Design in Starbucks Caramel Macchiato - Neli Kolam

It is interesting to see that the design drawn on Starbucks' Caramel Macchiato is a traditional Neli Kolam or sikku kolam from Tamil Nadu. People draw these kolams at the entrance of their house. These are geometrically symmetric and tend to have complex design patterns. It has a rich cultural background to it. I'm wondering how this kolam landed on Starbucks' caramel macchiato design :)

Neli Kolam in the background

Life Calendar

This is my first non-photo blog post. I made a weekly life-calendar for myself and I thought everyone should have one too to get a perspective of their life. This is aimed towards having a simple log which makes us remember the major events without having to write a lot about it. So, I made a weekly calendar for 100 years in a spreadsheet which can be downloaded from here. You can enter your birth year as specified in the spreadsheet, and you have it personalized for you. You could use it to make important events in your life.

I got inspired to do this after watching a TED talk by Tim Urban about procastination and reading his blogpost. Although it would have been easy to buy from his website, I thought I wanted a more personalized version and set about making it on excel, we could have it as a soft-copy version too.

I found it interesting and useful and gives me a simplified vision for my life, which most of the time we tend to think is long. This can be printed into an A4 size sheet and when filled, would look something like this image below. I had written some events with color codes.

Weekly Life Calendar in an A4 sheet

Give it a try for yourself. You could do something similar or you could have your own ways of noting the event with comments, etc.

Cactus Garden

They transform a desert into a painted forest! Dry, yet you find the elixir, when you find your cacti...

You give it a teeny tiny space, like your window sill (Here, I just have less than 3" width) and you have your mini garden and greenery!