I was digging up some old books of mine and found something interesting. Its a story that I had started long back but never cared to finish. Here's the excerpt..
“Make it fast! We need to catch the early bus today.” I realized my decibel frequency was beyond human hearing range. Sarah, my friend, would have almost gone deaf! She hurriedly drank the glass of milk kept on the table. We were late for the class again.
“Sorry David”, we chirped in, almost resonating. David, our teacher maintained his composure and resumed from where he had stopped. He was a man of great principles. It had been almost a month since we had joined. Our friends at the class told us that not a single day had the class started late. Well, we could never aver the fact…we had never arrived early. Not tomorrow, I thought, almost aloud that Sarah nodded in agreement. Both of us knew the real reason and I gave her a smarmy smile….
Anybody care to give a whacky/ wild/ weird/ interesting ending ?!?
Incomplete....
Me in the Lion City!!
I don’t blog very often and when I do have something to write about, Im always quite busy with other things.
Now, a month after visiting Singapore, I’ve tried to put down on paper my experience of the entire sojourn right from the planning…
Matter of fact, I was never part of this trip. It just happened and Im so glad for that. I was really thinking of giving my parents a special gift for their wedding anniversary, now that I’d put almost two and a half years of work! They had never been outside of India and the best that could fit in my budget was Singapore.
I think it actually starts from here. The fact that it’s really affordable and you tend to get a decent package if you plan in advance itself is a welcome note to the place.
Thanks to A who did all the running around and info collecting. Thanks to A again for having pushed me to include myself in the plan of action!! Well, what started out to be a surprise gift for my parents eventually became a treat for me as well :-)
The beginning was getting my parents to have their passports done! After what seemed like eternity, they finally managed to complete the forms. It had been lying at home for more than a month!! The next was to keep this whole thing a secret until everything was planned out and ready. Unfortunately, I needed to get their signatures on the visa form and had to let the cat out early….nevertheless, a surprise it sure was!!
As the day was nearing, the excitement was building up. Mom was all ready with her salwars (considering the fact that she wears sarees more often than not). Dad was still hunting for a nice pair of shorts (Well, I have to mention…thanks to A again for having lent his fav shorts). Somehow, for me I was a bit lost…I was really worried about having included myself for this and having taken upon me to make sure my parents enjoyed...(Now I really know how they have been feeling all these years through)
It was a 3-night 4 day trip. As the flight landed and I could see "Singapore Changi Airport" in bold, I seemed to slowly but gradually lose the initial inhibitions. It was amazing to get a feel of an airport so huge and clean...really that’s the second best part of the trip.
We stayed at the Grand Central in Orchard road. Well, that place looked lovely with wonderful decorations for Christmas and New Year having started quite early. We did have some frightening moments at the start of the trip though. A tour guide was supposed to pick us up and drop us to the hotel. He was there at the right spot, on time and waiting for us, no doubt, but, once we handed him the money, I got a little worried. After all, it was the first time in a new place. He asked us to wait and went to get the car. ‘Thud, Thud’, I could feel my heart beating in my mouth when I saw the car swivel and go out. But then, after a few minutes, he was back from the other side…damn the one-ways, I thought!!
But from then on it was a smooth sail. We spent like an entire day roaming around on the streets of Orchard road and Little India. Phew! I walked like crazy that day, almost having got blisters on my feet!! The city tour and Sentosa Island on the second day was real good fun. The third day was even better…the surprise packet being Jurong bird park. We had never expected it to be so nice, thought it would be just another bird park, with all birds caged. We were so wrong!!
The final day was perhaps the best part of the trip. We were completely on our own, moving around in MRT - Mass Rapid Transit (Get the metro project going in namma bengalooru, please!!). It just didn’t seem difficult to get the tickets, get onto the train and get off at the right station. The system is so easy, straight forward and passenger friendly. We visited the Sentosa Island again and spent a lot of time in the beach there…rejuvenating I must say!
As the plane landed in Bangalore after 4 full days in the Lion City, you wouldn’t have seen a happier person get off :-). All in all, it was a much needed break and Im glad I went. Thanks for everything ‘A’ :-) :-) :-)
Its 24 hours too less...
One simple question – How many hours are there in a day?
One simple answer – 24 hours
Ok. Now, what was that, you ask me? Let me explain….
I’ve been giving this some thought. What exactly do we or let me be more specific; what exactly do I do in 24 hours? Let me start the cycle with the most wonderful and natural physiological process SLEEP….
7-8 hours of sleep
1-2 hours of daily routines
1-2 hours of traveling time
9-10 hours at office
1-2 hours of living to eat (that’s me , cause of late I’ve developed an un profound fantasy towards eating…absolutely anything from Idly, Dosa to someone’s head!!)
Well, if you take the extreme values here, I seem to have completed the 24 hour cycle without absolutely doing anything - the cream being won by office, where I actually do nothing!!!
Seriously, that’s it?!?! Its seems pretty clichéd to say so, but would it have been different if it was say perhaps 36 or 48 hours ? Hmm…..I don’t think so. The time above would have increased proportionately.
We manage to squeeze in time for family, friends, parties, entertainment within the pre-defined style or routine of normal life. Where then do we have time for ourselves, where then do we have time to live a life that we want, where then do we do something which we love doing (I’m excluding those who love their work from this category). But somehow, this is all the time that anybody has got or gets in life, be it Einstein, Bill Gates or Dr Devi Shetty.
How do we then manage time effectively so that we do not lose out on fun but at the same time achieve something or do something that we want to?
I, for instance, want to learn many forms of dancing, I love theatre, I want to put my humanity instincts to some use, I want to travel to a lot of places, I want to write a book , I want to…hmmm “I want to” a lot of things. Is this all possible? Dictionary has the word impossible but I remember a teacher in high school telling me there is nothing like that!!
Yeah, all it takes is will power, determination and some smart thinking to do them all. But then, not everyone is a genius. Its takes that something extra to get right there!!
Having said all that, I ask myself, have I at least had time for family and friends alike ? Hmm…no, not exactly. Where then does all the time go??? You spend time with family; you have some distant family (distant in terms of blood relations but close in terms of your personal relations) complaining. You spend time with friends, you have another set of them complaining….You spend time with maternal grand parents, you have the paternal ones complaining. True, you cant do everything , but it is still important to keep people close to you, “close” to you literally. In fact, a few minutes back, I got a call from my Uncle who told me “atleast call me once in a while…its been a long time since I even heard your voice”.
Sometimes, you don’t intend to hurt a person , unknowingly though, you land up doing just that. Why ? “I just don’t seem to have enough time really” is the only possible excuse you could genuinely have.
I tried to do some research on how to spend time more effectively. I did hit upon some interesting/weird findings, one of them being Polyphasic sleep; reduce the number of hours of sleep and instead use that to do that something more in life -here
To know the value of one year - Ask the student who failed their final.
To know the value of one month - ask the mother of a premature baby.
To know the value of one week - ask the editor of a weekly magazine.
To know the value of one day - ask the wager earner with six children.
To know the value of one hour - ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.
To know the value of one minute - ask the person who missed the plane.
To know the value of one second - ask the person who survived the accident.
To know the value of one millisecond - ask the Olympic silver medalist.
- John Maxwell
Im a Nurturer!!
| Thats me, the site says... |
The Nurturer You have a strong need to belong, and you very loyal. A good listener, you excell at helping others in practical ways. In your spare time, you enjoy engaging your senses through art, cooking, and music. You find it easy to be devoted to one person, who you do special things for. You would make a good interior designer, chef, or child psychologist. |
Just like that...
It’s a dull day. Life’s a routine. There is hardly anything happening for another few months. And I just realized there isn’t a single holiday till the 15th of Aug. Oh! damn the corporate world!!
Life has been really exciting for me for the past few months or so. Things have settled down. I’m not so much into football, but this time, yes; call it enlightenment or just plain peer pressure, I have enjoyed the game. And I sure believe its “Joga Bonito”.
I didn’t particularly have a favourite team, but I sure did feel bad for Argentina’s loss and I surely did miss Messi ;-). I didn’t watch the match yesterday, but happy that Italy won and also sad that I wont get to see the German coach, Klinsmann again!! The good news is that I finally joined Salsa with my fiancée (happy J ). The first two classes have been fun and I’m so looking for the weekend! Other than that, it’s been pretty much usual.
I have been leaving office right on time these days. Ha! I don’t like working late or overtime….it doesn’t pay to be hardworking. It pays to be street smart. I’ve learnt it the hard way in these two years of my working experience. Well, there are 6 different kinds of people.
- Those who stay back late cause they have work
- Those who stay back late to study or research
- Those who stay back late( doing nothing), just to impress their managers.
- Those who stay back late cause they have nothing else to do outside (their social life sucks basically)
- Those who stay back late cause they enjoy the company in office (chatting, playing et al)
- Those who do not stay back late
I fall under the last (primarily) and first (secondary) sections.
Incidentally, I came across this article posted in office and found it a good read. Check it out
The making of an album!
The past couple of weeks have been an amazing journey…
I possibly cannot put on paper the excitement and fun experienced in making a photo album!
It all started off when I shot off the first mail on May 30, more than a month before one of my close friend’s birthday. We (me, K n A) were deciding what we could do different this time. Birthdays had started becoming so predictable. Surprises weren’t exactly surprises anymore….
We were all reaching a magical age and wanted to think out of the box. Something different, something we hadn’t done before, something which would really be a wonderful surprise.
I, for once managed to put my brains to some use and an idea struck!
The plan was to have a photo album / collage of sorts with photos of her ranging from childhood till date. We thought of including all phases of her life with messages from a number of people she knew/ had met in her life…. some of whom weren’t so much in touch too.
The plan was in place and we actually didn’t do much till about 2 weeks before the D-day. It struck us that we had loads to do before we would see our idea materialise into something. Thus started the awesome journey…every day, mails were exchanged. We had almost become managers. Each executing the tasks listed out. Mailing different people, waiting for their replies, mailing them again…oomph!
There were some goof ups in between as well. Like the time when one of them actually sent out a mail to her cousins from her own email ID!! Well, all was part of the game and we thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it.
Evenings we would catch up, discuss on the status and then return back home late, tired but very excited! As the day approached, we realized we hadn’t even started with the album. We had managed to get hold of a lot messages from her family members. That again was a well thought out plan. All operations were successful. One person would take her out of the house on the pretext of eating / drinking out and the rest of us would rush to her place to get hold of messages and photos.
We sure made some bold decisions, like giving the photos to be developed to a shop very close to her place.
We all gathered in K’s house one day before her birthday. We sat writing up all the messages on paper. Yup, with today’s electronic mail being the mode of communication, we all had a good run back of school days with a lot of writing to do. Some messages from people (mostly all e-mailed) were really long. But then, writing had never been so enjoyable :-)
The next best part was to cut the paper into different shapes. We had to give the album a crude and mystic look. This also reminds me of the incident when I lit some paper on fire, just to give the paper edges a different look and I almost ruined the floor …
We in fact googled for “shapes”, the results of which I wouldn’t want to reveal here!!
If cutting paper was so much fun, you could imagine the crazy stuff we did with the photos. We got to chop off photos like never before, infact even got to cut off few people from the snaps…..wow, that was soo much fun to do. We had some jokes, some sleepy sessions, backaches, chips everything to accompany us till about 4.30 AM in the morning. We then decided we better get some sleep. All of us hit the bed and almost instantaneously fell fast asleep. We got up again around 7.30 and started to finish up the album. By the way, that day was in fact our friend’s birthday and we were yet to complete the album.
One of us actually took an entire day off from office and the others half a day. But finally all that sweat and slogging did pay off. The album was a huge success. Its gonna be circulated to each one of our houses for a couple of days cause we actually haven’t got to see the album entirely.
The birthday turned out to be wonderful and the surprise was indeed a great one!
Deep is the love, strong is the emotion.....
When I look back
On everything Ive done
I know you must have cried
A river of tears,
But, you were there
When I was feeling low
To walk me through my darkest fears
So when the sun goes down
An those nights grow colder,
I will be there
Looking over your shoulder
An the deeper the love
The stronger the emotion,
An the stronger the love
The deeper the devotion
There were times
I almost let you go
When I thought I needed to break free,
But you were there
To whisper in my ear
Why dont you share my dreams with me.
So when the sun goes down
An those nights are growing colder
I will be there
Looking over your shoulder.
An the deeper the love
The stronger the emotion,
An the stronger the love
The deeper the devotion
I dont mind, what youre doing to me,
I dont mind, cause youre all I can see
I dont mind, baby, you mean the world to me
When the sun goes down
An those nights are growing colder,
I will be there
Looking over your shoulder, baby, baby, baby.
So when the sun goes down
An those nights are growing colder,
I will be there
Looking over your shoulder.
cause the deeper the love
The stronger the emotion,
An the stronger the love
The deeper the devotion...
I never gonna let you go,
In my heart, I know.
I love you, I love you.
Oh baby, I really love you...
- Whitesnake
I dedicate this to my love of 8 1/2 years and to whom I got engaged to last week!
One Saturday!!
The time was slowly ticking. It was 4 AM in the morning. Never had dawn break been so haunting and the feeling was sinking in gradually. I was attempting hard to stop biting my nails. I knew I would later feel the loss of the manicured beauties.
I felt like standing on a precipice waiting for the winds to blow me off. Every minute seemed to last for an hour. I was getting restless and tired of keeping myself awake. My heart skipped a beat when I almost fell off my chair. I did not know if I could have the liberties to complete my morning rituals. No, I wouldn’t dare do that; I knew I was jinxed in such issues.
I thought of getting over the feeling. In order to spruce up myself a bit, I logged into the computer and listened to my favourite music. Suddenly, music wasn’t exactly music to the ears. There seemed to be something going wrong. I knew the song too well to miss the beats. Heck, no, it was my cell phone ringing!!!
The dreaded hour had arrived. I checked the time and it was half past 7 o’clock. I hadn’t realized the time go by, thanks to Pink Floyd. I managed to keep my cool. Luckily the matter wasn’t all that serious or so I thought!
The phone from then on kept ringing at regular intervals. I decided I had to go. This was getting hard to handle from home. Wait, I had oiled my hair. There was oil dripping from my head. I did not have that much time to wash it and leave. I was contemplating how long it would take to reach the dreaded destination…an hour, no an hour and a half maybe. Time was running out. It would have taken an hour anyway with or without the oil on my head. I immediately jumped into an old pair of jeans and Tee and headed towards the door. Now, my driving skills wouldn’t permit me to drive above 40 kmph. I needed help. “DAD”, yes, he’s the one …my trouble reliever. The next minute, we were speeding.
I finally reached the place after about 45 mins of sustained tension. 4 hours, 100 phone calls later things had settled down. I was dead tired by then. I slowly trudged towards the exit and waited for a cab.
The day had ended in another part of the world and I was going to wake up to party!
It was my first production release, a business critical application that I was solely involved in during the development and testing stages! There were issues and more issues, but I’m glad it finally managed to pull through and got into production. Phew!
Then and Now.....
Then
X: "Hi, wassup?What plans?"
Y: "Hmmm, how bout my place at 11?"
X: "Cool, will tell Z, you inform A"
Y: "Bingo"
Now
X: "Hi, wassup?What plans?"
Y: "Hi, nothing much. Im going out, you?"
X: "Ok. Think I will be going out too."
Y: "Bye"
X: "Bye"
Then
X: "New year is fast approaching. What plans?"
Y: "How about Z's place and then something else...?"
X: "Alright, lets meet up and decide what to do. @ 2, my place."
Y: "Done. Will get the others."
Now
X: "What plans for the New year?"
Y: "Hi, I will be going to my friend's farm house. You?"
X: "Not sure, I think I will be with his friends."
Y: "Ok, have fun. Bye."
X; "Bye"
Then
X:
X: "Get up!!!Lets go out...and how dare you not pick up my call!"
Now
X:
Then
X: "Lets plan for a trip and get off!"
Y: "Yeah, lets do that!Hit the button!"
Now
X: "I want to go out somewhere. I will ask him to plan a trip."
Y: "Hmmm"
Then
X: "You think we will be like this forever?"
Y: "Yes, we will. There is no doubt about that."
Now
X: "You think we will be like before?"
Y: "Guess times change, we have to adjust with it."
Comfortably Numb
The title seems just apt to describe me right now. I dont particularly have a reason for my hibernation, just like the way I dont for a lot of other things (Hmm, I think i should make that almost.duh!!)
I had hell breaking loose for me sometime back. The nightmare of giving an exam and waiting for the results! Call it the CAT-syndrome.
Sometimes, I feel the hype and hula over CAT seems a little over done. Its not that I found it very easy or did very well. But the fact remains its after all just an exam. Either you work real hard to make it or your just plain lucky!! It was neither for me this time. Colourful pictures crafted, crescendo of anticipation increased. Well....
The world seems to hype up just about anything these days...the latest being Akshaya Trithiya. Not that this auspicious day did not come a few years back....but yes, of late, it sure seems to be all over the place with the likes of Sridevi or even Vasundhara Das (if you remember last year).
Last evening, I as usual went for a stroll around my place. There are close to 15 odd jewellery showrooms on the road. The surprising thing, not a single one was empty. I thought of checking out some local bangle and artificial jewellery stores. To my surprise, they were crowded as well!!! Somehow, the number of people increased exponentially to the size and location of the showroom! Well, all for the good of the shop owners!Hmm!
I wonder what is it that makes people (who have the money and those who dont) to throng these places on just one particular day. Why do we still have these beliefs?And does gold actually multiply if you buy them on this day?
The only thing I can reason out here is the fact that life is so fast paced and stressed out that we just need some (or any) reason to get away from the routine!
Well, all for "All that glitters is not gold".....
