Preparing for GRE. How to get a good score in GRE

Ready for graduate school? Getting a good score in GRE is a requirement for admission to most graduate schools in U.S.A. The basics of GRE, average and good scores and links to important sites, for example the ETS web site is given in the article Taking the GRE? An Overview of the Graduate Record Examination.

Weather in St.Louis

The weather in Missouri if anything is unpredictable. It will be so sunny in the morning that you think of packing your things and going for a picnic, only to find heavy winds in the afternoon and may be a shower in the evening. The first thing you do before you plan a trip is to check the weather.com site and even that is as dependable as the 'kalavastha pravachanam' in Kerala. It may or may not rain.

A couple of days before me and my friend cancelled our daily evening walk when we saw that there was prediction of heavy rains in the evening. It turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous day. We felt so foolish!!! The next day we went for the walk since there was no warning and suddenly the wind started blowing so wildly that it blew sand in to our eyes and nose. Chinnu was frightened by all the noise and sand and she started crying. Fortunately for us, we were almost near our apartment and so ran in to the apartment as quickly as possible. So much for weather predictions!!!

BTW there was a prediction of a tornado and heavy floods at 7'0 clock last saturday evening. Joshy was mildly excited because he wanted to watch a tornado in action. No tornado at 7'0 clock (thank god!) but it rained heavily in the night.

Birthday party

No not my daughter's... I attended a friend's daughter's first birthday party yesterday.. The party was great. The one year old birhday girl was attired in a golden pattu pavada and she looked so cute..

I have met the birthday girl's parents Rajesh and Resmy only a couple of times before but they seem like a sweet pair. They are close friends of joshy's friend Pramod and Joshy has also been to Rajesh's house before... Anyway they seem like a nice couple and I was happy to be invited for the party..

By the way I am four months pregnant now and I look like I'm going on 8 months.. I am not exaggerating.. my tummy is so huge I sometimes feel the discomfort that I used to feel when I was full term before.. people keep asking me whether I'm carrying twins and I promptly answer back that as far as I know, there is only one and I am very happy about it, thank you very much..

Anyways back to the party.. I wore my new red maternity top and black skirt knowing that I would look like a beached whale in a sari.. and I really didn't think that it would matter much since I expected it to be a small party..

Surprise,surprise,surprise!!! There were more than a hundred people present and judging by their appearance, they seemed to be the cream of St.Louis Mallus.. Did I mention that Resmy is the daughter of the famous Malayalam poet Prof.Madhusudhanan Nair, yeah the poet who is famous for 'pandhrandu makkale pettoramme'.. The ladies were all draped in elegant saries. Yeah there were a couple of churidars but no skirties.. I felt so embarassed and out of place and I stood out so much in my red top, I wished the party was over before it started!!!

Anywayz as I was saying, the party was great.. food was good and the cake was so delicious.. hats off to the party and to the birthday girl!!!

I Miss Autumn

I miss autumn with it's vibrant colors; fiery reds, golden yellows and deep oranges. I miss the sense of festivity in the air, the melancholy waiting for another cold winter and the nostalgia of a gloden summer, all mixed up.

All of us are smiling in this family photo taken when we celebrated the fourth b'day of Diya and our wedding anniversary.

Stars, Santa and Nostalgia

When I was young (and carefree and innocent..well I really am innocent even now, though my husband doesn't agree with me on that point) the thing I most remember about Christmas is the time when we all went to attend the midnight mass.

I grew up in Kunnamkulam where the houses in the angadi were all so close that if you sneezed in your house you could be heard in the tenth house from yours. Kunnamkulam is famous for nasranis (and notorious for duplicate goods but as a proud Kunnamkulamkari I probably should not mention that) which meant that all the houses would have at least a star as a decoration. Those were the days before the Chinese goods took over our markets and our aesthetic sense, so if you had a mala bulb in your house, you were considered rich. Anyway rich people decorated with mala bulbs and the not so rich contented with stars, but it was all so beautiful to see them all together. I can still feel the gentle night breeze on my face when we walked the one kilometer to the church with all the fellow church goers and watched all the decorations in amazement. That is one of the most cherished memories of my childhood.

I remembered those times when we recently went out to watch the Christmas decorations.. In the land of plenty there is always plenty to see and enjoy even in supposedly hard times like these.. There were all kinds of Christmas trees, lighted trees, inflated forms of snow man, Santa Claus, rain deer and even the train in which Santa brings all those toys but unfortunately there were no stars. I do not know why there are no stars here, perhaps the tree is so important here that they do not care about the stars, but I really really miss them..

My second post

My first template didn't look so good, so I changed it to tic tac blue, whatever it is.. This looks better although I am not hundred percent satisfied with the look... May be I can change it later..

For some time I have been thinking about creating a blog just for the heck of it.. You know, my life here in U.S without many friends and no relatives seems so dull sometimes that I thought I will pour my emotions into a blog.

Well on second thoughts life here is not that dull :) For the young and carefree, america really is fun. But when you have two toddlers and no job and no driving skills, an american prison looks better especially on a cold bleary winter night...