to scientific journals. How, di the ancients make such great observation. I might be just discounting their scientific knowledge or their access to current scientific knowledge.

While taking off in an aircraft or while the plane starts descend while approaching destination you may be faced with blockage in ear, which may eventually lead to unmanageable pain. When I faced this problem I turned to the lady, who was probably amused at the fact that I was not apologizing for the uncontrollable internal sounds that were emerging from my internals. How many times would have I had to say ‘excuse me’ for the sounds which were non-stop. The best I could do was to ignore her stares on me. I behaved as if I never noticed them. This probably made her ignore my miseries too. She saw me covering my ears, bowing down and sometimes saying an ah!!! But that was not enough to gain sympathy. I had to finally say “Excuse me, do you know how to manage this pain in the ears”. “No”, she responded moving her head side to side, but she also looked to be beautiful and it made me feel she was genuine. I continued struggling with my pain for two more seconds and the lady seemed t

I had not collected my university certificates for long. There were two reasons. One, I had not found enough time to travel to Orissa from where I did my graduation and two, I had on it (the certificate) an issue – a typo with my name on it. The second issue would ask for more of the time issue on the first. I had no sight of when I would gather courage to go and get it, and get it with the name corrected. All that was needed to get out of the vicious negative thoughts was an international assignment at work, for which the original certificate was inevitable. My brother in US was more excited about it than I would have appeared to someone. My brother, he is a go-getter, there are many things you and I would get to learn from him, if we get to watch him facing the challenges in his life. He searched the internet while in US and called up the Vice Chancellor in my university and sent an email to him. The Vice Chancellor (a gem of a person, a highly qualified good soul, a Kristal…) wa

I like talking to strangers and so while we were waiting for time to allow us leave, I got into a chat with the Scottish bus driver. The weather was cold and there was mist in the air. Suddenly, I got into a doubt, could we call a foggy condition a mist? Maybe the two are different. So I asked my Scottish bus driver “How do you describe this weather?” Strange as it may sound his reply was “We call it fig.” When an English man talks strange things to an already fogged person expect him to pause. When my pause ended, I asked him “Fig? You are you sure about that?” “Yeah we call it Fig” I was now ready to dare, “Oh! Well I think Fig is just the name of a tree” “Tree!!!” well I saw him confused now. A second Scottish guy had arrived for the bus and the bus driver checked with him. Well, to my rescue he backed my thoughts that fig (tree) may be found in fog but calling a fog as fig may be foggy. “Well my nephew keeps telling me there’s fig outside. It’s strange why he says tha

By one story this is how the nut got its name… A foreigner in Kerala asked a seller, “What are these?” He was obviously asking about cashew nuts as we know them today. The Indian Keralite seller could not understand the foreign language and he gave a response in Malayalam that he thought would help him sell and save the day for both, he said “Cashine ette” Translated this would mean ’8 nuts for 1 unit of money (whatever unit was used in those days)’ I am not sure if the seller sold his stuff. However, the foreigner’s mind heard ‘Cashew Nut’ and he took it as an answer for the name of the nut. If this story is true it’s a piece of history to be cherished.

There are two things you need. 1. A location where the bird can be found in plenty 2. A square or pentagonal room with reflective glass windows that can be left open. The birds somehow seem to be more attracted to the reflection of the vegetation than the real veg. They keep coming back to the windows a peck them - probably fun for them. Leave the window open and they stray inward. Close the windows gently. Have a see through basket ready to encase the bird and then slide your hand underneath to take it in your hands. It's fun catching different varieties. Take a pic and post it online for others to see. Free the bird. The square or pentagonal room is just for human aesthetics satisfaction - I hope the birds won't mind even a triangular one. Below picture shows a big yellow bird in action on reflective windows - humming birds do just the same. To see the humming birds I caught visit: http://observationsbylinson.blogspot.com/2014/04/bite-that-doesnt-hu

As per the Christians the world is between 6,000 and 10,000 years old. This is based on the ages and dates from the bible of people right from Adam the first man until Jesus. Whom we know as someone born 2014 years ago. Now if similar calculations were to be made based on the Hindu gods we might need nothing less that a super computer. I was just wondering if we could make a simple calculation. In our life time we have seen many additions being made to the list of Hindu gods. These include a cricketer, a few movie stars, men and animals born with abnormal features which to some seem to be divine reincarnations, abusers who wear the overcoat of a social workers and a few that have impressed minds with their intellect. Let's say on an average 50 gods are added every year. By simple mathematics we can assume that the 330 million gods must have come in: 50 gods in one year 330000000 gods in 330000000/50 = 6,600,000 years Rough calculations are worth nothing :-) 

Science is human venture to understand God's creation Ex:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_VdcDJAlWQ Evolution science attempts to give vague explanation of creation details that are based on faith reasons that cannot be observed. The science of History sometimes ends up with belief in aliens (that are as mystical and unencountered as pagan gods) when encountered with ancient architecture that modern machinery cannot build.

Standing under a new kind of tree you are tempted to taste a new kind of fruit you see on it. You make a pluck and you take a bite. How good you feel when it tastes good. If for some reason, you have not liked its texture or taste, it may not be time yet to completely make a judgment on it. Good fruit yielding trees might give bad fruits in one season/year. Come back and give it a try in another season, and you might end up loving it.  

A day on Blogger changes with GMT timings - GMT 00:00:00 starts a new day on Google Blogger. Sometimes you get more hits than the counts shown on Posts page. You might get audience from many different countries and you feel proud. But the data is temporary and goes in a couple of days. For some reason, if you post from your tab, you do not get any hits most of the time. Do not worry there might be nothing wrong with your post. The next time you login to your PC copy your post, delete the original and put the copied thing in a new post. You get instant hits when you post it from your laptop/PC, even when you have used the original title that you deleted.  Some days you think a lot and post a lot, some days you just keep bumping onto postable ideas at other times you do not get material that you think is good enough to post, at other days you just do not think of it and at times you just don't have time for it. Wouldn't it be nice to post things just when you think abo

1. A bird's nest is never its permanent residence, it builds and uses its residence only when it needs to raise its offspring. 2. Man had his first biology lesson when he saw an offspring coming into the world. Plant world may not have tickled his brain as much as when an animal or a woman gave birth 3...

All male hens do not cock-a-doodle-do. Wild male hens call out in a much different way, they live on trees and lay egg on the ground. They like mingling with the domestic hens but stay away from their owners. If chased they can fly away long distance. However, they are not scared for life and they do come back. Of late we are having a lot wild hens returning to our farms. I welcome anybody willing to come and study them.

If you take the picture of a tree you have only captured it's glory for a season.

A twenty five feet bamboo pole helped me pluck a jack-fruit today. It set my head rolling. Has there been ever a world record on the longest pole held in hand. I googled and apparently there is none. The one I picked is certainly difficult to handle. So can we expect some competition soon, now that the world has got this new record setting activity? All the best! Now you need a knife attached to your pole when you wish to cut a jack-fruit from a tree. The shape of the knife plays an important role and you must learn how to tie it to the pole you are using. Now, I also made another observation. Despite being 25 feet away from us the tip of a pole touching a jack-fruit can tell us if it is ripe or not. Do robots have that kind of a sensitivity?

Friends I was surprised discovering some kind of growth on a piece of metal under the roof tiles. I could not get good focus with my camera but yet it I can't keep from posting what I found:

Ilimbi, Ilumbanpuli, Bilimbi, Chilimbi, Irumban puli, Chemmeen puli, Keerichakka - A few names of this in Malayalam In English it is called bilimbi or cucumber tree

Ancient men had the Sun and the moon as clearest visible objects in the sky. The changing shapes of the moon may have perplexed a bit but he must have clearly understood that in it's complete form it is circular in shape. Though some might have believed that giant dragons might be feeding on the moon others observing the regularity of the changing shapes of the moon might have thought of the science behind it. While the former would have thought that the moon is not hot, the later must have been puzzled with light given off without heat. The sun for sure must have always offered less ambiguity as it was always round and would more often give both light and heat. These observations must have surely led him to think that even the earth could be round. The When looking at the sun and moon, it is hard to imagine that someone fantasizing of walking on it might imagine that one would fall of it. Both the sun and the moon appearing big and small during different periods must have led t

Food for most is a science. The combination, proportions, the timing of adding the ingredients, the flame temperatures and the like are all unwanted information when I do my cooking. Though people do like things I prepare, I must admit that those who follow the book do cook very well. However, my odd combinations has led me to discover a very odd but wonderful combination. It's curd with orange and sugar. Yummy!

Children (between 0 and 3 years old) and animals seem to pre-programmed not to be scared of thunder and lightening. I had often worried that my children could develop psychological conditions with the kind of thunder and lightning they experience here in the southern belt of India. But they seem to just carry on with their activities even when the adults seem to be scared. This could also be their first experience on differing with the adults. 

In the absence of sufficient food many a bird species is known to selectively feed it's offspring. The same seems to be true with goats too. The mother seems to shoo away the weaker kid by hitting it with it's head. Poor kid, I am feeding it from it's mother with my intervention. Probably due to lack of sufficient green fodder the new born kids are weak. Even though there are only two kids and the mother seems to have sufficient milk - it doesn't look like she has sufficient intelligence to foresee that she can manage both babies well.

Have you ever noticed that when you smell something, you also get a clue of weather the stuff is sweet or sour. Well, I guess this is an assistance of past experience or maybe we can never tell. Recently, I took a ripe seed of a garden palm in had. As I smelt it, I felt that it could be sweet. i had never seen it before and had nobody to consult. I was curious to find out if my sense of taste through smell was right. i did not know if it could harm, yet I wanted to taste. And when I did taste, it did taste sweet! Here is the picture seeds discussed:

If you have a few teeth missing in your mouth, chances are that you will not feel the stones in your food. After loosing 6 teethes now it has happened thrice now that I bit on stones once and was then unable to locate it. Now that was a task which  had no problem in accomplishing when I had teeth in my mouth. I ended up swallowing the stones - it never occurred to me that I can also spit out the entire stuff in my mouth.

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

From my sister's collection 

Ajman! From my sister's collection 

Nippon! From my sister's collection