Goodbye Blog, Hello Website

Dear Members,
The blog has serviced us well now for nearly two years. It is therefore with some sadness that I tell you that it will be discontinued. Members will now be able to post their own questions/advice/moving sales/staff needs on the new website.
1. Go to www.owcmadras.com
2. Click 'members forum'
3. Register an account
4. Wait 24 to 48 hrs for your account to be approved. This is merely a formality. We want to restrict the forum to members so that advertisers and others do not misuse it. Once you have been approved you may start posting!
Note that all events can now be found on the events calendar. The site contains a new and expanded vendor directory, as well.
Many thanks to Katya Reyes and her company e-designed.com. She exceeded our expectations and was great to work with. I think you will all agree that the site looks wonderful and is extremely user friendly.
Thank you also to Patrick Fischer for his many useful inputs!
I am blogging off now! See you in the forum!
Natalie von Hoffmeister

Guitar for Rent?

Any GUITAR available on rent? A 11 year old boy would like to practice his guitar lessons while visiting India for a month and a half starting from July. If anyone knows of a guitar which might be available for that period and could be lent out, please contact Sangeeta at 98841 49490 or e-mail her at syesley@yahoo.co.uk. Thank you.

Moving Sale

Hi ladies,
As some of you might know I am planning to move back to Korea on 14th of June.
I have few items to sell. Please see the attached item pictures and let me know if you are interested.
Have a nice day!

Youngmi
+99400 19021
plurplur@gmail.com

Little tikes Sport car bed with mattress
- 4 years old
- price : 8000rps (purchase in korea, original price approx. US$ 500 including mattress)

Miffy Playmat
- 3 years old. 185* 125* 1.2cm, Both side available.
- price : 800rps (purchased in korea, original price US$40)

Intex Dolphin Play Center
- In box. Never used. 249*163*135cm
- price : 1000rps (purchased in Korea, original price approx.US$35)

Yamaha Keyboard with stand and carrying bag
- Yamaha E403. 1 year old.
- price : 9000rps (original price 14500 rupees + Stand 700 rupees + Bag 400 rupees)

Bird wooden piece
- approx. 1.2m high
- price : 1000rupees (purchased in India(teak and heirooms), original price : 2500 rupees)

Driver for Hire

Tatjana Kaiser has a driver to recommend. He has lived abroad and speaks French. He knows the city very well and worked for many expats. If interested, contact Tatjana: 99400 30488

She has his CV.

Maid Available

My maid is also available for work starting June 7, 2008. Kala has been working for expatriates for the past 12 years. All her employers, including ourselves has been extremely satisfied with her services. All of us have employed Kala for the entire duration of our stay in Chennai and only had to give her up since our contracts in Chennai have ended and we had to leave.
Kala has a good work ethic. She comes to work on time and is never absent. She is very hard working, knows her duties and requires very minimal supervision. She also does babysitting, my daughter absolutely adores her! If you have any more questions about Kala or would like to set up an interview and see all this outstanding recommendations, please feel free to call me. Angela 9940162840 or you can call through her son's mobile Sugan -9941650606 Thank you!!

Book Recommendations

New member Rocky Peltzman, recommends the following books. Speaking of books, anyone interested in reviving book club is welcome to do so. Just pick a book and set the date!

Desert Places by R. Davidson
As Robyn Davidson writes in Desert Places, the Thar, a 230,000-square-mile expanse of formidably dry country in northwestern India, is a harsh land of "granite outcroppings, naked but for a few gullies of monsoon forest or a single, white-painted elephant stationed on a summit eternally surveying the farmlands below." Among the people who populate the Thar are the Rabari, who are quickly becoming modernized and dispossessed, wanderers on the fringes of urban civilization, people who are at home nowhere. After making a false start as a book of adventure travel, Desert Places becomes a work of cultural ecology and of amateur anthropology, reporting on the final days of a traditional nomadic culture once utterly at home in an inhospitable land. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers WeeklyInspired by an enchanting encounter with camel herdsmen at a Hindu festival in Pushkar, travel writer Davidson (Tracks) took a magazine assignment to accompany the nomads of Rajasthan (a region in western India) on their yearly migration cycle. Arriving in Jodhpur on the eve of the Gulf war under the aegis of her friend Narendra, a prince who equips her with an entourage of servants and an obstreperous camel-keeper named Chutra, Davidson soon discovers that the ancient culture of the nomads (who are known either as Rabari or as Raika) is slowly being eradicated, faced with diminishing grazing lands, new political boundaries and the spread of subsidized agriculture and Western culture. This book, as breathtaking but circuitous as the adventures it chronicles, begins to gather steam when Davidson is finally accepted by a dang (a migratory group) and sets off to follow them across the desert. She spends a few months sharing the shepherds' life of extreme deprivation, traveling 30 miles a day on a diet of little more than fetid water and camel's milk, sleeping two hours a night and battling illness and exhaustion, before deciding to return to Jodhpur on foot?which proves an even more perilous journey that ends when her camels die after eating poisonous weeds. By the book's end, Davidson's romantic vision of the peripatetic life has given way to a bitter account of her own dashed expectations and of the exploitation of India's nomads. Although her understanding of nomadism as an emotional and geographical phenomenon remains only partly digested, this book will nevertheless prove absorbing to even the most sedentary of bookshelf-travelers. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. The Dynasty--The Nehru-Gandhi Story by Adams and Whitehead. This accompanied a PBS or BBC serial on them.
Rocky Peltzman
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rockypeltzman

Art Show for Charity

OWC members are invited to "Double Take," a new exhibition of Indian contemporary art at the Prakrit Art Gallery. Proceeds of art sales to benefit the Mukti India http://www.muktiindia.org/index.asp.

New #9, (Old #4)

Ground Floor

Dhandayuthapani Nagar

2nd St.

Kotturpuram

Chennai - 85

Ph: 044-42188989, 24472207

Preview is on :Friday the 6th June, 2008 at 6.00 P.M.

On view: 7th June to 20th June 2008.Time: 11.00 A.M. to 7.00 P.M.