Destination Infinity's Blog, page 47

Liberation of All: A March to End Animal Cruelty

On 20th March 2016, a Sunday, around fifty of us animal lovers gathered at the Besant Nagar beach, Chennai. We marched to create awareness on cruelty towards animals, and to begin the liberation of animals from human tyranny. Yes, you read it right – HUMAN TYRANNY. 

This march happened not just in Chennai, but also in seven cities across India at the same time. I guess the planning & organizing happened mostly on Facebook. Since I have some friends who are members of Vegans in India/Chennai Facebook groups, I too got intimated about this event and decided to go. What better way to spend a Sunday evening? Special thanks to Preethi Raghav.

The objective of the march was simple: To try and convince people on the merits of veganism (people who don’t eat meat and diary products), in order to end the cruelty meted out to countless animals across the world by the meat and diary industry on a daily basis. And to keep oneself healthy.

Initially, we held placards and marched throughout the length of the beach. We raised slogans in English and Tamil. We had obtained police permission for this march.

Then we split into groups and went to talk to a few people directly. Since I didn’t know much on this topic, I attached myself with different groups of volunteers and observed what/how they spoke. I should say they were highly convincing. At the end of the day, I didn’t have any doubts or inhibitions about this cause.

I am not a vegan yet as I am finding it difficult to avoid curd and ghee. Milk, I take in limited quantity (one cup a day) which I won’t have much problem avoiding also. I am trying. Sometimes I eat sandwiches, sweets, ice creams, chocolates, etc. that are made of milk. But if you think about it – most of these items are unhealthy, so it’s easy to avoid. The next time some milk-based food is presented before me, I am bound to think twice before eating it, if at all.

I think it’s important for me to support worthy initiatives like this. Not only for the liberation of animals, but also for a healthier me.

Destination Infinity

PS: 1. This march was covered by Indian Express; 2. A fellow volunteer’s blog post on this event.

Mailam Hill Temple near Tindivanam, TN

Mailam Temple is situated on a small hill around 15 K.M. from Tindivanam, near Pondicherry. Actually, when you go on the Chennai – Tindivanam highway, you’ll find a road going towards your left indicating ‘Mailam’, a few K.M. after you cross Aaryas hotel junction. You’ll have to take a left here and travel for some distance until you reach a marketplace. This is Mailam town.

To go to the Temple, there is a separate route for people going in cars/vehicles and a separate route for people going by walk. So get down and ask someone in one of the Temple market shops, if you are not sure. I went by walk.

You’ll have to leave your chappals/shoes before you reach the steps. There are many shops who will keep them for a small fee. But remember that you’ll have to travel a total of 750m by walk, and more than half of it by steps. Nothing much, it’s a small hill. In case any old people are coming with you, it maybe difficult for them to climb. The vehicle path is 2 KM long and uphill, I was told.

This Temple is dedicated to God Murugan, one of the sons of Lord Shiva. Once you get into the Temple, you can find many monkeys. These will take away your cover if they know there are bananas or some other eatables in them. So it maybe better to give away the bananas voluntarily Or just carry a opaque bag with zip and keep everything inside that. I was not afraid of them – but one or two might get close!

Getting to the main deity might be slightly confusing. First, you’ll have to traverse 75% around the Temple. Just before you go out, there will be a ladder-steps starting from a corner on your left. You’ll have to go there and then climb the ladder-steps. You might miss this as the location is not prominent, so watch out!

There were many shops and even eateries on the way to this Temple. Refer to the Mailam Temple Wiki page for the legend behind this Temple, bus routes, etc.

Destination Infinity

Photo credit: By Destination8infinity (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

How to Disable Auto ReLoading of Tabs in Chrome

If, all of a sudden, you find some of your open tabs in Google Chrome browser reloading content again and again when you revisit them after sometime, and like me if you are losing work or time or peace of mind or all the three due to this feature being enabled by default, don’t worry. There is a way to disable this. 

Go to (type and press enter) chrome://flags/ in your Google Chrome Browser.

Scroll down to ‘Automatic Tab Discarding’ which may be near to the bottom of all those innumerable experimental options. If it is set to ‘Enabled’ or ‘Default’, just change it to ‘Disabled’.

It will ask you to reset/restart the browser to make the changes effective. Do it.

Now the browser will not kill any of your open but unused tabs and you can sleep in peace

It seems, open unused tabs were automatically killed to save some memory, as each tab might consume some 50 Mb when open. But nowadays, since laptops come with good amount of memory (RAM), I think you don’t have to worry about this. You can always switch it back to ‘Enabled’ anytime.

But I don’t know why you’d want to. I have (almost) lost work, lost videos that had loaded fully on the other tab, and most important – lost a lot of time as the browser kept killing and reloading almost all closed tabs just after 2-3 seconds of disuse, which is silly!

I think Google should disable this option by default for all Chrome users.

Destination Infinity

PS: In the process of my suffering, I tried the new Microsoft Edge on my Windows 10, and should admit it has improved drastically when compared to the earlier Internet Explorer. The Edge is still not as fast as Chrome, but I suggest you too try it sometime

Heritage on Wheels: Women’s Christian College, Chennai

Today I went to Heritage on Wheels – a heritage car and bike rally event hosted by the History Dept. of Women’s Christian College, Chennai. I guess this is a part of their Centenary year celebrations. There was an entry ticket of Rs. 200 (for public), but their FB event page says proceeds go towards women and children affected by cancer, and for the scholarship of underprivileged students studying in their college.

The event was organized well and gave me of feel of college culturals with music, quiz & other events, stalls, etc. For Rs. 100 more they allowed people to ride on a few of these heritage cars, but that section was crowded – so I didn’t venture! Without further ado, I hereby present some of my favorite clicks from today’s heritage bike/car event

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Howzzit??

#CaseNationMeet @ Coffee Tales, Chennai

I attended the #CaseNationMeet for bloggers at Coffee Tales, Chennai. Surprisingly, for a change, I was early – 30 minutes before the scheduled time! Once I entered, I met Sorav Jain of EchoVME who introduced me to Amit Bisani, one of the Partners of CaseNation – a mobile accessories manufacturer based in Chennai.

Amit spoke to me for a long time about how their products are different. Their mobile cases and accessories are manufactured in India (#MakeInIndia, anyone?) and offers great quality while providing good value for money. It seems they offer two-year warranty against design defects for certain models. In this world of dulling and greying, that’s a refreshing change, don’t you think? Most of their models are priced at Rs. 499/- to Rs. 899/-although the company is positioning themselves as a premium brand. They even offer transparent and wooden cases for some mobile models. (iPhone, anyone?)

Do you know what the above dish is? Family sandwich?

Adventure Games Theme Park in Chennai: Wild Tribe Ranch, ECR

Today, as a part of the activities organized by Chennai Bloggers Club, we went to the adventure games/sports theme park of Chennai – The Wild Tribe Ranch @ ECR, near Crocodile Park. Actually, this park — which previously functioned in Ponneri — will be opened to public only from tomorrow. However, bloggers and media persons were given a sneak peak into some of the adventure sports and games available there today. I don’t remember the names of individual rides – you’ll have to refer to the above linked theme park website for that. 

One of the partners of this adventure theme park gave a talk on how they started the adventure park initially on a small piece of land, how they gradually increased the rides, their decision to move from Ponneri to ECR – the entertainment highway of Chennai, for a higher footfall, etc. We were then requested to experience a few adventure rides. The first pic and the below one are of the same mammoth ride with multiple levels of hurdles to cross.

In this ride, as you can see in the above pic, you can jump up and down supported by ropes. There is a ‘reverse’ bungee jumping ride also, nearby.

In this ride, six people sit and the ‘vehicle’ keeps rotating in multiple angles for 1.5 minutes.

This ATV ride should’ve been good fun, but somehow I missed riding this one too!

At last, my kinda soft relaxing adventure sport – a small swimming pool. No one went into it today, so I didn’t too

It seems. you need to get into this bubble (sorta wrap it around you), walk around the field, and kick the football in between the small goal posts. It’s obviously a team game but remember – you or others can easily knock each other down!

As you can see in the above two pics, there is a gallery with a stage in front of it with music, light and sound where you can perform or listen/dance to the live music.

This is the Paint Ball game I was talking about in my previous post on Mango Mist Resorts, Bangalore. So Paint Ball is available in Chennai as well, folks! No, I didn’t play this as I was too tired by the time we came here. The reason for my tiredness was playing ‘net cricket’ where I bowled a few off- and leg-spinners to a fellow blogger-batsman Somu. I was glad to meet many of my blog buddies in this venue today

So if you are looking for an adventure games/sports theme park in Chennai, The Wild Tribe Ranch may be the destination

Destination Infinity

My Autobiography: Birthday Celebration Woes

Anyone whose birthday falls during the vacation or on national holidays will invariably have a regret. They would never be able to celebrate their birthday along with their school friends because schools will be closed!! Since my birthday falls in May, I too was a member of that bad-luck-club.

In the schools I studied, students were allowed to come in their birthday dress on the day of their birthday (only). Just imagine standing out with vibrant colours among those whites, khakhis and greys. Besides, you are the star of the day – your name will be mentioned in the assembly or class, and you get to distribute chocolates to all your friends.

Everyone wishes you or at least smiles at you. If not for your birthday, at least for the chocolates you’d be carrying. Non completion of homework or poor performance in tests are excused. The  world suddenly becomes friendly and there is a festive atmosphere surrounding you, wherever you go. On that day.

Having seen countless friends happy and smiling throughout the day, having wished countless friends on their birthdays, having seen countless friends in colour dresses, I too wanted to celebrate my birthday in my school(s). At least once.

But I never got to. (Birthday) Cursed are the people born in May!

The closest I came to celebrating my birthday with a few of my school friends was during my 8th Std. holidays when I enrolled in swimming classes, part of our summer coaching program.

I adamantly took a box of chocolates, got into the swimming pool with that box, and distributed chocolates to all my friends (and others) in there. For once, I came out of that wretched swimming pool smiling.

How about you? Was your (birthday) luck any better?

Destination Infinity

#FlipkartOutdoors blogger Meet @ MangoMist resorts, Bangalore

So last Saturday (20th Feb. 2016), I went to MangoMist resorts in Bangalore to attend the #FlipkartOutdoors indiBlogger meet. The entire day was filled with informative and fun activities. In this post, I’ll recollect some interesting happenings on that day through photos.

Flipkart executive introducing the purpose of the bloggers’ meet and the activities lined up for the day. 

Garmin (almost) smart but precision measurement watches to measure the no. of steps walked, calories burned, etc.

Samsung (real) smart watches with actual apps. There is a circular ring along with a couple of buttons to navigate and select options. These watches come with a stylish charger too.

Red Chief’s ‘lightest’ leather shoe!

Altec Lansing’s rugged water-proof speakers: Water literally dances on it. There is even a mount to fix these speakers on your bike handle bar!

Coleman Party Stacker to store and carry hot and cold foods during an outing.

Adventure games at Mango Mist Resorts, Bangalore:

Of course, I didn’t try any of these ‘stressful’ and ‘dangerous’ adventure games shown above. The games I did try were –

Archery:

Shooting:

Fish Spa:

Needless to say, I loved the above three ‘adventure’ activities

Eating Healthy is the best Medicine

“95% of lifestyle diseases are due to unhealthy diet and lack of exercise.” – Dr. Saravanan.

Yesterday, I attended a talk by Dr. Saravanan of Sharan India @ Meal ‘N’ Heal, Chennai. This was a 1.5 hour presentation on why switching over to plant-based and organic/healthy diet is important to fight lifestyle diseases like diabetics, hypertension, arthritis, auto-immune diseases, etc.

He told us that both animal protein and milk protein are unhealthy and addictive. That maybe the reason why we find it difficult to stop eating/drinking milk-based products. He said milk, sugar, maida, refined salt are all white poisons. His points were similar to what was mentioned at the World Veg Fest that I attended earlier.

He recommends following a plant-based diet with a good mix of fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains. Our food should be colorful, like a rainbow!

But remember –

Eating fruits directly along with the peel is better than drinking fruit juices as the peel that contains important enzymes needed to digest the fruit sugars are discarded in juices.
Raw vegetables are healthier than cooked vegetables.
Legumes provide a lot of fiber that makes the body healthy.
Whole grains are better than refined/processed grains as the nutrients on the top layers are retained.

After this talk, I am inspired to skip milk-based Tea that I drink twice a day. I have switched over to green tea and vilvam juice However, I am not yet convinced to skip curd and ghee as I believe they are healthy. I drank the peanut curd provided to us in the meet and it was good – I need to find out how to make it!

The issue is, it’s very difficult to avoid milk that goes into our body indirectly. Biscuits, cakes, ice creams, cheese-based snacks, sweets, coffee, tea, etc. all contain milk! But now I am aware, so will reduce eating them slowly. If you avoid meat & diary products totally, do remember that you may need to take Vitamin B12 and D supplements.

SHARAN India is coming up with a 1-day workshop on ‘Reversing Diabetics and Hypertension’  on 27th March, 2016. Click on the above link for details and see if you or someone you know may want to attend the program.

Destination Infinity

My Short Fiction eBook is *Free* for 3 Days on Amazon Kindle (13 – 15 Feb)

Video Trailer for the e-book:

My eBook, ‘Short Stories with a Twist’ is free to buy on Amazon Kindle for three days from 13th Feb. – 15th Feb., 2016. I request you all to download the book now and read it using free Kindle apps available for Computer, Tablet or Mobile, when you get time.

I made a video trailer for this eBook which is embedded above. Actually, this was an attempt at humor that backfired. Still, since the video trailer is unique and different, so I have made it public. See it before I take it down

Since these are short stories, you can read each story quickly. I hope people among you who don’t read short fiction will also consider reading a few stories. Some are fun, some are serious, some are heart-warming. Different emotions are packed into one short book!

Please don’t forget to give your frank feedback either in the comments here or on Amazon. It will help me write better in the future.

Thanking you,

Rajesh K

Destination Infinity