Happy Diwali!

Friday November 9th is Diwali, or in Southern India, Deepawali. I've learned that this is the Festival of Lights which is celebrated by lighting thousands of small oil lamps, or diyas. From what I've read, the burning of these diyas is a form of expression to convey a person's happiness. It's also a way to pay respect to God who is the source of our health, prosperity, knowledge, financial stability and peace in life.
The Festival of Diwali is supposed to bring a person hope of discovering light amidst darkness, happiness in place of sadness, and love when surrounded by hatred and violence. The tradition of lighting the lamps reflects Hindu mythology's idea that light signifies goodness and vitality.

The tradition of lighting lamps in the form of diyas and candles comes from several stories in Hindu mythology. The most famous is the story of the return of Lord Ram after defeating the evil Ravana and spending 14 years in exile. His homecoming was celebrated with the lighting of diyas.

This next photo was taken from the blog of Rajesh Dangi called "Bangalore Daily Photo." He labels this entry "Deepawali Preparations" and indicates that these lanterns and decorations are some of the items one may buy for the celebrations.
The rest of the photos for today's entry are from TrekEarth.com, a site I've written about before. It allows people to upload their photographs for display.

I know those children are having fun, but all that fire in such close proximity makes me nervous!

The photographer's note for this next pic is that this a pooja (devotion) for the Goddess Lakshmi, who is very important in Hindu mythology. I've heard that one of her most important characteristics is her power to bring wealth, but there's more to her than that.

Some of the diyas can be incorporated into very nice artistic displays.

This design is a form of rangoli which is floor painting traditionally done with sand or powder. Typically rangolis are used for special occasions and I've seen some very beautiful, intricate designs.

The diyas are made from clay which hold oil or ghee and have a cotton wick.

Deepawali is also a time for gift giving and serving of sweets. This platter holds many tempting items! Priya gave me a container of kheer today. Yum.

Ganesh - the elephant headed son of Shiva and Parvathi- is believed to remove all obstacles to success and bring good luck and prosperity and keeps natural calamities at bay in the lives of those who worship him.

A diya seller.

This girl is drying the earthen diyas for use in poojas and various festivities such as Deepawali.
I hope that if I've made an error in this entry someone more knowledgable than I will make a helpful comment. Happy Deepawali - Diwali!

Pics From The Weekend

On our way to Athens we stopped at the Georgia Welcome Center and these signs struck my funny bone. As if pregnant mothers are disabled, they have a parking space right up front amongst the handicapped spaces while on the other side....

...the pets have one further away. I can think of many of our pregnant patients that need to take a stroll around the exercise yard along with their pets!

Soon after arriving we sat down to a nice lunch provided by Saeed's sister Nahid, who sent all this yummy food back with Shirin and Gabriel on the airplane last weekend. (Thank you Nahid!)

We enjoyed her food many times over this weekend.

Shirin is explaining the two pleura to Saeed (we have two membranes lining the inside of the chest cavity, one lining the boney chest cavity called the parietal pleuron and one covering the lungs themselves called the visceral pleuron; there's a small space between and these membranes usually glide with each other during breathing.)

While we go about our business Qui-gon regularly sits in the kitchen window. Notice the bamboo plant on the sill? Well, it was chewed down by one of the black and white kitties (Benjen I think) and later that day it was knocked to the floor and broke. The house is gradually being reshaped by feline accidents, but it's all worth it, right?

This little guy, Jojen, would periodically go into the guest bathroom and try to open the cabinet door. You'd just hear this "thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk." You can tell he wasn't expecting me to come at him with the camera!

Jojen is supposedly the shier of the two black and whites (because he was caught three weeks later than his brother) and you can see him about ready to run away from me....

... but he and I ....slowly....

...became friends!

Qui-gon on the other hand knows no stranger! He is a true love muffin. Here he's playing with his new toy.

Notice his black arm spot? It's his fur, not a dirty spot. He's giving away his parentage!

Here are the two brothers together. Benjen on the right, who is very lovey with Shirin and Gabriel, was not interested in making friends with me. It wasn't till Sunday that he let me pet him.

Treat time!

About the time the UGA football game was letting out we struggled through traffic to campus so Shirin could take care of her patients. While she was inside cleaning out his cage Saeed and I had the job of watching this cute little box turtle (with a feeding tube) as he spent some time outside soaking up some UV light.

He really just had one thing on his mind...

...walking to a secure spot to find some earthy stuff to burrow in.

When Shirin came out to bring him back in we had to tell her that that pile of leaves by the wall was her patient!

This is Sheila the bearded dragon lizard. She wasn't doing so well...

... but she was so beautiful. (sorry it's out of focus)

Sunday morning Shirin fixed us a good breakfast. Before we left we spent the day doing a few household chores and watched the movie, "Word Play." The weekend was over too quickly, so I guess we'll just have to go back! :-)

Lovely Weekend In Athens

I see Shirin hasn't put up any pictures yet either, but we got back late enough last night that I only had time to put things away and scoop cat litter (and kiss lots of kitties to make up for being gone.) Stay tuned for some pics. Most of mine will be of their cats (of course!)

Women's Heart Attack Risk: New Study

I know, they're always coming out with new articles about what we should and shouldn't do to improve our health, but you have to pay attention to research findings as they are published. If you keep hearing the same conclusions from separate studies over and over again, perhaps there's some validity to what they're suggesting.


I'd like to pass on to the women in my life that the journal "Archives of Internal Medicine" published the results in the October 22, 2007 issue showing that women who led a healthy lifestyle (not smoking, having a waist-hip ratio of less than the 75th percentile, being physically active) along with a diet characterized by a high intake
of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, fish and legumes had a 92 % decreased risk of heart disease compared with women without this low-risk diet and healthy lifestyle factors. I know, I know, it sounds like a no-brainer, but the result suggests that this may prevent 77% of heart attacks in women.
The scientists note that many components of fruit, vegetables and whole grains, including fiber, antioxidant vitamins and minerals, have been linked to a lower risk of coronary heart disease. The conclusion was that these dietary behaviors together with a healthy lifestyle and body weight may prevent most heart attacks.
To be fair, they also included a moderate intake of alcohol (less than 5 grams per day) since previous studies had also found that small quantities of alcohol helped prevent the accumulation of plaque in the arteries. The problem with that is that there have been multiple studies that have shown a link between a woman's alcohol intake and her increased risk of breast cancer. I don't drink alcohol anyway, but I'm not willing to ingest a substance that may help one disease if it increases the chances of another.

Also Love Asian Food

One of our favorite stores is Anh Dao, an Asian market in Charlotte. One of the reasons we love to go there is that we love the lady who works the cash register. She’s always happy to see us, very friendly, and has a beautiful smile. She’s half Vietnamese and half Japanese and speaks both languages. No matter what time of day you go she is always there. Another reason we love to go there is the reason we love any foreign market: it’s interesting! You don’t know what you’re looking at half the time and we typically buy at least one new thing to try.

We always visit the produce section first. They have great bunches of fresh mint, basil, cilantro, green onion, and other green veggies that I can’t pronounce the name of, and lots of limes, garlic, ginger, cucumbers, eggplants, etc. If we don’t know what a vegetable is we ask our lady friend; she tells us the name of it ( for example, ngo om or rao muong), but still we often don’t know what to do with it. So we say, “Can we add it to a stir fry?” and no matter what the veggie is she says “yes!” So far it’s always been good.

We like jasmin green tea and there are about 20 types to choose from.

We try not to eat sticky Asian rice (very refined carb) but it sure is yummy. We buy Basmati rice in bags this size but not at this store.

As if they didn’t already eat lots of rice there are about 100 products made from rice!

The freezer cases have many unidentifiable things, things Martha and Ken have been observing on the streets of Asia in person, but in this store it's mostly seafood…

1`````````````` (that was written by Lupe)
… and more seafood.

Some things are labeled in English but I still wouldn’t know what to do with them, like these lotus seeds and tapioca shreds.

Ahh…. Shirin’s heaven: sauces and more sauces.

Ok, I always thought “Cleatus” was the name of that character (in the Eddie Murphy movie) who farts all the time. There’s a cleatus cookie?

Crispy snack sounds good till you read closer…. anchovies.

And look at this sign for vegetarian food. You’d better read the packages carefully, though, because this package was in there…

… and last time I looked, beef tendon balls weren’t vegetarian!