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Those were the days………..when women were encouraged to gain weight!
Concepts of beauty have varied among cultures and even within the same culture over a span of time. A few decades ago an attractive woman was a more full-bodied and rounded individual than would be the case today. During the 50s’ the actress in India renowned for her beauty was Nargis who appears on the right. Today, it is Aishwarya Rai (shown on the left) who is considered to be one of the most beautiful women not just in India but in the world; the contrast is fairly obvious. The same holds true in the West, where Marilyn Monroe was the epitome of sexiness and beauty with her quite full…
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Is your Dell Inspiron laptop having a problem with a jumping cursor?
If you have ever, while typing on your laptop, found that the cursor jumps around for no apparent reason resulting in whatever you are typing not appearing where it should be, you have gotten, what I call the “jumping cursor syndrome”. This is a problem that affected my Dell Inspiron 1764 laptop and after googling to find a solution, it turns out to be be a problem that obviously affects not only Dell laptops but those by other manufacturers including HP, Lenova, Compaq, Asus, etc. The indications are that it started with the Vista operating system but those who have Windows 7 are also affected by the problem. There is…
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What’s in a name ……..well, a Mallu name?
I don’t know if Malayalees are unique in their choice of names for adults and children. When I lived in Kenya in the fifties and early sixties, there were relatively few families from Kerala and everyone knew each other within the community. But even within the relatively small community, there were some interesting variations on names. For example, my father was referred to as Allidina Joseph to differentiate him from another individual with the same name who was called Agakhan Joseph – my father worked at Allidina Visram High School and the other Joseph worked at the Agakhan School. There were two people called Thomas – and to differentiate between…
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Voyages between Mombasa and Bombay – SS Khandalla and SS Amra
We love cruising and have been on fourteen cruises since I arrived in the US. These have included several cruises in the Caribbean as well as ones to Alaska, the Mediterranean, the Mexican Riviera and the Yangtze river in China. Our last cruise was with my brother Peter and his family and it was on one of the largest cruise ships in the world…….the Carnival Dream which was 1000 feet in length, over 128,000 tons and accommodated more than 5000 passengers and crew! Cruising is for me the ultimate relaxation and one can be as active or not as one chooses. There are multiple activities on board ranging from trivia…
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Pan Am Flight 217 Redux
A few months ago, I posted about the crash of Pan Am Flight 217 in 1968 while en route to Caracas, Venezuela and more specifically about a friend, Franciska Buyers, who was an air stewardess on that flight. More about Franciska and my relationship to her and her family appears on this link. When I first posted about that flight and the tragedy that befell Pan Am 217, it was intended more as a personal tribute to Franciska than anything else. There was nothing on the net that was readily available about her and many of the others on that flight. It was a pleasant surprise when several people commented…