The First Tag January 31, 2007

1. Were you named after anyone?

Yes, my grandmother.

2. Do you wish on stars?

I wish on anything and everything. Don’t like limiting myself.

3. When did you last cry?

Last Sunday.

4. Do you like your handwriting?

I used to dislike it when I was in school. Thats the last I remember writing more than a line. Used to change it very often. Now I don’t see it often enough.

5. What is your favourite meat?

I enjoy chicken and fish (all the while wishing I was a veggie, for some weird reason).

6. What is the most important quality in a guy?

Honesty? Naah, all men lie. So I will settle for self-respect.

7. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you?

Hmmm.. Depends on what ‘another person’ is like.

8.Are you a daredevil?

Nope.

9. How do you release anger?

I cry. That’s always the best release. It has fooled a lot of people too. They think I am upset and come to cheer me up but I end up venting it on them. Hehe poor souls.

10. Where is your second home?

Office. I am here more than I am at home.

11. Do you trust others easily?

Not really. I expect them to trust me though

12. What was your favourite toy as a child?

Don’t remember anything specific. Had a doll called masoom. Then the usual Barbies. None were favourites.

13. What class in school/college do you think is totally useless?

Complex Numbers! Completely and totally useless.

14. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Not as much as I should.

15. Have you ever been in a mosh pit?

Ok, hold on till I look up the meaning. Oh, I keep away from crouds. Definitely haven’t been in one.

17. Bungee Jumping?

Absolutely not. Am scared of heights.

18. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

Nope. I use the sliding technique. Never tie or untie.

19. What’s your favourite ice cream?

Baskin Robbins! All flavours.

20. What are your favourite colours?

Black for clothes, cars and electronic stuff. Blue if I have to just say a colour.

21. What are your least favourite things?

Dirty floor and unclean bedsheets.

22. How many people do you have a crush on right now?

Ahh. I am concentrating on love now. Crushes are out these days

23. Who do you miss most right now?

Hmmm.. err.. ummm.. moving on..

24. What are you listening to right now?

Shy Guy by Diana King

25. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?

Red. I love red crayons.

26. What is the weather like right now?

Its freezing in office. My hands are numb, I can hardly type. Outside I guess its sunny and warm. Brrrr.

27. Last person you talked to on the phone?

Jaya aunty. She is my LIC agent. Its time to file tax returns

28. The “first” thing you notice about the opposite sex?

Smile and hair. Yes, I can look at both at the same time.

29. Do you enjoy work?

Absolutely!

30. How are you today?

I am doing fine, thank you (I have been taught to say this)
I am not bad, have reasons to smile and be happy (thats the truth)

31. Favourite non alcoholic drink?

Water.

32. Favourite alcoholic drink?

Wine

33. Natural hair colour?

Black. Like it that way.

34. Eye colour?

Matches my hair.

35. Wear contacts?

Nope. I don’t need them and I like the color of my eyes just the way they are.

36. Siblings?

Yes. Bro and sis. Big bullies.

37. Favourite month?

February. Less working days, same pay

38. Favourite food?

Eat almost anything.

39. Favourite day of the year?

I am forced to say ‘my birthday’. Its not so pleasant of late ‘cuz I am growing older

40. Have you ever been too shy to ask someone out?

I wouldn’t say shy. I just haven’t found anyone who would be interesting enough to ask out.

41. Scary movies or happy endings?

Happy endings I like seeing what is not really possible in real life.

42. Summer or winter?

Hmmm.. winter.

43. Holi or Diwali?

Diwali. Love sweets.

44. Do you like your name?

I am used to it now. Hated it when I was young. (Grandma, I love you. No offense, ok?)

45. What book/magazine are you reading?

Book: Sexual Palmistry by some guy
Magazine: The Oprah Magazine

46. What’s on your mouse pad?

My mouse (was I supposed to give a smart answer?)

47. What did you watch on TV last night?

Didn’t watch TV last night. Watched ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ on Monday. hehehe

48. Favourite Smell?

Predictably, rain on mud. Hugo Boss for men. Fresh coconut oil. Fried Fish. Oh, sorry, I was just supposed to mention one

49. Have you ever regretted breaking up with someone?

Nope. I think before I act (that was just a smart answer, I haven’t technically broken up with anyone)

50. Most tiresome thing you’ve ever experienced/done?

Teach my mom to check her mails. She was least interested to know and I gave up!

I tag my lazy roomy toothlesswink, who doesn’t blog as much as she should.

The Bangalore Post January 29, 2007

Yup. Three days in Bangalore. Learnt a few things after all.

1. The traffic is terrible (an understatement). Vidya’s office timings are 6am to 3pm because they want to avoid the peak traffic hours. And we were cribbing about 8:30 to 5:30. Imagine!!

2. EVERYTHING is more expensive. Here is the list I can’t help but put in here.

auto – min 12 bucks and increases 50ps every two seconds (ok, three seconds!)
baskin robbins – 1 scoop 45 bucks. Its 33 here, isn’t it?
tropical iceberg in coffee day – 57rs! Its 47 here, I know its 47 here.
PVR tickets – different rates for mon-thur and diff rates (180rs and above) for fri, sat, sun. They actually charge more for tamil and mal movies. And its crazy.
Subway – tuna sub is 135rs. Its 95 here and my roomy can vouch for that.

3. Now for the good stuff. I love Bangalore. Sigh. Why? Because I’ve had the best of times there. No money, no care in the world, no job, no phone… that place has seen me at the worst of times. I would gladly share a single bedroom there with three other unknown girls. I feel thats more refreshing than the marble-floored, two BHK I stay in now. (But its definitely nice to have a bathroom to yourself).

Bangalore has taught me a lot, still continues to do so.

Met up a lot of old friends. People I have been out of touch with for ever! Lerish was one. We met at forum (duhh, where else). He took me to coffee day (where they charge more for tropical iceberg) and I duly spilt his ‘cool blue’ all over him. Yeah. Just like you see in the movies, it went splat on hislap. Anyway, after a zillion sorries and a gazillion tissues, he settled down. And we chatted. Good ‘ol chatting. It seems a lot of my friends from pre-degree are married now. Hmmm…

Stayed with Vidya. Both of us have changed so much but things are just the same between us. Same old giggles and gossips and philosophies on life (now more concentrated on marriage and love). We went to Kairali for breakfast – appam and motta curry. Lunch was divine too. Kuthari chor, meen curry and meen fry. See, Bangalore is nice.

Let it be.. January 24, 2007

Was looking for something.. some inspiration.. to start writing. Was going through some snaps now and one that caught my attention – my cousin, his wife and kid. Three people, three lives, bound together. She was not the woman he had in mind, far from it. And he was a total disappointment to her. Having a mentally retarded kid didn’t really help the situation, and yet, there they are, sitting on that familiar old sofa and looking at the camera. He was not smiling in the snap. I haven’t seen him smile in a long time. I remember the laughter that we once shared, when he used to stay with us. The playful way he drove my grandma mad. Now what’s left of that? What is the point in two people living together, bearing each other if there is no love, no commitment between them?

I donno, I feel.. I don’t know.. Maybe I should have looked in a better place for inspiration..

Sand through my fingers January 23, 2007

10:10 am – God! Its past ten already? Where did the morning go? I hardly logged into my system.

11:15 am – Ok this is ridiculous. I am sure my system time is wrong. And my watch. And my cell phone. Damn! Who am I kidding?

12:20 pm – Hmmm.. skipping lunch seems very professional and busy-like but thats not for me. I have to eat.

12:48 pm – I should seriously consider taking shorter lunch breaks, this is a lot of time gone and the flowcharts are waiting. My to-do list keeps getting taller.

1:15 pm – mad rush to the scanner to get necessary stuff done. Integral to travelling abrod plans happening in office.

1:23 pm – madder rush to finish chat conversation with friend so that I can concentrate (??) on the flowchart. I remember telling someone I like them , not too sure anymore. I am talkin about the flowchart!

1:34 pm – 3 calls to the ticket agent to finalise bus tix to bangalore. Wide grin on face when thinking of Bangalore and all the fun there. Wheeee.

1:48 pm – Ah well, if I have to blog, I have to blog.

1:56 pm – eeks! too much time spent in blogging about spending too much time on things

PS: the title denotes how I feel about time these days. Its no longer under control, I am telling you.

The ‘Guru’ Post January 19, 2007

Saw Guru yesterday. Mani Ratnam’s movies hardly ever fail to pull me to the theatres and my mental block against hindi movies (simply cuz I don’t know the language much) hardly comes into picture there.

Saw it. Liked it. In fact, liked it a lot. No dilutions in the sets. Truly post-independent ambience. Good performances by Abhishek Bachchan, Mithun Chakraborty and some people whose names I don’t know. Every single person in the movie did full justice to their roles, no matter how small or big it was.

AR Rahman, sigh.. No comments. Sigh.

For full reviews and more pics, toddle over to google.com and type in ‘guru mani ratnam’. Come on, I suck at writing reviews

Myths I Recently Cracked (Mostly Realisations For Self) January 17, 2007

• Branded jeans fit better –> I have a pair of jeans I got from a shop called Raju Tailors in Commercial Street, Bangalore. It was a tad too long but he altered it for me. Its 3 years old and still fits me better than my Levi’s I hardly wear.

• Weekends are always fun –> I know weekends are great and you can sleep late and blah blah. But they are not always fun. I’ve had a couple of them where I was dying for Monday to come and a miss call from my cab driver. Errr, to get to office, of course (In case any of you thought I am having an affair with him or something).

• Its always best to give an honest opinion when asked for one –> Some of you may have alerady realised this is not true. Well, I took some time. But now I know. When people ask “so what do you think?” they want you to anticipate what they want to hear and then say that. Sure, I can do that.

• Gymming makes one lose weight –> I don’t care what you say. I went to the gym regularly for a month and I put on weight. Period.

• You miss a person only for a few days and then get used to not having them around –> Well, this is self-explanatory. Lets just say I take longer for this to happen. Like, forever.

OK I love this! January 17, 2007

I love the way my blog looks now. Have taken off the cbox and other boring stuff that was taking up too much space. Have a comment? Use the comments link, please

Have been busy at work the past few days. Was working on something I enjoy tremendously. I built a website using Google Pages, for our team. Its something like blogging, but I had to really hunt down the data unlike random scribblings I put in here

Gotta run now, until laters..

The Minima Look January 15, 2007

I know I changed my template very recently. But got loads of feedback saying it was too dull, too light, font was unclear, etc etc. Couldn’t go through the trouble of finding another one so went for the classic minima dark, BUT its three column

I love it!! Yet to update links and other stuff.

Phew, the original three column minima black that I got from another site wasn’t working. So I had to edit the current template I had and make all the background areas black. It was tiresome!! I am still not too happy with this result, some areas are too bright.

Too tired to enjoy the dark look now!

Laters..

The one where I don’t talk about myself. Well, not much. January 12, 2007

6:06 AM : I woke up from a deep sleep for no apparent reason. Kept trying to snuggle back into my warm blanket but something was missing. I think it was a dream, where Soumya was very indifferent to me. That surely is disturbing. Soumya is my cousin, younger by a year and a half, married, pregnant second time. Due any minute. We had this closeness that was difficult to define or even ackonwledge. Even now we do. I am still disturbed. Tried to reach her number a couple of times but can’t get through. I am telling you, my network does a bad job at the ‘following’ that it promises.

6:59 AM : Yessss!! I called her. I spoke to her. Have a wide grin on my face now. She is fine, has her c-section tomorrow and she is getting admitted today. She sounded nice and happy and said she was slightly nervous. Her first baby, the naughty brat, kept yelling into the phone. He is almost 2 now. She said it might be a girl this time but she doesn’t want to get her hopes high because they said that last time too and look what happened!

7:01 AM : Love you Soumya, for your strength, your courage, for thinking you can take care of two kids below 2 when you are barely 24 yourself (well the mom’s age doesn’t really have anything to do with it, actually!). Go girl!

7:03 AM : After all the excitement and the nervousness I am sleepy now. Ahhhh, hot water waiting, office, trainees, life…

7:04 AM : Here I go. WHooooooooosh!!

This is Soumya and Pranav. I don’t have a pic in which both of them are not blurred. Either one always is. Both can’t stay still, you know. Like mother, like son . Love you both.

***UPDATE:*** Its a GIRL!!!

Random Thoughts January 5, 2007

I was listening to a tamil song ‘Enna Thavam‘ from Parthibhan Kanavu. Beautiful vocals by Harini. I have always loved her voice. The guy says a word and the song is about describing those words in a couple of lines. Beautiful..

Some lines that caught my attention.

Vekkam..

Ithu penmai pesidum, mudhal aasia vaarthai thaan..

Meesai..

Ithu enakku mattum swandham aakum koondhal kuzhanthai thaan

Thirukkural..

Iru vari kavithai, oru porul tharume,
Iruvarum ithupole irundhal sugham..

Kanaadi..

Ithil ennai paarkkiren, athu unnai kaattuthe.. (absolutely love this one!!)

Kadhal..

Nam naangu kannil thondrugindra ottrai kanaveda..

Sigh..