The Special Valentine’s Guide

1. Create hell and play with fire: There are some nice and interesting things to do on Valentine’s Day in order to celebrate it, and I would like to start with the creation of hell and maintaining its charming fire. There are a few people whom you can consult on this, and I will mention the name of one such person in the next few paragraph – his name starts with “M” and ends with “S”; that will be all related to the clue. Please don’t be late to create hellfire because not that much of the same will be available on Earth – there will be other lovers in need for the same, and so get it soon – don’t let it go!

2. Watch My Bloody Valentine 3D and if possible, other slasher movies too: The 2009 movie was a remake of the 1981 Canadian slasher flick of the same name, and as the Valentine’s Day should have a movie which has nice happenings on that particular day, this movie will really help. Well, what better than a slasher movie on a Valentine’s Day? Leave the romantic movies behind as they are exaggerated; instead choose this one which is closer to reality – days like February the fourteenth deserves movies like these with all the blood and dead people. This movie in 3D would actually be even better for the day.

3. Play Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 Arena: What can be better than shooting him or her on the head with a headshot? Yes, these two games make sure that you can do just that. Take a two player game and murder each other at will, only to come back to life and kill again. A classic deathmatch, the every-man-for-himself player vs player battle will make sure that this Valentine’s Day is a beautiful one. Maybe blowing each other up will be the best thing to do during this time of the year. There is one particular map in Unreal Tournament which is played in space jumping around three huge buildings – it is a nice venue for some suicide attempts too.

4. Have a visit to the cemetery: Nothing matches a visit to the cemetery, and the best adviced time will be between midnight and three in the morning, as the witching hour can prove to be the most effective thing on this Valentine’s Day. I would also recommend staying there from the day before February Fourteenth if the day before that is a Friday. This way, you can enjoy both Friday the Thirteenth and the Valentine’s Day together, and it will be an even better experience. You should take special care in listening to what the souls as well as the corpses which can animate have to say to you regarding your relationship – they have the right to opinion too.

5. Use an Ouija board to celebrate the day: This can be crucial in going through the day, which is loved by some, detested by some others and not cared about by the rest of the world. Talking with the people from the other world will help you to come up with interesting conclusions about your present relationships. If possible, call out for Mr. Mephistopheles – he is a skilled man in this, and he might even be able to present you with a special contract which can unite your souls forever in hell; it will make sure that the demons will live happily ever after even though I am not sure about your case. But if you ever meet him, you have to promise me that you will ask him about Doctor Faustus.

These are my favourite five, and I will add four more, making the points nine in number.

6. What to do with Valentine’s Day Cards: Get a card and feed it to fire, and declare that your love is not slave to such meaningless days, when love is forever and not restricted to just one day; for we don’t celebrate with the world but between us.

7. And then with Valentine’s Day Gifts: The next step is to avoid them completely and let the world know that such fake gifts have no place in our life which is not determined by all that is fake and glorified for no reason.

8. And about people tagging us in their photos: We get tagged on Facebook during all the nonsense every year, and now we have to suffer for this meaningless day too – lets think about removing a few such people from friends lists.

9. And escape from the romantic song and movie overdose on television channels: Once again, this is the kind of reminder that nobody needs; the rescue operation here should include cutting the cables as soon as possible.

Happy Valentine’s Day 🙂 😀

***The images used in this blog post are from the Official Facebook Pages of the movies, My Bloody Valentine 3D and Ouija.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

TeNy

Advertisement

The Daily Celebrations

People call different days as big occasions or time for grand celebrations. Some of them have those religious festivals like Onam, Deepavali, Christmas, Vishu, Easter, Bakrid, Ramzan and a lot more while a few others try to hold on to the wedding days of their own, and also wait for the special occasions of their friends and relatives. But then one interesting question remains here: Why wait for a big event to come to our life when we can just go on and #CelebrateLife everyday?

I haven’t been a big fan of celebrations for quite some time. Almost every special day has been just another day in the last few months. Yes, the days of big celebrations were surely there, but they have faded into the emptiness which I have discovered. Now, the only thing which is left about them happens to be a certain part of the memories which can be temporarily awakened by a look at that folder in which all the old photos are stored. But I dare not to, because they are dead memories.

All these celebrations had one common thing which is the talk about others, and the worst side of the same comes from those relatives who say that I am the next candidate at a wedding function. There are actually two sides to the same. The first one is that I am sure that I am not the next, and it has been perfectly proven by younger cousins who can’t wait to fall in love and overtake. The second side is that none of these relatives who make the point that I am next will ever try to proceed with the same and help me in the process. So, once again I say – #CelebrateLife everyday and not think about any special day coming, and I would need the following for the same.

If you celebrate life without me, I will find you and I will hug your leg. Mind it!

Simona the Valiant Kitty: Simona has been a big part of the daily celebrations. You just can’t have a day of joy without giving her the chance to be part of it. She makes her way through everything, closed doors, windows which never open and the leaps of faith which even the Devil’s hound kitten would not dare to make. She is like a legend in finding where the celebrations should be, and spreads happiness there by hugging the legs. Well, after all why should humans have all the fun? Kittens need their due because they can hug trees better.

The Great Vampire Gardens: No, the name is not official. Such a name would be devastating for mother who looks after it more than I do. Still, I call it by that name which is applied to the place whenever I am wandering through there. Well, there is a lot of happiness when there are trees and flowers around, and they play a significant part in making our lives a celebration. The first fruit to have grown at the new part of our garden is the Star Fruit, and I believe that it was just the preface to a never-ending celebration at the garden! It gets better with the beauty of monsoon!

There is no celebration like a nice shower with the green trees and plants.

That daily blog post: What is a celebration if there is no writing? Yes, there is the need to write something all the time. I have never desired for any escape from this part of the daily celebrations. I have doubted myself a lot, but for the past few months, never hesitated from coming up with something new and posting it on every other day, no matter what kind of troubles I had to face. It has been significant in getting this blog to twenty thousand visitors, and it is another reason for celebration!

What to read for the day: There is also the desire for daily reading. Every day, I hope to read and learn something new and make a good choice about what to read. These days, it has been mostly restricted to History, Geography and General Knowledge due to the upcoming PSC exams, but I have done that with joy and as a celebration. Reading has always been a celebration for me too – I have never complained about what I had to read and did try my best to like what was there, with the exceptions of some scientific things.

For now, the only thing that bothers me is that I need these things better, at a higher level! ***The photos used in this blog post were taken by me on my Asus Zenfone 5.

#CelebrateLifeAtIvy by owning a dream home at Ivy estate, an 85 acre estate with 34 acres of greenery and open spaces. Join the 1600 happy families already living here. Check out this walkthrough video and decide for yourself.

TeNy

Crashing the IPL Again

Coming back to those videos which were made as part of Crash the IPl programme, there were a few which could have been made better with a few changes. There is innovation hidden right there which haven’t really come out as expected. But a few changes are sure to bring enough power to to these advertisements and they can be used by the Pepsi a lot better than their winners and finalists or their own Ads!

Crash the Pepsi IPL – “Craze for Pepsi”
Uploaded by Nikita Pagare

It is always better to go back to old model of gaining things – that is to scare people, especially when there is no scope for a civil war in the house. This is something that can work wonders. But this could have been better working with more than just the hair. The Grudge model is not that effective for everyone, and if Anniyan was intended, this is the wrong hair. A little bit more make-up would have been done a lot of favour to this advertisement. There is nothing about jumping from the top of a cliff or building – this is a simple thing to do.

Crash The Pepsi IPL – “Do it Abhi!”
Uploaded by Mikhail Shah

I thought that this was well shot and worked with the basic idea of getting one’s love very well even though this works on a luck based situation rather than anything else. Still, there is nothing special about it – may be they could have used the first and the last few seconds to generate the same. You have to applaud the quality of this one though, and the cast is also very good and suitable. It is just the punch which was needed, and may be if this had a very much longer version, things could have worked in a more special way.

Crash The Pepsi IPL – “Jeeto par pyar se”
Uploaded by Ayush Sapra

There is the idea of winning and then being magnanimous. It is only fair to be good after being victorious – not being like those bloody conquerors of the past. May be this one could have had more focus on the same and finally coming up with the Pepsi. More detail could have done the advertisement a lot more good, as this is more like something we have been knowing and watching other forms for quite a long time. Still, there seems to be an attempt to make it much better with this one.

Crash The Pepsi IPL – “#LiveItAbhi”
Uploaded by Sanghamitra Dasgupta

I think that it is time that Pepsi uses some animation for their advertisements. This is more like an advertisement which could have gone out of being this simple because this idea of things getting better with a drink has been used so much everywhere. But it is still good to watch as an animated alternative. May be there could have bigger twists in the desert, and Pepsi can always come up better animation if they use this. Seeing some of those advertisements which not much acting and the others with random celebrities who do more bad than good, may be this is the need for the day.

Crash The Pepsi IPL – “Meri Pepsi”
Uploaded by Sachin Barthwal

I feel that this advertisement do have the potential to be a lot better with the fight over Pepsi. A number of sequences showing the battle over Pepsi could have made this a nice treat, and a good amount of scenes could be added over there, with them ending quick enough but making the desired impact. We have seen funny fight scenes nicely done to good impact, like in the movie Angry Babies, and this needs to shift its focus to making such interesting fun with Pepsi being at the centre of all action. No, don’t go too much further, but keep it funny enough.

***This blog post is related only to those advertisements which I thought could be better, and would have worked nicely as the Pepsi Ads with changes being made. It is only about those which I have personally thought to have potential and has no relation to the best that could be. It is just an opinion and not a judgment, and so you needn’t bother about why another advertisement was not selected over one of these.

Check out the #CrashThePepsiIPL videos & participate in the activity at BlogAdda

TeNy

TVB: The Grand Award

Aditya Sinha (http://facetsofadienglish.blogspot.in) has nominated me for an award, the third of this kind – Thanks a lot for nominating me for ‘The Versatile Blogger Award’ (http://facetsofadienglish.blogspot.in/2015/02/the-versatile-blogger-award_6.html). This comes from a blogger who is a lot versatile himself. Do check and see the poem he has come up with, on the nomination; he has also made some nice points about blogging 🙂

Now as The Versatile Blogger Award rule says:

• Display the award on your blog
• Thank the person who nominated you
• Share 7 facts about yourself
• Nominate 15 blogs
• Link your nominee’s blogs and let them know

Seven Facts about me:

1. I have studied in total five schools.
2. I have always hated Mathematics.
3. Physics was my second biggest enemy at school.
4. I feared Chemistry, but it did me no wrong in the end.
5. I have been on a flight which caught fire.
6. Every morning, I hope to get a Flipkart voucher 😀
7. I feel the need for Yorkshire Tea today 😀

The Fifteen  Nominations:

Ulkar (http://moviemovesme.com)
Jackson (http://moviemanjackson.wordpress.com)
Josna (http://josna.wordpress.com)
Samjoth (https://samjothsashidharan.wordpress.com)
Razia (http://noorsrecipes.com/2015/01/03/mooli-paratha)
Heila (http://heilablog.com)
Aneesh (http://gangsofedathua.wordpress.com)
Nishant (http://www.cheontheroad.com)
Fenil (http://www.fenilandbollywood.com)
Himanshu (https://ourindia.wordpress.com)
Ratnakar (https://historyunderyourfeet.wordpress.com)
Rohit (http://www.rohitontheroad.blogspot.in)
Sujata (http://sujatasharmas.blogspot.com)
Reji (http://www.digitaldimensions4u.com)
Ajay (http://ajthedad.blogspot.in)

Thanks and Congratulations…

The Versatile Season

I have been nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by Moon Roy (http://footlooseforever.com/2015/02/04/versatile-blogger-award-it-feels-great-to-be-appreciated/).

Yes, I say again as she has told her readers, that it is a wonderful feeling to be appreciated for the efforts. She has been a good support and an awesome presence on my blog too. Her blog (http://footlooseforever.com/) has always been a place worth visiting for me too. A big thanks to her 🙂

The rules for the award:

• Display the award on your blog
• Thank the person who nominated you
• Share 7 facts about yourself
• Nominate 15 blogs
• Link your nominee’s blogs

The seven facts about myself:

1. I have fallen in love with the never-ending running games on Android.
2. The first city I visited outside Kerala was Kolkata.
3. The first nation I traveled abroad was Singapore.
4. I have done zero exercise in the last few months; feels like I never even moved 😀
5. I am waiting for someone to gift me tea packets just because I can 😀
6. I haven’t traveled away from home for a distance more than seventy five kilometres for about six months now, and that is a new thing.
7. Free Simona the Kitty Fact: Simona now spends most of the time hugging human legs 😀

The fifteen blogs I choose:

1. Anoop (http://anooppillaiz.wordpress.com)
2. Simon (http://simonsayswatchthis.wordpress.com)
3. Ananya (http://www.ananyatales.com)
4. Alok (https://singhalalok.wordpress.com)
5. Mary (http://marythelittlewriter.wordpress.com)
6. Najm (http://angellicfrenzy.blogspot.in)
7. Sreesha (http://petrchorandclouds.blogspot.com)
8. Shibu (http://shibumathewn15.wordpress.com)
9. Umashankar (http://uspandey.com)
10. Raja (http://rajareviews.com)
11. Rohit (http://rohitthebest.blogspot.com)
12. Shrinidhi (http://www.enidhi.net)
13. Mirna (http://mirnamorgan62.wordpress.com)
14. Christy (http://poeticparfait.com)
15. Sakshi (http://www.sakshinanda.com)

Enjoy blogging. Thank you!

A Hat-trick in Inspiration

This is the time for The Very Inspiring Award, for the third time for The Tea Cerebrations, and we should be having a lot of tea on the hat-trick occasion in huge cups 😀

I was nominated by Rekha (http://rekhaaa.wordpress.com) this time, and the fact remains that it was me who was more inspired 😉 Thanks to her for making this three in a row, something that usually needs a penalty in the case of football 😀 (http://rekhaaa.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/1338/)

The rules:
1. Display the award logo
2.  Link back to the person who nominated you
3.  State 7 things about yourself
4.  Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them.

The seven things about me:
1. I believe that I am living in the wrong time period and require a time machine.
2. I don’t feel that the end of the world is a bad thing, because there is equality in death.
3. I support Asterix for the President of Earth 😀
4. I affirm Honda’s superiority in engine 😀
5. I have bad teeth, and even had awesome root canal.
6. My favourite ice cream is of Blackcurrant flavour, followed by Orange and Pineapple.
7. I hope that one day, I will be the old gamer again 😉

The Fifteen nominated: 
1. Dan (http://dtmmr.com)
2. Pallavi (http://palulife.blogspot.sg)
3. Ananya (http://www.ananyatales.com)
4. Sakshi (http://www.sakshinanda.com)
5. Sandhya (https://indfused.wordpress.com)
6. Kokila (http://sunshineandblueclouds.blogspot.in)
7. Prathi (http://prathi-pat.blogspot.com)
8. Ritesh (http://riteshmokasana.wordpress.com)
9. Kamila (http://spicyroad.com)
10. Rohit (http://www.rohitthebest.blogspot.in)
11. Razia (http://noorsrecipes.com)
12. Mohan (http://advocatemmmohanaksharaalu.wordpress.com)
13. Gaurab (http://www.processingcreativity.com)
14. Saru (http://www.sarusinghal.com)
15. Svetlana (http://maverickbird.com)

Have a great year and drink more tea 😀

Tea Cerebration 2014

The WordPress.com stats helper vampires with the aid of zombie minions and the little goblins prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. I would like to thank Maniparna for being the biggest commenter on my blog which started this year, with about fifty more than everyone else and Namrata for being the very first commenter on The Tea Cerebrations 🙂 Also thanks to the others who have supported me, especially those in The Hall of Fame and all who have given a comment or a like for this blog so far 🙂 You can also spend some time to read the movie year in review at Movies of the Soul. Happy New Year, everyone – keep being awesome and drink a lot more tea 😀

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,800 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

People of the Halloween

It is that time of the year again, and the period of Halloween, a night which has kept me happier than most of the other night. This is that celebration, which even if not at all popular in this part of the world and not even heard about among the people of our locality, had a lot in store for us. Halloween did turn into something special in 2010, but it remained so only for just another year, and 2011 ended the same.

It was after my visit to the United Kingdom in 2010 that this celebration got going. Thanks to my cousin in England, I was able to get a few Halloween special items as the night neared. But I had to cut short my visit and return to India as my grandfather had expired. Soon, I returned with what all scary or almost scary things I had brought from the place. After a few days passed and there were only a few days to Halloween, I wondered what was the use of the costumes.

Our notices before the first & the second Halloween.

We had a group for the youth at that time, and more than a month had passed after the last meeting – I was for some odd reason the secretary of the group and decided to hold a meeting, in which I asked the same about the possible celebrations. There was not really a response in the beginning, but later we felt that may be it could be possible, not without doubts, but still there is hope.

The major arguments against the celebration were that
I. Nobody is aware of such a celebration and doesn’t care at all.
II. People will get scared and might even complain.
III. Some people might misunderstand the evil masks.
IV. We don’t conduct celebrations, only the elder’s group do.
V. We have absolutely no decision making power.

Hellboy, Mr. Brain, Ghostface & Wolfman 😀

But then we decided to give it a twist. I had read about the Halloween related fund raising programs for UNICEF which had raised a huge amount of money. It is really a nice idea, I have to say; for Halloween isn’t usually considered in a positive light, and this changes a lot: http://www.unicefusa.org/mission/usa/trick-or-treat. See what they say about the same “began in 1950 as a way to help kids who need more than candy”. Notice the tagline: IT’S SCARY HOW MUCH GOOD YOU CAN DO!

We thought, may be we could do something good with our group along with celebrating Halloween all at the same time. It was from this idea that we come up with the plan to give a detailed proposal to the association and get the permission to conduct the same. We printed notices and distributed them in each and every home to make sure that they will be ready when we arrived. We rented a few more masks from the shops to make sure that all our members were included.

Before unleashing the monsters…

We mentioned in the notice that we would take donations as well as the old clothes. Even as there were two or three homes which didn’t open the door or didn’t contribute, and even though a number of people were not at home, we did collect around five thousand rupees for the night along with a lot of old clothes, which we could take to the nearby children’s home and the home for the aged. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t go on for more than two years, due to the lack of volunteers and the absence of interest.

It is fun, and a satisfying thing to do. Unfortunately, our club did cease to exist.

How not to steal Halloween sweets! 😀

Happy Halloween 😀 🙂
TeNy

Past, Present and Health

We all have memories of our childhood, but mine actually started much later, but among those days which are part of the big memory train, are those early days of school and what followed the same. I was considered as a child for a pretty long time, and therefore I haven’t really kept the exact border for the moment which I ceased being a child, and that should indeed be debatable. All the pictures that I share below are scanned from my old photographs.

Among the things that I can remember from those days include a number of calcium tablets, and a few tablets for immunity, but there was always Dabur Chyawanprash which took the centre stage on a lot of occasions. I used to run away from anything which was said to be good for health, but this one did have an interesting taste at that time, even though I did ask for one chocolate after having the same just because it had become a routine for me.

I was pretty good at smiling those days 😀

The need for some extra immunity rises from the fact that these days, there is rarely the time for children at the hands of parents who both would be working, quite in contrast to that idea of having the mother always being present for the child. Yes, things have changed radically, and the need to improve the child’s immunity and protect him or her from illness now has more requirements, and parents might not be able to do the same.

This is where something like Dabur Chyawanprash would come into the picture. It has also happened in my case, and I didn’t have that much of a healthy childhood. Born to working parents, and with a father who is always working at one or the other corner of the nation, not really there when you needed him the most, and the mother struggling to handle two pesky kids (I was still the less mischievous one, even as irritating enough), it was never going to be easy to get the right nutrients to the kids.

Maintaining one’s health is extremely important, and there is no need for any text book to talk about the same. When a child gets sick, it destroys the flow of daily life and the problem takes over the whole household. The children can always be asked not to go outside to play or venture out when the climate could get bad, but the question is about why can’t there be the thought about increasing the child’s immunity rather than stopping him or her from enjoying life before getting stuck with a boring life that is to follow?

Still, one of the more dangerous kids around, of course 😀

Here comes Dabur Chyawanprash again with its offer of a better immunity. There is no time for the parents to see what all the children eat and drink, and they often let them have food from outside – but how can one be sure about what they are provided with in the canteens and restaurants with their friends or relatives? Even yesterday, there existed the news about a number of restaurants given notice for supplying old food – and most of the times, these people are repeat violators and we don’t even realize that. There is nothing that we can do about that.

Despite our hope for an immune India, the world around us won’t get any better, and the choices we would have can only get worse. Due to the same, it is only a very good option to choose something like Dabur Chyawanprash. After all, what we want is the best for the kids, and what is better than giving them protection, that supply of immunity which they need, and what parents have the duty to provide them? Let’s hope for the better days and healthier children on this wonderful festival of lights, and keep the faith alive.

*This post is specifically written for the Indi Happy Hours campaign, A HEALTHY CHILD MAKES A HAPPY HOME! Thanks to Dabur India and IndiBlogger for the opportunity. For more details, please visit the link below:
https://www.liveveda.com/daburchyawanprash/

TeNy

The Diwali Nostalgia

PepsiCo #GharWaliDiwali film

There are only a few celebrations which survive on my nostalgia list, and among them the strongest surely might be Onam for all Keralites, but the brightest has indeed been Diwali or Deepavali as we call it here. This festival of lights have always given me hope throughout my life with its message that levitated above all despair to push it down, and reign supreme on that day which was another wonderful one. All the photos shared in this post are from my collection of snaps related to 2011 Diwali celebrations at our apartments.

As we used to live in an apartment building, the celebrations always brought us together and kept us interested. We have now changed our home, and the need for such meaningful celebrations was disappearing quickly from the minds of our new generation as well as the older generation which cared less. But there was always that time when the celebrations where at full power, and among them were the days of Onam, Diwali, Christmas and New Year – they had a certain beauty about it.

Let the light go on (taken on my Sony DSC-W310)

Among these celebrations, Diwali always maintained its separate identity. It was celebrated without any hesitation and no discussion was needed about how it was going to go. Every other celebration needed planning, but this one was just done. It was a spontaneous thing which we kids and youngsters took over and celebrated without thinking a lot about it. We decorated the place and arranged the lights along with a few candles as a few of us took the opportunity to buy extra crackers and the fireworks.

The sweets were brought by a few people who volunteered, along with our apartment’s association which bought the most of the same as well as sponsored those fireworks and crackers which would be brought by a few of us. I have always been scared of the crackers and fireworks, but this was one particular moment of the year when I found that lost courage and stood there praying and believing that it would all be just awesome and nothing else on the festival of lights.

One of the better shots I have on a Diwali night (taken on my Sony DSC-W310)

There are not many things that we have loved more than the Deepavali sweets which we had on those days, and some of our friends from the other states contributed with even better ones. There would also be the speech about the triumph of good over evil along with how we should care for others society and related stuff from the elders, and also a few songs which contribute to the day. There would be little kids and the old people alike who would wish to sing and contribute to the occasion.

We always took the special care about those lamps which found the best of us, and taking snaps with the same remained a priceless activity. We kids and youngsters always took the opportunity to enjoy the same a little bit more with exchanging gifts and wandering around the Sivarathri Manappuram which would also have its own beautiful arrangement for the festival, and then finishing off the day with porottas and milk shake; in my case with that unavoidable tea. It was a celebration which brought us together.

And there remains the fireworks (taken on my Sony DSC-W310)

Those days are gone now though, with the shifting of the home, and those friends who have already been lost to the extremely busy and barbaric world, with three of them who passed away in the last few years, and they have left that void which can never be filled, especially Jean Mathew who succumbed to brain tumor last year. There have been no Diwali without him capturing the essence of the festival with his camera, and he will be missed, every time there is Diwali or any other festival anywhere. The story of his fight against the disease and his faith has always brought hope and belief in our lives like the festival of Diwali itself.

This blog post was written as a part of the Indiblogger Happy Hour Campaign on DIWALI – A TIME FOR FAMILY! See more at: https://www.gharwalidiwali.com/

TeNy