Funny on TV!

Disclaimer: I am not a TV person except that I have no choice but to turn to TV every other afternoon (at my new (current) job: I leave for work early, I come back early too and my outdoor activities, no thanks to my UV rays allergy, are very limited till late evening) and now that I got that out loud and clear here’s what I really have to say:

I often chuckle my way through some stray episodes of Friends or/and Seinfeld.....

The other day I could not stop giggling through this one episode of Friends where Joey lands into a female apartment and realizes he has been there before. He goes around surveying the living room and remembering how it all looks familiar ....and then he picks up a Victoria Secret catalog and goes something like, “Hmmmmm, we even have similar tastes in books”. Haha!

I know corny, juvenile.....whatever you may choose to call it but every time I think of Joey’s expression I can’t stop giggling. I just can’t :)

Don't you agree.....

...with Calvin??? :)

I'm so craving for......

...a pet!!!!! I want a pup soooooooooooo bad and I have been waiting for so long......Some time back, I started scouting my local SPCA website for the kind I want...and finally they 've something I will love to bring home....They call her Sabrina (I have always dreamt of a lab that I would call "Gopi" :DDD, but that can wait) She's, as the website says, a Boxer/Spaniel. I wouldn't know about the breed as I know very li'l about dogs except that they are the cutest li'l balls of fur and have the most melting eyes and that I want to have one. Here's a peek at Sabrina. I am so wishing that I am lucky enough to bring her home........

Oh, summer!

And swing to these awesome beats that evoke the spirit of summer........ :)

Cinema Paradiso!

Despite being a (self-claimed) consummate cinema lover, I confessed to suffering from "movie-ennui" to a friend, not long ago. I needed a movie to jolt me out of that stupor.......and Sean Penn’s “Milk” did it. It didn’t really “jolt me out” like a shot of java or those edgy thrillers from Christopher Nolan. This biopic about slain San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, who was California's first openly gay elected official was actually much easier-paced with a beautiful, clutter-free cinematography….....even in the scenes where the tension in the air is palpable, it has more of a lingering quality to it than the clutching, heart stopping feel one would associate with a political biopic that is addressing as controversial an issue as gay rights.

I am tempted to "preach" the whole "Live and let live" philosophy here but I have worked hard on keeping my political views out of this space and I won’t succumb to the call of “mature content”, not yet!!!! Let’s talk about Sean Penn instead. I have always admired Sean Penn, even in movies that cut no ice with me like Dead Man Walking or that utterly absurd torture I sat and Arka slept through - The Game. I also willingly forgave him for his cameo in Friends as Phoebe’s sister’s boyfriend. And his cool, rebel (with or without a cause) image only adds to the charm :) Blondes may prefer gentlemen, raven-haired brunettes certainly don’t :D

And while we are on movies.......

Some time back I was visiting the local community library when I saw this flyer for a volunteering opportunity as a cine-master. On a fluke, I applied for it. Why not, I thought! It matches with my love for movies but I wasn’t too sure about acceptance as I have never done something like this before…Turns out, it’s not such a big deal really…. no, they don’t run their movies on film projectors a la Cinema Paradiso (the movie), though that would have been far, far more fun :( Anyways, this afternoon was spent orienting and working with a senior cine-master. I am so looking forward to my next turn :)

Overheard today............

....in the pre-operative area, a nurse wanted to know if the elderly patient who was due for his surgery in another coupla hours would like to continue wearing his hearing-aids to the operating room. So, the nurse goes, “Mr XYZ, are you deaf WITHOUT your hearing aids?” His wife promptly answered back “Ha! He is deaf WITH them!”

Today's disappointment!!!!

9:57 AM (2 hours ago)

Reply

Dear Mr. Verma,

Thank you for your email regarding HÄAGEN-DAZS® Ice Cream. We appreciate the time you have taken to pass your comments on to us.

Almost all ice cream containers are coated with polyethylene and, therefore, are not recyclable.

We at HÄAGEN-DAZS® Ice Cream appreciate your interest in our company and our products. We value our consumers and we thank you for the opportunity to respond to your concerns.

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Nicole Matthews
Consumer Response Representative

************************************************************************************

Mr. Verma!!!!!!!! No that's not what I meant by disappointment!

Random and quick! :)

This is gonna be a quickie!!!! I have tons to wrap up before my day begins at work tomorrow at 5 am. Yes, this is a hard-working, middle-class woman who doesn't have much of a life outside her work, so she goes around claiming that her work is an all-consuming passion for her. And here are some random tidbits from her life:

- I just wrapped up my first project at my new job and it was received well. Along the way, as I spent time observing the processes at different hospital units, I have been called all kinda "names" ....ranging from an "efficiency cop" to "a bad penny (who always turns up)". Now if only I had a vindictive streak in moi!!!!! :)

- Any part of human anatomy that may have been ummmmmm "sacred" before I joined the hospital doesn't seem to be that way any longer....like when questioned why a certain operating room is not ready for GYN surgeries, a rather inflamed nurse exclaimed......."BECAUSE, that room has rather poor lights to look into a woman's vayjayjay"!!!!!! There you go!

- If there's one doctor that's the favorite of all the nurses, clerks, staff......across the board, it's Dr. Derek Shepherd. He must be the most popular desktop background for our hospital systems.

- In course of explaining how diverse India is, to some of my coworkers, I happened to mention that my husband and I do not speak the same language. Even before I could go further, this male peer goes, "Well, which husband and wife do?" !!!! Point taken :)

Spotted today.......

"Jesus: the eternal bailout"

******************************************************************************

In other news, I am busy having a dandy time at work: learning something new, something fresh, every working day of mine.......For example, did you know that most hospitals here have their children admissions area where there are no exits close by due to the fear of abduction or that the regular delivery (vs. C-section) of babies is such a commonplace, quick hospital procedure that natural deliveries are jokingly referred to as "drive-through deliveries"?

Oh, and fun times continue. Even when my day starts as early as 5:30 am, there's always something to smile or laugh about.....like this li'l tyke who when asked how he's feeling (just before his surgery: what a question to ask, really!) he goes, "I FEEL LIKE SH**......aaaaa...LIKE POOP!" or this 80 year old grandma who after recovering from her surgery declared rather beamingly to her equally proud husband, "Despite the pain I did not use the F-word even once, back there"! :)

And while I am at it, here's a peek at how my casual reading patterns have changed on a dime:

All in a day's work

Honestly, I never thought that "Life in a hospital" would be so different from the world I have worked in before..........It has been two weeks since I started work and I am yet to have a dull day. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining. Au contraire, I am mighty grateful about that part of the new job: I need every laugh that comes my way, intentional or not :) Here's a sampling of all that goes on in a typical day-at-work here:

This one elderly patient who was in for surgery, commented that though his drugs cost him dearly he's not ready to buy cheaper drugs made in other countries especially in China as "Chinese can't even make good dog food"!!!!!!!!! Whoa!!! He seemed fine, though, in the company of a young Indian woman. He even winked at me on his way out of the recovery room, post his surgery. I swear, he did. I am sure he must have had opinions about India too but didn't bother to share them with me :)))

Then there was this other time when a nun (it being a faith-based non profit hospital, there is a sprinkling of nuns and pastors in the hospital) joined us for lunch and when she heard that I am newly hired as a "performance-improvement engineer", she went something on the lines of , "Well, I do prayers for our patients: don't know how you can improve that unless you want us to pray faster!!!" I always knew nuns were hard nuts to crack: half my childhood was spent in what they call "convent schools" and nuns there were always the toughest taskmasters (or should I say taskmistresses, considering the increasingly politically correct world that we inhabit ;DDD) .

And hey, soon-to-be-mommy Radha should get a kick out of this one: every time a new baby is born in the hospital, they play a lullaby on the overhead speaker system throughout the hospital to celebrate the new life. That's really sweet, don't you agree, Radha? What's sweeter is when people in-the-know, particularly the older folks smile and sigh "Awwwww, a babbby!" My ma and ma-in-law loved this story the most :)

And now the real perk of the job, till date: I got a chance to be in OR (Operation Room : no, unlike in India they don't call it Operation Theater here.......I think I like "room" better over "theater"...I mean an operation is no drama being played out unless............... I think I am turning into a word-puking machine, lately. Why can't I stop drifting, for the love of my life??) Ok, so I was in the OR for a day, and forget the part that it began at 7:45 in the morning as this pale, little 4 year old is brought in to get his infected tonsils removed, bawling his eyes out, crying "I WANT MY MOMMY" or the fact that I managed to stand through a circumcision and an external scrotal mass removal surgery (yes, all in a day's work!!!!!) ...........the coolest part was that I got to "deck up" in scrubs :) Lights, camera, action:

<


I swear it wasn't a bare-all-your-teeth-smile for the camera alone: I was THAT excited!!!! And I just broke my cardinal rule of never featuring "myself" on my own blog except for that fuzzy pic that you see on my profile. Ha!

"The Return of the Native" ;D

" .......I am yet to pay ode to the city I call home now. We have moved to what they call the "heart of America"......: the not-so-middling, modest, Midwest. Not exactly in the center of the US but not at poles either. It is close to where Abraham Lincoln spent most of his youth and it's not very far from Mark Twain's birth place either. And Chi-town (that's what they call good ol' Chicago in these parts) is their pride. Without further ado, we have moved to a town called Peoria, somewhere between Chicago and St. Louis. My dental-surgeon dad pulled his nose at the mere mention of the name : he muddled it up with "Pyorrhea" (the disease of bad gums, for the uninitiated)!!!!! Can't blame him: poor darling by the time he mugs up the name, the geography, the expected weather, and the time zone of a place we tell him we are planning to move to, life throws a curve ball and all our best laid plans come to a naught. Hopefully this means the end of all that "perambulation".

Am enjoying the part about setting up our new home. I always enjoy it: no matter how frequently I may have done it in recent past. It is fun to go out every evening après-work hunting for furniture, curtains to match the cushions, rugs to match the curtains and so on..............it's colder here than any other place I have lived but I had been itching to go some place with seasons and I welcome the change. I love the sight of fresh snow....the tiny snow flakes dancing outside my window make me smile instantly............."

- As written about a year back............Yes, this post was never made public......heck, not 'coz I am ashamed of it or anything.... but eventually, down the line, two years into blogging, I felt I may have "out-shared" (whatever that means......you may get the drift, I hope) myself considering I owned two blogs and wrote on four in those days and those "enlightening" stories that I came up with every other week did not seem to have any point any longer........yeah right, enlightening!!!! :)
Ever since I have often spent countless minutes wondering if this blog could ever be revived. I understand that blogging is a very self-indulgent exercise..... I mean, you have to be really in love with yourself to keep churning out posts after posts and expecting people to read you, and even let you know what they think of that brilliant idea you came up with while everyone else was busy trying to understand........ the law of economics??? Or that movie you think totally rocked and can't fathom why the world hasn't seen it yet, or that exciting novel you think should make it to the New York Times best sellers' list regardless of ......................Yes, that's what I used to blog about and will continue to hereafter: for the simple reasons: I love my life, I have what I call "a need to tell" and I have friends who just won't let friends stop blogging :)

Yes, I am "Bachhhhhh" and now it's your turn to tell me that the news is "music to your ears!"

:)

:)

How many men does it take to "shoot" a pretty bird?

I am Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!

He'll grow up to know better??? :)

PS: I know I have been gone too long. This is a desperate attempt to revive this blog which has lately been sidetracked completely. I hope I still have the same capacity to tell my "stories" as I used to!!!!

Normal is .............

........getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. - Ellen DeGeneres

Time to play house

In another seven hours, both of us will step out to work together :)

I hate goodbyes.

Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. - Snoopy

:)

Snow flurries are dancing outside my window as I type this. It's grey and dreary outside but it's beautiful. Our sojourn in North-east has come to an end. We move on yet again, this time to Mid-west and hopefully this time it will be for real: the move. All this while, we have tried hard, real hard to avoid a long-distance marriage........and looks like the efforts are coming to fruition, finally. IF all goes as planned, we'd be working not only in the same city but for the same organization too. A double whammy (in a positive sense :D)!!!! Though the if in l"if"e does not go unnoticed, the eternal optimist in moi wants to believe that things will be different this time. I am looking forward to having a little more "settled" way of life than the one we have had for past one month. The last one month gave us some truly stressful moments but none so bad that we could not handle and the entire credit goes to the people we chose to surround ourselves with. We have friends who have taught us lessons of love, loyalty and faith that will stay with me for as long as I live. Life only goes forward from here :)

Of hopes and dreams.....

I am so hoping for this one interview scheduled for the next week to click!!!!!!!! It matches perfectly with the career goal I have in mind and is so aligned with my thesis work in the field of performance improvement in health care, that it will be a shame if this does not work out. Pray, will you, for moi????

"The future is not what it used to be."

Tethered to my computer the whole day long trying to get my foot into a door/any door that would let me earn my pay packet at the end of the month, I seem to have acquired a philosophical bent of mind. If you can call these pithy statements borrowed from other writers "philosophical" !!!! :D

Life's all about Murphy's laws' moments, eh???

"About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends."
Herbert Hoover

:)

Meet Elsa P. Bhattacharya :)

Arka is a kind of person stray animals seem to find (for those who are tempted to ask, if that's how I found him, I have only one piece of advice- curiosity killed the cat ;D). This little ball of fur is the tiniest of the brood her mom left behind in the neighborhood and she now owns us. Though she has us wrapped around her tiny toes, this one has a mind of her own. She has made our door-mat her bed but she will not enter our house coz it's not her territory. She walks like a jaguar, finishes the milk only when we add caramel sauce to it, and plays only when she's in the mood to. Though no miss goody two shoes, she's the cutest! :)

That's her waiting for us as we come back from school :)

She's obedient like this only when it's the food time!

Slurrrrrrrrp!!!

At her charming best when she wants the belly-rubs! :)

Even a cat needs to contemplate!!! :)

We'll miss her!!!!!!! :(

Packed to the gills!

This gotta be the busiest month ever for us and we are supposed to be inching towards holiday season!!!!!!! Our commencement is lined up for 15th of this month, we gotta get rid of all the furniture we amassed as a happy newly-married couple last year, the car needs to be shipped, rest of the stuff packed..............meanwhile we are busy saying goodbyes to people and places I daresay we won't see in a long, long time! No "farewell" comes easy......It was not easy to leave home when I did almost a decade back, it was definitely not easy to leave India and now it's time to move on again and call me an emotional fool, if you will, but as we inch towards a brand new life in a brand new place amongst brand new people, I realize I am gonna terribly miss the familiarity of a place I have been calling "home" and faces I have been calling "friends" for some time now. Heck, I'm even gonna miss the stray kitty who has conveniently made the floor mat outside our apartment, her bed!!!We call her Elsa and have been debating if we can take her along...........just like I wish I could carry all those whom I love, with me always, wherever I go. Saki would have scoffed and said "you have scarcely reached an age when these things should make themselves seriously felt" but guess though I read Saki, I can't lay claims to such wisdom!!!!

And now the happier part of the month!!!! It's our marriage anniversary month....yes, we would have lived one year of the "Happily ever after" part this Christmas :) After much deliberations and considering zanier plans from a Route 66 trip to a cruise to the nearby Bahamas we have finally settled down on a ten days South east road-trip to celebrate our coupledom, graduation and the coast we have come to love. Destination unknown, no definite itinerary, we intend to go to places on a total whim....just drift along .....we have always wanted to do it and now we have all the time in the world to live life in the slow lane as I call it :)

:)

For the whole set of friends who are ready to take the plunge in the coming few weeks :D

Through the eyes of children

I can never get enough of movies which offer perspectives from the eyes of children and I often mourn the lack of cinema in that genre. One reason why I keep watching the same old movies over and over again and never get tired of them. As days get shorter with approaching winters, we are reliving some of our favorite movies at home. Last evening we watched one of the better-known movies from Iranian cinema houses, Majid Majidi's "Children of Heaven". A gently told tale of a nine year old brother losing his younger sister's shoes and then their daily struggle to manage school (thankfully they go to school at different times of the day) with one pair of old, tattered sneakers between the two of them, makes you thank life for the smallest of the gifts it has offered you. The mad dash the little girl makes every day to be able to pass on the shoes to her brother for him to make it to his school in time, tugs at your heart strings. The brother leaden with guilt for losing the only pair of shoes his sister owned decides to win a long-distance race, but he covets only the third prize: a pair of running shoes :) The film has a very convenient ending, but I keep going back to the movie because of Ali and Zahra, the brother-sister duo. It's touching to see how the littlest of the kids learn to cope and find their own ways to happiness in utter poverty while adults continue to lament around them. When Ali tries to pacify his sister with a pen he has been given by his teacher for his academic accomplishments, or when he informs Zahra about his intentions of running the race for the third prize, the smile that slowly creeps on Zahra's face is worth every single rebuke that Ali has received for arriving late to school daily. The way Ali begs Zahra to not let their father know of the lost shoes reminds me of how my brother and I would blackmail each other of our "crimes" to use them to our own advantage and when blackmailing did not work we would get down to manipulative ways of appealing to each other's kinder side. I miss my brother and I miss my childhood dearly, I know I cant turn back the clock, so I watch these movies, shed an earnest tear sometimes and get back to being an adult.

Over the misty mountains

Every once in a while when I have nothing much to add here, I feel like displaying pics that do not make it to my photo-blog......so, here's a peek into the neighborhood we are moving to in Dec. Most of the pics were taken from the car while hunting for our future apartment. Don't you love all that mist around!!!! Arka prefers sunnier climes but for moi--- a small, little place nestled among mountains is what i have always longed for. My brother lives (presently) in Shimla and I have always told him that there's nothing I won't do to trade places with him. In fact, I have always dreamed of "retiring into" a cottage amidst mountains.......I had no idea that sometimes happy endings make their way into the middle of the story :) Now, if only this was closer home, back in India.........sigh!!!!!!!

Taming the Shrew??? ;D

Runny nose makes a lousy Diwali, just in case you did not know. I type this in an unbelievably "cold" Florida (we call 14 degrees Celsius "cold" in these parts), nursing a flu that has my ears aching, head throbbing and throat itching, not to mention a nose that will just not stop leaking and sneezes that will scare the poor monsters under my bed into running for cover, along with a husband (no, he does not sleep under the bed and he does not qualify as an ogre, well definitely not the scary types, he's more like the ever-huggable Shrek kinds ....don't worry he does not read this blog so there won't be any case of domestic violence reported) who's busy sorting it all out single-handedly for our final move to West Coast this December.

We are barely back from the place after a frenzied attempt at apartment hunting there......good news being we did manage to find a pleasant place in a neighborhood that's so me (read: does not involve any driving for the daily shopping needs..heck, it even has a public library right across the street, a hiking trail just behind our walls, a creek at a walking distance that lends the place its name..and a lighthouse a short drive away ....can you hear my singing heart???? :D) but the costs on the other side of this continent are gonna keep us awake for many a nights to come. We did expect an increase in our living costs as everyone had warned us West Coast living does not come cheap but we expected a hole in our pockets not a total rip-off!!!!!

I am having a nice time imagining all that exploring I can do with no sun to bother me any more....I feel for Arka though ...:DDDD He has to fund it all till someone decides I am capable enough to work in their establishment......He already has the look of a married man, something he had so neatly avoided to acquire for 10 months into matrimony!!!! haha!!!! Like his ex-boss used to tell him, these are the times when you can separate the men from the boys......my boy's time is here :DDDD

Alive n Kickin'

I am alive n kickin', just in case you were wondering. It was a roller coaster ride with thesis defense.....After a long time in life, I was such a bundle of nerves that I could not sit through Arka's defense in the morning. And later in the afternoon, when it was my turn to defend, I was teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown...no exaggeration!!! Weird but as I type this, i can feel knots in my tummy already.....I remember, as I tried to strike a formal stance in front of my audience, it only made me feel like a fraud, like somebody is going to find out how little I know. And I do not have a clue why I was this fraught with tension....or come to think of it, I did have a reason..it's one of my committee members, a hard nut to crack, whom I trusted to create problems and boy did he!!!! I have been only calling him names ever since ..like that internet-ad goes, "You don't mind having to kill a couple of nimrods who happen to clutter your path". Anyway, despite several attempts at belittling my work in his trademark denigrating, condescending, supercilious way, he did buy in the thesis and now I'm just a month away from graduating though I am not gonna forget the day in a long, long time. Phew!!!! Yes, I am alive n kickin'!!!!!

Damsel in distress!

Less than 10 days to go before we "go live" or shall I say dead!!!

And at no cost do I want this to happen to moi!!!No way!!!!

I am currently hoarding blessings and wishes from all and sundry ......please donate some in the Comments section below!!!!

8 Random Facts!

Most of this post is a copy-paste of the current post on my photo-blog. But I had to do this here. The tag that says "List eight (8) random facts about yourself"
Radha long back had tagged me on something similar and today I got tagged on it for the third time. So I decided to pull up my socks finally and do it.

Here you go! :)

1. I am born allergic to UV rays...so stepping out in sun even for 5 minutes leaves me with a chance of getting a potential nasty sunburn. That explains why I love rains as much, I guess.

2. I'm a hopeless, incurable romantic.

3. Sometimes I think I was just not born with the music gene. I can't even hum a tune right : One reason why I hold musicians in such awe.
4. Day dreams are my mini getaway. Often, you'll find me dreaming with my eyes open.

5. I have wanted to be a teacher, a doctor, a tennis star, a journalist (in that order) at different stages of my life and ended up being neither of them.

6. The tennis star bit of dream (too pie-in-the-sky, I know) was partly due to Steffi Graf and partly coz I totally love those cute tennis skirts :D

7. I want to travel for a living and I want to take my husband along. But I want to be able to come back (whenever I want) to a modest, pretty place that I can call home. Guess, I want it all or I do not know what I want!!!! (Can you count the "wants" here :D)

8. I can go on and on with my "I's" .......

And now the best part. Jas, 666, Kanishka, Yoda, Suramya (once U are back to blogging world), Yogesh, Atticus, Sarad : Consider yourself tagged and let's hear "8 random facts" from you guys now :)

HO-freaking-HUM!

The Bhattacharya household is in "the-world-is-crumbling-around-us" mode as I type this. Groggy, sleepy-eyed, starving, late night denizens are working up a sweat amidst teetering piles of paper, keeping their nose to the grindstone. Both of us are defending our theses in less than 3 weeks and after entering all that data carpal tunnel syndrome is no longer a distant reality (no, that software never rose again.Whoever educated moi about Phoenix, forgot to add that its a mythical creature!!!!). And just in case you are planning to exhort me to work harder, let me admit, given to melodrama and bellyaching, I HAD to find time to write this post!!!But seriously, tough times are here : the only saving grace being they won't last long. Come October end and I'm outta here (well, almost...we don't graduate till Dec). I always do this to myself and it's no different this time either. Every time I've hit a ho-freaking-hum patch in past, I have saved myself from sinking into an abyss, dreaming about how life will be kinder soon (no delusions of grandeur, mind you) and I will no longer be poor, dull, busy or single!!! It's worked in past, it should work this time too........ I gotta rush back to my thesis now. And just before I split, here's a joke for those who are cognizant of Bong (the language: it's got nothing to do with the people)

Q: What do you call a Bengali voyeur??
A: Key-hole-o

Haha!!!! Ammo provided by a non-Bong friend to counter my husband's frequent not-so-charitable remarks about my North Indian heritage!!! lol!!! Bless the friends who think of you and your causes even when not particularly asked to!!! :D

"Good Grief!"

There's no escaping Murphy and his laws, is there? No matter how hard you try, anything that can go wrong, will. My thesis was progressing at too fine a speed for it to be true! I should have realized that. Last morning the scanning software we were using to scan my data gave up on us. It went kaput, just like that......!!! Now, I have to manually fill in data for thousands of surveys when I have less than 3 weeks left for my final thesis defense. I really can’t think of anything that stinks worse :( :( :(
Sometimes I feel, if it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all :( :(

Global Warming

If you can get that British accent, this one's real neat!!!! :)

Imminent change

It's funny how life turns on a dime. A few days back we were anxious to find out where would we be post graduation as both Arka and I graduate this Dec. Then there was this question of what if our jobs take us to separate cities....I have lived and survived (rather miserably) for a year in this long distance relationship thing......that's what made me come running to US to be "reunited" with Arka...I kept my promise to follow him till the end of this world, whether appreciated by him or not!!! :D So, I certainly did not want a repeat of history!!! Looks like I had no real need to worry......Arka's nailed a job for himself near Seattle and he has very charitably assured moi that I can live off his money till I find one for myself in that area!!! My ever-so-kind husband!!!! :) Come Dec. and we move lock, stock and barrel, yet again! I have been living like a nomad for so long now that no move seems daunting anymore.....so as we move from one coast to another, I hope the best is yet to come :)
Meanwhile, wish me good luck on job hunt!!!!

All typed out????

Most of what follows in this post is from this Gartner study/PC Mag article I came across while researching for a "technology article" for one of my courses this semester. So don't you go accusing me of "plagiarism"(as an aside, the first i heard of plagiarism was for Anu Malik's exceptional skills at it and the last...well, as students who have to write thesis you never really hear the last of it)!!!!!

Back to Gartner, the study claims that blogging will peak in 2007 that is to say that though there are 175,000 new blogs added everyday, half of them will not last beyond 3-4 months! And as of Dec 2006, the total number of dead, abandoned blogs was pegged at more than 200 million. Phew!!!! There's that kinda detritus floating amidst us, I had no idea!!!! Ever since I started blogging, I have lost several fellow bloggers to marriages, new jobs and school pressures, general disillusionment with this whole blogging phenomenon, some left to make babies and never came back and I'm certain a few others who did not make enough dough through Google Ads decided blogging isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And if you haven't guessed already, there's been this lull here for some time now and this post is intentioned to get you slackers out there back to blogging! I know most of you have fingers in more pies right now than a cordon bleu chef ...but you can't let go of your blog to the graveyard yet!!!! People, blog!!!! ferpetesake, BLOG!!!!!!

Nothing better to do!!!!

It wasn't long back when I spewed venom for Mondays and today's Friday's turn to get flogged. No Friday that has a class scheduled for 4 blessed hours and that too in the evening can be a good friday!!!!! Is there a contest out there à la Spelling Bee for bellyaching?? I'll be darned if I let anyone take the top prize for that one!!! And now though I have nothing to write home about (I never have, really) I wanna blog..so here I go dishing out yet another post that's not gonna change a thing for me or for you. And it most certainly is not gonna bring about world peace. But even the most difficult days can bring flashes of joy from the most unexpected of sources .........:)

I had to hold my tummy and laugh when I read Megster's post today on Mathematics' tryst with emotions!!!

And a discovery which may seem rather useless to many, did bring me joy. Funny , but I discovered a new word today: "Bildungsroman". Sounds complicated, does it??? It's a great word really!!! It is used for novels that follow the development of the hero or heroine from childhood or adolescence into adulthood, through a troubled quest for identity. Another word for LIFE, you mean????

Consult me!!!!

This semester I have a course on ERP Management (Enterprise Resource Planning).....my degree being in SCM (Supply Chain Management), it's one course I have been looking forward to adding to my laundry list for some time now. The funny thing is I enter the class a tad late and at first glance, in a class of 40 (or so) I notice only Indians with a smidgen of (read 5 or 6) representation of other races. I have been in school here for more than 2 years now and though I've always had Indian classmates (even if that meant Arka being the only other Indian in class ), but such a huge number of them in one class is a first. A few days in the class and then it dawns upon moi....they are all Consultants or aspiring to be.

A coupla weeks on Monster, and my resume fetches calls from a slew of desi Consultants, eager to get me my H1.

More than half of my friends (Indians) today are Consultants.

Every other day I hear of Indians who dropped/planning to drop their 9 to 5 jobs to open Consultancies of their own.

Do I see a pattern here??? Or am I over simplifying and generalizing like we all love to??? Are we a race that breeds Consultants??? That's destined to consult??? By the way, Who are "Consultants"???

Is there anything better in life.........

...than having a Monday off????

On our walls!!! Soon!!!

Our school has this tradition of posters-exhibit/sale on the first day of Fall semester every year...the first year I landed in US, I was too busy filling up all sorta forms. The next year I was happily vacationing in India, so this year being our last in school we made sure we make a beeline to the exhibit....and since we hate spending on our ourselves (I know I do :D), Arka and I decided to gift each other with the posters we totally fell in love with :) I'm so in love with all of them....Now, only if we can find some empty wall space in our teeny-weeny apartment!!! Guess, you can't have your posters and display them too!!! :(

Arka got his fix of Pink Floyd

While I got my Buffalo Solider :)

His Dali

My Picasso

And since this is a woman's world after all, I get to keep a Van Gogh as bonus ;)

And just between you and me and the four walls, I adore my husband :DDD

Thud!!!

The party's over!!! I still can't believe that my month long vacation ends today!! I've been in a state of denial the whole of this week....living it up, lest the unfavorable thoughts cloud the mood I've been in ever since we went tripping to Key West! But with the shadow of that evil Monday looming large right now, I got no choice here!!!! And I have a meeting scheduled early morning to update my prof. with the progress made in my research (!!!!!) this summer......Woe is moi!!!! :((((

I need some cheering up people!!! Hope this helps when I look up my blog tomorrow..

Phobia

Dale Putley: [Screeches his car to a halt all of a sudden] Could you see if there's someone lying in the road?
Jack Lawrence: [Looks back] No, nothing there.
Dale Putley: There's not a body lying in the road?
Jack Lawrence: A what?
Dale Putley: A body.
Jack Lawrence: [Gets out of the car and looks all around. The car had stopped on a country road in the middle of nowhere] No, nobody there.
Dale Putley: I often think that I've run someone over.

I am in the same boat (or shall I say car) as Robin Williams in Father's Day was. I am on the verge of slaying my biggest fear if it doesn't kill me before. I'm learning to drive.

Home decor ;)

For two people who love to laugh hard, our den is replete with inane-nothings. Here's a sampling :)

Finally!!!!

I'm done! I'm done!! I'm done!!! .....*Runs around the house like Olive in Little Miss Sunshine does, screaming "I won! I won! I won!" with unabashed glee *

What am I done with, you may ask !! Like it's hard to guess!!! The semester's over, laid to rest!!! :)
A whole one month of lazy summer is what I have to look forward to. And now that I'm a free bird, where do you think I'll pour my "carpe-diem" energies into!!! ;) Any guesses or suggestions????

Cinema Paradiso!!!! :)

Don't remember the last time a Hindi movie made an impact. No, I don't belong to the uppity school of thought that believes in lampooning Bollywood or vernacular cinema efforts to be a part of some intellectual clique. Its just that whenever I go to do the Indian part of groceries here I yearn to rent a Hindi movie only to find nothing that I could go back home with. I enjoyed Namesake but that's definitely not a Hindi film. Approached "Dor" a coupla months back with tons of anticipation : in vain. So this last one week, I decided to dig real hard and real deep and came up with 3 gems. Honest.

I picked up" Iqbal" because the theme of a deaf-mute boy obsessed with making it to the National Cricket team was right up my alley (cricket-y pun, very much intended).How likely is that in real life is anyone's guess though! Like most inspirational stories or rather like most of Kukunoor's works, this one is overtly simple and saccharine, and we’ve mostly seen it before. But it was worth a watch for that aging wine that goes by the name of Naseeruddin Shah and also the cricket-fanatic's younger sister whose name I can't recall now. Getting to catch a glimpse of Kapil Dev in his cameo towards the end was a treat. I have loved the man and his sunny disposition all my growing up years (Arka says I'm a poster girl for hero-worship, if the world needed one). If anyone has seen Gulzar-Rekha-Nasseruddin's "Ijazat", I felt similar shivers of joy when the jolly-old fella, Shashi Kapoor comes on screen like a breath of fresh air at the fag end of the movie.

The next in line was on a different plane altogether: "Hazaar Khwahishen Aisi" : Sudhir Mishra's hard-hitting statement on Naxalite movement.The movie deserves a separate post but since the world can do without my oh-so-knowledgeable reviews, I'll keep it to bare minimum or maybe a tad more than that :)I enjoyed watching Mishra's "Is raat ki suban nahin" ages ago and knew he'd not disappoint. He certainly did not. The movie has this real, intelligent and honest feel to it. And the irony of the final scene still resonates in my head, long after the movie is done with. I wish someone here has seen the movie and would tell me what he/she thinks of Chitrangada Singh. A modern day Smita Patil, as they call her????

"Parzania", a true story of a 10 year old Parsi boy who went missing during Godhra riots was a heart-wrenching one. Guess, that was the intention of the director whose friend's son has been missing since 2002 and "no body cares" as he says. I refuse to give in to the theory that such movies are made to receive acclaims at film festivals. That's a mockery of an honest effort like this one. I am not sure if the movie ever got its due in India. It does get dramatic in parts but It hurts to see the mindless hatred that's perpetuated in the name of religion in a secular country like ours. Being a non-believer myself, I probably will never understand the workings of God and his men. Last word on the movie, Naseeruddin Shah should be declared a national treasure.

Yipee!!!

A coupla more hours and we'll be reunited with dear old friends. For us weekend starts in another few hours ;)

I've been doing and redoing our den here since last night.......reminds me of my Mom and how she used to go bonkers trying to set every inch right before her much awaited visitors arrived....we were commanded out of the living room lest her precious sofa gets a crinkle or that ceramic vase takes a fall. Guess, the apple never falls far from the tree, eh!!!

And I am off for my long due ;) vacations.... Catch you when I'm back and since Father's Day (17th June) is round the corner, I decided to share one of my favorite paintings ever: The painting titled "The Banjo Lesson" (1893) by Henry O Tanner . It's a poignant image that gently stirs up emotions. Tanner supposedly chose banjo because of its African origin and it being the most popular musical instrument used by the slaves in early America. Ironic because it's an instrument that's now associated with bluegrass music and country that primarily has a white audience.

Love the painting and hope to have a replica on my walls some day :)

Down the Memory Lane

It's a popular tag right now.."My oldest memory": Much as I am obsessed with photographs and memories, like Radha and unlike Jas I find it so hard to pin it down to the oldest. Reminds moi of Christopher Nolan's masterpiece, "Memento" ... The whole premise of the movie revolves around how big one's life is? The answer being, as big as one's memory. It's a movie of its kind. Film noir comes alive in this thriller as a former insurance fraud investigator who has lost the ability to make new memories goes around looking for his wife's murderer. To cope with what he calls his "condition", he keeps copious amounts of photographs with labels that he scribbles on, hand-written notes, and tattoos to remind himself of people, places, and events he cannot remember. The whole movies goes in reverse order and keeps you intrigued and glued till the very end.

Awlright , now to my oldest memory ......as I said earlier, tons of them, cheek-to-cheek, to whittle them down to the oldest .....i can't even seem to remember my first day at school...have i grown that old, that soon??? I remember this incident though from class Nursery. I never went to a pre-school like toddlers these days do!! Did we have a concept like that in India of 80's??? Surely not in an itty-bitty town like where I grew up!!! There I go digressing again..... and dare u ask me to shut up. For, Blogdom hath no fury like a woman silenced!!! :)

Back to the memory......i was in class Nursery, our final results day.....and I flunked in my first-est year at school. a meager 9 out of 50 in Hindi. Haha...poor my parents!! *This is where memory ends and monologue re-appears * The repercussions of the event : While other parents beamed with pride, my Mom had to confront the guilt for being the working parent and not enough attention paid to the only child...My dad had to share the blame, he entered into the marriage, completely cognizant of the fact that he'll have to share the household responsibilities in equal measures and Moi.... i had to do and redo my अ, आ, इ, ई .......till I got them right. My brother, the brat who came along 5 years later was not entirely disaffected by the event either.....every time he'd score lower than what was deemed respectable by my parents, he always had his argument ready, "I certainly am doing better than Didi, she flunked her first class, didn't she"...

Thank u Abhishek for bringing it back to moi....there's no such thing as too many memories, is there!!! And one's never too young to reminisce :)

Hello June :)

I'm a June Girl......an out and out June girl. To begin with it's my B'day month: the only rub being the day comes deep later into the month. But that doesn't take a thing away from June.....Ever since we were kids, we looked forward to the idyllic summer vacations and us packing our bags to leave for somewhere in the mountains for some family time away from home. It was a family tradition and we went tripping all over from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. The tradition seems to have stayed with moi just as many other did without me realizing that they've been passed on as a heritage. June comes along with an itch to be on the road. Given quarter a chance, I will travel half the sphere to be with my family but since it's not to be, I'm hitting the road mid-June with the other family I have, the only family I have here with me, Arka. And I can't contain my enthusiasm. I really can't. We are heading northwards to be a part of an Indian-Irish wedding . Sweet!!!! I love inter-racial marriages for they speak of love amidst the prejudices that mangle the world. And from there a little trip by ourselves to an island near Canada. Sweet again!!!! :)

But before that, we have a guest at home, Arka's dearest childhood friend, our friend who hosted our honeymoon in Holland not too long back. It's our turn to return the favor and we are so looking forward to it. Few people continue to stay as thick as these two have been along the journey called life and I respect that. This is the same guy who took me to a corner almost a decade back to confirm if I'm in my right minds to be going around with his friend who's absolutely a no-gooder :DD And then years later he will not let us honeymoon anywhere but in Amsterdam. His house in Holland is about 300 years old...That itself was a temptation enough to foray into those parts, with canals, windmills, dykes and tulips, on the side!

As if this wasn't enough for June..I'm expecting a killer tax-refund by the end of this month :) :) It doesn't get better than that!!! All's more than right in these parts and I hope it's the same for all of us, you and me, through June and beyond :)

Sequels Overload

It's a sequel packed summer. What with Spiderman, Harry Potter, Jason Bourne, Capt. Jack Sparrow and Danny Ocean's jing-bang coming back to the silver screen for their umpteenth installment. But I can't be bothered about them, save for one : Shrek. He's back and with a triple errr...whammy!!! Here's a sneak peak at his verdant brood :DD

Aren't they absolutely adorable........
For more, look here . I'm champing at the bit about this one release, tomorrow : planning to make a beeline for the tickets tomorrow itself. If I'm successful, it will be my first ever first-day show!!! :)

And if Tinseltown can't have enough of sequels, the literary world seems to have at least one major sequel lined up for release soon. I was almost stunned when I picked up yesterday's NY Times to see that Rhett Butler and Scarlett O Hara are making yet another encore as the headlines claimed. After some 12 years, Margaret Mitchell's epic classic "Gone with the Wind" will have a second sequel as "Rhett Butler's People" by Donald McCaig, is due for publishing soon. I'm not sure if I am stoked about this one. I have always believed that classics can not be reproduced by authors who don't own them. For that precise reason I never bothered to pick up GWTW's earlier sequel, "Scarlett". Rhett Butler and Scarlett are owned by Margaret Mitchell. She gave soul to those names and made them come alive in that tome of more than thousand pages. How can a new age author even begin to do justice to them in his version and this when Margaret Mitchell steadfastly refused to write a sequel herself all her life. It's my rant against corrupting a classic that's simply untouchable in my eyes. I know i am beginning to sound unreasonable and not that the venom that I spill here is gonna change anything but then that's whats this blog is for, right and quoting Butler "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" !!!

For someone who's interested in reading more on this absolutely moronic attempt can follow it up here . I know one person, who'll like to. Suramya, we are due for a discussion on this one :)

V for Victory/Peace.

It started with Radha's adorable Japanese tourists. The familiar sight of Japanese tourists flashing V's while posing for shutterbugs piqued my curiosity to delve deeper to see if it's some kinda cultural thing or mere co-incidence. I frankly did not expect much material on it but i was underestimating the world wide web. Google it and lo and behold the all-knowing Wikipedia has it,

"During the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo,Japan figure skater Janet Lynn (American) fell during a free-skate period—but continued to smile even as she sat on the ice. Though she placed only 3rd in the actual competition, her cheerful diligence resonated with many Japanese viewers, making her an overnight celebrity in Japan. Afterwards, Lynn (a peace activist) was repeatedly seen flashing the V sign in the Japanese media. Though the V sign was known of in Japan prior to Lynn's use of it there (from the post-WWII Allied occupation of Japan), she is credited by some Japanese for having popularized its use in amateur photographs."

The sign is so popular that this 3 yr old we spotted in front of Manneken Pis at Brussels, readily flaunted it for us when we asked his mom for a pic. Am not sure if he knows what it means but that's besides the point, really. Here's Mario posing with his Vee!!!

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_sign#Japan_and_the_V_sign

Happy Mother's day!!!

I know I'm guilty of depending heavily on Calvin and Hobbes during the extended phases of blogger's block but this one was too good to pass up!!! Kanishka , you aren't the only kid around here. Plz do click on the strip to enlarge it to read it better.
Here's wishing all the Moms a Happy Mother's day and not Calvin's way!!! :)

Did u know?

Facsimile of the first page of the first printing of "The Star Spangled Banner" with music. The original is in the Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Notice how "patriotic" is spelled wrong!

Update: What's your "Did you know?" :)

Pic Source: www.cr.nps.gov