Monday 30 March 2015

mundane monday - #48

ha. its almost the fourth month of the year and this is the first mundane monday post of this year. i know i've been in blog hibernation, but whats worse is i havent been taking that many photos either. i had used the camera only a few times since the start of the year and even those few pics are waiting to see the light of the day, because my pc has been acting up and i have trouble transferring them.

funnily, turns out that i'm not that much of a mobile camera person. somehow i'm not that happy with how phone camera pics turn out - especially when seeing them on a bigger screen like a laptop.

nevertheless, i took this one today and i liked it after a few touches and filters... (for editing phone camera pics, i find either snapseed or google photos most convenient.)



it is a wonder how much your relationship with sleep changes as you age - when you are a student you have that supreme ability to fall asleep anywhere anytime, but as you age, you find yourself counting sheep everyday till you run out of numbers. makes you wish you still had your textbooks from school, but i seriously doubt if even that would help once you reach that stage when you find that your body has stubbornly decided it belongs to that nocturnal league which has among its members everything from rodents and owls to vampires and werewolves.

and thus the sleep-aid industry flourishes, peddling us everything from pills to memory foam to lavender lotions to white noises... while there seems little respite for the 'zzzz challenged', as we lie wondering how many lengthy miles we have to go, before we can finally 'sleep'...

Thursday 26 March 2015

throwback thursday - TBT #3

the next weekend will be easter, and that brought to my mind cadbury chocolate eggs. if you grew up in india, cadbury's was 'the chocolate' of your childhood - the undisputed choice over everything else - but cadbury eggs were one thing which did not really make it to the indian market. 

when i searched for vintage cadbury egg pics, i came across this article which has wonderful pics from the early days of cadbury, and some of the old ads. i couldnt have been happier. images below are from the article.

even though i dont celebrate easter, i love seeing the pastel colours all around - the blues greens and yellows are kind of an official reminder that spring is upon us !

ad for a cadbury egg in 1930 stating it costs 3 shillings and 6 pence

Cadbury egg Easter cards from 1914

im such a cadbury lover that when some years back the ownership changed to american hands, i took it really personally and felt kind of let down :( somehow cadburys will never feel the same again, i think !

Thursday 19 March 2015

TBT # 2 - mad as a march hare.

technically its supposed to be the first day of spring tomorrow, but the weather outside is anything but 'spring-ey', to say the least. who needs a snow warning on the first day of spring, seriously ? - utter madness is what it is.

which got me thinking about the phrase 'mad as a march hare'. apparently hares start behaving excitedly, jumping up and down, starting in march - which is the beginning of their breeding season. it has resulted in that phrase which has become so popular ever since lewis carrol used it in alice in wonderland (along with the 'mad hatter' ).

below is the illustration made in 1865 for alice in wonderland, by john tenniel. it shows alice at the tea party, with the march hare and mad hatter.







image source - wikimedia commons 

well, even though the weather might seem as mad as the hares now, spring always brings with it a sense of new beginnings, of hope... its definitely a heartening sight to see the empty branches start sprouting leaves, to see buds and blooms make their way out after months of icy frost. to be able to remind oneself that there is so much of colour to look forward to in the world, and the bleak frosty days dont last for ever. 

Thursday 12 March 2015

catching up, over a TBT.


long time, no post. i know. 

sometimes i think i'd rather not write anything if i'm not in the best of spirits, than to write in a bad frame of mind and have the negativity within me spill out here. despite having been an optimist as far as i can remember, there are times when i think im increasingly becoming a cynic about life. i dont know. i just keep telling me i need to make peace with myself. that, honestly, seems to be the most difficult part.

despite whatever may happen in life, what keeps me going is my 'fraulein maria attitude' of simply remembering my favourite things whenever i'm feeling sad. and thats where pinterest comes to play a big part. as anyone who has been on pinterest even once knows, you can be there forever and forget there exists a world outside. if you are looking for a non-prescription, non-alcoholic way to drown your sorrows, i highly recommend it.

on that note, one of my favourite things to search for is vintage stuff. pretty much anything vintage catches my fancy, so i have been toying with the idea of starting a throwback thursday series, based on vintage things that i find around the internet. (only that im not sure if i start a series, how regular it will be. as always things here are subject to so many things. lets see. at this point i dont have too much expectations for myself.)

and so here we go - i saw this pin of a set of typewriters. in addition to their beautiful charm, each one has a note to say which one was used by whom. 

i couldnt make out the models from the image, so i searched around with the caption in the pin ('typewriters and men who loved them') and found this article, i think originally written to go along with the pic. olivetti, corona, hammond - you can find out who liked what. 

out of the collection above, i liked the beautiful blue one belonging to McCarthy and also those of george orwell and steinbeck. i do not like that big red monstrosity at all. sorry. 

in my childhood, i remember my parents having a facit typewriter, and my uncle had a remington i think. if you close your eyes and take a deep breath, i bet you can catch a whiff of carbon paper and typewriter ribbon ... and the sound of the carriage return from another era.