NaNoWriMo

A couple of months ago, I came across a website called NaNoWriMo and I immediately liked the idea. How many times have you thought of some wacky story in your mind and told yourself, “This would be a great idea for a book!” Then, you tuned it all out and got back to what you were doing. I know I have! I’ve concocted some insane plots in my head, only to shut them all out because I told myself, “Who has the time to write it out? I have other things to do.”

Well, NaNoWriMo has a solution for all of us creative geniuses out there! The name stands for National Novel Writing Month and it’s a month dedicated to working on any crazy plot that we desire to pursue in the month of November. The goal is to write down 50,000 words, without worrying about the quality of your writing. It’s like when your high school English teacher made you do those journaling exercises in class and told you to write down whatever comes to your mind, without discriminating against any thoughts.

What’s the perk of doing this with the NaNoWriMo rather than on your own? Well, if you were going to do it on your own, you would have done it by now. You need some motivation to crunch out those 50K words and NaNoWriMo offers that. Plus, you can join a write-in where you live and make some new friends. If that wasn’t enough, winners can receive a free proof copy of your novel from CreateSpace. Isn’t that exciting?!

So, hurry up and sign up for NaNoWriMo because it starts in 3 days! You wouldn’t want to miss out on all the fun!

How to eat with your hand

Howdy! Here’s a tutorial that might be useful if a spoon or fork is not in sight.

I had lunch at my friend’s house a couple of weeks ago and I saw that she wasn’t shy about eating with her hand. I almost always eat with my hand at home, but I don’t do it if there are guests over. I realize that I need to get over my shyness because I really do enjoy eating with my hand. I feel like I am more aware of what I am eating because I can feel the texture of the food.

Now you can experience the pleasures of feeding yourself with your bare hands too!

I lived the first nine years of my life in Pakistan, where it is quite common to eat with one’s hand (yes, they have spoons there-but some people prefer not to eat with them). I also knew that our neighbors in India do the same. I recently found out that it is common in Sri Lanka too. Now I think it must be a common practice in many other places as well, despite the availability of eating utensils.

So, here we go.

Let’s say you want to eat this:

And you want to use this:

 

(1) Form a shape with your hand as if you are holding a baseball. Here, you can see it from different angles:

(2) Now, shrink the imaginary baseball until it’s as big as the amount of food you want to stuff in your mouth:

 

(3) Now, take some rice and form a little mound with the hand that has the tiny, imaginary baseball:

This is how it will look like:

You can add some meat or whatever else you eat your rice with:

(4) Pack it really tightly between your fingers:

(5) Then, pick up the rice with your fingers and you are ready to eat:

=)