Lotus Pond

This pond in a cement tank of  a local temple made a pretty sight - I remembered such lotuses that I saw a few years ago in KL's Orchid Park - would have loved a close-up, but this is all I could capture on my zoom.

Hangout

We've been having a gala time with our friend from Bombay and we went searching for an ice cream early in the evening. This place called Oranges N Lemons had caught my attention for its bright and spacious interiors on one of my drives and we took off in search of this.
Sadly they didn't have much of a variety on ice creams, but the long juices and shakes menu, with interesting bye-lines more than made up for that. The three of us made ample fun of their descriptions and laughed hard. The had most of the board games stacked up for people who wanted to play, wi-fi for the facebook addicts :) - not having too much time on hand, we played a game of Snakes and Ladders - and we laughed so much, we had forgotten how much fun this game was, especially when your opponents come down long snakes :)
Over-all the evening was great fun!

A nice weekend

Enjoying the Friday with a nice cup of mid morning lemongrass tea
I don't find lemongrass or chai patti in Hyderabad as easily as I'd find them in Bombay, so managed to find some bulbs in Ruci & Idoni - kept them in a jar of water for a few days and planted them - now a couple of snips & they brighten up my mornings with their fresh flavour :)

Bought a set of three orange plastic strainers from Hypercity - love their cheery colours :)

This is turning out to be a fun weekend as we have a friend who engages us with great conversations staying over with us :)

Anything goes

I remember that a few years ago, a law was passed in Mumbai that all license plates should have uniform fonts and they be in English, not that too many followed the rule. But here in Hyd, everyday I am amazed by the funny (illegal) license plates I spot in front of our car. The commonest rule breaker being - replacing the AP with TG - initially I even tried to figure if that was an abbreviation for any other Indian state I couldn't remember - after a while realised it was the yet-to-be-formed state Telangana and no traffic cop dare stop such a car with illegal license plates!

Yesterday was another crazy license plate spotting - writing 8055 as BOSS, while it is creative, i'd rather people left their creativity to do better jobs that trying stunts with official stuff like car license plates!

Pretty homes

 One would think these cottages are in some kind of holiday resort - but they are bang in the middle of Banjara Hills - went visiting a friend in this campus and these stone-brick houses with the glorious golden tabaebuias (thank you d) had to be my pic of the day.

A close-up of the trees

Heya!

 

Finally, a movie in the movie hall - after 16 months

After singing along, dancing along to the fabulous music of Karthik Calling Karthik, I finally got to see the movie - breaking my movie hall exile!

Am so excited that I had to share this right away...

Rediscovering the simple pleasures of life sure feels good

Farhan Akhtar - I'm sure you know it, but you are superb!

First day of spring

Liked the colours of this climber growing wild in my friend's compound, so brought a cutting home and stuck it in an empty wine bottle, not knowing if it will shoot and after almost ten days of sitting in water, shoot it did - I was just happy to spot a new little green shoot on the first day of spring.

Here's a shot of the whole thing...