Spring Contrary

Spring in Heidelberg started on a strange note with March providing sunny days and then interspersing it with a sudden snowstorm. Which brings me to the point I can show off my new camera. It just so happend I had taken a picture of a beautiful magnolia, on the cusp of blooming- deep pink buds on the ready. When the snow came, and it came in shovelfuls, it gave the term "false spring" quite a visual twist. So I present my Lumix LX2 camera pictures taken at 8 Megapixel in jpeg format and postprocessed with Picasa for saturation- to bring out the colours.

Cameras, pitures and recycling

Incase you wondered what cameras, pictures and recycling all has to do with one another, I must explain. I lost my cheap digital camera to an unfortunate accident on a canoe. It was the least of the damage. I lost my honour, being plunged head first into cold water 3 inches from a slippery, muddy bank after my boat was nudged away by our friends as I floundered to get a hold on the wet-bank!

Bottom line, I either use my massive Minolta 7000i camera weighing about 300 gms or look for a digital camera. The latter, a new one, with fancy optics, good choice of settings, but price!! Set you back by € 400-600. And what if another rivirine mishap should occur!

So I thought and consulted the oroogle (google the oracle), and found out about LOMOGRAPHY. Infact it reminded me of the days back as a kid with my first ever box camera. And also about what photography means to me. Which brought me (not alone) to the idea of reusing a so-called single-use camera.

And what was really scary was the idea that single-use cameras can be reused, but for the commercial considerations companies spend unbelievable amounts of energy, materials and time on selectively "re-cycling" them- plastic gets crushed, pelleted and made into, well squeaky new plastic. Don't believe me, watch this FUJI FILM demo. Impressive for the robots, scary for the energy spent doing all this!

So I decided to unsheath the camera I had bought from one of the drug stores (drogerie markt). Opened the back carefully, as advised by Camera Hacker Chieh Cheng for the Kodak Ultra or whatever they call their "use-and-throw" cameras. And the nice part was after finishing the roll, it has already rolled into the cannister that conventional film rolls come in.

The unpleasant surprise is there is no spool.
Take a look at the opened up read-view.


Unlike CamerHacker who had to cut away the other teeth of the forward wheel, here the forward wheel comes with the conventional 2-toothed wheel that locks into the inside of the film roll.

The outstanding issues:
1. whether an unspooled virgin film will hold inside the left-side of the camera and not loop over inside.
2. how to take multiple pictures on the same frame, i.e. disable the mechanism that prevents you from taking a picture on the same exposure multiple times (since I want to play with overlays).


I will keep you posted how this goes.

Shira- Marathi Padhat

Since all other topics bore me, sore me, make other people snore at me, I decided food it shall be.

Distinctiveness of various foods tends to come from varied components (typically local). So here is Shira (suji halwa to north-indians, sheera for s.indians or sweet cous-cous of the maghrabis).

Typical Pujecha Shira, after a worship (my memory being of satyanarayanachee puja) this PRASAD tops it. Makes up for listening to the Bhatji... :)

Puja puja rahte, potachee ki devachee.
(modified with comments and additions from a satyanarayanachi pooja webpage)
Quantity: 7-8 Plates Shira.

Material: 2 Vati Rava (Sooji), 1¾ Vati Sugar, ½ Vati Ghee, Badam (Almonds), Manuka (Resins), Charoli, Keshar (Saffron), Banana

Procedure:

1. Roast Rava in a utensil in ghee to make it well done i.e. color changes to brownish.
2. Add same amount of water as Rava if it is fine,.
3. Add water 1½ times the quantity of Rava, if Rava is coarse.
4. Heat & stir well till the water evaporates (thus cooking rava).
5. Add sugar & heat again.
6. Add Almond pieces, small circular pieces of banana, saffron, elaychi powder etc…
7. Control the heat & stir well to ensure that the lumps are not formed; shira is not too thick nor too thin like paste.

---------- ENJOY!
Remember, don't miss out on the bananas!

With the time on hand, I was curious about Charolis since I had been dreaming recently of them, and couldnt for the life of me figure out what exaclty they are called. So here goes:

Charoli
Buchanania latifolia

Also known as chironji. A small, rounded, lentil-shaped, almond-flavoured seed hardly 6 mm (1/4 in) long. It is used in Indian sweets, most often topping Karachi halwa and the simple but delicious yoghurt dessert, shrikhand (see YOGHURT). It is also one of the four seed kernels in the mixture called char magaz.

And pray then what is CHAR MAGAZ?? Well,

This should answer it:

Literally translated: Char means 4, Magaz means intelligence. WISE!

Char Magaz is a combination of four seeds/nuts: Almonds, Pumpkin seeds, Cantaloupe Seeds and Water melon seeds. This is believed that ingestion of this combination results in brain development and rejuvenation. This is primarily used in Rajasthan area. Char Magaz is used to make Thandaii, Bhang, as well as sweets. Char Magaz is also consumed by nursing mothers in the belief that essentials will be passed through milk to babies for their brain development. There may be some truth to this. Almonds and Pumpkin seeds are high in fatty acids that are good for building and maintain parts of the brain.

AND While on the theme of spices and CURRY!!!
Here is the curry plant or Murraya koenigii Spreng.

The waters at Taormina

The azure mediterranean with the full sunshine on a rocky beach never ceases to amaze me. This little exemplary bay was also as it happened full of fish very close to the beach.
  

Taxidi entos Siculia

This is a photojournal of a recent trip Irs and I made to Sicily. The plan was hasty and endured many changes. Some dramatic and some trivial. At the end, I also got a mighty bit of local knowledge from a friend, Isa. Especially where to eat. And we discovered our own favourites too.

The first day we landed in Catania. As the plane circled Ira thought she saw red flashes from the general direction of what we assumed might have been Mt. Etna. We assumed the next day it could have also simply been lightning and reflections from the clouds and a lot of imagination!

That very night, for it was already midnight, we picked up a car that we were meant to rent. Just remember if you ever pick up a fiat, the reverse gear is locked against accidental usage- lift the little disc to engage! After this minor discovery followed the more substantial one that unline in Germany, signposts in Sicily tend to be more cryptic, hidden and highway (autostrada) signposts often tucked behind advertisement hoardings. The exits and entrances often pass through narrow passages between houses. Its amazing that then once we reached the autostrada to Messina, it was smooth sailing. Until reaching Taormina, where we figured that we needed to figure out how to pay the highway toll. Thankfully at that time of the night it is all free since nobody mans the turnstiles anyway.

Detective Selbs

Heidelberg has had its share of literary attention- disproportionate to its size, but then especially in such a context, size is nothing. So it is all that much more interesting that a mystery novel series could be based on a relaxed, university and touristy town like Heidelberg (and Mannheim).

Selb is a private detective and a former judge in Nazi-Germany. His friends and colleagues come from the same lineage. His supposed reason for turning to private detecting- the "old ones" from Nazi days continued their lives as if nothing happened, even took on the same j0bs. This part is somehow the most mysterious and often unexplained part of the charachter. The rest is adventuring and often (on the part of Herr Selb) some bumbling (Selb(st)verstaendlich = Self-evident).

Now after having read two of his books:

• Selbs Betrug
• Selbs Mord

I am beginning to see certain gaps in the charachter of the protagonist. Or maybe the WW2 veteran German, who has turned for the better was not a literary theme I am familiar with, or maybe I find such ambiguity almost uncomfortable.

I will post more reviews on this later.

From the sky

So if you wanted to see what the north korean nuclear weapons facility looks like, or Abu Ghureib site in Iraq, look here, for the eye in the sky sees (almost) all.

Geek and think

What is a geek. Why would a geek not think? What is thinkgeek? Toys for boys (and curls for gurls?)? Pun intended, offence not.

View from my living room. Der Odenwald. The forest reputed to have hidden Siegfried. 

It appears to be still a matter of debate whether the name Odenwald stems from Odins Wald (the forest of Odin) (Ref. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odenwald).

Odin, as many of you mythology freaks are aware is the most powerful of Germanic tribal Gods. Something like Indra for Hindu iconography. A fascinating entry on wikipedia (here) indicates that his identity as king of gods is ambiguous, being sometimes also associated with war, poetry or the liks. But then you dont want to particularly know about Viking poetry!

But coming back to the Odenwald,

The Semperoper Dresden (http://www.semperoper.de) by night. 

Dresden Dollop

Since my travels to the city otherwise referred to the Florence on the Elbe (http://dancingcobra.blogspot.com) I have been scheming more of the German experience. Wagners city - Bayreuth, the Baltic Sea spas and maybe even the valley of the Neanderthals. Yes, it exists. There will be much to say AFTER I have been there, and I can see myself rising in rhetorical excitement at it.