A glimpse of souvenir shopping in Hyderabad.

The above video is of us at a (only) Souvenir Shop at Chowmahalla Palace, Hyderabad. There are many Hyderabad related souvenirs here with Charminar, Chowmahalla Palace, ‘Salarjung museum displays’ etc., as the theme…replicas, mugs, coins etc. And many other items like pearls and pearl jewellery,  silver filigree items from Karimnagar, brass idols from Pembarthi, Bidri works, Nirmal toys and paintings, lacquer bangles and many many more, which I now wish I should have filmed in detail.

Enjoying exotic diverse foods at Hyderabad!

Last week I wrote of our first visit to Mekong Restaurant - If you love trying foreign cuisines, try Mekong!, where they serve authentic food of China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore and Japan. And I wrote that the ambience and food was good here.  Once we like the food at a restaurant there is always the desire to visit again.

One among such foreign food restaurants is Barbeque Nation to which we have been a few times, as the food is very good there. The attached photographs are of our recent visit to Barbeque Nation, once again! Here they serve delicious starters, soups, salads and main courses from cuisines around the world - Mediterranean, Continental, Oriental, American, Asian and Indian. I am very happy that these days we get to enjoy a variety of Indian and international cuisines at several places in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. 

Below photographs are of our first visit to Barbeque Nation:

A statistical and pictorial summary of my 701 blog posts.

I am happy to announce that I have just completed posting my article No. 701 to my blog – Raghu’s column! After I posted my first article to this blog site on 20th April 2009, I sent an email to my family, friends and relatives as follows: “Hi! Everyone, I have just started blogging under the title: ‘Raghu’s column!’ I strongly wish and hope I would find time to contribute regularly to this column on wide ranging topics: My views, memoirs, parties, forthcoming events, local issues / news, family announcements and many more topics. Please visit http://srisrilara.blogspot.in/ from time to time, please read my articles and post your comments for me and others to benefit”.

At the time when I began blogging, I never thought I would reach a figure of over 700 blog posts. As events came up and ideas, thoughts and memories sprang up in my mind I kept writing as and when possible and in these close to 5 years, to be precise in 56 months, I have posted 701 articles with well over 5,000 photographs. My son, Srinath is abroad in UK, and my nephew Dr. Uday Bhasker is in New Zealand and similarly a number of my friends, relatives and ex-colleagues who are far away are very happy to read my posts on current events at Hyderabad and those concerning me and our family. And the blog is serving as a ready reckoner for me, our family and friends over various subjects related to us and I presume it is helping a large number of other visitors reaching my blog in search of information.  

I wish to continue blogging as long as possible, as I am thoroughly enjoying this new found hobby. 

With a modest number of registered followers but a very large number of unregistered regular followers and hundreds of random visitors to my blog there have been 6,79,518 page views so far, from every nook and corner of the world, as you can see in the blogger statistics I have provided below. Actual page views might be more than double of 6,79,518 page views! because many computers these days have complex firewall protection which do not allow blogger to register their page views.

Here is a pictorial glimpse of my blog statistics and my 701-blog posts:

A solution to prevent crime against women.

Another atrocity on a woman two days back and this time in Hyderabad. The police have acted swiftly and caught the perpetrators of this beastly act. I hope the culprits will be punished swiftly, and the punishment should be death. It is so sad to hear about such instances. And unfortunately nowadays this has become a commonly recurring tragedy in our country.

One way I see to prevent such crime is by constantly educating the people to respect women and to be law abiding, through the most popular media in our country, the movies. We all know that all Indians throughout the length and breadth of the country are great fans of movies and movie stars. I strongly recommend that from now onwards, in every forthcoming movie; let teasing, degrading, violence and insulting of women be stopped. And as a part of movie stories and through striking ads during the course of the movies; in theatres and on TV, let the beasts among the audience be educated to treat women with respect and warn them against crimes and of severe punishment that is death.

My 700th Blog Post! – ‘My YouTube Videos!’

This is my 700th blog post! And I am very happy of reaching this milestone. In this post I am presenting a link to the 77 Videos I have posted so far on YouTube and a pictorial representation of the Videos with titles, I hope you would like a few of them. 

You may click on the link below for the Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/user/srisrilaran

Among these Videos the one with more than 1700 hits is a popular Tamil Cinema Song by my wife, Lalitha and Granddaughter, Sudhiksha. You can listen to this song by clicking on the following link:

Granddaughter and Grandmother singing the classic Tamil song 'Munbe Vaa'!

If you love trying foreign cuisines, try Mekong!

If you love trying different foreign foods, ethnic and authentic, you must certainly attend the Asian Sunday Brunch at Mekong Restaurant of Marigold By GreenPark, Begumpet, Hyderabad. The restaurant is named after the mighty 4,350 km long River Mekong which originates in the Tibetan Plateau and runs through parts of Mainland China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. And true to its name this restaurant serves authentic food from China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma and also Japan. The décor is subtle and pleasing with antique-look wooden bird cage lampshades, rich furniture made of fine wood and a live kitchen at the centre of the restaurant for a variety of Sushi, few other oriental delicacies and an oriental grill.

We went to this restaurant for the first time today and we loved it. You can see today’s menu and pictures of us with the exotic food items in the photographs below. There were few other accompaniments like Chinese Tea, salads, sauces, etc., which are not listed in the menu. To give you an idea of the large variety of the Pan Asian food they serve at Mekong I have also included the menu of last Sunday’s Brunch at the very end of this article.

You may visit this restaurant if you have an appetite for Chinese, Burmese, Japanese, Thai and other Asian cuisines.