My couple of visits to Ukraine in recent months have been quite an experience. I was going to a country I knew hardly anything about. In hindsight it was good that I was totally in the dark about Ukraine as the place gave me a pleasant surprise.

I traveled to Kiev (capital of Ukraine) on KLM, which flies’ there via Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. The journey was comfortable and took approx 11 hours on the plane and add to it the waiting time of 1 hr at Schipol and 3 hours in Delhi airport. The arrival airport is called Borispol, which is on the edge of Kiev city, some 25 or so kilometres away from the centre.

I booked the VIP Terminal at airport in advance which avoids all the immigration hassles that you would normally face when entering Ukraine.  These hurdles add up due to the major language issue that all English speaking people face, as Ukrainians mostly speak and understand Russian or Ukrainian only. I found all the people in Kiev extremely friendly and polite. The place is very safe and I with my local friends enjoyed Kiev city till middle of the night and I was amazed to see how safe girls feel there. In India we can’t imagine women walking alone or even with family after 10 PM, but its not like that in Kyiv. Even at 1AM in the night I saw girls walking alone or with their boy friends and hiring taxi’s.

Ukraine is beautiful in spring months with trees sporting a multicolored hue and flowers blooming all over the place. The countryside is beautiful and full of flowering mustard plants which give a complete yellow shade to mother earth. As I traveled out of Kiev I was amazed at the greenery and multitude of flowers that I saw. I just couldn’t resist the temptation of requesting the cabbie to stop and take couple of pictures of me in the yellow mustard fields.

Kiev in itself is a very happening place and full of life all day and night. During my first visit in May, Ukrainians were celebrating Victory day (World War 2) and the Kiev main square was full of the old war fighters, war songs, bands. Parades were taking place and a whole lot of both young and old people had come to cheer the war heroes. It made me quite respectful of the people who came to cheer. Kiev also has a very active night life with discos, casinos, strip clubs spread all over the place. The young Ukrainians appear to enjoy eating out a lot as there’s a flood of restaurants and you need to book your table in advance. Kiev's architecture is brilliant and it has lots of beautiful cathedrals one of which I have shown in the pic.

The Ukraine girls look absolutely fabulous. It is amazing that you can walk down the street on the Kreschatyk (the main street in Kiev) in the centre of Kiev and you see so many girls walking the streets dressed up in a way as if they are participating in a fashion show in Paris. Everyone seemed to be dressed very smartly, with all the latest fashion accessories. Appears all the dresses showcased on FTV channel are being put to use in Ukraine. I always wondered who wears these dresses; finally I got my answer in Ukraine.

The Metro train system is a very old one setup around 1950-60’s and is full of marble and chandelliers. The cost of the Metro is very cheap too and is the usual way of getting from place to place by most people in Kiev. It was thanks to the inquisitiveness to travel by Metro once, did I travel down to the underground station on the longest escalator drive of my life. The next station was even farther underground and on inquiring I was told that these were built up as Nuclear free places where people can take shelter in case of a nuclear attack. The Escalators of the deepest station were designed in 2 stages. The 1^st stage ended in a short alley from where I moved some distance to come to the 2^nd escalator which took me further down. If you visit Kiev make sure you visit the metro stations maybe just for the escalator ride of your life.

I returned from a week long visit to Kiev only this weekend and thought to share some of my experiences with my friends.

Thank you for bearing with me!!!!!

Cheers

I found it truly hilarious and laughed uncontrollably on seeing it!!!! 

Is it only funny or is their some truth also in it....................:))......

Any comments friends!!!!!

Enjoy!!!!

Since all of you enjoyed the "Fun Stuff" post......here's Fun Stuff - 2. Hope you enjoy it too!!

Cheers

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Why marry???? --> You have two choices in life:You can stay single and be miserable, or get married and wish you were dead.

At a cocktail party, one woman said to another, "Aren't you wearing your wedding ring on the wrong finger?""Yes, I am. I married the wrong man."


A lady inserted an ad in the classifieds: "Husband Wanted".Next day she received a hundred letters.They all said the same thing:"You can have mine."

When a woman steals your husband,there is no better revenge than to let her keep him.


A woman is incomplete until she is married. Then she is finished

A little boy asked his father,"Daddy, how much does it cost to get married?"Father replied, "I don't know son, I'm still paying."

A young son asked,"Is it true Dad, that in some parts of Africaa man doesn't know his wife until he marries her?"Dad replied, "That happens in every country son."

Then there was a woman who said,"I never knew what real happiness was until I got married, and by then, it was too late."


Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say -- talk in your sleep.

Just think, if it weren't for marriage, men would go through life thinking they had no faults at all.

First guy says, "My wife's an angel!"Second guy
remarks, "You're lucky, mine's still alive."

"A Woman's Prayer:Dear Lord, I pray for: Wisdom, To understand a man , to Love and to forgive him , and for patience, For his moods. Because Lord, if I pray for Strength I'll just beat him to death"

AND NOW FOR THE FAVORITE!!!

Husband and wife are waiting at the bus stop with their nine children. A blind man joins them after a few minutes. When the bus arrives, they find it overloaded and only the wife and the nine kids are able to fit onto the bus. So the husband and the blind man decide to walk. After a while,
the husband gets irritated by the ticking of the stick of the blind man as he taps it on the sidewalk, and says to him, "Why don't you put a piece of rubber at the end of your stick? That ticking sound is driving me crazy." The blind man replies, "If you had put a rubber at the end of YOUR stick, we'd be riding the bus, so shut the hell up."
=================================================

Hope you all enjoy it.

Cheers

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Man: Is there any way for long life?
Dr: Get married.
Man: Will it help?
Dr: No, but the thought of long life will never come.
----------------------------------

Why do couples hold hands during their wedding?
It's a formality just like two boxers shaking hands before the fight begins! 
--------------------------------------------------

Wife: Darling today is our anniversary, what should we do?
Husband: Let us stand in silence for 2 minutes.
--------------------------------------------------

It's funny when people discuss Love Marriage vs Arranged.
It's like asking someone, if suicide is better or being murdered.
--------------------------------------------------

It is difficult to understand GOD. He makes such beautiful things as women
and then he turns them into Wives.
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If u r married please ignore this msg,
for everyone else: Happy Independence Day
--------------------------------------------------

Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you say.
After marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish.
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There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking.
It's called marriage.
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Girlfriends r like chocolates,
taste good anytime.
Lovers r like PIZZAS, Hot n spicy, eaten frequently.
Husbands r like leftovers, eaten when there's no choice.
--------------------------------------------------

Man receives telegram: Wife dead-should be buried or cremated?
Man: Don't take any chances. Burn the body and bury the ash.
--------------------------------------------------

Q: Why dogs don't marry?
A: Because they are already leading a dog's life!
--------------------------------------------------

There was this guy who told his woman that he loved her so much that he would
go through hell for her. They got married and now he is going thru hell.
--------------------------------------------------

Fact of life: One woman brings you into this world crying & the other ensures you
continue to do so for the rest of your life!
--------------------------------------------------

Q: Why doesn't law permit a man to marry a second woman?
A: Because as per law you cannot be punished twice for the same offence!
--------------------------------------------------
Here comes the Ultimate One :)

Prospective husband: Do you have a book called 'Man, The Master of Women'?
Salesgirl: The fiction department is on the other side, sir.
--------------------------------------------------

A young couple got married and went on their honeymoon.
When they got back, the bride immediately called her mother.
'Well', said her mother, 'so how was the honeymoon?'
'Oh mama', she replied, 'The honeymoon was wonderful! So romantic'.Suddenly she burst out crying.
'But, mama, as soon as we returned, Sam started using the most horrible language -- things I'd never heard before! I mean all these awful 4-letter words! You've got to take me home! PLEASE MAMA!'
'Sarah, Sarah', her mother said, 'calm down! You need to stay with your husband and work this out. Now, tell me, what could be so awful?
WHAT 4-letter words?'
Sobbing, the bride said, 'Oh, Mama..., he used words like: dust, wash, iron, and cook...'
----------------------------------------------------

Those days were fun!!
the fun of freedom from school dresses
the fun of freedom from the binding school timings

Those days were fun!!
the fun of bunking classes
the fun of moving in U-Specials

Those days were fun!!
the fun of seeing the colorful dresses of girls
the fun of hearing colorful talks of guys

Those days were fun!!
the fun of missing classes for picnic places
the fun of being with friends

Those days were fun!!
the fun of seeing new-2 faces

the fun of falling in love again and again

Those days were fun!!
the fun of watching love story movies with girls
the fun of outings with girls

Those days were fun!!
the fun of spending full-2 days at Kalindi Kunj
the fun of visiting Tughlakabad Fort

Those days were fun!!
the fun of buying clothes at Janpath
the fun of making new friends at picnic spots

Those days were fun!!
the fun of pulling each others legs
the fun of cracking jokes

Ur's Truly

Friends am posting this story which I recd some time back. Hope you like it!!

Rgds

-------------------

    Miss Evans couldn't take being a Sunday school teacher

any longer.  Not for another Sunday!  This handful of

disrespectful teenagers snapped their gum during prayer

time and read magazines during Bible study.  But most awful

of all, at prayer request they asked the Lord to increase

their weekly allowances!

     "I have had it with you.  I quit!"  she screamed at

the students.

     "Cool," Nick said nodding in approval.  He was the

rudest kid she'd ever met.

     It took two months to find a new replacement for that

Sunday school class.  The pastor escorted Miss Betty Ray in

to meet the pseudo-angelic-looking group.  New in town, she

hadn't heard of their reputation for chasing off teachers.

By the look of her pink dress, one size too small, and her

bad blonde bleach job, the students obviously felt they had

an easy mark.  Soon bets were taken as to how long Miss

Betty would last.

     Betty introduced herself, stating that she recently

came from the South.  She certainly looked like a southern

belle who wore outdated clothes and whose beauty had peaked

a decade earlier, only she didn't know it yet.  Snickers

rippled in the room as she rummaged through the huge

shoulder bag she carried for a purse.

     "Have any of you ever been out of state?" she asked in

a friendly tone.  A few hands went up.

     "Anyone travel beyond five hundred miles?"  One hand

went up as the snickering diminished.

     "Anyone visited outside the country?"

     No hands went up now.  The silent teens were puzzled.

What did this have to do with anything?  Was she using

psychology on them, or was she just plain clueless?"

     Finally, Betty's bony hand struck on what she had been

searching for in her handbag.  Pulling up a long tube, she

unrolled a map of the world.

     "What else do you have in there?  Lunch?" someone

cracked.

     Betty smiled lightly and answered, "Cookies for

later."

     "Cool," Nick quipped.

     Then she pointed with a long fingernail to an odd-

shaped continent.

     "I was born here," she tapped with her finger.  "And I

lived here until I was about your age."

     Everyone craned their neck to see where it was.

     "Is that Texas?" someone sitting in the back asked.

     "Not even close.  It is India."  Here eyes twinkled

with joy.

     "How did you get way over there to be born?"

     Betty laughed.  "My parents were missionaries there,

and that is where my mother was when I came into the

world."

     "Cool!"  Nick leaned back in his chair duly impressed.

     Betty fumbled again in her purse, this time pulling

out a handful of old wrinkled pictures along with a tin of

chocolate chip cookies.  They passed the pictures around,

viewing each with great interest.  Dark faces stared up

from the photos, frozen in time.  The kids studied them as

they bit into the sweets.

     "You don't have to be a missionary - everyone can do

something in this world to help another," Miss Betty said.

     The hour quickly slid by as she told them her stories

about faraway places and what the people were like there

and how they lived.

     "Wow, this is as exciting as TV!" one young girl told

her.

     Sunday after Sunday, Betty came to class, tying her

lessons to their everyday lives.  She told the teens how

they could make a difference right now.  The students grew

to love her, bleached blonde hair and all.  The more they

liked her, the lovelier she became.

     Betty taught that Sunday school class for twenty

years.  Though she never married, or had children of her

own, the town came to think of her as a surrogate parent

since she taught two generations of children.

     At last, her hair grew into a natural gray.

Increasing wrinkles about her mouth and eyes added

character to her cherub face.  Her hands began to shake

with age.  Every now and then, she received a letter from a

former student.  There was a doctor, a research scientist,

a homemaker, a businessman, and many teachers among them.

     One day she reached into her mailbox and pulled out a

blue envelope with a familiar foreign stamp in the upper

right-hand corner.  In the left corner was the name of a

boy in that very first Sunday school class, years ago.  She

recalled how he'd always liked her cookies and seemed so

interested in her lessons.  A picture slid out of the

envelope and onto her lap.  Squinting her eyes, she smiled

at the man in the photo, still seeing the teenage boy in

him.  Standing in the rubble, in a quake hit city in India,

he stood with other volunteers who had come to help the

earthquake victims.

     The caption read, "Because of you, I am here now."

We bought a flat some time back. The flat had been vacant for few months with almost nil maintenance; we then decided to rent it out. Search for a tenant started and we found a suitable person to rent our house to. We then had to get the house cleaned and whitewash done. Work started to enlist a good contractor!

I was supervising the search and started visiting the flat often. I found a good contractor and told him to finish the work in around 7 days as the day the tenant was to occupy the flat was nearing. Work started!!

That's when I observed that 2 pigeons had used the kitchen loft to build their home and I could see one of the pigeons sitting in the nest day and night. Appears she/he (male and female pigeons take turns in warming the eggs) had been incubating the eggs since some days as pigeon eggs need about 18 days to hatch. I am not sure if the eggs had hatched or incuabation period was going on. But their was no chirping of baby pigeons at that time. 

One fine morning (after couple of days) when I visited my flat, the kitchen was filled with very soft and cute chirping of baby birds. In the dimly lit kitchen, I could see the small cuties raising their heads and playing with their mom / dad. The soft chirping was music to my ears. I just stood there mesmerised. I smiled looking at the pigeon family play n take care of the babies. During the night one of the pigeons would occupy the window shelf outside the flat n spend the night there while the mother n babies would play/sleep inside.

That's when my dillema started. What should I do with the nest? What about the babies? Should I place the nest on the high shelf outside? Should I get it moved to a high tree? Should I talk to the tenant and delay the occupation of the flat?

With these thoughts I left the flat. The only option that sounded workable to me was the last one - tell the tenant to delay his occupation of the flat or occupy it with the pigeon family in the kitchen!! I had already told the contractor not to touch that part of the kitchen.

Next day morning I entered the flat and went straight to the kitchen. Complete silence!! Were the baby pigeons sleeping? I didnt take time to realise what had happened. There were feathers strewn across the kitchen floor. The next sight made me speechless and shocked. My eyes filled with tears and I felt an empty feeling inside me. The almost fully eaten dead body of one grown up pigeon (I assume mother pigeon) was lying in one corner with just the bunch of feathers attached. There was no sign of the baby pigeons. The nest was empty. The father pigeon was moving in and out of the window as if searching for his babies and companion. Appears a cat had come in the night and cleaned up the baby pigeons and their mother.

My dilemma ended but thats not the solution that I wanted or ever expected. It was cruelty at its best. What was the baby pigeons or their mother's fault? The sight of the little pigeon babies, the sight of the mother playing with her babies, the sight of the male pigeon sitting outside on the same shelf for many days after this incident just dont seem to leave me. Even today I can feel my ears filling with the cute chirping sound. But that's LIFE!!!!!

I had a childhood friend by the beautiful name Preeti.......and when I met her after many years both of us just couldnt believe it and were speechless.......we held hands and sat quietly..lol...my mom dad and her grandmom just smiled looking at the 2 of us.....it was a super moment of my life...we didnt meet much even after that.....then she got married and both of us were left with sweet memories of our childhood jokes, antics, fights and then patchups...somehow we never forget old friends do we?....and childhood friends in particular.......movies like Betaab(Sunny Deol and Amrita) make me nostalgic....

During those days she and I used to be together almost half of the day daily.....rest half we couldnt be together as we were in different schools...:(.....she was a very jolly person and very pretty also.....like her name.....When you are spending so much of time together its obvious that you would argue and get into fights also..which used to lead to breakups between us also....yes!even at that tender age of 10-11yrs....lol.....then we would look for ways to again patch up and be together again....

those days we used to sleep in the open....and believe me it was much better than sleeping in the airconditioned rooms that we have got used to now....and we used to sleep with our parents mostly...but occasionally we would sleep on our cots next to each other...as children we could take all liberties..lol.....
 
we had a bad fight one day.....and we were not talking for couple of days...and as usual we started getting that strange feeling that this cant go on forever.....we had a small common garden where due to rains some cute little saplings had sprung up....i love plants and dug out some of those saplings and planted them in flower pots near my bed.....she just couldnt sit watching me do all that and came up to me and said....these saplings look beautiful...which plant are they?....and that ended the cold war and we spent half the night gardening and laughing.......

after some years we shifted from there.....

Preeti - We are not in touch but those beautiful choildhood memories are still with me....

A Mother had 3 virgin daughters. They were all getting married within a short time period. Because Mom was a bit worried about how their sex life would get started, she made them all promise to send a postcard from the honeymoon with a few words on how marital sex felt. The first girl sent a card from Hawaii two days after the wedding. The card said nothing but: "Nescafe"!

Mom was puzzled at first, but then went to her kitchen and got out the Nescafe jar.

It said: "Good till the last drop".

Mom blushed, but was pleased for her daughter.

The second girl sent the card from Vermont a week after the wedding, and the card read: "Rothmans"

Mom now knew to go straight to her husband's cigarettes, and she read from the pack: "Extra Long. King Size"

She was again slightly embarrassed but still happy for her daughter.

The third girl left for her honeymoon in Cape Town. Mom waited for a week, nothing. Another week went by and still nothing. Then after a whole month, a card finally arrived.

Written on it with shaky handwriting were the words "South African Airways"

Mom took out her latest YOU magazine, flipped through the pages fearing the worst, and finally found the ad for SAA.

The ad said: "Ten times a day, seven days a week, both ways."

Mom fainted!

The morning was beautiful...like any other day..:)...

Cool morning winds were blowing...like any other day...:)...

Birds were chirping...like any other day...:)...

People were doing their morning jig in the central park opposite my house...like any other day..:)...

The morning was like any other morning.....cool winds....birds chirping...people moving about in the park for their morning walk.....

But I had not anticipated the beautiful weather that I would experience soon. I started for office around 7:30AM and as soon as I crossed Moti bagh and turned towards the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway.....I could see dark clouds on one side towards the IGI Airport and the sun shining on the other.....the view was beautiful and the clouds danced in the gentle sunlight....and started filling every visible part of the sky.....

With cool windows blowing I opened the windows, increased the music volume and.....humming I zipped towards office....hoping that it would rain again so that i could enjoy the drive even more and the summers would have their middle plucked further (May last week is the middle of Delhi's peak summers..sorta..).....The rains came down soon enough and the experience was enchanting....the wiper swishing....good songs.....rain drops falling on me as soon as I would lower the windows slightly.....soon the heavy rain turned into a slight drizzle and it started getting darker with the increasing cloud cover....and soon enuff it poured......

I havent experienced such a pleasant fortnight in Delhi in May since a long time...and the experience has been wonderful.....I love rains and getting wet in the rains....the smell of wet mud.....the trees which are parched at this time of the year have been shining green and dancing alongwith the cool winds.....some trees drunk in the beautiful weather have even fallen......hopefully new ones will take their place....

It just makes me thank God for giving such a beautiful life!!!!