Reblogged from domaphile:

It’s January 10th and I am pleased to announce that I have already fulfilled a resolution!  Never mind that it was a resolution made back in 2010.  This weekend we inaugurated a volunteer-run, community-wide composting program in my apartment building.  It took about two seconds to dump the first batch of kitchen scraps into it and about two  years to get to that point. Until yesterday, my family had been composting with worms in our apartment for several years and I can’t say enough good things about …

great blog

Am I an extrovert or introvert?

A serious point to ponder—

Who is an extrovert? Someone who is outgoing or gregarious. Could be more concerned with external reality than inner feelings?

Who is an introvert? Someone who is shy? A person more concerned with his or her own thoughts and feeling?

I think I’ll take stock.

Extroverts are:

Interested in what is happening round them~ I am

Are open and talkative ~open — no, talkative –Yes

Compare their own opinions with others ~sometimes

Like action and initiative ~yes

Easily make new friends or adapt to a new group ~ adapt to a new group yes. Real friendship (the thick and thin, sick and sin kinds no)

Say what they think ~ sometimes

Introverts are:

Are interested in their own thoughts and feelings~definitely

Need to have own territory ~ very much

Often appear reserved, quiet and thought ~ no way I always give the impression being a scatterbrain, lost and spaced out.

Do not have many friends ~ “friends very few” but cheer crowd immense

Have difficulty in making new contacts ~ no way

Like concentration and quiet ~ very very much.

Do not like unexpected visits therefore do not make them ~ of course not I like the surprise element.

Work well alone ~ not necessarily.

Now what, the diagnosis is still questionable.

If I were to take Audrey Hepburn as a model then I am an introvert, I love being myself, being outdoors, taking a long walk,(not with my dogs, I don’t own them I hate them) talking to the birds, looking at trees, flowers, the sky.

I agree with Michael Fassbinder when he says words like introvert and extrovert are various traits of a personality. A lot of stuff we use in drama school to define characters, the heroes and heroines are classified by these traits.

Like Roger Moore I find it difficult to enter a restaurant alone, — I need a book!

• •

Peters Oscar 1

Who should get the Oscar awards this year?

The answer is I do not know, I don’t know who the nominees are and if I did I don’t know what they stand for. I care less about it. Call me an ostrich or a marooned islander but this is the truth.

To many it is a dream.

The award was instituted in 1928, the first awards being given on May 16th 1929 at Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s Blossom Room. 2.809 statues have been presented since, every January.

The award known as Merit in Movie making stands a 13 ½ inches tall and weighs 8 ½ pounds in weight. The film real features five spokes signifying the first five original branches of the Academy, actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers. Though statuette has varied in size over the years it was standard to the current form in 1945, despite the fact that the statuette is true to the original form.

Humphrey Bogart had it right in 1951 when he said “the only way to find the best actor would be to let everybody play Hamlet and let the best man win.”

It’s infuriating when the Indian paparazzi go gaga over the so-called Indian winners of Oscar. “Slumdog millionaire” is not an Indian movie it could be a movie about India. But the very title is offensive.

To me nominating an Indian movie to Oscars in itself does not make sense. When movies are sent the movies chosen are to do with the British Raj or Indian poverty.

Signs of Wisdom

Am I more likely to tell it like it is or hold my tongue?

My instinct is to tell it like it is, unless something is told to me in confidence, and then hold my tongue hell or high seas.

The first twenty years of my life I was notoriously outspoken, generally as subtle as a pole-axe. My attitude was like mother’s menus take it or leave it. It not only gave an image of being a rebel and brash. Every time I went out my mother would request that I be diplomatic.

When I got married my mother told me to hold my tongue and be silent even I wanted to talk because when I did not talk or speak, the only fault one could find was that I did not talk/speak but if I did it could cause all sorts of complication.

So I cultivated the art of keeping quiet, even when I felt I had to say something or I will bust.

I now neither here nor there! Since holding my tongue unless something is confidential is against my instinct I goof up and at unexpected times I blurter the unwanted truth!

What i love about my hometown is the extended sense of family. The very thing I ran away from. Everyone knows everyone. If they do not then they try to.

I grew in the town of Manipal placed at a very pivotal point of rural and cosmopolitan background. The young crowd is floatsham-jetsham crowd of students the residents are faculty at the various colleges.

My ancestors hailed from the rural towns around it. The weekly fair the family gatherings, the rotary or the Ladies club they are all energizing it gives a sense of belonging.

I specially touched when my 10th standard teacher who was Draconian by the teenage standards, came to visit me, she had made my favorite dish specially for me.

It happens only in a small town.

how true

Chinese Checkers

A board game I will never get tired off.

Chinese checkers !!Though for a while I was hooked on to the word-pathways on face book. Chinese checkers still excite me.

All the bored room variety, the board room variety and the game board variety have been around since pre literature days for example Sennett of the Egyptians or the chaturanga of the Hindu’s,

Chinese checkers is a game played with 2 6 players. It is the simplified version of Halma or jump created by the Germans and was initially called Stern-Halma. Unlike the Halma this is played on a six-pointed star. Each player has 10 pieces each and the aim is to traverse the board to the opposite base.

1892 Otto Robert Maier patented the game under the name Stern-Halma (star-jump) through the company Ravensburger.

1909 it was introduced to England by Spears and sons.

1928 J.Pressman and Co released the game in United States calling it Hop Ching Checkers. This was eventually shortened to Chinese checkers.

I enjoy the game, probably because it brings back memories of childhood. Somehow I never ventured into the online version of the game.

Aged

Acting my age depends on the company that I keep at moment. As everyone and his wife knows the age of a group of people is the same as its youngest member. Yet ge does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.

Out of curiosity why are we so obsessed with age? Recently I picked up a magazine for senior citizens, and they had stuff on arthritis, meditation, coping up with empty nest.

Some of the most fun people I know are who would chronologically and physiologically be called seniors.

I know Vimala Rao who trekked the Rwandan mountains at 70 to see the mountain gorilla's

My 67 yr. old mom and her 69 year old friend travelled by road from Egypt to Israel.

Another friend of my mother started learning to paint at the age of 68.

Memorial to politicians who opposed Hitler

Midas, they say, possessed the art of old

Of turning whatsoeér he touch’d to gold;

This modern statesmen can reverse with ease—

Touch them with gold, they’ll turn to what you please. ~ John Wolcott.

I need to understand political stands before that. I would rather, call issue as public issues that could do with political backing.

But coming to politics, particularly the Indian democracy, it appears one party is busy devoting its energies to try and prove the other party is fit to rule—both commonly succeed.

May be we need to take Jose Maria de Eca de Queiroz seriously, when he says politicians and diapers should be changed frequently and all for the same reason. For it appears, that politics in concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.

Then what happens to my issue

• NRI’s are not to get voting rights.

• Education in mother tongue is every child’s right.

• Macaulay’s system should be banished to the Duat!