AshTalksHobbies

I don’t recall which movie it was that featured a group of girls recording a message for their future selves in 2050 and burying it in a box in a vacant plot of land. It was their ‘time capsule’. Was the movie the Britney Spears’-starrer ‘Crossroads’? This concept has been featured in several Hollywood movies, none of which I can recall at the moment. But I think it’s something we must explore, especially if we are keen on collecting memorabilia and creating memories. It would be a great activity for students in school to perform.  Here’s  a link that explains more about what you can put in a time capsule and how to go about it.   In my post, ‘ L is for letter writing, ’ I’d explored the idea of creating an email account for your newborn (if you are a parent) and sending emails to your baby for years and years and then giving your child the access to the account when he /she becomes an adult. That, too, is a kind of time capsule. How about leaving video me...

I’ve already done a post on R is for Reading , but I’m dedicating a post to science fiction since I feel it deserves one. I loved E.T and ‘Back to the Future’ as a child. I also enjoyed Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton back in the 90s when I was in high school. I’ve watched the movie, too, numerous times over the years. The movie has spun off sequels, too. One of the earliest science fiction writers was H.G. Wells who wrote The Time Machine. Some best-selling science fiction writers include Michael Crichton and some books of Dean Koontz. I read a lot of Michael Crichton in high school. My mom’s first science fiction novel was ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley. She was 18 when she read it. In fact, even my English teacher from high school had asked us to read this book along with 1984 by George Orwell when we were in Class 10. Recently, my mom read Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines trilogy. The same author’s ‘Recursion’ is also doing well. Many of the science fiction stories ...

I guess the first books I remember reading are the Ladybird series of books. But I can’t remember which ones. What I do remember clearly is that my mom joined a library back in the 80s and brought home my first Enid Blyton and my first Archie comic when I was in Class 4. I was hooked to Enid Blytons after that and also added Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drews, Trixie Beldens, Archies, Tintins, Asterix comics to the list. I moved on to the photoromance series before I was even a teen! That’s why childhood seems like such a magical time for me. I inhabited the world of Darrel Rivers and the five find-outers and escaped to the enchanted woods, too, whenever I wanted to. In my teens, I read a lot of Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon, Ken Follet, Arthur Hailey, Robin Cook, Michael Crichton etc.  In my twenties and thirties, I read mostly chick lit like Lauren Weisenberger and Candace Bushnell, interspersed with the odd literary classic. When I turned forty, I started taking my read...

For some, participating in quizzes or watching them on TV/online is a hobby—and a good hobby that increases their General Knowledge. I remember taking part in quizzes back in classes 7 and 8 when I was a student in a convent in suburban West Bengal. A group of four of us (if I remember right) from our school went for a quiz conducted by the famous Derek ‘O Brien. We were awarded a copy of the Pear’s cyclopedia of that year for our performance. I still remember one of the questions. We were asked to provide the spelling of supercilious! Some popular quiz competitions for school children include The Cadbury's Bournvita Quiz competition, which was marked by the publication of a Q&A book every year. I used to watch Siddharta Basu on Mastermind India quizzes when we moved to Chennai. It was a real coincidence that I went to college for a year later with his niece! The quiz format became a huge hit with every household in India through KBC or 'Kaun Banega Cror...

Most sensitive souls love poetry as do I. I’m not trained in poetry, but my former colleague from Ogilvy had studied poetry in the US and graduated in the subject. There was a time when poems had a rigid structure, but over the decades, they have become more free-flowing and convey a spontaneous outpouring of emotions. Today, insta poets, such as Rupi Kaur and Lang Leav have a huge following. I’ve read Rupi Kaur’s ‘The sun and its flowers’ and ‘Milk and Honey’. I’ve also read Lang Leav’s ‘The Universe of Us’. I enjoyed them in parts. A friend of mine loves Mary Oliver’s poems. I own and have read Mary Oliver’s ‘A poetry handbook,’ which is a slim volume that explains basic terms in poetry. I’ve also read Sharanya Manivannan’s ‘The altar of an only world.’ I enjoyed the book for its rich imagery, creative use of vocabulary, and sheer sense of poetry it conveyed. I’ve enjoyed Rilke’s poetry in 2014. ‘The Essential Rumi’ with a translation by Coleman Barks was another book on po...

What better time than the lockdown to pursue an online course? I have done three courses on LinkedIn so far during this period, but I would love to do more courses on other platforms as well. LinkedIn enables you to download a certificate and also add it as a skill on your LinkedIn profile, once you complete the course. Now, so many reputed universities and Ivy League colleges are offering free courses online. Have you checked out https://online-learning.harvard.edu/ ? Udemy is offering courses starting from Rs. 420 for Shuttl users. Instapoet Rupi Kaur conducted a live writing workshop online earlier this year. BYJU’s, Unacademy, Vendantu and Coursera are having special offers and limited free access to their learning material. There is no better time than the present to upskill. Learning is a lifelong process. The half-life of an engineering education today is only three years, so it becomes crucial to keep learning after graduation or post-graduation. It is best n...

People have collected newspaper clippings over the years and stuck them onto their scrapbooks. My dad cuts out a newspaper clipping, of say, a book review, and keeps it inside the book in question. My dad tells me an anecdote of the time he was a student in IIT and one of the boys he met during an inter-university student leader’s conference had a huge collection of newspaper clippings on Kamaraj. The boy had collected news clippings of every news item pertaining to the Tamil political leader and arranged them chronologically in his scrapbook. Others collect pictures of strange UFO sightings, criminal cases covered in the media, favourite cooking recipes, pictures of touristy places and music festivals. I’ve not been in the habit of collecting newspaper clippings, and now with print editions rapidly folding up, it doesn’t seem like a good time to start. I just add sites I want to go through later to my Bookmarks. These days, people do online scrapbooking. I’m plann...