Thursday Thirteen #6 June 7, 2007

13 reasons why its best to be single

a) You don’t need to worry about smelling minty fresh or your floral best all the time.
b) You can use your emotions and put them to better use – like yelling at your boss for not promoting you, watching a romantic comedy and crying your eyes out after the happy ending, bloah blah.
c) Practial lingerie is cheaper than the lacy sexy (and uncomfortable!) ones.
d) You won’t feel a pang when your friends get married, you just feel happy for them, the clothes shopping you can do for yourself and looking your best for all the cute single who are going to come for the wedding.
e) You can eat all you want and have only yourself to answer to in case you put on some weight.
f) You can wear whatever you want and not feel bad when someone says ‘you look fat in this tee’, ‘this colour doesn’t suit you’, ‘why did you buy such a dull shirt’, cuz you don’t care about any of these people or their crappy comments anyway.
g) You can really concentrate, obsess, worry, work on your career with absolutely no distractions.
h) You can feel good about getting a year older and not think ‘am I getting too old to even look good in my marriage pics with him? He still looks so young!’. You are single, you don’t compare yourself to your boyfriend. Simple.
i) You can spend all the money you earn on yourself and not on impulsive gifts that don’t go well appreciated and sometimes even end up freaking him out cuz he thinks now he owes you expensive gifts too.
j) You can talk, flirt, go out, make out, with any of your guy friends without feeling guilty (if you are morally driven) or out in the open (in case you were doing it in the sly without him knowing)
k) You can tell all your friends you are single and be proud of it instead of lying to all of them cuz he is not ready to tell the world yet.
l) You don’t have to put up with dirty feet, stinking socks, sweaty tees and junk food dinners for a guy who doesn’t care about any of these things.
m) You can write a Thursday 13 about being single and yet wish you had all these problems (note: I am not talking about myself here. Sigh, its a long story guys. It deserves a blog of its own, not even a post)

Thursday Thirteen #5 May 25, 2007

13 special places in Bangalore (Yes, I am still not over my weekend, sigh..)

1. Forum mall, Koramangala – Its a great landmark to meet people. We just have to say ‘I will stand at the entrance’ and specify whether its the KFC side or the McDonalds side.

2. Landmark in Forum – Have spent hours here, reading, reading and more reading. They never throw you out, you know. Its awesome.

3. The transit food court in Forum – Have shared many a chaat platters and dosas and roast chicken here. Almost always cuz we couldn’t afford to buy one for each of us. Yeah, coming to think of it I was really poor once. Google made me rich. And an avid blogger.

4. Kairali Restaurant – Made me miss mom less. Puttu and kadala, appam and mutta curry, meen porichathu, aviyal.. oooh awesome!

5. Adugodi – The place where I stayed for 3+ months with my friends. The streets of that place have more dogs than rest of Bangalore combined. I was shit scared, yet I love the place.

6. Juice Corner – They have juice cheaper than bottled water! How cool is that. Have had countless musambi and mango juices from there.

7. Domlur – beautiful wide roads flanked by those trees that look brilliant with orange and red flowers. This is where Mafoi is located. The place I went to everyday for almost 4 months. 6 buses each day. My dreams originated from here. And I realised I never wanted to get into recruitment after spending 3 weeks here. Met some beautiful people meanwhile – Mini, Damayanthi, Vignesh, Gazala, Rudresh, et al.

8. Jyoti Nivas College – My friends’ college. Have spent a lot of time on the campus waiting for them, taking pics, reading, day dreaming. Its almost like I studied there. PS: a lot of cute guys used to come there to play basketball. Just added to the aesthetic value of the place

9. Monday to Sunday – the vegetable mart that allowed us to pick out one tomato, one carrot, 5 beans, two potatoes and two onions. It was a blessing for people who didn’t have a fridge and who wanted atleast these basic veggies in not great amounts. Thank you M to S.

10. Commercial Street – Kept making me think ‘one day.. one day I will come back here and buy everything I want. Everything!!’ I know the obvious question. Did I do that? Well, turns out I didn’t really want much from there. But yes, the first time I visted Blore after coming to Hyd, I went there and bought a lot of stuff. I still use some of them.

11. I am kicking myself cuz I can’t remember the natural ice cream place that gave two scoops for 25 rupees. Ouch!

12. Cubbon Park – walks on weekend evenings (as if I didn’t walk enough on weekdays!), 5rs sev puri on the streets (my first taste of chaat and I fell in love instantly). Heaven.

13. The countless buses, the numerous friendly people on the roads that helped me find my way around, the rude autowallahs, the merciless cars, the glamorous billboards, the dogs, the scent, the climate, Jayanagar, and much much more.

I miss Bangalore. I miss home.

Thursday Thirteen #4 May 10, 2007

13 things that I use every day

1. My toothbrush

2. My phone (wake up looking at it, go to sleep looking at it, use it for alarm, music, time, messages, calls, reminders..) wow!

3. My watch – I feel incomplete stepping out of the house without it

4. My music player – I know this sounds all ‘ohh where is my ipod” haughty stuff but I use it every day in the cab and even on weekends just before I go to sleep

5. Laptop – Property of Google. Used extensively by me. The day I need to return this, I will get one of my own.

6. This is a boring post.

7. I can’t find more stuff cuz most of the things I use over the weekend I don’t use during weekdays. And vice versa. Like the Internet.

8. Ok guys, you have to forgive me for a stupid Thursday 13.

9. And sorry lemon, for messing up this idea of yours.

10. Does this mean you guys are not gonna read my blog anymore…?

11. Do I see people leaving without reading the next two points…??

12. Oh my god! What am I doing?

13. Ok, the damage is done and I am a boring dumbass hehe..

Sorry guys!!

Thursday Thirteen #3 May 3, 2007

13 things about Dublin

1. Dublin is the capital and largest city in Ireland, near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast, at the mouth of River Liffey.

2. The city is one of the most youthful in the world – an estimated 50% of inhabitants are younger than 25.

3. Dublin was once voted the friendliest city in Europe.

4. Ronan Keating of Boyzone fame grew up in Dublin.

5. There are no snakes in Ireland (Thank God for that!! Or maybe, thank St. Patrick!)

6. Dublin’s O’Connell Bridge is the only bridge in Europe as wide as it is long.

7. Ireland’s national flag uses the same three colours as the Indian flag but contains vertical bands instead of horizontal and does not have the chakra in the centre.

8. Dublin is world-famous for producing a unique kind of beer called Guinness.

9. Dublin has a club-area called Temple Bar that is known for its mayhem and drunken people having fun literally on the streets.

10. Why oh why am I talking about Dublin and giving you these ho hum! facts?

11. Hmmmm.. why I wonder!

12. Google has an office in Dublin

13. And I am going there!! (Time for the inevitable drum rolls). Me and another trainer from office are going for two weeks and the trip is planned for first week of June. So look out for posts on ‘My Second Trip Abroad’. Wheeeeee!

Thursday Thirteen #2 April 27, 2007

13 ideas I had for Thrusday Thirteen #2 before I settled on this one

1. My weekend in 13 steps (got stuck after step 4)

2. 13 things that influenced me as a kid (I was so overwhelmed thinking about it that I quickly moved on to the next idea)

3. 13 things I want to do before I die (turns out I really don’t have that many things I wanna do and when I found myself repeating ‘travelling’ for the third time, I gave up the idea)

4. 13 things about my family (some things are best left unsaid)

5. 13 food items I love (its almost impossible to pick out 13 and when I started cramming more stuff into one point category-wise.. yeah you are right, I gave up)

6. 13 steps to a good blog (didn’t think I was qualified to go on after point 6)

7. 13 blogs I read regularly (there are more than 13 and I didn’t want to pick a few)

8. 13 reasons why I love blogging (I got so excited while writing this that each point was a paragraph, didn’t have the heart to publish it)

9. 13 reasons why Google is the best! (Come on, everyone knows this anyway, we all love Google right? They even pay me at the end of every month so I really love them )

10. 13 things I want to do when I get my own apartment (this I think qualifies for a post. Needs more thought!)

11. 13 reasons why I can’t come up with a good idea for Thursday Thirteen.

12. 13 reasons why I love potted plants (??? this is when I knew it was getting out of hand and that I had to do something quick!)

13. And finally, I emerged smarter, funnier and more successful than you would have thought! Haah!

Thursday Thirteen #1 April 19, 2007

Lemon had told me a couple of weeks back that I am good with lists and should try the Thursday Thirteen. She also shared this nice banner with me to kick start it

What? A list of thirteen things that I post every Thursday. It may be a list of anything I choose (That’s what I like about it).

When? Every Thursday (Duhh!)

Where? Right here on my blog

So here goes the first one.

My Typical Weekday In 13 Points

1. Groggily wake up to the maid’s bell.

2. Get ready in half an hour, and then blog or read while waiting for the cab driver’s miss call (Ok, this is not entirely true, most days I don’t get time after getting ready, but still this is what I would like to do, you know)

3. Cab ride mostly spent listening to music (hot songs that I listen to every day in the cab are ‘Mallika I hate you, Bluffmaster theme song, Neruppae Sikkimukki from Vettayadu Vilaiyadu, Genie in a Bottle by Christina Aguilera and Babuji zara dheere chalo’)

4. Commotion in the office cafe for breakfast and bigger commotion in my head trying to figure out what to eat – Indian breakfast, the continental snacks, fruits, toast, cornflakes are the choices. Yeah, Google totally spoils us I am telling you. Normally settle for the most unhealthy and most fattening. In short, fruits and toast are among the last choices.

5. Laden plate and me move towards my desk where I dock the laptop and log in. Same old Firefox, same old bookmarks that open in the same order every day (I think I am too organized sometimes, almost to a boring extend) and I always check Gmail first. The comments on my blog, scrap and friend request notifications from Orkut, one spam from astrology.com which I just can’t seem to unsubscribe from.

6. Work starts the moment I check office mail.

7. Meetings

8. Trainings

9. More meetings

10. Ah lunch! Almost always eat with roomy and friends. Again dilemma of choosing what to eat. Buffet lunch, subway sandwiches and salad, fruits again (again last choice) and I choose and eat and head back to desk.

11. Its difficult to keep off the sleep at this stage. Come on! Its afternoon, I am full and office is always freezing. I sigh and keep working.

12. Sometimes dread the office hours ending. Not because I am a workaholic (I work just enough, no extra, no deficiency and I enjoy what I do so no issues there) but because I don’t want to go back to an empty house (damn! I had to bring in senti stuff just when I was doing so well)

13. Head home anyway cuz I have to sleep, right? Take one of the last cabs possible and I hit the bed.

Important Note Below : I might sound boring in here but wait for my Thursday Thirteen for weekends. You are going to be oh so jealous!! Haah!! I am not a going-out-and-partying-on-weekdays-after-work kinda person. So jail me for that!