Get your house monsoon ready

Water leakage is possibly one of the meanest that could happen during monsoon. The wonderful season of romance does have its ugly side and I am sure everyone just prays that they don’t have to deal with this part of monsoon.

I remember last year we visited my native place somewhere close to the end of monsoon. Now let me tell you that the house was vacant for quite some time now and thus when we reached, we were in for a shock. The house was damp with seepage at places. The roof had completely gone for a toss.

It was then that we realised that maintaining a house is difficult and even so during monsoons. And it’s not like these things happen when the house is not well taken care of, it could happen to any house. Suddenly the vacation went for a toss and we got busy in fixing the house.

 Luckily we don’t live on the top floor in the city, the people living on the topmost floor often complain about seepage from the terrace. I used to always think that they exaggerate but when i saw the same thing happen to my house, i did realise that maybe they had a point. When we got back to the city, i visited the top floors and to my surprise, they weren’t exaggerating at all. I could see the cracks and the places that they had fixed during monsoon to avoid water seepage.

I wondered how anyone can live in a house that has water leakage. And getting these cracks fixed is an annual routine for a lot of people, but people like me who don’t live on the top floors are generally unaware of this.

There however are some few easy things that we can do to make sure that our house is clean and damn free.

Adding bring, vibrant and cheerful colours to your home decor can help make the house feel more monsoon ready. It will help take the gloomy weather out of your house and thus making it a happy place even when the weather outside is just dark and gloomy.

Picture source: http://i1.tribune.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/yellow-room.jpg

Pic source: http://resize0.indiatvnews.com/en/centered/oldbucket/750_533/lifestylelifestyle/IndiaTv13f046_monsoon-ready.jpg

Repainting metal frames of windows with waterproof paint is a good idea. It will help keep the rust away. You can also get the exterior as well as interior walls repainted with weather proof paint to avoid damage. This would be a good time to invest in some water resistant products, it will help fill up the pores and small gaps and prevent water seepage. 

Check your electric connection. Make sure that there is not pending electrical work and that your connections are safe. They can be dangerous especially if there is dampness or seepage in your walls.

Place camphor or neem leaves in your cupboard to keep moisture away. This will also keep the bacteria and fungus away.

Don’t forget the most important part, Roof! Be proactive and take care of the roof first. Do a thorough inspection and take care of all the small problem areas.

It is always a good idea to get professional help and get your house checked for cracks and problem areas.  You can get in touch with Dr. Fixit who provide a team of dedicated technical experts for site inspection who compile timely solution and recommendation reports. Dr. Fixit also has trained applicators who are the ambassadors for good waterproofing workmanship. The continuous efforts taken by Dr. Fixit aim for a country/home free from dampness.

Have a look at their latest video featuring Mr.Amitabh Bachchan 

Being ready before and after the monsoons is very important personally as well as keeping your home happy and healthy.

Do check out some tips and solutions to stay Monsoon ready by checking out The Happy Homes Blog.

Dubai Vlog | Burj Khalifa | Dubai Mall | Dubai Aquarium | Abu Dhabi |

So I went to Dubai recently and vlogged a little bit. And finaaalyyy after a bit of a delay the vlog is up! Check it out?

Your Personal Sanitation Squad

Sanitation has been a major issue in our life. It saddens me that it is so difficult to find clean washrooms in India. Every time I visit a place, I first check their washrooms and it is always a great relief when the washrooms are clean. However, if you travel a lot or even if you hop around the city a lot, you would have to use public washrooms, which again are questionable when it comes to sanitation.

Yes, there are some tricks that we use to avoid any contamination like hovering over the seat or making a tissue seat cover etc. My best is to use the Indian style washrooms as there is no touching the seat involved. (I know too much TMI right? Sorry!)

So I recently came across PeeSafe, it is a toilet seat sanitizer spray. They also have wet wipes which can be used for both the seat as well as the skin. Sanitizer sprays are really handy and be useful on daily basis. They have various sizes, so you can buy one depending on your needs.

The spray has a pleasant fragrance. All you have to do is spray the sanitizer on the toilet seat and wait for 10 seconds and you have a sanitized toilet ready for you! I have been using this product for a couple of weeks now and I am truly impressed by it. The fragrance even makes the stinking public washrooms bearable. 

You can order one from here: http://www.peesafe.in/

Bombay Vintage – Review

A lovely little place in Colaba. I like restaurants which have some theme and character to it. This place has a mix of modern and vintage feel. The seating area is also very cosy and thus made me not want to leave the place. It’s a good thing that we ended up going here a bit late; the place was empty and quite.

The place is not very big but they do have seating arrangements upstairs, I like the place upstairs better.

The food is good too, they have tried to mix the typical Mumbai dishes with western cuisine. I remember having a Chicken pizza with a typical chicken curry topping and vadapav sliders, loved both.

The staff was courteous and nice. We ended up chatting the waiter up as well, and he suggested the vadapav sliders. We are glad that we tried that one out.

The place is not really very economical and the bill was around INR 2000/- including drinks.

I really like the place, and may visit sometime when I am in a mood for some fancy meal.

Watermelon Martini anyone? #blogger #Bloggerlife #Mumbai #colaba #Fort #Bombayvintage #Bombay #Food #Drinks #Review #Zomato #Youtuber #mumbaifood #mumbaifoodie #drink #drinks #slurp #pub #bar #martini #Watermelon #instagood #cocktail #cocktails #drinkup #photooftheday

A photo posted by Pooja Mahimkar (@poojamahimkar) on Aug 10, 2016 at 2:38am PDT

Ladies, please!

Pic taken from: http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-04-01-1427903179-8511558-what_is_feminism_1781259786-thumb.jpg

Ever since I came across the word Feminism, I have had these confusing ideas about various topics related to women.

A quick google search on the definition of ‘Feminism’ throws this up:

ˈfɛmɪnɪz(ə)m/Submit

noun

the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.

How can we manage to complicate everything is beyond me, today however I am going to talk about just one thing.

Money. Finance. Wage. Salary. Bucks. Funds.

So the one thing that I have learnt is that women expect husbands to earn more than them. The logic of which I do get, I would like the financial safety and security that a well-paid husband brings.

Then again, if you are a feminist then this shouldn’t be your concern right? You can’t talk about equal rights and then expect the guy to earn more than you do.

We have issues with men getting paid more than women, we protest about that. Cool, I agree with it. Both should get equal pay. And if you agree with this then you just cannot expect your man to earn more than you do. You both should be each other’s financial security.

Yes, women has had it bad for decades or even centuries together and it did take a lot of time, effort and struggle to give us the kind of freedom we have now. and we still do have a long way to go, we still have to make sure that the coming generations get even better life than we do now but in the process let’s keep in mind that not every man is evil. We can cut them a little slack. 

You Won't Believe What This Girl Has To Say

Dear viral content creating website,

We actually know things! Maybe we don't know everything about everything but we do know things!

You know those 'seven things we bet you didn’t know about something' kinda posts? Yes them! They are very annoying. Like we get it, we may not be the wisest of them all but we aren't that stupid either. You just need to stop trying to tell us that there is always something that we don’t know. (Don’t you be a know-it-all)

We have also kind of understood your click bait titles and won't be falling for them any longer. Yes, initially maybe you had a lot of people fall for your click bait titles but we have got your trick now. There’s a chance that I consciously won’t click on a link that starts with ‘OMG!’ Or ends with ‘what happened next is unbelievable!’

We have also understood sponsored posts and now it just makes you look lame and no we are not going to buy those products either. Advertisers, find new way to sell us things that we don’t need.

Also, what’s with sharing latest pictures of old child actors? We all grow up! That’s normal! The only day you are allowed to share your childhood pictures in on Children’s day or maybe on your birthday. That it.

And don’t even get me started with every time you make an entire post revolving around some celebrities tweet. Like really? You made a post about something that was of 140 characters or less? And obviously this is also titled with something like ‘You won’t believe what this celebrity said/did’. This also generally happens when that particular celebrity has a movie coming up.

I am sure this article can go on but for my sanity, I think I should end it here.

If you can come up with more annoying things that these websites do then let me know in the comments below.

Kolad River Rafting – Offbeat Getaways Near Mumbai

I have never been adventurous, actually I have never really done anything much sporty in my life. However i was really thinking about trying new things for a while now, so when I got to know about the Kolad River Rafting place, I immediately said yes for it.

There are a number of River Rafting places there so I suggest you Google them up and then take your pick. The Rafting in done in the Kudalika River.  It takes around 3 hours to reach Kolad but as we got lost in between and the road was bad we took nearly 6 hours to reach.

We started off at around 8am from Dadar, stopped at a highway restaurant near Panvel for some breakfast and then were on our way again.

I would really suggest using GPS to get to the place. The rafting begins from Sutarwadi and then you come down towards the end of the river. So you might just get confused there as there will be two river rafting points, skip the first one that you see as that is the end point. (If you are coming from Mumbai)

We reached the place at around 3pm and were the last ones to leave from there. As it was too last minute and we didn’t have enough time, we didn’t carry any cameras or phone.

The river was less furious at this time as the damn was close to closing, we did raft for a while and post that swam the river for close to half hour. It was pleasant and really beautiful. It was raining on and off and the scene was just beautiful.

We also tried a few stunts, like rolling the raft upside down, standing on the raft etc. Honestly, I was a little scared in the beginning, I remember screaming when they threw me in the river (I can’t swim, but we all had a life jacket on) but after the first two minutes of panic, I was fine.

They do teach you how to raft and be prepared to row your raft.

Things to remember when shopping - Sale Shopping Tips

Sales are one of my favourite things and like clockwork this year too Big Bazaar is coming up with its annual Independence day sale 'Big Bazaar Mahabachat'. The sale will be between August 13 to 17 2016. They have been doing this sale for over a decade now and this is their 11^th year!

There are a number of things that I particularly keep in mind when I go out shopping during sales, listing down a few that may help you when going for the Big Bazaar Mahabachat sale.

Plan the day

When you go out shopping especially during sales, it is quite understandable that you would be spending a lot of time in the mall and thus you should make sure that you go there ready to come back tired and with tons of shopping bags.

Go early

‘Early bird gets the worm’ just like that ‘Early shopper gets the best stuff’ I always believe that the earlier I go the better stuff ill be able to purchase. Going early means less people, no or less line at the payment counter, no queues at the trail room and just a big shopping place where you can pick and choose to your heart’s desire.

Coupons, coupons, coupons

Keep a track of all the coupons that you own especially of the shops where you don’t shop often. You can visit those shops during sales and redeem your coupons, this way you get to shop from a new place and incase you don’t like the product that you just bought, you still won’t be disappointed because you really didn’t spend the full amount for it.

Shop smart

Buying woollens during summer may look stupid but it really is the smartest thing to do. Woollens are going to be cheaper during summer so you can happily buy them now and use them during winter. Same goes for buying swim suits, umbrellas, raincoats etc during winter/summer.

So now that you have some handy tips to work with and a sale coming right at you soon, I think it’s time to take the pen and paper out and make a list of things to buy.

Oh, that’s the last time – Make a list

Make a list of all the things you wish to buy, this helps you stay focused and not waste time in the wrong section or store. This will also ensure that you have got everything that you need by the end of your shopping trip.

So head to your nearest Big Bazaar store during August 13 to 17 and make sure that you did some Mahabachat yourself.

Hum Tayyar Hai Big Bazaar!