Onam Celebrations 2007

 

Our harvest festival Onam, marking the homecoming of legendary King Mahabali, is fast approaching. Miles away from our Keralam, let us all get ready to celebrate with grandeur, the beauty and richness of our festival.

We would like to invite you to the GAMA Onam celebrations 2007 to be held on Saturday, September 8th, 2007. Venue and time will be communicated later.

We invite you to unfold the best of Kerala culture and tradition through various performances. Due to limited time, performances will be selected using the below guidelines:

·         Preference to GAMA members

·         Multiple performances by same individuals will be discouraged

·         Group performances will be encouraged

·         First come basis

 

Please register your performance via email to Abha Nelliparambil  or Sasi Vallikkat on or before August 5th 2007. When registering, please provide the below information:

-         Contact Name

-         Contact Number

-         Type/Kind of performance (song/dance/skit etc.)

-         Number of performers

-         Name of all the performers

-         Approximate duration

 

 

GAMA Logo Contest – Don’t miss an opportunity to win an iPod Nano or iTunes card!

Its time to wear your creative hats and win an iPod Nano or iTunes card – your choice! We would like to remind you of the GAMA Logo Contest to design a new association logo. Parents please encourage your kids to take on the challenge and work to win an iPod or iTunes card during their summer break. Don’t miss this opportunity.

 

The rules of the competition are outlined below:

- Entry to the contest is open to people of Kerala origin or their descendants, residing in the Greater Austin area.

- Only one entry is accepted per participant.

- The logo design should depict the essence of GAMA – capturing the link with Austin & Kerala

- The logo must be original work.

- Should contain the acronym "GAMA"

- It may incorporate any colors, but it must be effective in both color & black/white format

- GAMA will acquire ownership of all the submitted logos.

- New Submission Deadline: 6 pm, Aug 10th, 2007

- Submission format: Each submission should include the following information and should be sent via email to Marita Kollannur

·         High resolution print-ready scalable vector format such as EPS or Adobe Illustrator AI. Minimum resolution on the image 250 dpi. Minimum recommended dimension 400x400 pixels. Logo must maintain its integrity and should be legible when reduced to a smaller size (200x200 pixels)

·         Design concept / description.

·         Submitter's full name, email address & phone number.

 

Winner: An independent panel of judges will select the logo that best represents the ideas and spirit of GAMA. Creativity, originality, aesthetics, use of space & color will be used to measure the logo’s merit. The winner will be announced and the new Logo unveiled at our Onam celebration (September 8, 2007). The winner will receive an iPod Nano or iTunes card – their choice. The new logo will be used for the web site, banners, stationery and so on.

We look forward to receiving many varied creative designs from all of you!

 

Austin, GAMA and a tribute

On behalf of all the GAMA members, I express my deep condolence to Mr. Sebi Paul (GAMA president) and his family on the demise of his mother - Mrs. Lissy Mangalam (65 yrs). She passed away on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at the St. David’s North Austin Medical Center. We had a solemn prayer and viewing service on June 27 th, at the Cook Walden Funeral home. A word of gratitude and appreciation goes out to all those who were able to join the service and comfort, support the family during this difficult time.

I  would like to share with you two Podcasts recorded by Manoj Kumar’s father,

Mr. Narendranathan, who is visiting from India. In the Podcasts, Mr. Narendranathan pays tribute to Mrs. Lissy Mangalam. In addition, he shares with us his view of Austin, talks about our growing malayalee community and its activities with special appreciation for Sudhir’s Malayalam classes. You can listen to the Podcasts (Austin1 & Austin 2) by clicking here.

 

Update on our MALAYALAM classes

The GAMA Malayalam classes focusing on conversational Malayalam have started with a bang. We have had two classes so far and have received good feedback from parents and children alike. As one of the parents put it “My children look forward to the Malayalam classes“. Thanks to Sudhir for his time and effort to help our children learn Malayalam.

You can contact Sudhir at skperin@yahoo.com if you are interested in enrolling your child for the classes. I hope to have some photos from the class in my next newsletter.

 

 

 

From the Movie desk

 

On June 17th, we had our last movie screening at the Alamo Draft house before it moves to its new location on 6th Street. Thank you to all those who came for the screening of the Malayalam movie MAYAVI. We hope to see all of you at a new theatre for our next movie screening which will be after Onam.

 

 

You can email the GAMA webmaster if you have any suggestions/inputs on our events.

This newsletter is available on our GAMA website - http://www.gama-austin.com

Thank You,

GAMA Governing Board