aloha

well it's out lat post FROM hawaii, but there will be more once we get back (at least from me...wait these are all from me).

i (rits) spent the last days in oahu..jumped off a cliff into the ocean, did a 6 mile hike to an amazing waterfall, hung out on some of the most beautiful beaches on these islands....it was AMAZING!!! visiting my friend toby was beyond words. wow.

ruk fell asleep in the sun and as a result we can longer see him....he is just a walking shadow.

woke up at 3AM and drove up the volcano to see the sun rise...spectacular...everything stressful about the world washes away when u watch the sun rise from the top of a volcano and then jump into the ocean when you get back.

this trip has been such an amazing experience on so many levels. long talks with ruk on the beach late night (and by late i mean 9PM due to jet lag...which im only now over, now that we are leaving)....amazing food. amazing beaches, scenery, energy. i feel like a new woman and ruk does too.

being able to really just chill out and vacation with someone else is a rare thing. ruk and i do it well together. personally, found a long needed sense of shanti here and i thank my faux hubbby ruk for that. something about swimming into an endless ocean makes you realize that you can really take anything that life has to offer you with a smile....even when you don't want to. .

ruk and i don't want to leave. but we have to. and that is sad. but we had this incredible vacation that makes all the noise of new york okay.

so maybe ruk is disconnected and i can't commit to even a newspaper subscription but it's all good because it turns out that the world is a little bigger than we tend to think in our microcosm of NYC. and that's about as philosophical as i will get in a silly blog.

from ruk: i never want to leave. (frankly, that's more deep than the usual coming out him....ha).

photos to be posted on flickr...ad i will edit so that u dont have to endure 10001 picture....cuz there are literally that many.

we're on our way *home*. lovesNb (and rJr)

punini

punini is the hawaiian name we have given our car. the other option la'hymen. but punini just made so much more sense.

last night a tragedy occured when ruk's camera encountered the infamous cannon E16 error...this means the camera is broken. we are left with just one camera (fewer pictures, sad) and alex, if you are reading this we really really really hope you mailed in that warranty thing that ruk left in your car. ruk's camera is officially on a moratorium. that's right kids, i just used a 5 sylable word. now what?

well, we went to lahanea yesterday, an old whaling town. we proceeded to find a beach with cute surfer boys to stare at but the waves weren't big enough so there werent any. then we hung out on our beach. and then....the photoshoot. i could write sooo much more but 1. i'm off to oahu in a hot minute to see my friend toby and don't have time...and yes, i will have severe separation anxiety for ruk. but he will not and intends on going to a nude beach. huh. and 2. these pictures are waaaaay more interesting than anything i could write.

so my dear friends, i challenge u to a game of radiology/photohunt...point out the 5 differences in the two pictures:
(i seem to have to post them through flickr becuz this blogspot thingy is being buggy...sorry.)

there are even more honeymoon/moo-moo pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/saritabhatt/

paradise can make a couple go nuts. ruk and i are clearly already there...insanity.

radiology

IMG_0740.JPG
Originally uploaded by saritabhatt.

?????

radiology

IMG_0698.JPG
Originally uploaded by saritabhatt.

what's different?

back to life, back to reality

reality is this paradise resort. and this is the place ruk and i came back to this evening after a day long road trip to hana...reality equals intense amounts of food (buffets), drinks, long talks on the beach looking at the moon and searching for stars. ruk thought that a shooting star was a meteor and he had never seen one..but he saw a few tonight and was schooled (by me) in the fact that a shooting star is a dying star. [CORRECTION: WE JUST LOOKED UP SHOOTING STAR AND I AM NOW PUBLICLY SAYING HERE THAT I AM WRONG. A SHOOTING STAR IS IN FACT A METEOR. RUK WAS RIGHT. WHATEVS]. wait, why aren't we married...i bet most married people dont have such blissful honeymoons (sorry nush/vicks).

ive been told that i should stop apologizing for bad blog write ups. so i'll say this only once...I AM NOT SORRY IF THIS BLOG SUCKS AND IS A WASTE OF YOUR TIME. STOP READING IT THEN.

we left the hotel around 830 (after an extremely huge buffet breakfast, because as we all know, ruk loves his buffets...skinny as the kid is).....and we set off on the road to hana...which is a tiny sleepy town on the other side of the island. ruk drove us out there through a lot of rain and crazy ass windy roads where we both thought we would die..luckily i played DJ (sorry nush, i think i was better than even u) so that if we were to die on the crazy roads, at least it would be to an amazing set of songs. very limited list here of what was playing:
mos def, punjabi MC, u2, mary j, falu, falguni pathak, various bollywood, muse, journey, madonna, george michael, james, wyclef, mobb deep, indian grooves mix, brandie carlile, regina spektor, rabbi shergill, paul simon, m.i.a., jack johnson, karunesh, random anus hip hop, random dj brown mix....and the list goes on and on...8 hours long.

what we learned today: ruks mind is blank while driving. ruk is great driver. i'm a great driver too but had more faith in ruk than myself on the crazy single lane roads. ruk and i would have been miserable if we were on vacation with any of our friends because none of them wake up as early as we do. ruk and i are literally black and burnt but are quite happy with our current state of overweight, over-tanned selves. when ruk and i sing songs for some odd reason he takes the high notes ad i take the low notes. there are other brown honeymooning couples in maui...we just dress better. ducks/birds are violent creatures and like to attack ruk while driving. when i drive the car, it stops working. odd. we both have very weak ankles and could have fallen/died at any moment and in fact expected to, but thankfully didnt. we like to hike so long as the entire process is less than 1/2 hour. i need to get over myself. ruk needs to get over himself. roll with it.

and now, for the pictures...we took over 200 today and several videos. but i will only torture u readers (i.e me and ruk) with a few highlights:

ruk and the breakfast buffet


the other brown honymooners. check out the busines socks and sneaks


one of the bird that attacked ruk while driving:


black sand beach:


one of many watersfalls where we stopped to chill



desi chick by car take one


desi chick by car take two



ruk the best driver ever


"hiking"


"hiking"


avoiding convertible sunburn


post road trip dip in the ocean


sunset

jet lag

its 3AM and i cant sleep....although i did pass out around 930PM because i was so tired...damn.

ruk and i spent the day going from the beach to the pool and back to the beach. the water is around 80 degrees. the pool has a grotto bar and the sand is like silk.

i dont have anything to witty or fun to report because it is, after all, 3AM. this is just paradise and i never want to go home. today we are driving the coastal road to hana and will stop along the way to jump into several waterfalls...ending our road trip with power hang gliding adventure...

ruk reading east of eden at the beach


ruk on beach


rits on beach


maybe at a decent hour, i'll have something more interesting to report...until then, be jealous, suckers.

back to sleep..i hope.

privlege

it has been one long long long day..at this point, been awake for over 24 hours, including a 13 hour journey to maui...coach class...stuck in a middle seat where i had about 1 cenitmeter of room on either end of me (we couldnt get the honeymoon upgrade because the flight was full)...but it was all good cuz i had ruk to keep me company, i mean ignore me for the entire time. apparently spiderman 3 was more interesting that my deep thoughts on life. this is has been an amazing honey moon so far.

we have turned into japanese tourists...or desi tourists (which probably makes more sense), photographing everything in site.
it is absolutely unreal, undeserved....but we are goig to soak up every minute of it and chill... although our 2 suitcases were the last come out of baggage claim and we were tired, once we got the honeymoon car upgrade and had at least 2 people tell us how happy we look together (puke), we got into that convertible and we both screamed with excitement (insert gay ruk joke here).

we've decided to spend our week taking pictures of each other and then blogging them to the zero people that read this late night. we might also make some music videos, but dont get your hopes up people. and there is also a good chance that we will stop posting things all together because we are lazy and even sNb productions needs a day off once in awhile...but, at any rate. here are some highlights:

after 10 hours in the air:






my tray table:




welcome lais at hotel




view from balcony of the the room:




sunset





free bottle of champagne for the honeymooners:



well thats all u get. and by u i mean me. cuz i am the only one reading this thing,...except for the occasional nushie who was the first to find this blog by googling me...scarey.

ruk is snoring, im out.

On repeat

I've been feeling guilty for not writing more so I'm going to start doing so...and not feel the responsibility to make these long or all that interesting (especially since it's mainly just me reading these posts in the first place).



Last week I went to the Falu CD release party and I have to say...as critical as i can be (with no just cause) of some of the new music that's out there (especially music with a brown twang), I was blown away by Falu's performance. Her music brings classical indian music to new heights with dancing beats, a rock solid band and, of course, her brilliant voice.

I was in CT (home state) this past weekend and I spent a good deal of my time there driving around Windsor, fairly aimlessly, listening to her CD over and over again. Her voice is soothing, yet with a kick. The band is clearly composed of some very accomplished musicians and the production value of the CD is very tight. Falu's voice took me down the memory lane of childhood--weaving together india and america in a unique and tasteful way.

So, if there is anyone out there reading this, I HIGHLY recommend you take a minute and check the band Falu, purchase the CD and support artists that are doing amazing work.

GIF Wesbite

Well, here it is...a first draft look at the Global India Fund Website. It's just a rough skeleton for what's to come....a tiny bit of info on what the organization is about. It needs to be filled out...more information, substance, etc. But for now, you know who to contact if you want to learn more about GIF.

round 1

jogi from saritabhatt (sNb productions) on Vimeo

this past weekend (5/19) we celebrated the upcoming wedding of my good friends vicii and anush....we from the NYU crew (me, ruk and barbara) would like to take full credit for making this wedding happen given that we were the 3 people that introduced them.

so a group of us (doris, barbara, kiks, michelle and me) got together on various saturday mornings over the past 2 months and put together this little dance for them. the songis called Jogi andit's by Punjabi MC....i picked the song because it apprrpriately spoke to the couple's love for hip-hop, dancing and all things that slant towards the ghetto. it was also short enough for us to only make fool's of ourselves for all of 3 minutes and 11 seconds and it had a builtin applause in the song....all reasons to me. but the most priceless thing about this song is the lyrics:

Na de dil pardesi nu, tainu nit da rona pai jaaoga
Don't give your heart to a foreigner, or you will have to cry everyday
Naal ranjhe te jogi de, tainu jogan hona pai jaaoga
Falling in love with an ascetic/hermit will make you the same
main ishq de allayah zakhman de khud has has ke moonh see laangi,
I will soothe all my pains from love, with a smile on my face
je yaar mera mainu zehar dave, main gat gat kar ke pee langi
Even if my lover gives me poison, I will gulp it down readily
Come on ......

and this weekend--memorial day--the wedding....

The Big Act to Follow

This is a link to one of the many articles published on my sister's recent trip to India with Ashely Judd and YouthAIDS/PSI. CLICK HERE

One of the many positive outcomes of her trip has been the creation of the Global India Fund, a donor advisory fund that will collaborate with local NGOs and programs in India that are working to solve the country's public health problems. It's a very exciting time for both of us (since I'm working on the Global India Fund with her). Proposal writing, powerPointing, logo making, meetings, talking, collaborating, more and more and more....and it just keeps making the Fund bigger and better....GIF, you heard it here first....soon to be a household name among the charitable-giving South Asian global community.

screeeeeeeeeech BOOM!

so this is long overdue and i've been clearly slacking at my attempts to be a certified "blogger"....but here we go.

last weekend i woke up at 830AM to an alarming crashing sound that didn't sound just like an accident. I looked out my window and say that a car had somehow run right into a building at the corner of s. elliot and fulton street in Fort Greene....right next to the store My Little India. I have no idea as to what happened or why this occurred, but i proceeded to take a few pictures with my camera phone of the accident. Neighbors came running out in robes and PJs, people stood jaw-dropped at the site and I saw 3 guys walk out of the car with no noticeable injuries.

what was even more crazy, was that the car went INTO the building !!! that is just nuts..a brick building. I am surprised that the building couldn't withstand the impact (so sketchy) and that no one was hurt.

A Saturday in Fort Greene, Brooklyn...random.

The Global India Fund

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Sarah Freeman
April 2, 2007
202-994-8874
mcmsxf@gwumc.edu








GW Medical Center Professor Joins Hollywood Actress to Raise Awareness of HIV

Washington, DC— In an effort to raise awareness of HIV among those at risk in India, Amita Vyas, PhD, assistant professor in the department of Prevention and Community Health at the GW School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) joined Hollywood actress Ashley Judd and YouthAIDS/Population Services International (PSI) on a mission to Mumbai, India. With a population of more than one billion, it is estimated that at least 5.7 million people in India are infected with HIV, the world’s largest number of HIV infected persons.

The National Geographic Chanel filmed this Indian mission, which will air as an hour long special on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2007, in more than 170 countries and to more than 200 million households around the world. The documentary starring Ashley Judd and Bollywood actress Sushmita Sen focuses on the complex relationships between women’s rights and empowerment on HIV. Women and children are increasingly becoming vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and it estimated that 38 percent of infected persons in India are women. The male to female ratio of HIV infected people has shifted in recent years. In 2001 there were 55 HIV infected females to every 100 HIV infected males. Just four years later in 2005, it was reported there were 60 HIV infected females to every 100 HIV infected males. This indicates the increasing feminization of HIV/AIDS in India. “The empowerment of girls and women is an essential tool to preventing the HIV/AIDS emergency from exploding any further,” Ashley Judd told reporters in India.




The delegation spent one week in Mumbai, India’s financial capital and home to Bollywood, a Hindi language film industry in India. Dr. Vyas visited and spoke with commercial sex workers, in Kamthipura. She also spent time in Dharvi, the largest slum in Asia and she observed PSI/India’s HIV prevention programs such as street theater, help lines, and social marketing of condoms. Dr. Vyas spent time at voluntary counseling and testing centers for sex workers and their male clients. In Mumbai, approximately 5,000 sex workers reside, and an estimated 45 percent are HIV positive.

The mission was complimented with a series of high-level meetings and receptions with Mumbai’s corporate leaders and the entertainment industry, to develop creative partnerships in the prevention of HIV. “Public-private partnerships are the key to combating public health issues such as HIV in India. The Indian-American community has the power and potential to join forces in a meaningful way to build the capacity of NGOs in India who are saving lives,” said Dr. Vyas. “We need to be ‘smart’ donors and provide support for evidence-based programs in the public health sector of India. We have the ability, resources and most importantly the compassion and courage to make a difference.”

The George Washington University Medical Center is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary academic health center that has consistently provided high-quality medical care in the Washington, DC metropolitan area for 176 years. The Medical Center comprises the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the 11th oldest medical school in the country; the School of Public Health and Health Services, the only such school in the nation’s capital; GW Hospital, jointly owned and operated by a partnership between The George Washington University and Universal Health Services, Inc.; and the GW Medical Faculty Associates, an independent faculty practice plan. For more information on GWUMC, visit www.gwumc.edu.




# # #

for the sake of the name

Friday night (3/16) I saw the Namesake at BAM. I'm not generally one for writing a movie review but this one struck a chord. So I can at least give it that much credit...it made me feel compelled to respond to it, even if just in my small unread blog-like way. Any chord. Most of the people I went with (who were mainly indo-American) didn't like the film...calling it a sell-out, cliché, and creatively defunct. I don't totally disagree but I do think that there is another side to consider.

The movie is based on a cliche theme. Bi-cultural, identity questioning, ABCDs. It was a popular theme (and a somewhat failed genre emerging in the late 1990's) that has passed its time. The ABCD experience has evolved...there are now 3rd and 4th generations popping up and those that have recently arrived from the motherland are coming to a "new" America....a place where, for the most part, people know what curry is, have seen an Indian woman in a sari and recognize the difference between American Indians and Indian Americans...(I'd like to emphasize FOR THE MOST PART..although maybe being born and raised on the East coast and living NYC has me jaded). But just because the theme is a more dated one, doesn't mean that movies, books, music, etc exploring this theme can't be fresh. In fact, I think that exploring these themes still do shed light on a topic that many people still don't understand. So, this is where my positive nod to the movie comes....the namesake is what it is. it explores a dated theme in a dated manner (although I wish it was explored in a fresh manner). It is the best ABCD movie that has been produced (on a large scale) to date (in comparison to American Desi, ABCD, etc etc). It isn't breathtaking, but maybe it's not meant to be. It lacks in strongly developing any characters and relationships, but maybe the America (read: white) audience that it was made for can't handle going too deep when dealing with a "foreign culture." 95% of the audience at BAM was non-Indian. When I went to see Mira Nair and Jhumpa Lahiri speak at the Barnes and Nobles in Union Square the week the movie opened, the audience was amazingly ethnically mixed...but then again, it was still predominantly white. And I don't say this to be negative, racist, etc...in fact, I think the opposite. I think that Nair and Lahiri have done a great job with illustrating a very standard immigrant experience to a larger mass-market audience....in a very standard way...again, it is what it is.

As far as the actual acting goes, I think that Tabu (Ashima) and Irrfan Khan (Ashoke) were true to their art, sincere and convincing. I appreciated (and actually wanted more of) the focus on Ashima (as opposed to the book which focuses on Gogol). It would have been more satisfying to see a deeper view of Ashima and Ashoke's relationship, which is so rich and meaningful. But they were both, hands-down, what makes this movie special and worth it.

Visually, the movie was well done..that is, of course, Nair's strong suit. She has that "slice-of-life" style that is visually engaging...her use of colors, framing and shot angles were captivating (sometimes, a few too many close ups of Kal Penn though)....and musically, Nitin Sawhney was amazing (as usual). I found the editing to be jumpy and it lacked a fluid thread. I realize that it's extremely challenging to boil down a 30 year old saga to 2 hours, which makes editing that much more important. I just think that there large chunks of missing time pieces or scenes that were cut too short...while at the same time, there were many scenes that were too long, dragged out and/or unnecessary.

So is it worth the $10 to go see this movie in the theater?..ABSOLUTELY...suppoort the brown people and their art, I say. For me, it the film wasn't the life-changing/inspiration story it had the potential to be...but it was entertaining and holds its ground as a higher-quality indo-America film...along the lines of an American romantic-comedy....

and there you have it. long, sorry, i know...

Test

This is a moblog test

the blackberry pearl

the title probably assumes that this post is a phone review, which it kind of is. but it is also a review of what went wrong on Friday night. i started the night cheering to health and happiness with most of my closest friends at a delicious Brazilian restaurant in tribeca, Churrascaria TriBeCa.

the food was amazing. my good friend's parents took a bunch of us there for a nice dinner out. all in all, things were going amazingly well. the night ended pretty late with me being thrown out of a yellow cab with nothing but my house keys, several blocks from my apartment in an area that i shouldn't be strolling down late night. everything was gone, my digital camera, brand new samsung blackjack phone, wallet and EVEN my eye glasses. so i blindly started booking it down the street to a friend's house. all in all, perhaps my scariest night in nyc. while it's sad and financially crappy that I lost all of those things, they were just that, things....all in all, i came out of it lucky. what disturbs me more is the blurriness of how that happened. i don't just lose things. anyhow, the details are besides the point..well, because i don't know the details...i was blind.

so i couldn't bare to buy another blackjack. instead i bought the new blackberry pearl. i didn't HAVE to go so over-the-top with the phone purchase but i hear that shopping can be therapeutic and when you're a gadget freak like me, shiny cell phones DO make one feel better.

The Pearl has several amazing features including the pearl trackball, easy email set-up, customizable screens, etc...pretty much everything you need in a phone/mp3 player/PDA. i find the actual navigation much more friendly and sensible in comparison to the blackjack. the keyboard, while a little strange and compact is just fine and in fact, i prefer the style of the Pearl's keyboard to the blackjack.

it's unfortunate that i had to be robbed in order to realize which is the better cell phone...ha...i joke, because what else can i do about the situation now?

clothes

If you think you have it bad.

a quick post..just saw this video (click line above). it's breathtaking...and not in a good way. after watching it, i had a pit in my stomach. the little girl just wanted her clothes and they were burned. i'm no expert and probably can't speak very eloquently about the issues surrounding the palestine/israel problem. but i do know that to see the suffering that these kids have to go through is just plain sad. i don't know the source of the video so I can't speak to its credibility. but i don't think you can question the faces of these kids.

it's just haunting.

web 2.0

cliche, i know. web 2.0 communication technologies utilized in a social networking context through the contributions of user generated content via wikis, video, audio and photo blogs.

HA!

anyhow, i've come across a few interesting web 2.0 sites that i'm posting here...more for my own reference (since i'm pretty sure that no one else is reading this):

www.last.fm (i.e. wiki audio)

www.yelp.com (i.e. local guide to nyc)

www.vimeo.com (i.e. video)

more later (i just happen to be looking at these today)

colonialism is common

[this is a very delayed post...but]

rented a house in the catskills over the fall with a bunch of good friends. Note to self: bad time to rent a house in the catskills. the leaves had already fallen, it was cold and not in a pretty "wintry" way, and the lake behind the house was "drained." Anyhow, sitting around the campfire at night, this is what came of our conversation:



Fireside Chats on Vimeo

here is the transcript if you can't understand the voices:

voice #1: [the Scottish] survived 800 years of horrific rape and domination

voice #2: waddaya gonna do. it's gotta happen to everyone.

$30 box of tic-tacs

girl #8
Originally uploaded by saritabhatt.

If you look closely at this picture. you'll see a box of tic-tacs on the table. that box of tics costed me $30...and i had to share them with 17 other guys. now that is crap. my lady friends and i went to a DESI speed dating event in the west village. brilliant. i attempted to purchase a wearable camera to document the event, but my last minute attempt was just too costly--about $600 for the camera that looks like a button on my shirt and the recording device.

there were 30 women and 17 guys. every 3 minutes the guys moved lockwise to the next awaiting damsel (myself especially) and initiated the routine "hi, my name is," "i work here," "i work hard and play hard." we women couldnt possibly afford to get up and do the actual moving from seat to seat because our hair would get tossled and lipstick smudged. it kind of reminded me of what i would imagine a 1920's brothel is a smokey second-rate city is like.

more than 50% of the guys lived and worked in Jersey with a questionable visa status. some were very nice and mildly pleasant to converse with. and some of the conversations were just plain painful. but that's to be expected, regardless of the demographic.

after each comment you circle a yes or no next to the name of the guy on your sheet (you can see the sheet and pen in the picture above). here what i did with my card:

----- Original Message ----
From: Flirteve NYC < flirteve@gmail.com>
To: saritabhatt@yahoo.com
Sent: Sunday, February 4, 2007 11:40:46 PM
Subject: speeddating matches...

hey sarita...

unfortunetely, we don't have your speeddating score card, and we wanted to send out the matches... did you turn it in to one of us? or are you not interested in anyone? please let me know as soon as possible so i can send out the matches...i hope you a had a good time at the event and we would love to hear your feedback...

~The Flirteve Team

best intro lines:
guy #1
him: go ahead, answer three questions for me
me: what 3 quetions..you haven't asked me anything

guy #2
him: what is the most imporant thing to you in a relationship?
me: what relationship?
him: this relationship?
me: but we're not in a relationship?
him: but if we were?
me: but we're not.

guy#3
him: what do you like to do outdoors?
me: [sexy wink]
him: very nice. have you been to the smokey bear mountain?
me: what?????

guy #4
him: where do you work?
me: the new york times
him: well that's a pretty decent place to work for a girl
me: i have to go to the bathroom

guy #5
him: i work at deutch bank
me: yeah, i thinki've heard of it. small little company right?
him: actually, its a very large bank [insert statistics here]
me: i know, i'm kidding.

also: my COWORKER was one of the girls and we are the only 2 brown girls in the ad dept and with thousands of brown girls in nyc what are the chances that we are both 2 of 20 girls there. a true highlight.

best part of the night: saw rhea pearlman (waitress from cheers) and
dr. mark greene from ER at the pizza place across the street that we
went to after the bar.

this was response to the actual flirteve company and then their response to me.:

On 2/5/07, Sarita Bhatt wrote:
Thanks for this follow up. I didn't hand in my card because I didn't circle yes for any of the people I met. While it was an interesting experience, I think that the demographic of people was not what I was expecting. Being an event in NY City, I think that there should be some cap on who is allowed to attend ( i.e. more than 50% of the people I met both live AND work in New Jersey. If I want to meet people who live in NJ, then I could easily attend an event there).

Sarita

-----
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2007 15:32:40 -0500
From: "Flirteve NYC" Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by gmail.com. Learn more
To: "Sarita Bhatt"
Subject: Re: speeddating matches...
hey sarita...

that stinks that it was not what you expected... it's so hard to judge, it varies from time to time... sometimes we have a bunch that live in nyc... sometimes a bunch from long island and jersey... it's random people all the time so you should check it out again... no this not a shameless way for me to get you to another one of our events but being a single chick in nyc myself i can tell you each speeddating is different and a different mix of people... and like i tell all my other single friends you never know who will be there...

in any case... i hate to have an unhappy customer so if you would like to give it another try, it will be on flirteve... so just email me and let me know if you are interested and what event you are interested in and i will put you in the database...

have a great day
:)Anamika

madhu's scar face

Madhu's threading salon is located on 6th Ave and Christopher Street in the West Village. I've been there before to get my eyebrows threaded. While they aren't the best, they aren't the worst and if you're in the West Village it's convenient. But now I want to sue them. Although, that is fairly useless answer to my current problems because I doubt they would even be worth suing.....so the story.

Went to Madhu's this week to get some threading done. I don't go often enough to keep my gorilla-like hairy self neatly trimmed, which is a problem in itself but that is neither here nor there. Anyhow, my skin was tingly and felt a little rubber-like when i walked out of there...and my bare/hairless face hit that cold cold cold cold cold air...but i assumed that I was just being extra sensitive since I had gone for the hair removal treatment in a long time.

Well I woke up the next AM to this:











A horror show on my face. scarred and scraped. painful and scabby...and aside from some calamine and/or neosporin, there isn't much I can do about it. I am furious, feel like an ass and am just generally wondering why on earth I go through this painful hair removal ritual at all...especially when something like this happens. I'd rather have my hair and not these scars. I'd rather just own my gorilla self. I feel battered (and look it to). I am scarface. And it ain't cute.

Brooklyn animal shelter selling dogs?

Brooklyn animal shelter selling dogs?
Originally uploaded by saritabhatt.

This was the dog that i went to the bk shelter to adopt. I arrived at 7.30AM and was the first in line to choose from the dogs. A few hours later a random woman walked in and took the dog from me and the staff said that she was there the day before and and really wanted the dog. However, they couldnt prove that she was there and refused to further explain. Thay gave the woman MY dog without even having her spayed. illegal. I think she bought the dog from the staff. In fact, im fairly sure of it.

the aninmal shelter has very specific procedures. they have these procedures to avoid these disputes. there was no reason why i wasn't given chutney...the name of MY dog...i felt wronged. i'm still mkourning the loss of my almost dog. i suppose the only good part about it all is that soooo many people wanted this dog. my little fraggle rock.

austin, texas

cafe in austin with the ladies
Originally uploaded by saritabhatt.

is a beautiful city and took me by surprise. for many reasons....mainly because i was able to meet anika sejpal-sharma (or is it sharma-sejpal?) and learn a lot about loons...and various shapes and sizes. it's amazing to watch how the people in your life evolve around you into something meaningful...like mother and fatherhood....guess i'm just lucky be surrounded and surprised by life and its many paths.

as a city, austin took me by surprise. i had never been to texas and generally imagined it as a place that was flat, dry and filled with cattle. austin has mountain, an eclectic feel and a surprising obsession with yoga/meditation/zen. i'll add it to the list of city that i could see myself in one day....so far its seattle, austin, portland, san fran and brooklyn.

couch potato on Vimeo

seattle, washington

seattle, washington
Originally uploaded by saritabhatt.

the zoo in seattle is by far one of the best zoos i have ever been to...and i dont even like zoos. but the monkeys were screaching at the top of their lungs and it made me feel, oddly, at home....i would be screaching too...if someone were to put me in a cage. wait someone does, my boss, my work, corporate america...you can't hear it, but i'm screaching.