Ladies Room!!!!!

There comes a time in every woman's life when you slowly start lowering your guard about things like makeup and skincare and everything you may consider really not worth your effort. My first serious thought about this came when i attended a conference a year after i started graduate school. i had no idea whatsoever about makeup and moreso an everyday use for cosmetics. Like every other indian girl i loved my eyeliner and kohl and stuck to it. i strongly believed everything else was unnecessary. But, for special occassions like weddings and receptions there is no way we can go without any makeup. A Nude look is NOT no makeup but it is makeup done smartly so as to appear as close to natural as possible. One reason why most indian girls are scared to venture is the sensitive skin we have. Home remedies and face packs are the best to keep skin healthy unless you have an extremely severe acne or skin problem that needs a dermatologist's attention. I agree but learning and being aaware of why this is done and not that is of great help when the day dawns when you finally need good makeup. Over the past few months i have reviewed material on the internet and have really loved reading makeup blogs by indian women. some of my favourites are - askamakeupguru, indianmakeupdiva,roopcafe,anindiansmakeupmusings. They are free and provide invaluable tips for makeup suited specifically for indian skin. My own experiments with makeup have taught me a few valuable lessons and i decided to share them like i did in my previous blog about fitness. I guess this is quite a bit of digression from what i have in my previous blog post but i really hope this helps women who are clueless about where to begin. Lets split up and talk about the Basics for the Face, eyes, lips and cheeks.
1. Face -
Most indians use a really horrible ghostly like foundation on theri skin thinking it will make them look fairer. Foundation MUST and ABSOLUTELY must match your skin tone. So look for shades that disappear when you streak it on your cheek just above your jaw and not on your hands or wrists. Brands like MAC, Bobbi Brown etc make good products. It is meant to even out skin tone but shouldnt feel like a layer of paint on your face. The next issue is if this photographs well since thats what we need for weddings and receptions. Unfortunately almost all foundations come with SPF in them. Even MAC had its foundation with SPF 30. All these have titanium dioxide that works great by reflecting off sunlight but look ghostly and a different shade in photographs. i have seen that in wedding photographs and even celebrity photos-a white layer on your face. For me, it got worse with time. The latest foundation from MAC is SPF 15 and the most natural. I however have a personal favourite from VASANTI COSMETICS which has no SPF. The company is run by 3 indian women and caters to colored women and indians because we have yellow undertones(warmer than the usual colors sold out here abroad) and makes foundations that do not have titanium dioxide. otherwise one can use MACs moisture cover concealer and set it with a powder. Again, choosing a concealer is tricky. Indians have really dark circles. To some extent, an orange-red based concealer does a great job of covering up. I need two different concealers for under eyes and spots.

2. Eyes -
The best feature for us. We have lovely big eyes and for most occassions our eye makeup is heavy. Askamakeupguru has a lovely video on asian wedding eyes. She uses a shimmery shadow on the lid and a Matte darker shade in the crease and blends it out to give an additional depth. Also, highlight on the browbone is important. Use a highlighter (benifit,lorac or eyeshadows that are very light and shimmery like MAC Ricepaper). For everything blending is really the key.
After that, apply liner and kohl and try to shade a little and smudge out in the bottom of your eye. Curl your lashes and use a good coat of mascara or experiment with False Lashes which are lovely, although i am yet to try this out.
Brows - need to be neatly shaped but need not be so paranoid about it that they are super scanty. A well placed arch really looks amazing but a lot of desis do the curve which is very weird looking. Kareena kapoor's look has thick eyebrows that arent perfect but still full and look good. Fill in with a dark brown but not black and use an angled MAC brush.Dont overfill brows.

3.Lips
Keep them moisturized always. Use a liner and then fill in the color and top off with gloss. Mostly i only wear gloss. And if your eyes are really heavy go with nude lips. Usually we must try and stick to one strong feature. Lot of brides wear strong eyes and bright red lips. For red lips the other features kind of fade in the background.

4.Cheeks
One of the other big big mistakes most desis make is to apply this big blob of "rouge" on to look like a clown. Golly, that is so weird looking. Blush should give you a slightly flushed look and is extremely light. Mostly its the color you would be if you were pinched on your cheek. I apply this pinkish color on the apple of my cheeks and blend towards the temple. A tiny tiny bit is all you need. The other option is to contour using a bronzer or darker shades of blush. They need to be applied below your cheek bones and blended for added depth. Also use the darker shade on your temples. Finally apply shimmer on the cheeks and a little bit on your chin and tip of your nose. Too much isnt good. You will sparkle like a christmas tree.

These are the basics for the good healthy look that will make you look fresh and bright. And if the colors are mostly nude it would be perfect for a natural daily work look. A little bit of concealer and liner plus kohl is all you need if you are in a hurry. Dont forget moisturizer for your face and lip gloss. And the more elaborate for special occassions. Sadly, very few people back home pay attention to all these factors. A lot of people start off looking good at their receptions but as the day wears on it cakes up and faces get too oily. Using a blotting paper is great and regular touch ups helps. FOllow these tips and experiment with various looks and learn how much is too much before really using makeup and you will find that you are a pretty good artist yourself!Good luck!

The Ring.....

Almost a year later I begin to write again.
Today my pen beckons me like never before.
The ink flows, through my heart through many a vein
onto the blank piece of paper waiting to be soiled.

Write I will, but not about bleeding hearts
Or of sorrow, pain, suffering and rejection
These are the happy, smiling joyous parts
The reds, the pinks and the sunny yellows.

Is it the comfort of knowing that you are being loved
A hundrend more times than you can ever love back
Or is it the vivid image of the two faces that glowed
As they walked holding hands along the moonlit path.

Is it the passion of the first kiss and many more to come
Or the softness of pure and exquisite love that fills us
All the needless, wantless selfless emotion that makes me numb
And engulfs me like an ocean of sweat and pleasure

Today, I smile when I look at this tiny small cactus budding
Even the ugly thorns fit into the lovely warm creation of God.
I bend down and look at my hands and the priceless ring
Of love, of commitment and promise for a lifelong togetherness.

In simpler words,
I am engaged! Woo hoo!

What really works........

At the risk of sounding boastful, i admit that i have succeeded in losing some weight. I started to hit the gym after a lot of apprehension. I noticed that i was way below the average fitness level among most women in the gym and that i could barely hold my running for 10 min on the treadmill. Less than half a mile, i would have this ache in my legs and boy i felt like i was dead. I would look around and watch people go twice as fast as me. I painstakingly went past that to more than 3 miles in one go and boy did i feel proud of myself. I had never worked out seriously before.
Like any other indian graduate student, the pastas, ranch and southwesterns,garlic alfredos, Hummus,rice-cheese-bean burritos at taco bell( i know you guys will say oh yes for this one) slowly started to take their toll. I always thought i limited my meals but when i actually began adding up what i used to eat, i figured it was a disaster. One single dinner of pasta and dessert was like 3 days or more of saturated fat and Sodium. Especially because all that is piling up in the night and you dont really need it at all.Even the so called "good foods" across various cuisines are like at least 500-600 calories To top it all, i am a hypothyroid patient. I wasnt too bad but still i had to lose 15 pounds. In my defense, my earlier apartment didnt have a full length mirror.
I started to add some strength training exercises to my workouts. I am a big fan of pilates. Amazing things you can do to change the way you look. I am not very efficient with them and wish i could afford a personal trainer. I did have some painful inJuries but thankfully i am still in one piece. I added 30 min of exercise to my routine in the morning. Mostly for my tummy and to kickstart myself. I added some crunches,push ups and squats and built a longer sequence that would actually have me break into a sweat. I felt good about that.
If there is one thing i struggled the most, it was to get out of the rice habit. We eat way too much rice. And if you need to build a calorie deficit it isnt possible to do so without changing your diet. I watch people around me struggle with it and mostly its a state of denial in your mind. You think you are hungry and cant do it or you think its not worth it because you cant do it. Seriously you can. In all probability your stomach has stretched to accomodate for a larger appetite and therefore you might feel a little hungry but slowly you get used to it. I switched over to eating Just the curry part and a slice of brown bread or two and having a glass of fresh fruit Juice or eating a good plate of fruit in the night. It seems like i hardly eat but seriously it is good stuff. Occassionally i have chappatis.
I noticed that i burn much less than what most people do in a normal 1 hour workout and therefore decided to split the workout and control my diet. The biggest no-no has been lunch outside.Eat well portioned meals, smaller ones 6 times a day and have your 1/2 little cheat eatings as usual.
For the same weight, muscle looks 5 times leaner than body fat and burns more calories. There are some great free body routines out there for people to try. The key to everything is a strong mind and discipline. You can do it if i can. I have nothing against drugs that melt away fat or lipos but seriously girls you are stronger than that. Its an amazing feeling when you get there. Go for it girls!!!!!
Show them thats its not only our grey cells that are on the go. Getting past all the denial and the hypocrisy,I know all of you want to get into that victoria secret top.
Scoff all you like and ya right me but im telling ya, you need to lose something to gain something else. Sweat it out...
CHEERS

the result of having a whole room to myself......

I am now a member of Hollywood videos – I can rent dvd’s for 15 dollars a month. This whole movie watching thing recently triggered an argument about how powerful a movie can be, if it were based on a woman’s life and experiences. My beloved friend believed that they cant be as “effective” – whatever that meant. Isnt the thought of a woman protagonist as powerful? Minus the testosterone surges - the guns in Munich, all the blood shed in Sparta, the craze for power in the Godfather, it is a very different world. The Shawshank redemption, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, patch adams, the insider etc shall always be on my list of favourites but then I cannot downplay Erin Brockovich, Million Dollar Baby (Hillary Swank), Step Mom,Little Women, Jane Eyre, Color purple, Anastasia (Ingrid Bergman). Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady. How can you forget Scarlett O Hara in Gone with the Wind? The argument started because I was trying to describe how I felt after watching The Hours. Nicole Kidman’s oscar winning performance. I loved the movie and all the three women were amazing. I cannot understand why someone will think it was boring ( this was another friend). I would love to see Malika Oufkir's book being filmed.Somehow I cant turn my head away whenever the movie has a male protagonist and say oh, its boring. I found out that Kathreen Hepburn has the most number of Oscars as a best actress; she won it 4 times. While no actor has done so 4 times. Now my friend will say – that’s because they couldn’t find anyone else good enough and so on. Instead I would say it’s the continued strength and commitment of her performance that enabled her to win it. I would like to think of it as two sides of the balance without which there is no harmony. I wonder if everyone does that.

Couple of other interesting things -
Japan has the highest life expectancy. I found it strange since I thought Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have surely worked against it. The CNN website attributed it to their healthy diet.
And the fact that the largest supplier of weapons all over are the 5 permanent members of the UN security council. 190000 US supplied ak-47 rifles are missing from the war in iraq

exam fever

ok...i have an exam tomorrow....i have no enthu whatsover to study for it....its a closed book exam...damn!i have to "remember" stuff....names and things like that....about viruses...the thing about these courses is, they eventually make you believe you have at least one of those damn viruses in you by the time you finish it up!!!!and boy,by far;the best exams in such courses are the ones Dr.Das used to give us for "recombinant DNA tech" back in BITS....he had only open book exams...everything depended on whether you actually understood the course material..he would talk about an experiment and ask us to interpret some results....and in my neuroscience course here(btw this is supposed to be a grad course), this is one of my questions - what did so and so do to win the Nobel Prize and then there are 8 names staring at me!!!!how in the world am i supposed to remember all of them?????i managed a couple but seriously is that a question???not one but a lot of them were like that....so what is the sequence that does blah blah blah.....the bad thing is i dont even feel bad that i didnt do well in such exams....and i can only pray that tomorrow i will get lucky and remember all my answers.....the funniest part is that i made more marks than the instructor's grad student in the previous exam!!!

The Dawn Of Peace

I want to express what I feel

Like the minotaur of the labarynth’s darkness
The dark and forbidden emotion resurfaces
Sometimes its rage, other times it is hatred or even envy;
The feeling slithers all over like a creature evil and slimy
Along with the lovely pastels, shades of grey I shall paint
To hell with anyone reminding me that I must be a saint
No rain no flood nor any fiery tempest can put off the fire
And walk it will, along with everything else to the pier
Sadly I can never pick the shells without the sand
The pastels and the grey seem to always march hand in hand
Even if it is futile,I hope that the darkness recedes away
Letting the dawn of peace reign over, someday

Thanks to the world wide web

Something i found on the web. One of my favourites -

JOY and SORROW

Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.



by Khalil Gibran

thanks to the world wide web,google and my vettiness....and the stupid agarose gel that never showed me any bands for like the zillionth time