Musings

Pankaj and I started watching a documentary last night - Zeitgeist (http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/). It's an indy film in three parts. The first part is called "The Greatest Story Ever Told" - it is based on a couple of books by Acharya S (the pen name of D. M. Murdock, if that means anything to anyone, but I've never heard of her).

Anyway, the first part discusses a theory that the Jesus story was not unique, but a retelling of a long line of similar mythologies stemming from pagan astrology. Ancient civilizations around the world had a common dependence on astrology to guide the rhythm of their lives. As cultures settled down and became agrarian, moving farther away from their common hunter/gatherer roots, the movement of the stars and planets, especially the Sun, in the sky allowed famers to develop a calendar - seasons, months, daylight hours, solstices, eclipes, and other phenomena were mapped by cultures around the plant - the Mayans, Incans, Isrealites, Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Japanese, and Indians, to name a few.

Anyway, it went through a list of these common myths and argued that the story of Jesus was not a historical account, but a retelling of this overarching astrological understanding of the stars. All the similar stories of savior figures are supposedly retellings of the story of the Sun's movements through the sky - the sun is born in the east, rises, and then wanes until it "dies" under the Southern Cross constellation at the winter solstice (the shortest day of the year). For example, the reason that Jesus was born on December 25th is because that is the date of the solstice, the day on which there is the least amount of daylight.

Ok, so Part 2 and 3 are, I believe, part 9/11 conspiracy and part conspiracy theory about the Federal Reserve Bank. I will comment more on these after watching the rest of the movie.

G'night!

Labor Day Week

Pankaj went home for Ben's wedding last week, so I was here in Seattle by myself for a week (that's two whole weekends to myself!)

I missed him a lot, but there were a bunch places I haven't been in Seattle yet. So...

I went to the Seattle Asian Art musuem. The museum is on the grounds of Volunteer park, which also has a cool conservatory in the park. I visited both :)

The muesum was a lot of fun - it was very quiet on the Sunday I went - hardly anyone was there, so I got the place to myself. They had on display a special exhibit on modern art that highlights Eastern art's relationship to books (not reading, but books themselves). They also had older art, and a whole area devoted to statues of Buddha. Unfortunately, they did not have much Indian art - only a few statues in the main atrium. I very much enjoy Indian art, so I'll have to keep looking for that around here.

I also visited the Bellevue Botanical Gardens that day. It was a very nice park to walk around, and I had picked up some peaches at a farmers' market on Broadway before going to the museum. I walked around the park while eating a peach - the weather was beautiful, and I especially liked the Japanese garden.

On Monday, I went to the Museum of History and Industry. It was also very quiet there, so I could take my time and really enjoy myself! You could lose yourself in the history there for many days, but after about 2 hours, I had to go get some food and rest my feet - next time I'll wear tennis shoes! The MOH&I has done an amazing job recreating the history of Seattle - they even have recreated a street from Seattle in the late 1800s. There is also a cannery that you can walk through and see how salmon canneries were such a big part of the economy of Seattle.

Oh, I also made banana crumb muffins the other day - they were mighty good!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Banana-Crumb-Muffins/Detail.aspx

Here's the recipe - I used about 1/2 cup of white sugar and added just under 1/3 cup of brown sugar into the batter.

Surface

Microsoft has the coolest new product out - Microsoft Surface. It uses cameras and a screen so you can use hands and objects to interact with your computer.

Of course, the second video is a pretty funny parody, so check it out, too!

Watch the video in the middle of this site first - http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Then this one – www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY

One Year in Seattle

I have officially lived in Seattle for one year now. I'm not counting my six month internship because I was not sure if I was coming back here afterwards.

Well, here I am... and only 7 blog posts since! I'm going to try to do a better job of posting.

Here are some things that have been going on -

• My house search continues - 6 months and counting. It took Pankaj and myself probably 2-3 months to figure out exactly what we were looking for in a house. Now, we've narrowed it down to a couple of areas where we would like to live, and pretty much know exactly what kind of house we want. Now it's just a matter of time...
• Work is going well - busy as usual :) I'm working on a larger "dogfood" (piloting new SW) project, and contributing to the creation of the next version of our service. The people I work with are great - lots of fun! My officemate is really nice, too - we have too much fun! :P

Preeya started vet school 2 weeks ago - she's living in Madison now. She's brought her menagerie with her, so at least Allie won't be bored! I know she's going to kick ass there! I admire her so much for having a passion and the drive to follow it! Plus, when I get my kitties, I'll have a 24-hour on-call vet - I'll just call her for expert advice! tee hee hee

My dad is going to Las Vegas next week for a huge pet expo - I bet he'll do great and get a bunch of new customers. Hey, afterwards, maybe he'll even post a comment/pics... hint hint... :)

Mom is doing well too - busy with work - she had to work 8 days in a row last week, but hopefully that won't be the norm. She's watching Snowy for now, so hopefully she won't go cookoo... or at least cockatiel... ummm ok, I know that's not funny

Alright, I'm going to start a separate post for my adventures last week - bye for now

Walk in the Park

I went for a walk in the park by my apartment the other day and took a ton of pictures. Here's one that I took while on a little dock by the lake. This is Lake Washington, and across the lake, you can see a different part of Kirkland.

I've decided that since I have taken quite a few photos now, that I should find a place to upload them online. I chose Flickr (www.flickr.com - note that there is no "e"). The direct link is - http://www.flickr.com/photos/manishainseattle/

So, yeah, check it out! I'll post to this blog if I add pictures ot Flickr.

I have some park pics, a pic of my apartment complex (I found the nicest view that showed one of the ponds, of course!), and a few pics I took last year at Alki beach, which is one of the nicer public beaches on Puget Sound in Seattle.

Harappa Link

You all may not be too interested in this, but I'm fascinated by this cool link that shows some topographical maps and 3-D images of Harappa.

http://www.harappa.com/3D/1.html

Harappa was one of two major cultural centers of the Indus Valley civilization that flourished around 2500 BCE. The other major cultural center was Mohenjo-Daro (in the current Sindh province of Pakistan). Harappa is in current Lahore.

Despite the numerous seals found at Harappa with proto-Dravidian and proto-Sanksritic markings, archeologists to date have been unable to translate the words. It is also interesting to note that it is unclear as to what brought the civilization to an end.

I'll post more about the Indus Valley civilization later, but until then, check out the site. :)

Experiments in the Kitchen

So, I've decided that I'm bored with my cooking, so I've been trying new recipes these days. I found a good recipe for pot stickers (gyoza) - http://japanesefood.about.com/od/tempuraappetizer/r/gyoza.htm

Today, I had to figure out something to do with the eggplant I had bought with the high hopes of making shaak... but since that never happened, I made baba Ghanoush. I started with this base recipe - http://www.aubergines.org/recipes.php?eggplant=47. Then, since I don't know what all spice is, and didn't want to go buy it, I improvised a bit. (eh, word of advice, don't take "all spice" to mean that you need a lot of spices - the 2 or 3 things I had other than salt worked just fine).

For dinner today, I made stir fry with tofu - it was pretty good, so I'm going to branch out into some other tofu recipes. I should look for Quorn/mycoprotein here... :)

Oh, the other thing that I've been experimenting with is making sushi. It's not too difficult, except I can't figure out how not to over cook the sticky rice... will keep trying :) Over cooked rice aside, it's pretty easy to make, and you can fill it with anything you want. I don't like the fish thing, so I usually put cucumber, avocado, imitation crab meat, and/or cream cheese (or, as it's called here, a "Seattle Roll" - seriously!) Plus, can't go wrong with the wasabi - makes for a fun evening! Oh cool - I was looking for a picture of sushi, and found this recipe - http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cucumber-and-Avocado-Sushi/Detail.aspx. I'll have to try the 1:1.5 ratio of rice:water to see if that will result in perfectly cooked rice.

Ok, I'll keep posting here if I have recipe ideas for you guys to try. Don't forget, asparagus and cantaloupe are back in season and tasty as ever! :)

My Sunday

I slept in this morning because I was up late yesterday - Pankaj's officemate and her boyfriend came over for dinner. I made Indian food for them, so I had quite a mess on my hands to clean up this morning! ;) I made palak paneer, chicken curry (papa gave me the recipe over the phone), ritu and channa masala. Rice and naan of course, and then samosas for appetizers. I have leftovers, so I don't have to worry about cooking tomorrow. (Today I have a box of jambalaya mix to which I have to just add chicken) I think Tracy and her bf enjoyed the food, so I was happy. :)

Today, Pankaj and I wanted to get out and go somewhere new and interesting. The Seattle Centeral library has been on my "must see" list since I got here last year, so I finally went to check it out. Now, you may be thinking, "why would she consider a library downtown "interesting"?? - well, check out this link - http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=seattle%20central%20library&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi (if the link doesn't work, go to Google, search for "Seattle Central Library" in the image search). It is the coolest library I've ever seen! It's very modern and has instead of brick walls, lots of glass windows everywhere - they tried to achieve a "transparent" theme.

Ok, well, I had saved this post last night (while it was still Sunday) and now it is Monday morning and I am at work. The ride in this morning was great! It was pouring rain when I left at 7:10 am this morning, and for some reason, there was absolutely no traffic - which is very unusual for a rainy Monday morning - I had braced myself for a 45 min commute as I walked out the door and saw the rain!

Preeya - you can accept my invite to become an author and post pictures of your new bathroom :)

Papa - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!! Hope you had fun and got some cake! ;)

I'll post again later. Bye for now!

Feb 13th, 2007

Hi guys,

I thought I'd send you guys a link to a site with tons of recipes for salmon - http://www.salmonrecipes.net/. If you happen to get some salmon, you may want to try a recipe from here. I've been experimenting with new recipes lately - today, I made some Asian style salmon (yes, salmon was on sale, so we had it 2 days in a row this week! Yesterday I bought a mango chipotle marinade for it, which wasn't bad, though I don't like sweet stuff on meat).

I don't know if I told everyone, but a few weeks ago, I went to a Vista/Office 2007 launch party at work - they had lots of nice little desserts and we watched the launch on projectors in the cafeteria.

The weeks since then have been pretty busy. Work is busy, but I'm on a new campaign to better organize my time and "work smart, not hard." :) Hopefully I'll succeed, otherwise it's a slippery slope to a 70 hour work week (which I will not let happen!!)

On the bright side, my big project is very interesting - I'm getting to know a lot of people outside of my team and building. Many of my meetings are in other buildings around campus, so I've been riding around in the hybrid cars they have for shuttles. I have posted a picture I found online of my building area. Actually, it's a picture that you could take from a window on the other side of the building from me - I have a view of a road and some trees. It's quite nice, though, as I get direct sunlight all day (when there is sun to be seen!)

I have also posted a floor plan of my apartment if you're curious.

Anyway, my laundry just finished, so I'd better get folding! (Pankaj and I went to a friend's house on Sunday, so I missed my laundry day and procrastinated till today!)

Post comments!

Snoqualmie Falls

Pankaj and I went to Snoqualmie Falls last May and were in the area again on Sunday. Made it to North Bend, just a bit past the falls. The whole area is beautiful - mountains, trees, water...

Here's a picture that Pankaj had taken of me back in May near the falls. Sunday was really nice and sunny, but I didn't have my camera with me.

The rest of Sunday was fun, too. Pankaj and I went to the Seattle Aquarium and saw cute otters and a huge octopus!

After that, found a Krispy Kreme and splurged on some donuts. :)

Monday was definitely a good day because I was still happy from the fun activities on Sunday!

Will post again soon

Hi From Seattle

Hi everyone,

Starting my blog here from Seattle. I'll try posting to this often and will email the appropriate parties when I make new posts.

Look for some content soon!

~Manisha