What do I write about next?

Dear readers,

Am kind of running out of topics lately...so can you think up of something nice that I can write about ? :)

Best topic will be awarded a blog post ;-) and a heart-felt "thank you" :D

At rat and co, topics that are comprehensible are preferred. Topics like "afghanistanum uzhunnu vadayum" will be automatically rejected!

Cya!

Teddy at Twenty!

Are you knitting your eye-brows at the thought?
Or are you smiling end to end?

Probably it wouldn't figure in the heavily revised Girl's-best-friend-list, but would unanimously be voted to occupy that special place in her heart.

And guys grrrrrooooaaannnn at the thought. Some (read it as Most) guys think its "too-girlie", "too-baby-ish" and a lot of other-ish for a twenty-something girl to be found owning a teddy bear!

They pull your legs, poke fun at you and call you "beiibeeeee" if they know you hug your teddy while you sleep ...

They twist the teddy's face, throw it up and down, kick it like a football, and tug at its satin ribbons...

All said and done, on Valentine's, they gift you a teddy, with a big red heart! What an irony!

Note: A post from a married-woman showing contempt towards the male species is imedietely seen as a way of showing contempt towards ones husband :) Please spare mine from being the object of interest in your comments, he doesn't mind teddies :)

Happy Vishu..

Hoping we would have another wonderful year ahead.
Thank you God, for all those wonderful years in the past.


Today is a working day, as always.

Tagged on a boring day...

Tagged by Geo, here we go!

1. LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATER:

Race, at Innovative Multiplex. It started off in a jazzy ranch with horses and what
not...and the story twisted and turned every second with all the characters plotting against each other until you start feeling a throbbing pain around the nape of your neck and in the end leaves you with just one question "So where are all the horses!!"

2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING?
Been a long while now! I have few books near my bed which I sift through for God-alone-knows-what-sake when am guilty.. Head First Java, J2EE technolgies :))

3. FAVORITE BOARD GAME?
Snakes n Ladders!! Nothing to match it. Used to play chess and have a record of never winning.

4. FAVORITE MAGAZINE?
Still love to read the termites-eaten 1950s issues of Reader's Digest that are stacked at home.
And there is nothing that I hate more than the recent issues with its junk calories,diets and diseases info..

5. FAVORITE SMELLS?
Smell of coffe, kappa-meen, smell of damp earth after the rains, smell of babies after their bath with J&J soap, mom's starched sarees, smell of new books...

6. FAVORITE SOUND?
Typing on the keyboard, Sand saying Goodnight, Titan ad music, deafening sound of waterfalls, school bell, a new chat window opening up with a 'blim' sound :))

7. WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD?
People not believeing that you are saying the truth and circumstances are such that you can't find any evidence to prove it too!!

8. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE?
Ohh..am late again..milk..newspaper...breakfast..get ready..no pressed clothes..run..cab...sequence is played again and again until I get out of bed!

9. FAVORITE FAST FOOD PLACE?
Hmm... CCD or Dominos :)

10. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME?
Tough question..not thought of yet. Wil come up with a few during those loooong 9 months :-p

11. FINISH THIS STATEMENT. "IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY I'D...?
ask for a little more ;-)

12. DO YOU DRIVE FAST?
No :) No more questions on my driving skills pls!

13. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL?
Before wedding, I had a bunny, a teddy and a monkey to share the bed till midnight, after which they mercilessly end up somewhere on the floor.. right now, things haven't changed much..sleeping with a BIGGER stuffed animal :-S

14. STORMS-COOL OR SCARY?
Never been in a scary one yet. So may be cool.

15. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR?
:( Do Hot Wheels count?

16. FAVORITE DRINK?
"Jeerovellam" :)

17. FINISH THIS STATEMENT, "IF I HAD THE TIME I WOULD .....
make 5 dishes for dinner instead of the usual 2, bring in atleast 10 bugs in my code instead of the usual 2-3, check orkut more often instead of the usual every tea/coffee/lunch breaks, try to reach more frnds over fone.

18. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS ON BROCCOLI?
I have never even eaten Broccoli. For that matter, I am sure I would hate it for its colour alone!

19. IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR CHOICE?
Will prefer the natural color!

20. NAME ALL THE DIFFERENT CITIES/TOWNS YOU HAVE LIVED IN.
Palakkad -> Bangalore. (Yeah,it ends there)

21. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
Watching Sand play NFS and Flight Simulator for hours and hours and hours ...! allathe entha!

22. ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU.
Speechless!

23. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED?
Pooky pooky poo.

24. WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE BORN AS YOURSELF AGAIN?
No doubts,yes. But please, shall I be a lil taller?

25. MORNING PERSON, OR NIGHT OWL?
Neither... :) I want to sleep!

26. OVER EASY, OR SUNNY SIDE UP?
Rephrase please. :(

27. FAVORITE PLACE TO RELAX?
Home sweet home. In front of the PC. (ie, Relaxation starts once you have won the battle for the PC)

28. FAVORITE PIE?
Sweetie pies? :p

29. FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR?
Pls don't confuse me. I like them all. But in case the vendor has only vanilla, no probs, I will adjust :p

30. OF ALL THE PEOPLE YOU TAGGED THIS TO, WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND FIRST?
Geo already tagged all the ppl in my blog-world. The few remining were tagged by Rat. I don't have any to tag :(

Blog in Progress..97% Complete

Who was that moron who got this idea to develop the ever-hated Progress Bar thingie??? Probably developed with all the good intentions in the world, he would never in his wildest dream have thought that people would howl and scream, tear their hair apart watching it grow in a snail's pace.

How many times have you tried to pull those green boxes in a failed attempt to drag it to 100%!

How many times have you coaxed and cajoled yourself into believing "Okie..this would be the last one I would see for this install" and just when you think its over, there comes another window and yet another empty progress bar!

And as if one per screen was not enough, we have the all-new-double-progress-bar where when one completes to 100%, the other, with lot of effort, goes higher by 1%!!!! Duh!

C'mon yaar, there is height of being patient! And you allow yourself to be mocked at by this kind of logic, just because you don't have any other choice?? Sigh!

The other day, as I was staring at yet another merciless progress bar at work, I wondered if it would have been better staring at a black blank screen and letting my mind wander into other not-so-boring stuffs than play the self-invented-stupid game of speculating where the progress bar would reach when my system time shows 3:54!

All said and done, I have to agree that the moment we see the last cell getting colored green is one of pure ecstasy!



Download Complete!

Kaapi? :)

Those letters make it sound irresistible, especially when it appears on a chat window at office at around 3:30 PM, while you are fighting hard to keep your eye lids from dropping and you keep cursing the person who created that PDF document which you are trying to finish! All this while you had been scrolling up and down the document, minimizing the screen, taking a look at your To Do note, then shifting your eyes to the bottom right hand corner to check the system time..going back to the document..hummpphh.. so much more to go yaar!!! And that is when this tiny thing pops
up from your next-cubicle mate.."Coffee?" "Sure..", you type quickly and spring to your feet.

The vending machine gives me really bad coffee, but then drinking it is much easier than staying awake before that great PDF document at least!

Scene 2: Traveling on the pride of Indian Railways.. yet another hot day. You look out of the window and see barren land as the train passes through villages, ponds and fields filled with water-hyacinth with palm trees lining up their shores. You turn to look at the passengers in your compartment. Its the same set of people since the last 5 stations. The guy sitting near the window has been clutching his briefcase and sleeping for the past 3 hours now.. the middle-aged couple sitting right across seem to have boarded the train after a fight I think, they hardly talk! The lady sitting right next to you with a sleeping baby in hand, who has been looking at your hands
since she settled down, making you feel so conscious of your un-cut un-polished nails. Thats when somebody cries aloud and thats like music to the ears.. "Kawfeeeeeeeee kawfeeeeeee..." His container comes to view first and then the man. He settles and hands you the familiar tiny cup.

The soft wisps curl up and lightens your spirit. A train journey without a couple of "kawfeeee" is so incomplete!


Why go so far... A sumptuous lunch, Sunday afternoon siesta and then you wake up to a BIG cup of hot hot Bru Instant... eyes still half sleepy, images of some portions of the last dream still in your head, with a mouth that cries for a wash and that first sip to touch your tongue...hhmmm..heavenly!

Any time for coffee man!!!

Feminism ..and something extra

I know am treading upon a topic which has never seen light beyond controversies, and on a blog like mine where the stuffs that I talk of are so subtle and 'non-taboo' such a topic is the last thing one should think about writing! But at times, the things that you read or certain people whom you interact with forces you to delve upon such thoughts. And added to it the idle-time you get in the office cab while you commute to-and-fro.. thats one time you don't want to think about your work in office or home, and so such thoughts creep in.

That ends the disclaimers :-)

It was probably on one such mid-week cab-drive did my mind wander to the word feminism. My dictionary here screams that it means "A doctrine that advocates equal rights for women". Now,don't start panicking. Neither am I going to talk of Parliament and Women's Bills nor am I going to narrate some incident where I was fighting Woman's most-hated enemy named Man and was made to feel that I was not given any rights.

If the dictionary is anything to go by, I would be proud to say am a hard-core feminist at heart. Any woman for that would be proud, ain't she? But calling myself a feminist makes me as uncomfortable as a baby in wet diapers. Now why is this so...I probed.

Would I mind if a guy opened the door for me? No, I wouldn't.
Would I mind if a guy opened the door for me EVERY TIME??? I wouldn't. Seriously I wouldn't!! I mean, why should women make such a hue and cry for such a small thing and tag it with feminism and adulterate the very essence of the word??? Off late, this is just what women talk in the name of feminism! If a man does some(any)thing for her which probably she can do it herself, she screams to the world that her rights are violated, that man sees her as inferior, writes blogs on her strengths, writes columns in magz...phew! C'mon darling-women, let them pamper you, what difference does it make on who opened the door??

Women are so much obsessed about giving new meanings to feminism that they themselves forget what they are there for! Independence, freedom, liberation and other fanciful words have been etched to their thoughts so much that feminism probably now means "A doctrine that advocates women do not need men".

If moving out and "living independently" at the age of twenty-something, blogging about your sexuality so loudly that it makes it seem so obscene and still claiming you don't need a man for anything, even for reproducing is considered the classic epitome of new-age feminism..then sorry, no, am not a feminist! Wake up women, Please don't over-do things!! This ain't the stuff that the dictionary says!

Disclaimer 2 : Please understand, I am a women too. I wouldn't want to be a down trodden. But the essence of this post is I wouldn't believe that any man would think I am down-trodden if he opens the door for me! This is my opinion, my blog and if you think I have disappointed you, so be it!

Fry till Golden Brown..

Take any culinary book, am sure these lines would never be missed. Its there all over like a punchline!

Talking about recipe books, writing it is as much as an art as is cooking itself! You need to choose words with utmost care so that it tempts the reader to try it. Once the reader runs through all the ingredients required and is satisfied that (s)he has all the stuffs ready she is automatically drawn to the Method section. Now once (s)he starts reading the method, the author should hand-pick and present the words in such a way that he (more than often she) actually starts smelling the aroma of the spices being lightly fried in oil!!

Some tips (read as "culinary jargons") used to draw the readers attention are -
(Use these phrases in case you are looking for an alternate career in writing cookery book/online posts)

1) Onions are always fried till golden brown. Am sure many a times all of us would have wondered what exactly the golden brown colour was, but sure enough we have been made to believe that onions taste best when they are "fried till golden brown", a thing never achieved !!

2) Garnish with fresh mint leaves and blah blah... mmmm sounds so appealing! The readers would fall head over heels for this!

3) If you observed, recipes with simple names rarely catch your attention. Instead see the increase in page-hits you would get if you posted the simple recipe of prawn fry to Golden Fried Prawns in Sweet-n-Sour Vinegar Sauce.

4) Not to forget that colourful picture of a juicy chicken ready to be dug into surrounded with "garnishes from point# 2", a checkered napkin in white-n-red! Yeah man, its going to be nothing without an eye-catchy pic of the (supposedly) real thing

5) If its an online post, get your friends and parents to comment on your recipe. Bribe them to give you as many stars as possible for your ratings and watch the magic as some naive unassuming user(read: prey) searches for something and your recipe gets another hit!

Now who cares if your prey ends up skipping his dinner coz of half kilo grams of burnt prawns with a vinegar sauce that doesn't taste half as exotic as it sounds! You receive your hits (pun intended ;-))

Happy Writing!

Wheels of Change

I wasn't believing myself when I saw myself type on a chat window "Yaar,go for santro, it perfectly suits your budget and is a really good value-for-money car. If in case you can stretch a little, try Swift." and the guy (ok, mark this word, its a GUY !!) at the other end asks "What about i10? Hows the performance? " and I type without thinking twice "i10 is very good, but then don't you think its over-priced? " "Aur WagonR? kaisa hai? " and I reply confidently "Thats the ugliest looking car ever produced by man.. absolute waste!" We exchange a few more pleasantries and I end the conversation.. beaming like a first rank holder! Guess why..

Barely 2 years back, a car for me would be as simple as something that runs on the road, has 4 wheels and a cover on top. My knowledge of car (or any automobiles for that matter) was an absolute zero even though I had a valid driving license. And that I possessed coz I thought it would look odd in today's world not to hold one once you complete 18 yrs of age. After all 18 is the age to scream aloud to the world am finally officially an adult!

I think we are deviating from the primary topic of interest.. cars.. yes, I was mentioning how ignorant I was about cars. Back in school, I had this friend N, an absolute tomboy, who used to be such a car-lover that it was hard for me to resist all the gyan she gave me then! So though I despised that topic as much as Social Studies, I knew Celio (or was it Ceilo?) was a car which was big.

After school, it was again a state of pure bliss (read ignorance) about automobiles. And in I walked into the hustle and bustle of bangalore city, I meet this dude. He loved traveling, enjoyed having all kinds of food at all sorts of places, was ready to take risk and sit through many super-duper bollywood flops and.. loved his car (then an Indica) n bike (then and now a Pulsar 150 cc) like crazy!

Harmless, I thought. Though interests were aligned in exactly opposite directions we got along like a house on fire.

Unfortunately I didn't realize that spending a year with a car-lover means you might subconsciously expand the thesaurus meaning I had created for a car to little more than what a normal human being would.

The car-word got bigger and bigger and took different shapes in its meaning. Today I attend Auto Shows (huh!!! I would have committed suicide had I the power to predict the future 2 yrs ago!), can tell between different kinds of alloy wheels, can even imagine how they would look and hence choose between them, confidently comment that small cars look bad with a spoiler, and that European cars have extra performance and power and US cars, like any other market fall under the age-old "just looks" categories, watched the Tata Nano videos like some crazy car-enthusiast ;-)

Man, whatta transformation... now I read all the car columns in newspapers, and guess what, when a reader pops a question of which car would suit his requirements I am already ready with the answer that is usually in line with what is given by the professionals :-))) lolz...

And I still don't know if I ever loved cars... or even driving one!

10 Random Stuffs I find hard to Tolerate...

1) People being so vain enough to put their own pic as wallie in their cell phones.

2) Showing that you are totally jobless by converting orkut scraps to a chat service!

3) Anonymous friend requests on orkut with the profile being a member of atleast 25 porn communities.

4) Speaking on your mobile and driving..

5) The newly-sprung-retail-chain-supermarkets where every vegetable has to be wrapped in separate plastic covers, be it one small piece of cabbage or 3 lemons! Ever wondered where these plastics go after you dump it in your dustbin??

6) Mallus speaking English with an absolutely absurd sounding american accent -> 'green' sounds something like 'gzheeen' and creme becomes 'czheeem' with a tinge of 'r' somewhere getting lost in between. Of course, I hate the other extreme as well. One who says "oooyil" for 'oil' and 'loan' for 'lawn'!

7) Guys with extra-ordinarily long hair, let loose, looking half like King Cong and half human!

8) Auto drivers - the whole breed - without any specific clauses!!

9) Young girls(or guys) puffing away during breaks in office to reduce stress (??) !!

10) People taking hours to draw out money from an ATM with a long queue waiting behind them.

11) Couldn't stop at 10 as I promised.. :-( I hate FM radio with the jockey never shuttin up her

mouth and going blah-blah-blah...and most of the times playing the same numbers again and again!



(I have more, but I guess I should be a little more tolerant :-) )

Those little yellow sticky notes..

One can't but wonder the significance of those yellow sticky notes these days that you tend to stick in your cubicles, at home, in your kitchen..

The moment you have written down every single thing nagging you into those 2" X 2" bit of paper you feel a sense of relief flooding in, something akin to the feeling you get after 2 hours of pouring out all your worries over the phone with your patient-best-friend listening to you on the other end! Man, its like as though you have a constraint on the amount of things you can store in your head,say certain megabytes,and you want to make sure they are used only to store the most nitty-gritty things of life!

Now, that is the feeling when you have "instantiated a yellow sticky". The next time you see those tiny things trying their best to stick and stay on where they were pinned , you only let out a loud exclamation..followed by a slap on your forehead , followed by a "Ohh $%#@ I forgot!!!"

Soon enough,as days pass by, the yellow notes tend to curl up on their edges as though they are tired of reminding you again and again and are recoiling back accepting their defeat. True, the poor little notes rarely demand your attention on time...most of the time we take note only to tell yourself how we had wanted to get it done today and we forgot!

But still they adorn your walls like those inspirational wallpapers, hoping somebpdy would take a look at them once in a while. I have seen these notes stuck to computer monitors too...so that they are always in sight! But after days of presence, I guess your eyes get used to seeing something yellow out of the corners!

Now coming to the variety of things that get jotted down to be reminded... few people use it for groceries, few others use it for their imporant appointments,tasks at office and a lot other personal to-dos. Now coming to the point where I divulge the source of inpiration for this blog post -> PJ's apartment. A hard-core-yellow-sticky-notes-fan he doesn't do a thing unless its written down in one of those numerous stickies! And me being the curious cat I have always been ,I make it a point to see whats updated in them... and here is what I found one day..without thinking twice I caught it with my mobile cam... :-)) (He is going to skin me alive for this!!!)

Rate my Life!!!

Took this quiz recently from a friends blog and this is how somebody rated my life !! Am not sure if this is right and am even not sure whether I liked the results :-)
Anyways... here they are...

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	8.1
Mind:	7.2
Body:	7.7
Spirit:	7.2
Friends/Family:	6
Love:	9.1
Finance:	8.4
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

The Great Indian Arranged Marriage !

The subject line calls for a blog in itself but lets stack it away for another day and yes,I promise I will pop it one day for a novel post. But today, let me show you what I found in The Hindu dt 22nd Nov,2007, The Metro Plus. Here it goes ...

Games2Win is celebrating the union of two hearts the Indian way. Get hooked and get hitched in “The Great Indian Arranged Marriage” which explores some of the events surrounding marriages today. The game is narrative right from the girl a nd boy talking on the phone for the first time to the wedding reception.
Each level sports a different game – play mechanic starting from the question and answers in the first level which is the “Phone Call”, level two is the “First Date” where selecting the right outfit becomes very important, level three is the “Engagement level”, a classic match where the rings mechanic helps you select the best ring for the bride, level four is the “mehendi ceremony” and is a precision mechanic where you use the mouse to apply mehendi on the brides hand, level five is the sangeet (Musical) this level sports a management mechanic which forces users to manage the stamina of all the people on the dance floor, level six is the actual Lagan (Wedding), the twist to this level is that you have to find the grooms shoes which are hidden in the mandap (Wedding Altar) the final level is the “wedding reception”, here the groom is trying to feed his bride a laddoo but the challenge is to do it without people looking.
All the game mechanics are all controlled by different movements and clicks of the mouse buttons, the game also has a very comic art and music style which consumers whether married or not will really love. Click here to Get Married: http://www.games2win.com/desi/desi_the_great_indian_arranged_marriage.asp

Man, I was stumped!! What games do people play these days!! :-)) So are you clicking to enter wedlock ?? :-D

Washed Away...

And they were gone...almost 4 or 5 pages , 2 of them completely irrecoverable. Through the thick film of tears in my eyes, I looked at them as I traced the fonts gel into one another and smearing the entire page with a light shade of pink. The pages were soggy wet and smelling like a buttermilk factory!

In a hopeless attempt to retreive them, I laid the pages carefully beneath the ceiling fan. The ceiling fan did its best but what was lost was gone forever!

My most precious and one and only cookery book which had ALL the info I had gathered all these months... from mathan elissery to paneer butter masala..were all gone! The utter helplessness that was written all over my face was more than enough to bring a riot of laughter around me... but the loss for me was indeed a great one!

Thankyou Ceiling fan, for trying your best! :-) Here are the results -

Lessons learnt :
1) Never keep your cookery book next to the milk left for curdling. It might overflow and drench your cook book pages!
2) Never take down recipes using an ink-pen or gel pin. Always use a ball-point pen.
3) Never depend on cook books FOR EVER. Coz they are never there FOREVER.

The Aunty - Uncle Phenomenon

Wondering what? Well, get married and you would know. I had anticipated a lot of things that I would have to face once I got married but this one somehow managed to creep out of my list!

My first hand experience was hardly a few weeks after we got married when I was walking with Sand,hand in hand on the pathway just outside our apartment. On pinkie-frockie 2 yr old kid and her boy friend came running behind us screaming "Auntieeeee....please movvvveeeee out of the way...we are playing !!" Their sudden shreiking itself had me jostled and on top of it those kids got me paranoid for another reason... "Aunty????? " and Sand, right in front of me was laughing as though he had read atleast 50 santa-banta series in one shot!
Welcome to the Aunty-Uncle club,all you newly-married people!! Your neighbour's kid will start addressing you as 'Aunty' even though you are only in your early twenties. Get married and for that matter, even an 18 year old will turn into "Aunty" sighhh!! Reminds me of the old Godrej hair dye ad that supposedly addressed a common burning issue!!

The second,third, fourth and n-number of incidents came in quick successions that I started getting really worried! Some relief flooded in when I heard the kids call Sand "Uncle" :-) Soon, if you observe, you find that its not just the kids who call you Aunty but their dotting moms too !!! "Say hi to aunty..." How much more can you tolerate !!
I am a little confused as to what exactly makes you an aunty..coz when I was a kid I used call all ladies wearing a sari as Aunty and the rest as "chechi" (sister in mallu). Or atleast, you had the sense to guess the age! I admit that you don't work out any equation or go through if-else condition in deciding whom to call what, they rather come spontaneously ,but my point was that a little analysis would show that this was how I(or for that matter many of you) concluded.
But on that fateful day, I was in my jeans n t-shirt and if my memory is right, wasn't looking more than my age... sad!! :-(
>Is marriage the culprit??? Yes it is!!
But then another question comes up naturally ...kids make no mistake in identifying if a couple (however young they may look) is married or not!! How do they do that!!! At the ripe age of 24,am still faltering when it comes to conclude if a guy and gal are "just friends" or "much more" !!

Better Blog next time! :-)

Enikku ippo blog ezhuthanam!!

A sudden urge caused due to a fleeting siesmic wave travelling from one portion of my brain to another,added to it Sand's discouraging comment "innu venda...pinne oru day ezhuthikko", am here typing away like crazy!! But still I have not decided what to write on and all I know is that I should blog today! Sounds crazy ? I know and I have noticed, the worst of the worst blogs are created when you have nothing to write and still want to write something. So forgive me if this write-up really doesn't appeal..for a change,am writing for myself and have no readers in mind! :-)
As my clock ticks away, I realise I have exactly the same time in my hand as much it takes for the heater to heat my water for my bath! Which means 3 minutes?
Ok,lets start.

Or rather, let us stop?

Yes,its time to stop!! How long are we planning to run like this?? Till you gasp for air and die a painful death?

You start pondering about your life and what is not your life when you realise you are hurrying as if there is no tomorrow! And when those musings come up too frequently, you should take the symptoms , for your life is asking you some precious time for yourself. You don't pay heed and continue the rat race cos you know there is no stopping until you win and the ironically,you don't even realise that sometimes you are already winning!!

Soon you start discussing with like-minded people about how we are hurrying about in life and those like-minded people whom we call friends ask us to "take a break" . Now "taking a break" is easier said than done! What exactly is "taking a break" these days?? Can you take a break from deadlines? Can you take a break from the mundane tasks of cooking and house-keeping? Can you take a break from checking your e-mails every 4 minutes? Can you take a break from scrapping your friends in orkut and chatting on gtalk?

You realise things that make up your life carries you so fast in its wave that its hard to stop the over-powering current from swallowing you. And you just flow on and on, not knowing where the waves are taking you.

And thats when you think of quitting your present job ...and searching for a "better offer" :-D

PS-1 : - Am not planning any job-change now, if this is wa=hat crossed your mind just now....its just observing a general trend :-)

PS-2 : As I told, I feel sick reading my post -> really bad write-up...but I did write some(no)thing !

Monday in School...

This is the story I wrote for the short story contest in office today.. and coincidently it happens to be the first story I have penned in my life :-)

Little Neha never liked Mondays. She wondered why God had made a day thats not liked by just about anybody she has met in life.Mondays always seemed longer than any other day. Not just longer, they felt depressingly darker somehow.Mondays usually had you writing exams, submitting homeworks and sometimes, PTA meetings too!And as if all those were not enough to hate mondays, the Bangalore Traffic Jams, as daddy says!

And today was not just-another-monday, Neha knew. Her mom was back with her this weekend after a long span of 6 months in the US. Neha had pleaded her to take her along when her when her mom said she was to go onsite for 6 months. "In which country is onsite in mommy?" ,Neha had asked her, in between her sobs.. and mommy had laughed and taken her in her arms and said "No dear, onsite is not a place... Am going to work for a while in US for my company and that is called onsite".

She was so happy to have her mom back soon! Her grandma and grandpa had come from Chennai on Saturday and they had gone to pick her Mom from the airport on Sunday morning.

It had been a hectic weekend for little Neha. She had planned lot of surprises for her mom. Saturday was spent with Dad and Neha going around shopping for groceries, something that Neha used to love doing with her mom before she left. She would carefully pick up packets from the shelves and take a good look at whatever is written at the back, imitating her mom,
though she rarely understood anything.. but it made her feel like mommy and she loved the feeling! After taking care to pick up few packets of chikkis for her mom, she returned home and collected all her toys scattered around and put them neatly into her box.

Neha hardly slept on Saturday night thinking about all the things she planned to do once her mom is back home. She woke up her grandma time and again to ask if it was morning. She didn't remember when she slept, but was already awake and looking at the hands of the clock when grandma came to wake her up in the morning.

On Sunday she was ready even before her dad! And she stood next to the car and screamed "Daddy, come soon..we are going to be late!!" While she waited, she shouted in glee at the newspaper boy "My mama is coming today!!", and then at guy who supplied milk, at the watchman , at the uncle next door...!!

And when mom landed, Neha was running helter-skelter! She ran into her arms and hugged her mom, not speaking a word! Ah, mom's smell is so special! She was too happy to even speak!!

Back at home, the existence of dad,grandma and grandpa was completely ignored by little Neha and she was always with her mom. She did everything she had missed doing in the past 6 months.. she sang to her mom all the new songs she had learnt, mom made Neha her favourite cookies, they went out and had ice creams and then her mom read to her in the night and was at her bed side till she slept.. It was a perfect day!

Monday morning it is... Neha felt like crying out loud.. "Its not fair, I don't want to go to schoolll!!" but mom wouldn't listen. It had been raining heavily since the night before and it was quite cold.Neha remembered she had not done any of the school works in the weekend and her Dad had also completely forgotten about checking her school diary amidst all the weekend rush.

"Mommy, I have not done my English homework and the teacher is going to beat me.. You won't believe it, she beats really hard..I don't want to go...". Mom was not budging at all. She gave another pleading look at grandma knowing her heart would melt. "Let her stay at home Padma, after all she is a small kid". Neha nodded her head and with an even more sad face, she looked up at her mom again to see the response. Hmm.. no way! With a sunken heart she packed her bags and left to school in the rain.

In the bus,as she watched people on the roads with umbrellas, she thought of all the good times spent yesterday and then about her English teacher who is going to beat her soon. Neha never liked her English teacher, but yes, she hated Mondays more.

In the English class, ma'am walked in. Neha was scared to even wish her. She was the famous terror in her school.The kids never liked her because she never hesitated in beating them! Neha's throat was going dry. Teacher began looking into the notebooks of the children in the first bench.. one after the other..Neha was in the 3rd bench. As her turn was fast approaching, Neha was sweating though it was cold and damp outside.

She could hear the teacher getting angry at Rahul for having made a lot of mistakes. Tina was beaten and she began crying. Arun was sent out of the class because he didn't do his. She even said she wants to meet his parents.Peter, who sat next to Neha was fumbling with the pages when ma'am asked him his notebook. "GET OUT OF MY CLASS" she screamed and the whole class froze in silence. Peter was inconsolable.

Neha thought she would burst from within, the tension was mounting so high!

"Excuse me,ma'am. There is a message from the principal to all students" , Rajan uncle, the peon in the office was at the door. Ma'am took the paper from his hand and read out aloud to the class "On account of heavy rain in the city, considering the safety of students and members of staff, all classes have been suspended. Everybody is requested to leave the school premises and board the school buses rightaway and go home."

"Children,please go and board the school bus and return home... there are no classes today".. For a moment, Neha's face turned expressionless. Then all of a sudden she got up and screamed.."Yeeeeaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.." in joy!!

Soon enough the whole class was jumping with joy!! The teacher was also looking at the little ones and joining in thier celebrations... Everything had changed in a split second!!! Neha looked out through the glass panes as the rains lashed outside and whispered to herself
"thankyou rain!! Mondays are not so bad " and gigggled to herself.

"Pls take an Orkut Photo for me...! "

Thanks to orkut, we have few new words to add to the dictionary. A friend of mine has made a remark on the word "scraps" but more than anything, I think its the word "orkut Photo" thats catching up fast in people's lingo..

Lets try examining what type of word it is..
Of course,its more of an adjective to the word photo.. "Da,pls take an orkut photo of mine .." which means it should be good enough to be put as a profile picture in orkut. As a matter of fact, in order to call a photo "orkut photo" ,it should satisfy the following criteria -

1) Even if I look like a mirror-cracking material in real, in an orkut photo I should like the hero/heroine right out of a sugar-coated-lovey-dovey H(B)ollywood movie.

2)The background should be perfect.. Preferably looking very similar to European countryside or New York skyline. If they can't be met, its alright,pls refer to point no : 4 for a solution.

3)There should be a touch of professional charm in the photography .. you know,something like showing you in a silhoutte with a tiny ray of sun peeping out beneath!

4) For guyz, you get extra points if the photo is taken to show a jazzy car/bike along..and for girls, its any photo where they are decked up like the ladies in kyon ki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi or for that matter, any other K-serials of Ekta Kapoor ...

5) For a handful of people, this kind of photo is taken in such tricky a way that you-will-know-its-me-but-you-can't-see-my-face... like creatively wearing a mask, taking the photo in such a way that only a portion of your face is seen (and the pose looks so natural sometimes!) These people fall in those category where they are strictly forbidden to put their photo in orkut after their worried parents/spouses read about orkut crimes (now, that will soon be another new word !) in newspapers.

6) Orkut photo also happens to be updated very frequently, like ones resume !

A recent trend in orkut photo culture is that people tend to have a "status message" along with their names where they mention if their album has been updated today or not! And then there is a swarm of activity in their scrap books "you look choooo cute yaar" blah-blah...
If you are going on a holiday, few pics are shot mandatorily just to make them candidates for orkut photos and after 5 rounds of heavy rigorous screening which is capable of scaring even our historic Abhimanyu , one of them gets to be "The chosen one". And what follows is another couple of rounds of editing contrast,lighting,removing red-eye blah-blah until the expected degree of "glamourism" is achieved!
All said and done, it would have taken half of your day...and with a satisfied smile you upload your "orkut foto", only to realise that your best friend whom you located recently is still looking at the glamorous "orkut foto" and wondering who you are!Here you are,listing down in his public scrapbook all those moments in your life that were too embarassing for words just to help your weak-memoried friend map the ugly-duckling in school to the glam-doll in the "orkut foto" ! Sigh! :-) But life goes on...

Happy Orkut Photography!

One more to the list...

No comments this time. The pic says it all..