Harry Potter and Orville

Haha.
Well it works. On thursday Orville and I went to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and an ultra cool theatre. Thus, the title to this blog. I was going to mention it yesterday, but I was itching to write about the Global Warming thing cause I had gone to bed the night before thinking and arguing in my head about it.
Anyway, the ultra cool theatre was ultra cool cause it had fully reclining seats. The kind on which you press a button and the chair slowly reclines. It was totally exciting. And the seats were really soft too.
I enjoyed the movie. Its the best I've seen of Harry Potter movies but the fact that I enjoyed it so much may also be a result of the fact that I haven't watched a movie in a long time. But still, it reminded me of why I used to love reading the books and now I'm actually looking forward to reading the new one although, when I'll have the time to do that, I don't know!
It was absolutely FANTABULOUS catching up with Orvi. The time went really fast as we got talking - a whole year's worth of conversation! We had lunch at TGI Fridays which is quite an expensive restaurant. Not sure, why we went there. I knew it would be relatively expensive but only got the full picture when we actually looked at the menu card! Oh well, atleast we could hear each other's voice in there as compared to outside where there are so many people and the ambience was really quite nice. I did take a photo but I don't have it with me at the moment so I'll put it up later.
I'm spending the night at an aunt's house today. I was actually just supposed to stay for lunch and then go back home but after I got here, she asked to stay so here I am still. Its nice for a change. AND they have TV and the internet for which I don't have to pay! :P
Next week will get even busier. I start my cooking and baking classes on Monday and will also hopefully start teaching at a school for underprivileged kids on one of my afternoons and then there are the dreaded assignments and tests... ahem.
Anyway, more later!
~Me~

Its happening.

Heat waves kill 500 in Hungary...
Flooding deaths prompt warnings...
Heatwave and wildfires across southeastern Europe...
Pakistan hit by deadly storms...
Sudan hit by major floods...
Major drought in Moldova...

These are just a few of the recent weather headlines I picked out from BBC.com
Why are we so indolent?
Why does something have to happen in our own backyard until we pay some attention to it?
Why are we not bothered as long as it doesn't affect us personally?

Maybe you're thinking, but this is just weather, we don't have control over it. But it's not. It's not JUST weather, it's Global Warming. It's because of you and me. It's because we keep ignoring the signs when they're glaring at us in the face. It's because we don't realise that these things just add to the problems that people already face.
A drought is not pleasant. Especially when a country is already stricken by war or extreme poverty.
The thing is, even if this is a situation millions of miles away, our actions have effects.

Right now, they're having negative effects. And it will get worse if we go on like this.
But we can make it better. Its as simple as turning off the lights when we leave the room. Turning off the ACs when we don't really need them. (ACs are very very bad carbon emmitters). Walking the small distances instead of driving there. Using public transport (I know its not always pleasant. Trust me, I live in Bombay)

But it really doesn't take much.
So what will you do to decrease your Global Warming footprint?

Here's a link to a site that lists the top 12 ways you can reduce Global Warming.

And there's plenty more information about the issue on the net. I've mentioned this many times before, I'll say it again. If you have time and a little bit of money, get a hold of this movie and watch it and get others to watch it too.

An Inconvenient Truth

And it all came tumbling down…

My parents left this morning. That’s sad. I miss them already and the house seems empty. Its just me and granny. They went back to Bangalore and will be there from now on… My dad will go to Delhi for a while but he’ll be working in Bangalore which is great cause they can finally live, like really live in the house that they built.
Anyway, so I attempted at making this big old room a little more livable and put up my photos which positively manage to make me feel at home wherever I am or wherever I move to. Somehow my photos remind me of who I am and where I come from. Something that remains the same I guess, the past. You can’t alter it. Of course not all of the past was good but the pictures only remind me of the good, of the things that I am grateful for – my friends, my family, Hebron, my many ‘homes’, the places that I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to… I look at them and I smile.
I attempted to move the bed a little and the whole thing just fell apart. I kid you not. I think I’ve mentioned before that my granny’s house is an antique and everything in it is also antique and its better not to fool around with anything but I stupidly tried to move the bed; big mistake! The whole thing caved in with a big bang which obviously caused a frenzy and granny came running in to see the joke. GAH! Anyway, thankfully it didn’t actually break, all the planks that hold it together just came out and basically, we had to remove the mattresses which are extremely heavy and then put it back together. Oh well, at least some of the dust accumulated from under the bed got cleaned up and now I know never to move the bed again!!
I’m making pasta tonight. Yesterday we went to this HUGE mall called ‘Inorbit’ and since we’re Bengalis we just bought food and ate food! The clothes stores are usually extortionately priced at these places so that’s mainly what I do in malls and of course if there’s a Crossword or any other book store, I’ll be sure to pop in. Anyway, so at one of the stores, this guy was making sample of pastas and you can try it out for free and as a rule, I like trying out free food (!) so he made some for me and it was great! Not much work required, he used some pasta sauce imported from the US and I bought some so its pasta for dinner tonight.
I’m planning on joining a cooking and baking class at college. I love cooking and I have the time and I’ve actually always wanted to do a course in baking so YAY! Looking forward to that.
That’s it for now! I promise to put up some photos of Bombay up soon. Orville is coming this week and he’s agreed to be a tourist with me and so I shall take lots of photos…
Later,
Tina

Do something!

…Dare you to move,
Dare you to move…
Dare you to lift yourself,
Up off the floor.
Dare you to move,
Dare you to move…
Like today never happened,
Today never happened…
Today never happened before…

…Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell.
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna go?
Salvation is here…

- ‘Dare you to move’ by Switchfoot

I’ve never really aimed for excellence. I’ve always been okay with doing “good enough” but is “good enough” enough?
Obviously everybody can’t be the best at something or rather everything or the same thing and that’s not really what it’s about. We don’t have to compete with others at everything – that could easily become nasty but shouldn’t we still aim for excellence? Our personal excellence which is (my definition) what God has made us for, aiming at our purpose with all that we have, all that God has equipped us with – our skills, our situations, our circumstances, everything. Wherever we are, whatever is our lot (for want of a better word)?
I don’t know if that came out right. It’s just something that’s nagging me and I’m trying to make sense of it...
Any ideas, anybody, somebody?

Anyway, moving along...

Here’s something to chew on…

- Did you know that there 8, 00, 000 people who suffer from leprosy in the world?
- 30% of them are children
- Did you know that 2 thirds of that total number of leprosy patients are in India? That’s approximately 5, 33, 333 which is a very large part of the total number and that’s appalling for a nation that boasts of prospering, a high development rate and all that jazz and we can’t even get rid of a disease that’s a 100% curable!
Why?
-Because of ignorance.
People are not aware.
We are not aware.
-Even worse, people treat it as a “curse from the gods”.
-Most of those who are afflicted are poor and do not have a strong enough immunity to fight the disease.
Leprosy can afflict anyone; its an airborne disease but is one of the lease infectious diseases known to man and usually we are strong enough to fight it without drugs.
Drugs which are available (free of charge) can cure a person completely but sometimes in the later stages of the disease, if there is deformity, this cannot be reversed.
Nobody dies of Leprosy but that doesn’t make it any less of a problem.
We have to eradicate it. Poverty is difficult to eradicate but at least we can take leprosy of their plates.
If you want to contribute, (even Rs. 5/= counts) let me know. And let others know about it too...

Later,

The Twinny Birthday!

Isn’t Twin such a funny word? I think its funny. Twin… Twin…
Ahem. It’s the Twins’ birthday today. Well, they’re not really twins but they share a birthday but were born a year apart. Yes, it’s the convoluted desi family tree again.
In plain words; both Alva and Niru are celebrating their birthdays today! One is in Bangladesh and the other is in Australia, and the rest of us? Well, I’m here, in India, Grace is in Korea, Meg is in Jeddah and Sushi is also in Bangladesh and Tashu is somewhere between the US and Botswana (not sure) so having a party is not exactly possible! If we were in the dorm, we’d all have woken up at 12 o’clock, made a lot of noise, perhaps spilled some Jell-o on somebody’s bed and then opened presents, each one of us as excited as the other! What fun!

Someday, someday, again we shall do all that madness! For now, I wish both of you, my darling friends, a FANTABULOUS day! May you feel as special as I always felt with you guys around on my birthdays!
Lots of Love and God Bless,
Tina-Bina.

I got You.

"I got You,
and it doesn't even really matter,
if I've got nothing else...
I got You..."

-Third Day

Feeling a little lonely today.
Missing my friends.
Wish there was someone to talk to (digging a little deeper than the superficial), have a Bible study with, pray with...

Ah well,

More later,

Love,
Me!

Fool for you

There are times when faith and common sense do not align,
When hard-core evidence of You is hard to find,
I am silenced in the face of argumentative debate and,
It’s a long hill, it’s a lonely climb…
Cause they want proof;
They want proof of all these mysteries I claim,
Cause only fools would want to chant a dead man’s name…
Maybe its true but…

I’ll be a fool for You
Oh, because You asked me too.
A simpleton who’s seemingly naïve,
I do believe You came and made Yourself…
A fool for me…

-Lyrics from a song by Nicole Nordeman

It’s Thursday evening (although you may not read this till Saturday cause I may not be able to post it till then.) Any-the-how (my French teacher likes to say that, I find it most amusing!). Life is good. Mostly. I’m enjoying my long train rides and my studies. Although I prefer the train rides when they are relatively empty and the work, when it’s Psychology! I positively dislike Economics, its official. It just does not appeal to me at all. I fail to see the point of it and I can’t really apply it to my life and so it’s even more uninteresting (to me). I know I shouldn’t have that attitude cause at the end of the day I DO have to do it for the next two years (the other option is History! Even worse. Well, maybe not worse, but I don’t think it’ll be any much of an improvement for me) so it would really help to at least TRY and be interested. C.S. Lewis said somewhere in ‘Mere Christianity’ that if you don’t love something, pretend like you do and eventually your feelings will catch up. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I must pretend to LOVE economics. Yippee! (Of course while I’m typing this, I’m hoping the teacher won’t turn up tomorrow!) ;)
I must tell you of my French classes. It’s absolute chaos. Yes, I have to study French, which is absolutely crazy. While I admit, I have studied it before, I’ve always had horrible teachers that led me to dislike the subject but then in A’levels, Orville’s passion for it and Meg’s also made me think a little differently of the subject but still happy with my German! And now, I must betray German and study French! It’s a university requirement to study a second language and the options are Hindi or French. Now, I can speak Hindi and also understand it, but I haven’t much knowledge of the script and since all the Hindi students have several years of experience of the language (pretty much all of their schooling life), I would be utterly lost in that class. So French it is. The problem is: our French class has a little more than 100 students, ONE teacher, several students who don’t know a word of the language (I know Bonjour!) and a syllabus that’s NOT exactly elementary – we have to study Fontine, an entire text by Victor Hugo. And my personal problem is that every time I try to recall a French word, the German counterpart comes rushing in! Imagine me at the end of this all, I won’t be able to speak any language at all!
I’ve been reading a LOT. All of a sudden, I’ve developed this seemingly insatiable hunger for books and I’m just gulping them down one after the other so it’s a good thing that there’s a huge library to feed me in that way. Just recently I finished reading Joni by Joni Eareckson (Now Joni Eareckson Tada). I used to follow one of her daily devotional books which I started a little before I left school, Mr. Fisher had bought it for me and wow, I have such a distinct memory of that day! It all just came gushing back. Anyway, so this book is like an Autobiography – how she was an active young woman (17 yrs old) and then within a split of a second, in a tragic diving accident became a quadriplegic, wanted desperately to stop living, became an agnostic, fought with God, and then slowly came to trust Him again and has since helped a whole lot of other people come to the faith and also deal with quadriplegia (basically paralysis from neck down) and other similar handicaps. She’s a great woman. I would absolutely love to meet her someday….
Right, its dinner time.
Sorry, this is SO long! I obviously got a little carried away….
Later,

Compelle Intrare

What it means...

"But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood the plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our Liberation.”

- An extract from C.S. Lewis’s ‘Surprised by Joy’

Raindrops on Roses.
Ah, what a blessed thing to sleep till 9:30 in the morning! On Monday its back to 5:45 am again! ACK! After a whole year of waking up at least no sooner than 7… what am I talking about? I’ve never had to wake up this early on a daily basis! So imagine the shock to my body! Everybody says you get used to it though, so I’m hoping that’ll be the case, soon, very soon.
Anyway, for some reason on Sunday morning I woke up thinking about “The Sound of Music” and as soon as I got up I asked Ma what she had done to our copy of the movie and she said she’d given it away to Resham – a little girl in Zambia who I’m glad inherited the tape cause when I had heard that she’d never watched the movie I tried to educate her a little and instill in her the love that I have of it and I succeeded! Muahahahaha! The only thing is that now I don’t own a copy of my favourite movie anymore. L Our copy in Zambia was a video tape and I actually have not seen a video cassette player in anybody’s house in India. They’re just so outdated, it’s a shame! I used to know everything about video tapes, like how to rewind it manually or how to check if the tape is in good condition. Imagine, to our kids, video tapes to them will be like old vinyl records are to us! GASP!
Oh well, the point is I need to get a copy of “The Sound of Music” on DVD. When I told my mum this she’s like, “Why? You’ve watched it more than a hundred times already!” This is true but I have to show my kids also, no? So if any of you want to buy me a present, you can get me the DVD! ;)
Ta!

Saturday!

I can honestly be happy about it being Saturday evening since i'm not sitting around at home like its the weekend everyday anymore...
No special plans, just sleeping and reading! I'm reading "Surprised by Joy" by Clive Staples Lewis (remember the chronicles of Narnia, yeah the genius who wrote that!) Its good. I have to return it on Monday so hopefully I'll be able to finish it this weekend.
Also in pyschology class we learned about "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"! Its just so fascinating how complex our bodies are! So this man actually had a condition known as Prosopagnosia which is caused by damage in the right hemisphere of the brain in just one particular spot. Everything else was absolutely normal about him (he was a very talented music teacher) except that he could not recognise things; not even his own feet and actually mistook his wife for a hat and a grandfather clock as his doctor on other occassions!
You can read more about it here
More later,
ME :)

Train Ride Home

Hi everyone!
Am sitting in the college computer lab and thought I'd do a little blog but there's not much inspiration... Actually, there are just so much to say, i'm not sure how to say it!
As an outline: Life is good!
I'm almost done with my first week of classes and most lectures have started except for french (our teacher has mysteriously disappeared!). I also have lectures tomorrow. Infact Saturdays are my busiest days with five lectures one after the other!
Every subject is totally fascinating to me! Except for Economics... Hopefully, I'll gain interest otherwise its gonna be even harder than it already is! But Psychology and Sociology are great! So great that I'm actually willing to do extra reading, which I need to do anyways cause most of the students already have a background in the subject whereas I don't.
My favourite part of the campus is by far the Library! I don't think I have ever seen so many books in my life. Be it sociology, philosophy, religion, novels, literature, magazines, newspapers, whatever... there is abundance of everything. Its like a dream come true to think that all these books are at my disposal for no charge for three years and maybe more. I am so grateful!
The canteen is also great, but also always crowded! Imagine a college full of 5000 girls who are like always hungry! Dosas, sandwiches, noodles, chips, etc etc. And its pretty cheap too.
To top of things, Sophia is located in a great area so there are loads of shops and eating places within walking distance and also the ocean! A friend and I went exploring today cause we had two hours to kill before our next class and discovered many places where we can hang out close by.
Ohhhh! God is good. I feel so foolish to think that I ever doubted His plans for me. This is a million times better than what I had in mind for myself!
Anyway, more later...
I'm gonna get something to eat and catch the train home.
Done for the day and looking forward to tomorrow....

When it rains, it pours...

I can apply that to a LOT of things in my life at the moment, but I'm not going to go into analogies. I thought I'd quickly check my mail and facebook and read updated blogs and then get out of here but apparently not. I waded my way here, like literally! Its pouring in Mumbai and the roads are all WET and there's water upto your ankles in many places but I haven't been washed away.
College is great. Its only been like one day but I have been waiting for this day for a long time and its actually kind weird to realise that I am in it. I'm in that day; my first day of college. Give me a second to take in.

Right. Yeah, so it was great. I'm loving the independence. My parents have been more nervous than I have! But I am so grateful for them. I don't know how I would have managed this last month without them here to help me. But now I'm settled.
Andheri
Vile Parle
Santacruz
Khar
Bandra
....
Ugh. I'm still learning! Those are the names of the stops that I have to pass to get to Grant Rd. from where I then take a bus that takes me to college. There are about 12/13 stops in between, its about a 35 minute journey and I have to leave at 6:30 ish to get there in time for my 8:00 am class so that there's enough time to cross impossible roads, wade in water, push your way through crowds and then of course, find where my class is! This is life. I'm lovin' it.
More as and when,
Me