Yearly Archives: 2015

Inside Out Genovese Pasta At The Beach 2

This entry was posted in Food on by (updated 3173 days ago)

I love Basil. Which is why I have untamed Basil bushes growing in my lawn. It’s a cousin of our very own Holy Basil (Tulsi) but tastes very different. Apart from garnishing anything with basil, the best thing to make with it is Basil pesto.

Pesto is a sauce originating in Genoa in northern Italy and traditionally consists of crushed garlic, basil, pine nuts blended with olive oil, and Parmesan cheese. There are many variations to this. You can add a dash of other herbs that go with basil or replace pine nuts with walnuts or even almonds. You can also make it without any nuts and it’ll taste really good even then. The word pesto comes from the past participle of the Genoese word pestâ  which means to pound, to crush, in reference to the original method of preparation, with marble mortar and wooden pestle. Anyway, enough with the history behind it. Pesto tastes wonderful and is typically used in Italian pasta recipes. A very classic Italian recipe is Genovese pasta, that originated in Genoa, where potatoes and long French beans are added to pasta and then tossed with generous amounts of basil pesto. It’s very quick and easy to make and is made with veggies like potatoes and beans which are staple to all households! I’ve made it earlier as well, as shown in the instagram image below.

 

 

Today’s main course: genovese pasta- spaghetti with basil almond pesto, long green beans & cubed potatoes ?#moi

A photo posted by Twilight Fairy (@twilightfairy) on


 

So on this fine sunday I decided to give the Classic Genovese pasta – a twist. Instead of the pesto and the veggies being on the outside of the pasta, I decided to put them INSIDE the pasta. Hence the Inside Out Genovese Pasta. (The twist to this recipe doesn’t end just there). I figured that the best shape for this dish, which is easily available in India would be Conchiglie (Sea shell shape). So off I went to the local gourmet store and bought myself a pack of Del monte’s conchiglie pasta. It’s a good pasta for stuffing things as well as eating like regular pasta. It also coats well and holds shape. And since creating food is akin to creating art, I decided to play out a seaside scene with my food, sitting far away from any beach and sans any seafood. Hence came into existence – the ‘Inside Out Genovese Pasta At The Beach’.

DelMonte Conchiglie

 So here are the detailed steps.

MeThod:

1. In a large pot or saucepan, put water to boil. Add some salt. Put the Conchiglie shells in it and cook al dente or as per what you like (I like them properly cooked). Drain them , Pour a dash of extra virgin olive oil on them and keep aside. Ideally the pasta and the potatoes and the beans can all be cooked together in one pan but in this version of the Genovese pasta, since we’ll be stuffing the shells, it is important to cook the pasta and the veggies separately.

DelMonte Conchiglie pasta in raw and cooked form

 This image shows the uncooked pasta with the cooked pasta in the background to give an idea about the relative size.

 

2. For Basil pesto, in a blender blend the nuts with the garlic and parmesan. Then add the basil, dash of balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil (as per your health concerns) & churn into a sauce. Season with salt and a little pepper. Put aside. Even if you make extra you can use it later, as a dip or just as a spread in a sandwich.

Basil in my lawnA cup full of packed basilBasil pesto

 

3. Peel the potatoes, and then dice into very small half inch cubes. The size should fit into a piece of pasta.

Take the trimmed beans and similarly, chop them into half inch pieces. Classically in a Genovese pasta , the beans are barely halved in size and sometimes not even halved. Readers can try that version as well. It would just mean not stuffing the shells.

Trimmed beansDiced potatoes that fit into the pastaChopped beans and potatoes

 4. Again take some water in the earlier pot or saucepan, add some salt and put to boil. Put the potatoes first, since they’ll take longer to cook and we want crunchy beans. After 5 minutes, add the chopped beans. Cook for 2–3 minutes until the beans are cooked but are still crunchy. The potatoes should be cooked thoroughly.  Since they have been diced into small cubes, it will not take that long. Drain both veggies in a colander.

5. Take a pan, heat up some olive oil in it and add a generous pinch of thyme. To this now add the potatoes and the beans. Toss quickly and add some salt and pepper. Keep in mind that there is already salt in the pesto as well as the Conchiglie pasta. Keep the mixture aside.

6. In a pan, heat up 1 or 2 hot dogs or frankfurters or sausages. Whatever is available and as per your appetite.  I used chicken pepper sausages in this example.

 

For the elaborate plating for the ‘scene at the beach’:

7. Take a dish in which you wish to do the plating. Take one shell at a time and put a piece of bean and a cube of potato or just few pieces of one vegetable as per your choice. There’s no set formula, and it can be a random mix as well. After this you have to put the basil pesto inside the shells. You can either use a small spoon or use a piping bag or icing gun if you are more comfortable with that. I used a small spoon. You can also choose to put the pesto first and veggies later. It can be an interesting mix of stuffed shells. These will, as is apparent, be the sea shells in your beach scene. You can stuff as many shells as you want. The quantity in the image below is only for representation of the beach scene.

 

Stuff each shell with pesto, potatoes and beansA plate full of stuffed shells

8. After you have taken several shells (as per your appetite) and stuffed them, and aligned them on a plate, take a slice of bread and spread some basil pesto on one side. Toast in a toaster or bake this bread till it is brown and crisped completely. I used the air fryer here for the same result. Once this is done, break the crisped toast into pieces and crush into powder in a blender. This will be the (flavoured) sand at the beach. Pour the sand in one corner of your seaside scene.

Seaside sand created with toasted bread

9. Take the cheese block and a cookie cutter in a star shape and cut out a star piece. After this you can try your artistic skills and slice off more cheese to make this star look more like a starfish with slender tentacles. You can place this starfish anywhere in the seaside scene.

A starfish cut out of cheese

10. Take the cooked sausages (or hot dogs) and after leaving 1 – 1.5 inches on the top, slit the rest into 2. Then slit into 2 more. Then slit the individual 4 pieces into 2 each. The resultant 8 pieces will be the legs of the octopus. Stick 2 peppercorns into the top portion of each sausage to make eyes. You might have to poke a tiny hole with a knife if they don’t stick in. Your octopuses are ready!

Place the octopuses anywhere on the seaside scene we have going.

Slicing a sausage for making an octopus Octopuses made out of chicken sausages

11. For the final touch, You can also sprinkle some of the pesto toast sand onto the shells. Your sea beach scene is complete! If you wish, you can splash a little extra virgin olive oil in this dish too.

The final dish with the beach scene complete with sea shells, sand, octopus and star fish!

Instead of serving bread on the side as is typical with pasta dishes, I’ve used the bread as sand. Instead of adding chicken to the dish while cooking, I’ve used chicken sausages for octopus. You can also omit the sausages if you are a vegetarian. All in all, this is a healthy wholesome meal made with commonly available ingredients.

Here are some closeups of individual elements of this dish.

DelMonte-21 DelMonte-22

 

 

 

DelMonte-25DelMonte-23

 

 

 

 

 

DelMonte-24DelMonte-20

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voila! Enjoy the Inside Out Genovese Pasta

 Tip:

1. You can also leave the plating portion of this recipe and just toss the pasta together with the potatoes and beans and basil pesto.

2. For a variation, you can also add a dash of vodka into the pesto instead of balsamic vinegar.

3. Leftover pesto sauce can be stored in a jar. Add some extra virgin olive oil on the top to avoid oxidation.

4. Leftover pasta can be put in muffin cups, layered with grated cheese on top & baked. A quick to-go handy bite is ready!


Hostgator is Post-Traitor

This entry was posted in Customer grievances personal tech on by (updated 3200 days ago)

Here’s why you should never use hostgator’s services. They are post-traitors. They lose mail data. And then you can never get it back. In short – they can not be relied upon for hosting your data, which is precisely what their job is.

I have been using Hostgator since 4 years now for my professional photography domain www.priyankasachar.com. I started with the US servers after which my account was shifted to India servers following their expansion into India just a month after I signed up.

Since then, my experience with HG has been a living hell! Their India team is the most unprofessional team I have EVER seen for ANY service, full of incompetent duds who know nothing, pass personal comments and now they have gone and lost 6 MONTHS OF MY MAIL DATA with the following solution – “Now it can not be retrieved”.

I have raised issues several times with hostgator in the last 4 years of my painful journey and have even received calls from their US branch thanks to the unprofessional behaviour of their India support staff. I thought that with time, things will improve with the India operation because they might just be having teething troubles. However I was being impractically hopeful! Their team was AS PATHETIC 4 years back as it is TODAY.

Right after shifting to India servers, they lost a lot of my professional mail data (of 2 weeks) in June 2011 because their servers marked my mail account as a “demo account” for some stupid reason. This caused me huge losses not just in terms of the overseas opportunities I lost, but also in terms of my repute. All my clients considered ME unprofessional because I wasn’t responding to their mails, instead it was HG that was unprofessional by dropping mails and I had no idea that mails were getting dropped! Now HG has lost 6 WHOLE months of my mail data and the previous incident of June 2011 seems minor in comparison because at least then, I was able to retrieve mails from the server & get back to those who had tried contacting me and pick up pieces of my reputation somewhat, bit by bit. Currently they say that “Nothing can be done about the data loss”!! How pathetic is this organisation that loses professional data (unheard of) – the very data they are supposed to be hosting and then their employees have the gall to say that nothing can be done about it!

For the purpose of this post, I will look past the various issues I’ve faced over the years including loss of mails in June 2011, difficulties faced during account transfer to India, hosted images not showing on the site, the site being too slow, various downtimes, global outages over the years, unavailability of SSH multiple times, Google adwords credit NEVER given till date, harassment at the time of renewal for 3 years in 2012, unprofessional behaviour by Indian staff, unavailability of their tech support senior people during all this time, etc – and – get to what all I have faced just THIS year.

1. On 11 Jan’15 I realised that my site had been down on 10th and decided to upgrade the wordpress software & plugins to the latest versions. I kept trying to upgrade and I kept getting server timeouts and other errors. I thought it was something to do with my internet service provider. Little did I know that it was HG all this while! I couldn’t even access it via SSH or FTP! Ultimately when I contacted HG – following are the issues I faced:

a) NO contact information available on their website. Raising support ticket fetched no response. Live chat was offline even though the website screams 24/7/365 support!! What a rubbish claim. No contact number mentioned for support requests – only for billing and abuse. Their Toll free number wasn’t mentioned anywhere AT ALL. I was ironically, fortunate enough that my past miseries with HG had made me store their toll free number in my phone and I used it after I got no response whatsoever from even their twitter handle!! Why do they even have twitter presence when the duds maintaining it get back to people AFTER THREE DAYS!! This is how pathetic HG’s accessibility is – to even get heard at the basic level.
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b) I managed to call the toll free number which after great difficulty and very long holding times, connected me to someone who put me on hold and then the call was disconnected! And this wasn’t the only time this happened for me to think that it was an exception! I talked to 5 different people mostly because the tollfree number just disconnected multiple times! I must say that the technical support staff is MOST incompetent EVER. They do not know even the basics of what they are talking about.
Firstly, my website’s ports had just been blocked out of the blue – with no notification or email or sms or anything at all! With the amount of marketing spam these guys send, could they not have autogenerated an email which alerted me to the issue? The customer instead has to DISCOVER the issue first – time does not matter here, then bang her head against incompetent tech support staff and THEN get to the point where the issue is disclosed to begin with! I was told that there was some malware on my site which is why my site’s ports had been blocked!
Here’s what I found on running a 3rd party check on my site:

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Which means that HG has some beyond imagination parameters based on which malware is detected! Whatever it was – was NOT SO life threatening that my entire site had to be blocked due to some reason and that too WITHOUT NOTIFYING ME!!
c) Ultimately I had to tell their staff to at least fix SSH access which was previously working, so that I could at least upload files I wanted, into my hosting account and fix the malware issue. Even that had been disabled. Sadly their tech support staff was absolutely unaware of what I meant. One had no idea of how to enable the port used for SSH. The other told me to use putty instead! This was in spite of my sharing screenshots of the SSH command issued on terminal (In Mac OS). When I told her that I am on Mac OS and that putty was only for windows she started arguing with me! Instead of putty on Mac OS, one needs to run the SSH command from the terminal (app in Mac OS). Ultimately she consulted someone senior and came to the same conclusion that terminal has to be used. and FINALLY she managed to enable the port. It took me ALL day to get this mess sorted.
d) With every passing issue, I managed to unearth newer ones! this just shows how PATHETIC their tech support staff is and how unimportant PROCESSES are to hostgator! Now that my site was supposedly infected with malware which was mind you, NOT detected by any other malware detection software in the world, except for the one on HG, I was supposed to run a malware check through cpanel each time after changes, to see if the malware had been finally removed or not. In order to do this, I had to login to cpanel. I logged in only to realise to my horror that the credentials I had been using for years did not work – AGAIN NO NOTIFICATION for any resetting of the same had been sent.
e) I finally got my password for cpanel reset (do i need to add how difficult that was?) and then realised that “change password” option was NOT in cpanel at all! I AGAIN called their pathetic tech support staff and landed with another dud, who now told me that the very round about way of resetting one’s cpanel password, was NOW through the billing account! SERIOUSLY? AGAIN, so much marketing spam and these guys could not deem it fit to send ONE mail that mattered? One informing their customers that NOW they have to go through this roundabout way for changing the cpanel password?!! And to think that I wasted so much time trying to figure our where the hell that option went! I was told that this was for our own security and benefit. Well could the dumb unprofessional hacks i.e. HG’s tech support staff not think of sending a mass mail informing everyone about this so called benefit? If they are doing such a great service to their customers, why not brag about it? Refer to the numerous amount of marketing spam comment again.
f) Finally, i managed to change my password for the billing portal, then accessed it, changed the password for my cpanel, then accessed THAT and finally fixed the problem on my website which if you ask me – WAS NOT THERE TO BEGIN WITH. Also, their tech support staff was very very rude to me in this time frame and this one particular person was constantly muttering an exasperated “oh god!” under her breath. When I mentioned that the tollfree no was still NOT listed on their website she said “if you can google it what is the problem?”.. Their staff seems to have been trained to find faults with their customers rather than fix their issues! Appalling! I fixed my issues and thought that was the end of it but the next day my passwords did not work YET AGAIN and I had to reset them YET AGAIN. However this time I knew the elaborate process – no thanks to tech support staff. Why could these people not have sent ONE mail about how this worked now?!! Priorities much? What will I do with all the crappy marketing mails if I am already an unfortunate customer of theirs? What matters more to existing customers is what my data is going through at their hands! and needless to say that even the marketing spam is useless because all deals apply ONLY to new accounts and not existing ones! So why even send the stuff to existing accounts? Why the laxity in sending mails that matter? And How dense and rude does the support staff have to be in each call? Not to mention the average holding time of at least 20 minutes if you call them.
2. I had thought that HG would at least learn *something* from all this mess that they had created but I was so SO wrong! Also, I was dealing with a knee injury and consequent surgery + physiotherapy in this timeframe, so I let these incidents go without reporting them officially, even though I had been urged to do so by HG US twitter handle. On 27th May one of my clients alerted me that she had sent me some mails, some days back. which I never received and I fired up my mail client and realised that I had not been receiving ANY MAILS since the last 6 months+ ! I have put a forwarder on my mail id hosted by HG and even though the forwarder was working fine there were no mails received from the time period of 8th Dec 2014 to 27th May 2015 on my mail server in question!

a) I called up HG immediately and (after being on hold in 4 different calls due to their pathetic tollfree service, finally connected and) spoke to a tech support person, who pretty much like previous encounters with their unprofessional staff started blaming ME for not having reported this issue earlier! Excuse me but how is the onus of this on the customer? Then she went on to ask me WHAT I was doing in the past 6 months and if this was a professional id , I should have been checking it more frequently! Flabbergasted at this personal investigation, I even asked her what business she had asking me such personal questions! Seriously, do these guys not record ANY calls? Do these people not train staff on mere basics?
b)  I had dislocated my kneecap in december, fractured it, ruptured one of my ligaments as well, and had to undergo surgery followed by intense physiotherapy to fix these issues and was bedridden for quite some time. This summed up my time from all these lost months. So excuse me, the customer, for not being able to live up to the high standards that HG has for everyone except the quality of their hosting, processes or their support staff. I had placed my faith in HG and thought that if I make whatever changes I have been asked to, post server migration, at least the rest would function fine and wouldn’t need my intervention, especially if I have other things to deal with (surgery and post-op rehabilitation). Clearly that faith was wrongly placed. Once the tech support person, got to know the reason for my absence, she was quite apologetic but she wasn’t sure about retrieval of mails.
c) Since 27th May, several people have written to me in context of this support request and the ONLY answer they have repeatedly given to me in these 2 whole months, is that the mails can not be retrieved because that server has been shutdown. SO? how does that concern me? They should have retrieved mails from backups. How to fix this issue is the tech support staff’s problem! The mails have NOT EVEN BEEN BOUNCING. My clients told me that the mails have been sent and yet I did NOT get them. They did not get any mailer daemons. So they have gone SOMEWHERE. The last time this happened in 2011, the duration was 2 weeks and the mails had been retrieved. This time the duration is MORE THAN 6 MONTHS!! And their staff says “Nothing can be done”. Well who the hell is responsible for this mess?
d) At the time of their server migration on 8 december 2014, the mail that was sent to all customers did NOT mention that mail settings had to be changed! Yet this is what ultimately had to be done to even get my mail to start working again! This is what was sent. No mention of mail anywhere.

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e) Why could an automated mail not be sent for the mail server changes required? Was their tech staff sleeping all this while? What caused this major oversight? In fact I was told by their staff that they had been fixing problems as and when they came in!!! THIS is beyond shocking! As can be seen by the previous examples as well, Hostgator as an organisation, WAITS for their customers to first DISCOVER that there’s an issue, then to discover WHAT ISSUE and THEN they bother to fix it – not without personal comments & incompetence! This is the most unprofessional practice I have ever seen. Not to mention that the likelihood of people discovering problems at a point when nothing can be done, is rather high. And this is not for the first time with HG either. This is after having seen various service providers in the business because I have been maintaining several websites since a decade now! As showcased in the 11 Jan incident, Hostgator has NO processes whatsoever. And this is a wordlclass MNC we are talking about. They just put the onus of all problems on their customers. Even for basics like changes in login details and password resets and mail server changes!
f) Most importantly, WHY is the staff busy making stupid excuses now to justify the data loss which in turn is an unheard of thing! If a server is being phased out , there are backups, there are processes, there is documentation. There is absolutely NOTHING that Hostgator has here.
g) I have been exchanging mails with their idiotic India staff over this issue, since 27 MAY 15 now but to no avail.

The way their staff has been consistently unprofessional and technically incompetent, the way my experience has been over the last 4 years, needless to say I am not going to stick around with hostgator anymore. In this day and age, these guys are inaccessible be it social media channels or other traditional channels put up by them as their forefront. HG india twitter id got back to me after 3 whole days of the whole fiasco on 11 Jan. HG US twitter id however got back to me immediately. Why are the standards not same for both? Why are they even trying to run the HG India twitter id if the people handling it don’t operate as often as the social media world requires them to? Just shut it down. I would in fact, recommend shutting down Hostgator’s ENTIRE India operations because THIS PATHETIC an experience after shelling out so much money is not anyone’s cup of tea. In fact my local hosting service with no multinational operations has proved much better for the rest of my sites. At LEAST they don’t lose my data and then make stupid stories about it.

I would like to hear their Senior management’s comments on this. My hosting with Hostgator expires in 2 days. Knowing how unprofessional they can be, I won’t be surprised if they do nothing for the next 2 days, after which this issue will sort of become a moot point for them. But then there is consumer court for issues like this.
I don’t trust these people anymore. And going by my experience of last 4 years, neither should you. If you have faced any issues with your hosting provider, please share in the comments.


A drive till neemrana 1

This entry was posted in blogmeets holiday photography travel on by (updated 3260 days ago)

The first 4.5 months of this year went in coping with the kneecap dislocation and the subsequent MPFL reconstruction surgery I had to get done to fix the ligament that got ruptured. This included intensive physiotherapy for 2 months and even though I am not 100% ok yet, I am at least “kaam chalau” ok. Good enough to go out and be social again. I’ll write more about the MPFL reconstruction journey later. For now I shall talk about another journey – one from Gurgaon to Neemrana, while driving myself (yes, a big deal after surgery) and that too in a brand new car – the new Tata bolt! I got invited by Blogadda to join in on this drive that was happening on 10th May. Even though I was a bit apprehensive about my driving a long distance after surgery as well as climbing stairs – after talking to Harish from Blogadda, I was assured that there were many other drivers and it wasn’t mandatory to drive. It was as per comfort level. In fact there was a participant who didn’t know how to drive, but I digress :).  As for the stairs, well some were to be climbed to get to our destination for the day, but I could skip anything else that seemed physically taxing for my knee for now. So off I set on Sunday morning, reached Galaxy hotel at the pre-decided time and was assigned to team no 1.  We were to drive the petrol version (revotron) of the car first, followed by an exchange with the diesel version at a pit stop.

After an intro round and some appetisers, Mr Sethi  from Tata Motors shared some of the features of the Tata bolt. They also announced a contest – the best picture of the day would win flipkart vouchers. After lunch, we got ready to leave. All the cars had an ice box that was filled with cold water, juices, lassi, lemonade and some assorted snacks. Much needed on the hot searing sunny day that was the 10th of May! They were also equipped with Samsung tabs using the “connectnext” technology, through which we were constantly in touch with “Captain Bolt” – for all practical purposes a mysterious voice that kept tabs on us, our whereabouts and our requirements 🙂 .. In reality a person of the Tata Bolt team who wasn’t a part of the cavalcade & also provided us some media to play during our long drive. All cars were RED in colour except the pilot car. Boy I love that colour! My team mates were Prasad – an angel investor amongst other things and Alok – An SEO specialist. Alok didn’t know how to drive … and then there were two :). Accompanying us was Anuja from the blogadda team. Since we were team no 1, we were the first ones to be flagged off. I decided to drive first for as long as I could drive and then hand over the car to Prasad. We first went to leisure valley grounds, where a track had been set up to test the suspension of the car. Once we were through that, we set out for Neemrana Fort Palace. The “Revotron” version has 3 modes of driving in the city – Sport (power), Eco (Mileage), City (Mix of both). We mostly drove in the city mode. Even on the highway on sports mode, the difference could not be discerned because of constant traffic jams. It felt great going for a long drive after a gap of more than 4 months. I didn’t feel the level of discomfort I had expected due to my knee and drove till the pit stop. Once there, we exchanged our car for the Diesel version and Prasad got behind the wheel. The hi-tech music system and the voice of Captain bolt kept us entertained throughout the drive. Soon we reached Neemrana. The heat was unbearable and I slowly troddled up to Jalgiri Mahal which overlooked the superlicious swimming pool! We had some refreshments and then it was time for a tour. The group went ahead while I decided to skip this part. However, I did venture out on my own and caught a glimpse of the Hawa mahal.

The place was seeped in history, and sounds of birdcalls & their echoes. Parrots and peacocks roamed around unafraid of human contact. It was strange seeing huge trees growing over by the stairs and what not. Small little peepholes in the parapets of the fort had been converted to toilets with a view! Bougainvillea creepers adorned the palace and in some parts they covered whole walls like ivy. There were tiny little manmade ponds all over the property at various heights. And a swimming pool of course. Wonder what it would have been like in ancient times.

The inviting pool on a sweltering day!

The superlicious inviting pool in the sweltering heat! #neemrana #boltdrives @tatabolt @blogadda #cinemagram

A video posted by Twilight Fairy (@twilightfairy) on

 

Soon the tour ended and the entire gang came back. We all had high tea and watched a folk performance. I was still uploading my instagram images from the day and making Cinemagraphs (Animated GIFs made with short video clips) when the prizes were announced. I shouldn’t have worried cos the only image I had managed to upload by then, won me the best image of the day award! 🙂 The prize was flipkart vouchers worth 4K. But the bigger surprise of the day was yet to come when Tata Motors announced the results of a blogging contest that had already happened a month or so back. And one of the bloggers  – Ragini – won a brand new Tata Bolt! I am sure everyone wanted to be in her place at that moment :).

My winning image!

 

  Eye of the tiger! @tatabolt @blogadda #boltdrives   A photo posted by Twilight Fairy (@twilightfairy) on

Cinemagraph of the folk performance

Soon it was time to leave and although this was a touch and go trip, it was still worthwhile. I clicked some more images of the fort palace that were appreciated by Neemrana properties as well.

Twilight at the Neemrana fort, clicked by twilight at the Neemrana fort 😉

 

The magnificent sun set as viewed from #neemrana fort. #boltdrives @tatabolt @blogadda #ipadography #panorama

 

A photo posted by Twilight Fairy (@twilightfairy) on

On the way back we had the diesel car with us throughout and since I had not driven that variant I decided to drive for as long as was comfortable. The journey back was again full of laughter, jokes, friendly jibes and of course Captain bolt’s announcements. He also conducted a quiz about the features of the car and we all won Bookmyshow vouchers. If only, we had won cars instead ;). Around halfway, I again did an exchange with Prasad and sat in the backseat. The car is comfortable and has enough leg room. We reached Galaxy hotels at 9:30 pm and after the entire gang bade farewell (which almost drowned the sound of a shaadi band) we all headed home with new experiences and friends. It was a Sunday well spent at #Boltdrives with BOLT from Tata Motors and Blogadda especially since there were prizes involved 🙂


Hair today, what tomorrow! (Review)

This entry was posted in Product/Service review on by (updated 3333 days ago)

So I took up the #happyhairchallenge from Garnier almost a month back & at that time my hair had the tendency to be like what I highlighted here!

Here’s the journey from a tendency like this –>

monica-geller1

to using this –>

IMG_20150220_220013_1

to hair like this –>

MonicaBlonde

KIDDING! No my hair didn’t change colour! 🙂

to this –> (well somewhat)

MonicaClean

After using the shampoo frequently over a period of a month, following was my experience:

In the initial days of usage, my hair would feel soft immediately after the wash and conditioning process. However once my hair would dry properly, it would look rather electrified and I had to apply hair oil each time to just settle it! (grr – see topmost image above again) So I reduced the quantity of shampoo used. I also increased the time I waited, before washing off the conditioner and the results improved considerably. No more frizz. And my hair felt “silky” & easy to maintain. I might as well add, that the conditioner bottle mentions applying it on scalp but I NEVER apply conditioner to my scalp (ever since I learnt from haircare professionals that one is not supposed to). I take some in my palms and rub it from roughly 1 inch of hair follicles to hair tips without going to the scalp. It does help in reducing hair fall because conditioner is tougher getting out of one’s hair. Also, I don’t wash my hair without applying hair oil and massaging well first. So the product hasn’t been tried on an absolutely “dry” head.

More thoughts:

Both the shampoo & conditioner have attractive & bright packaging and a pleasant fruity smell. They have a pretty good shelf life (36 months) compared to other brands. The lathering is moderate. Not too much and not too less. I personally like more lather, but as long as results are fine, this is ok too.

The conditioner bottle’s instructions mention leaving it in for 1-2 minutes, but I left it for a good 3-4 minutes before washing off (towards the later half of my experiment). I have tried leaving it for shorter but as mentioned above, it doesn’t help my hair in the least.

Previously when I had been asked for a hair evaluation by Garnier (“Which is the biggest hair problem that you face?”) Mine in decreasing order of concern, were:

  • Frizzy/Unmanageable hair
  • Rough Hair
  • Dry/Undernourished hair
  • Weak roots leading to Hair Fall
  • Split ends

After using the shampoo for a month, the rating that I have submitted to Garnier is the following:

Does your hair feel Nourished after using Triple Nutrition?* – Yes
Does your hair feel Stronger after using Triple Nutrition? * – No
Has your hairfall reduced after using Triple Nutrition? * – No
Have your split-ends reduced after using Triple Nutrition? * – NA
Does your hair feel smoother and softer after using Triple Nutrition? * – Yes
Is your hair more manageable/easy to detangle after using Triple Nutrition? * – Yes
Does your hair look shinier after using Triple Nutrition? * – Yes
Rate the Fragrance of Triple Nutrition * – Love it!
Would you recommend Garnier Fructis Triple Nutrition? * – Yes , can. In this price range.
Will you buy Garnier Fructis Triple Nutrition? * – May be.

Good STUFF :

  • Affordable (Rs. 135/- each).
  • Good shelf life (36 months).
  • Colourful bottle, easy to open flip cap.
  • Smells nice.
  • Smoothens hair once you get what’s right for your hair.
  • Hair detangling made easier.

BAD STUFF :

  • Does not reduce hair fall.
  • Made my hair dry and electrified till I figured out what’s right for my hair (which was after not following the instructions on the bottle) .
  • For those finicky about chemicals in your shampoo – well this is not for you.
 Rating : 3.5/5

Disclaimer: I have not been paid for this review, but I did receive the samples of the product from Garnier. This is an unbiased review of the same.


Hair today, what tomorrow! 1

This entry was posted in Product/Service review on by (updated 1758 days ago)

Since the beginning of time immemorial, I’ve had rather long hair (almost knee length or at least butt length for most of my life). Last year on women’s day I chopped my tresses in a bid to do something different, and went in for “shoulder length hair”. I know that counts as “long” for many but for me it was *rather* short going by what I had almost all the time. My biggest problem has always been how to keep my hair free from entangling and avoiding heartbreak (also known as hairfall that results from the aforementioned entangling). My hair is naturally wavy, and it tends to go rather frizzy if not maintained properly. Every hair wash episode is a mini project in the art of combing hair without entangling or breaking the long length. I have never tried any chemical treatments and have never straightened, streaked or coloured my hair. I go in for hair spa treatments from time to time to tame the tresses. In short, I’ve been a rather aadarsh bhartiya naari. And now that I have “short” hair, and tend to keep them open, I need all the help I can get to maintain my hair.

Now I can’t possibly pass off Monica’s excuses for my frizzy hair.

monica-geller1

 

Or try and tame them like this.

monica-cap

Or try things like this.

monica-friends-dreadlocks-beads

So I went in for something simpler..ahem!

.IMG_20150220_220013_1

(Ok, I couldnt help dramatising that image with textures etc)

Recently, Garnier contacted me and asked me if I wanted to try this product and review it, so here I am, trying out Garnier’s Triple nutrition range. Here are some closeups of the product that I am about to review.

I was asked “Which is the biggest hair problem that you face?” Mine in decreasing order of concern, are:

  • Frizzy/Unmanageable hair
  • Rough Hair
  • Dry/Undernourished hair
  • Weak roots leading to Hair Fall
  • Split ends

All hair products have several claims.. be it hair masks, serums, shampoos, conditioners, hair oils and what not. Now I am about to test out the claims of this one! And I’ll be putting up my review as part of the #hairchallenge.

First impressions:

The appearance looks attractive. I like the bright colours. The bottles have a good grip on slippery shampoo-ey hands. They have a very convenient to open cap unlike many other brands where you have to struggle to flip open a rather tight cap and end up with hurting fingers and the shampoo splattered on the wall. The stuff smells real nice – but then don’t they all :).

Let’s see where it goes. Shall post a review update soon. And needless to say the review will be based on my personal hair experience and nothing else.