for the LADIES.

This is HILARIOUS!!! MUST WATCH IT LADIES :) Let me know what you think!

Diwali.Festival of Lights.

Wednesday October 26, 2011 was Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights. It's a holiday celebrating and welcoming the goddess Lakshmi (goddess of wealth, prosperity, purity, generosity, charm, grace and embodiment of beauty) into your home.

My mother religiously celebrates Diwali every year. She cooks a bunch of YUMMY treats the night before and spends the day lighting our entire house with candles and decorating our floor with little Lakshmi footsteps (as if the goddess is ACTUALLY walking around our house). Oh, she of course cleans our house spick and span before the prayers begin.

To be honest, I love celebrating Diwali. The best part is spending time with family, friends and enjoying drinking, eating and lighting firecrackers! This year I took it upon myself to move my guy cousins aside and light the firecrackers one after the other without their help (well, they put it in place) but it was phenomenal !!!!

Diwali is a wonderful time to CELEBRATE. Celebrate your life, family, friends and welcome all good things in your life. Remove all negativity and be forever positive! 

Candles, also known as Diya that we light around the house

Firecrackers I lite outside in the country side (St.Andrews)

Look! It even says Happy Diwali :)

Goddess of Lakshmi

tweet and travel.

Though this is a school post, I've wanted to write about this topic for quite sometime.



My first tweet was back in 2009 when my cousin, Joey, told me to start using it. Her exact words were "Have you heard of Twitter? It's SO much fun!"

 

I did hear of it, but didn't care for it at that time. I think it's because I thought it was plain silly. Why would someone want to write about them eating? going for a number 2? and to top it off share it with the WORLD. So I tweeted two times and stopped.

It wasn't until I went to Vancouver in 2010 that I saw how Twitter ACTUALLY works. Joey would be on it 24/7 and finally I asked her "what's the deal with this Twitter business". She told me how majority of users don't write that kind of 'personal' stuff but rather market themselves on who they are, what they do, and what's going on around them in a total of 140 words. I thought that was pretty cool. But the coolest part was when it was put into ACTION. 

Joey woke me up one morning, SUPER EARLY (thought I would add that in) and told me we have to go take the train to go watch The Colbert Report LIVE!!! I was pretty stoked! I asked her how she found that out and lo and behold she said TWITTER!!!!!!!

That is when my appreciation for Twitter began. Twitter is more than a website. It's a way of life. It allows you to connect to  different types of people, experience things that you wouldn't on a daily basis and be part of everyone's world. Twitter is travelling in my eyes. Travelling into people's lives.

 

The only unfortunate thing is I write less, probably less then 140 words on a daily basis. BUT if used in a way that gets your point across then every word is POWERFUL.

Let me try a few sentences on how I feel about Twitter in less than

140 words and let me know what you guys think.

Try #1: Twitter is like travelling. Watch the fascination unfold tweet by tweet.

Try #2: Twitter is like several short stories. Those who don't read them are missing out on the whole experience.

Joey and I

I'm looking forward to what you guys think of Twitter! Please comment in less than 140 words.

@priyatandon

laughter and music.

This weekend I stayed at home. Yes. I did NOT go out once, except to hand in one of my assignments at school.

What got me through this weekend was first, my cousin Devika, who would Skype with me and make me laugh till my tum-tum would hurt and my music-- the Weeknd and Buddha Bar... yes Buddha Bar-- love them!

I'll post a video of the two songs I repeated this entire weekend. Oh and please take the time to look at the beautiful images posted on the song Secret Love- Buddha Bar. Absolutely stunning.

Secret Love- Buddha Bar 

The Weeknd- The Zone (feat Drake)

Oh and I thought I would post a picture of my beautiful cousin Devika who never fails to make me smile. 

Devika "cousins by blood, best friends since birth"

all the same.

I loved watching this video- an Italian woman who married a Sikh man and her occupation is a taxi driver in New York City.

It does not matter what race you come from, we are all the same.

check it!

Life as an Italian American Sikh female taxi driver in NYC

marrying off children.

This morning I read an article on BBC- What is it like to be a child bride?

The stats were out of this world "Some 10 million girls a year are married off before the age of 18..."

It is surreal to think that this exists in our world today.

Being brought up in Canada, we have the freedom as women and men to do whatever we please and make choices to be single, in a relationship, divorced and so on.

However, in India this is not the case... yet. The laws in India have shown that it is ILLEGAL to have child marriages, yet it openly exists.

Why?

Women are still looked as a burden in many families in regions throughout India. Also, the dowry system is prevalent. ("the brides parents offer dowry to the grooms family in the form of money and materials. This is in order to help support the livelihood of the bride until groom grows up to support her himself").

Not only that but people do not like change. If a system as been a way for so long, they want nothing to change that system.  "I hate the government for trying to stop us. This is the way we've always done things. The government bans this, saying do not get under-aged children married, but we don't care and we do these weddings anyway." - A bride's grandfather says in his interview on BBC.

Surely, one day India will CHANGE and as an optimistic person I am, I believe they can CHANGE for the better.

Below is the link for the BBC article- it's a good read.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15082550

Also if you have the time, you can watch a documentary on child marriages- an unsolved fact (a child marriage). Below is the YouTube link on all parts.

dressed in PINK!!!

Today was the Run for the Cure walk. This was my first year going and I have to say, it was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had.

I woke up at 7:20 am on a Sunday, so I knew I was committed to going on this walk. I got ready, took my dog for a walk and was on my way to the run. 

It felt as if I was surrounded by yummy pink cotton candies. Men, women, children and animals all dressed in pink. Men wearing tutus, women wearing pink colored wigs; running as if they themselves were killing cancer by each step they took. It was enlightening.

There was one incident that got to me the most. I saw a beautiful woman who was going through her stages of cancer, her head gorgeous and bald and her family holding her up, being her pillars of strength. I looked at my 'special friend' and we both had a moment. A moment where I remembered my aunt going through her chemo, fighting for her life to rid her cancer. She fought hard and she survived. I called her right after the walk was done.

Unfortunately that was not the case for my 'special friends' aunt and his friends' mom.They were fighters, and fought hard till the end. They will NEVER be forgotten. 

I salute everyone who is fighting; fought cancer. You are all simply beautiful....

I will be sure to make this an annual event.