….Lipton PureLeaf Raspberry Tea. This stuff is truly delicious! I have never been a fan of tea–of any kind, until I was introduced to the green tea frappucino at Starbucks. My goodness, that stuff is good. Yeah, not much tea-like though! Then, I tried citrus-flavored green tea (also by Lipton), which is refreshing. However, the raspberry tea is just awesome! I have been looking everywhere for a bigger pack of it, hoping it will be cheaper. I have only been able to buy a 2-serving bottle for $1.49+tax at the market at school. I have been, in pursuit of this amazement, to Smart & Final, Vons, Walmart, Target, Big Lots, CVS, and Rite-Aid. Nowhere is the deliciousness to be found–not even on Amazon! If anyone knows where this is to be found in a larger pack of bottles, please let me know. With the summer heating up (to 97F today in San Diego!), there would be nothing more enjoyable than sipping on this PureLeaf Raspberry flavored Iced Tea.
If you are looking for something new, with far few calories (the PureLeaf Raspberry Tea is 80 calories per serving, and 150 per 8 fl oz bottle) than a green tea frappucino without whipped cream (290 calories for a 12 fl oz Tall), and have never tried these iced teas, give it a shot. I don’t think you will regret it for one minute. Cool relief on a hot, hot summer day. Mm, Mm, Mmm good.
PS If you have not tried Starbucks’ Green Tea Frappucino, which is usually available every summer, you are missing out! It’s quite good, but not for the calorie conscious. It’s a treat for the self, once in a while 
I have never been one of those crazy health freaks. I have laughed and ridiculed people who watch their calories everyday, drinking diet sodas, eating fat-free food and drinking fat-free milk. I love good, tasty food. Having grown up in India where almost all the vegetables you eat are organic and the milk was freshly squeezed from the buffalo every morning (agreed it was diluted with water but still it was yummy). I really just hated everything I ate when I first came to US. The milk tasted like water, the yogurt didn’t taste right. The potatoes and peas were sweet. The eggs I ate had no taste and smelled too bad 
. Eggplants were huge and tasteless. The complaints I had about food were endless. Recently, I started going organic and that made a world of difference to the taste. Organic whole milk tastes much better than Indian milk, organics eggs = yummy; I just avoided the label ‘fat-free’ and I realized that the food in US never tasted better.
Yummy
It feels like it has been forever since I last blogged. Jagadish would definitely agree (I can almost hear him say, “That’s because it HAS been forever”). But here I am. It was a generally good weekend. I did a lot of clean up around the house. I may (or not) be moving, but I’ve come to realize I have a zillion things I don’t need or use around the house, but that blog is probably for later. I made a scrumptious meal this weekend–one of my all-time favorites: Vegetable Fried Rice with Cauliflower Manchurian. Here is how you can make it yourself: trust me, it is not as painful or time-consuming as it may seem if you use the shortcuts I did!
Isn’t it weird how some people keep falling in and out of “love” at the drop of a hat? It has been one of those things that’s been bothering me a lot lately. I do not intend to be self-righteous but it is just ridiculous and irritating the way some people act.
One of my roomies is a complete womanizer. It is, of course, true that nobody ever gets along with their roommates and you could think that I might have some unknown agenda for laying such allegations on him. Believe me, whatever I say here is just the tip of the iceberg.
As I was saying, this guy had a girl friend in India when he came to the university with me. This did not dissuade him from adding a multitude of American girls to his Facebook and flirting with them into the wee hours of the night. He eventually found another girl living in New Jersey and would spend talking to her in the late nights spending all his minutes on the phone. He even met her when he went to meet his sister in NJ. But, apparently, nothing happened as she found out that he had a girlfriend (she saw her picture on his phone’s wallpaper which he forgot to change) and he never talked to her again or maybe she never wanted to talk to him 
Recently, just around Earth Day, I bought some seeds to plant. I did have plants before, but only 2-3 have survived my neglectence. I was determined not to let that happen to these seeds. I took care to peek at them everyday and water them as needed (but not too much). I planted sunflower seeds (those are the large leafed ones), basil, and some perennials.
If you noticed, these are all in little pots. I do have larger ones that I plan to transplant these into. I’m not sure when is the best time to do that, so any suggestions are welcome, but I think the roots have to be pretty strong for the plants to withstand the move.
It really is amazing how hard seeds, with just a little soil, water and sunshine can grow into these brilliant green little plants. I really, really hope they live to be healthy strong plants!
Sad Update: I discovered two fat little caterpillars feasting on my sunflower plants I got rid of them, but the plants are in dire state. I am not sure they will make it. Boo. I hate insects.
Dear Archana,
I want to apologize for my behavior last night. I lose control of myself every time I get on the red Poltergust 4000. It pumps my adrenaline and I want to drive as fast as I can bumping into everything that comes in the way. I agree that I should not have dropped all the banana peels on the road with the intention of tripping you. Worse, I should not have got my hands up in the air and jumped “Gotcha!” every time you tripped over them. I should not have shot you with all the red shells when you were about to win. I should not have braked and moved into the second spot so I could hit you with the devastating blue shell. Sorry I screamed “Ha Haa!!” every time I crossed the finish line.
I promise I will not put fake item boxes near the real item boxes to confuse you. I also promise I will not say “Oh yay!” if you fall off the ledge. I will definitely not slow down to get better items. I hope you will forgive me and connect to WFC again. I will look for your yellow blinking icon. Please come back so we can play again.
Love,
Jagadish
(For all those who don’t get it. Go play MARIO KART)
Here I am again, blogging about Apple. What can I say? It warrants a blog!
A while ago I had posted about Apple’s excellent customer service. There is nothing like that to keep a customer going back again and again to the same retailer. This, I think, is a big part of what distinguishes Macs from PCs. I had a Dell Inspiron before my current (very beloved) MacBook. Bigger screen, and I spent almost an equivalent amount ~1k on its purchase. It was a top-of-the-line notebook at that time. I was quite happy with it for a while, but as almost everyone would agree, it slowed down considerably with use, and that is really not unusual with any computer, I’ve noticed, but more about that later. So, there was this one time where the darn comp entirely crashed and refused to boot. I had to call Dell, which of course took me to a center in India. Not only was the rep entirely unsympathetic, but refused to do anything about it. After several unsuccessful attempts at dealing with the issue, I finally found a person who was willing to abide by the warranty coverage. However, this was the deal: they would send me a hard drive, I’d have to install it all by myself, and I’d have to send back my old one. I’d never done a hard drive installation, and how was I to recover any of the data? Sorry, no help there. Anyway, after that debacle, I soon bought a MacBook. Now, Jagadish is not an Apple fan and he will say they have problems too. Sometimes very bizarre ones! I mean, a melting adapter? Hmm. That was only the beginning. The Bluetooth had a mind of its own and came on and off as it pleased, and a fairly visible crack developed along the side of the right palm rest. Worse, it was just barely out of warranty! I should have gotten AppleCare, I kept telling myself. Splurging another $1200 on a laptop and not buying warranty seemed like a silly thing to have done. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised with the awesomeness of the customer service at Apple. While it did take persistence, after gently reminding me that the comp in question was indeed out of warranty, I was allowed to send it to Apple to be fixed, free of charge. Now, that did not fix the bluetooth problem, but I was happy the crack was gone and felt I could live with the bluetooth going on and off (sometimes though I’d wonder, why me?!). I have to admit, I was incredibly happy when Apple offered to REPLACE the MacBook. Wow! It was a problem they could not fix, they admitted, and simply replaced the out of warranty MacBook with a new one. Yay!
After a long and hard week of work, weekends usually mean getting some rest and catching up with the rest of the world. Being grad students means working on the weekends sometimes, but it doesn’t have to be the same as a weekday, so we can take it easy. I actually like to start working starting Sunday afternoons, whether I have any work to do or not. It actually helps me get over the “I hate Mondays” syndrome really quick.
Archana and I have a really lazy way of spending weekends. We spend most of the time catching up on the TV shows and picking movies to watch. It actually takes us an hour to pick a movie to watch and we usually end up not liking it. We don’t watch horror or drama, so that limits the choices. It’s almost always romance and comedy that wins the vote. Unless we want to get some regional flavor, we watch Telugu or Hindi movies and it’s difficult to find a good Hindi/Telugu movie that is intelligent and devoid of all the hyping up of the hero.
In Indian movies, the hero can hit a 100 people single-handedly without even using a weapon. It seems believable in Kung-fu movies where Jackie Chan jumps around taking a few blows but still managing to beat up a few thugs using the environment as props. It is also quite believable if Keanu Reeves fights 100 Agent Smiths in Matrix, because it is a fictional world. But, in Indian movies, the hero punches every thug into the air with just one mighty blow. Worse, the hero is almost always a lanky kid (who is probably the son of a veteran actor). The Indian hero is Superman, without a cape. Even in movies that does not involve a lot of action, the emotions seem unreal and over the top.
