A Box of chocolates and a bag of nuts ….

Mama says "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." ~ Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump

A couple of years in the corporate world opens your eyes to a potpourri of people. While you could meet them anywhere, work is where you spend most of your weekdays and you need to co-exist with people who can be very very different.

While some are like the box of chocolates.. some that inspire you, some who you love working with, some that end up being great friends at work and some even outside of work.....

…and there are a whole bunch of others you just observe, who amuse you or annoy you…..

Presenting exhibits A through Q….the bag of nuts, some sweet, some spicy and some absolutely nutty...

A) The Echo Generator: The guy who wishes to drive and have control of every discussion thread, but drives you crazy by just agreeing and repeating exactly what you said, right after you did. Dude, if you do want to summarize the discussion every 2 min – you should paraphrase...do not repeat verbatim….His motto: Reinforcing a thought is a good idea and most probably people werent listening the first time it was said.

B) The Attention Hogger: You will see him in as many meetings as there can possibly be. He loves sending emails around that you wonder where he finds time to actually work. Its all about visibility. His motto: The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time doing nothing but reporting on the nothing you are doing.~ Cohn's Law

C) The Saint: He sits in a corner. A deep intellectual…No amount of commotion tends to faze him a bit. He won’t bat an eyelid and you would think he has given up on his work. He lives the Zen way of life. And absolute disaster has to strike for him to come and speak and he can stun you. His philosophy: When the student is ready, the master appears. ~Buddhist Proverb

D) The Gossiper: The one with the entire scoop. Your easiest point of access to the local newsroom. Your one point window to all professional gossip. His motto: Gossip needn't be false to be evil - there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around. ~Frank A. Clark

E) The Midas: His touch is definitely magical but not so necessarily golden. He complains that somehow things never work for him, while they work for everyone else. His touch is his destiny...His thought: From error to error, one discovers the entire truth ~ Sigmund Freud.

F) The Complainer/Whiner: After a point, what he speaks is like white noise..You have heard it over and over again..About how he has an unfair share of burden to carry, how his tools don’t work when they need to…His philosophy: Every Morning, I rise and whine.

G) The Over eager Newcomer: This one is like Aladdin’s Genie…. And is definitely a blessing if he is working with you on something. He keeps working non stop till he gets burnt out (You don’t even have to rub the lamp and ask for a wish)…Completely bubbl-acious with excitement he sometimes works too hard that he makes everyone else look bad.

H) The Invisible one: You see him now, and a second later he is gone. He has telepathic abilities to sense if a load of work is coming his way. You wonder if he actually has a cloak that will render him invisible in the middle of the meeting… His philosophy: Hi, I'm not available right now but my answering machine is, so you can talk to it instead. Wait for the beep.

I) The Blamestormer: You would think he’s thinking more of his back up blame strategy than his actual task. He begins and ends with a defensive note. He truly lives by his philosophy “To err is human, To find the right person to blame for it is strategic”

J) The Life balancer: The one who makes you understand what you are missing while working hard. He teaches you the importance of seeking out your hobbies, having an active life. His philosophy: His motto: A job is nice but it interferes with my life.

K) The Orator Coordinator: He gets to talk his way through his job. His job is to make people work which he disrupts by talking to them in the name of coordinating. His philosophy: “Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.” (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)

L) The Stalker: Before you can complete reading his email on what he would like your help with, he has sent 3 follow up emails, buzzed you on messenger, left you a voice messages and is at your door. Worst part, the stuff isnt even urgent. He wants to know if there any issues in getting this done…Biggest issue – YOU…Go back to your office and it will get done.

M) The Olfactory Offender: You would love to group gift him a box of socks and perfume. But who shall bell the cat ?. His Motto: None…I hope he thinks….

N) The Sick One: Ohh…he is not really sick..He’s mastered a bunch of high sounding medical terminology. And if you did ask him what happened, he can blow your brains away with the details. He knows what can cover for a day or a weeks absence…Never mind that he doesn’t miss his tennis sessions, his gym or his late evening bar dates. His motto: I always arrive late to work, but I make up for it by leaving early.

O) The Drama Queen/King: If all the world is a stage and we are all actors, this guy did take that way too seriously. Life is often much simpler than the tele-serials. Disaster Scenario’s are all he thinks about. His dictionary has only superlatives… His ideology: “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”- Kurt Vonnegut

P) The Martyr: This one makes you feel like he wants the Param-Veer-Chakra or something…You end up hearing over and over again as to how he put himself in the firing line , solved the problems (that quite a few times he had created !!) and saved everyone of the incurring the wrath. Sometimes that whole jig was a result of a completely unnecessary creation of his and all that was required was to involve the members working on the details offer a much clearer explanation of why certain actions were taken.

And finally …

Q) The Boss Figure: His philosophy: What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter. ~Lykes Lines Shipping

I had a colleague who told me once that the corporate life was a huge chess game, there are no friends….there are just games and one should learn to start playing them. While I don’t agree with that thought entirely, I can agree to the point that there are people playing games, and you need to be a little more aware of the strategies they have than just work your butt off and expect due returns.

At the end of the day, it’s no longer a simple story of the ant and the grasshopper. But at least you have a bunch of chocolates around to help you pull through…..

That stranger is an old friend…

I was talking to a R this week and somewhere during the conversation I just thought off how long I had known her…..and it was a whopping 24 years that we had been friends…

That thought triggered two reactions….

Really…Have I grown that old …and

Wow, I know her almost as long as I can remember…The only people who have known me for longer are my parents and my brother…

While some friendships sustain themselves through years (Touchwood and Hugs to you R), that brings me to writing about some that sadly don’t….

Sometimes it takes just a few conversations or a few weeks for someone to become one of your best friends. Some people endear themselves to you the moment you meet them.. Some friendships grow through knowing and understanding a person with time. Some have even come about when I read their blogs and saw a side to that person I dint realize existed.

And then….

Sometimes with time and distance, things change drastically and for no particular reason. You see yourself drifting farther away and suddenly he/she feels a lot different from the friend you had known... You hesitate to call that person, you used to pour out your thoughts to, who would be the first one to know you’re excited or sad about anything, who you wait to call and talk to, whose phone number and bday you can never quite forget ….And eventually that feels quite normal. You have a new friend who has stepped into those shoes and life goes on…

Why do some relationships change….What can make friends un-friend themselves…And when distance and time was all that was needed to change the chemistry, why do I miss that friend ?

Friends are a part of your memories of your childhood, your teens and your adult life….When we look back on the memories, it feels incomplete if that the face that smiled once in it, doesn’t smile anymore. Sometimes it feels weird to the point that you try to block off the memory of that period.

I don’t think friendships die. I don’t think we can suddenly stop caring about someone we cared about. And a friendship can’t reduce to nothingness for no reason. When our lives can get as different as they do, with some people you always know that they are really just a call away and you can pick up your conversation right where you left even if was a couple of years back.

With some there’s a lot more effort needed to sustain a friendship and with time I have realized, it is not something one can accomplish alone. It needs two minds to work together on getting back. When one individual doesn’t quite share the same memory you have cherished, it becomes difficult and next to impossible to get the weirdness out of the system. And eventually you have to move on to say..”That stranger is an old friend”…..

A blast from the past ….

Stumbled onto this song, thanks to M…One of my favorites, A great song, beautiful lyrics, No stereotype dance sequences with uniformed extras, simple yet beautiful picturization....

Whats in a name?....

A week of making phone calls, making appointments, cancelling some, verifying some charges, creating some new accounts…, all of which got me to the familiar ordeal…

Voice on the other end of the phone: May I have your full name
Me: It is PR……., Should I spell that out for you…
Voice..: (sounding particularly tired and annoyed at the length of it ..) : yes Please …
Me: P as in Paul, R as in……, (thinking: With 19 letters in my full name, it’s a total alphabet soup…My parents could have taught me ABCD with just this….)

I empathize with the “Anan”’s of the world (the Narayanan’s if you don’t know what I mean)….because I too have the a’s generously spilt around in my name and frequently hear the other person..”Ohhhh..thats another ‘a’.., I thought u were just repeating the first one..”

Duh !!…She spaced out before I could complete spelling out my name…

Is it because Indian kids are exposed to these long names that they are good at spelling bee…

Nevertheless moving on, I married someone who could understand my plight…as he battled not only with a long surname but had a middle name too…And u guessed it right…he knew the plight of an “anan”…

How many folks have their last name truncated by expedia bcos of a word limit on the field…

When my parents decided to christen me with a Sanskrit name, they prided themselves for their meaningful pick. The journey, then on has been interesting…

Despite not being a totally uncommon name, I have never personally known someone with the same name. Through school, my friends caught on to the ‘vada’ in my name …due to their fondness for the south indian savoury delight, my name transformed with dahi and sambhar to their taste. An extra ‘h’ would have saved my name from that, but my dear mother preferred to hold on to the grammatical correctness of “it’s the first dha, not the second, and that singularly would transform the meaning of my name from ‘one who speaks with affection’ to ‘one who kills with affection’ ”..Hence in the greater interest, the ‘h’ was never inserted.

Undergrad saw some Profs struggle with my name and me standing up waiting for them to finish reading it, whilst being a curious exhibit fielding stares from fellow classmates. Relief crept in finally when they ended their struggle and called me ‘37’ instead. My name definitely wasn’t he longest around. The struggle to an unfamiliar soul though was how to pronounce the M followed by VA without sounding like a kitten. I shortened my name in Grad school to save myself and others of the agony. But it didn’t end there …

I chose a Starbucks name after my coffee cup came out being marked “BIRA”..That day I christened myself Ria for the restaurant world.

My world is filled with news of newborns now and I notice that 6 letters seems to the longest a name can get….And given that limitation, the names tend to repeat more often. Theres only so much you can do to get a meaningful name that’s not way too common within 6 letters.

And I am thinking, as names get shorter and shorter…we may end up with abbreviations for names, or will we get as tired as the guy who named a road Zzyzx on the way to Vegas.

Somewhere over the rainbow…..

It sucks !!...Two people very dear to me are going through troubled times and much as I want to help them, there’s nothing I can do but offer a shoulder to lean on and promise to listen. I wish God shows them brighter days soon! Their circle of life seems just stuck at one point for too long…. :(…

And when you are down in dumps that you can’t do anything about, there is not much faith or positive energy you can summon. Your belief system breaks down into cynicism and frustration. And there is a question “Why?” that howers around.

I have no answers, but I still believe that things will be OK, even when u strain your eyes to look for that silver lining and seem to find none. I don’t believe in miracles, but I believe things have a way of happening that you can’t explain at the moment, but seem to fit in a bigger picture that we see much later.

In prayer….

10 min of Spam Face

My morning coffee time ritual of deleting spam messages got me thinking into what kind of person I would be if I were my spam face.

First off, I will save thousands and no one will know. Someone will help me do that.
I will get 70% off discounts on several stuff which I would never want.
Someone wants to mail me free trial weight loss capsules.
Dozen emails need my attention or my urgent answer.
Several others tell me I have made a payment or to check on an invoice status or my payment was rejected.
Some prod me to go get an online degree in minutes
Some get me gender confused.
Some tell me all my worries are over …

Some obviously think I love watches.

I am this insecure person who sends myself emails..
And I have 90% discount on ordering Acai berry supplements.

Spam Face obviously has a dozen people in her/his (?!?) life to help her solve all worries, get killer deal discounts and degrees with least effort. And also has financial issues with payments getting rejected and unauthorized payments being made.

I am happy I get to be spam face only for the few minutes I spend deleting her emails.

De-Clutter....aka Domestic Dieting !!

The last month has been a roller coaster by itself...my first promotion, thinking of paati, having lots of visitors, signing up for a 3K walk and trying to get others hooked to it, accepting the fact that B’s iphone shall become an official member of the family ...and we were too occupied in it all that we forgot that our lease expired. After paying an unneccessary extra month-to-month fee, we finally signed the lease again….Mostly due to the nightmarish feel a move would give us. That tied with the amount of stuff we've managed to accumulate over the last 2 years...

Rewind to March 2007.., we moved into this place 4 months after our wedding. It was a nice apartment..Nothing ultra-cool about it, but was a welcome change with so many windows after my last apartment. I like the fact that my patio gives me the "interesting" view of the parking lot which i prefer a lot more than a view into my neighbor’s kitchen. Also the number of windows and loads of light made me discover that i am a very photosensitive being whose cheer index is deeply wound to the amount of sunshine around. Thank God for this city!!...The fact that i have an obstruction less view of the moon from my room lent a special touch. And in the process of making this place our home, our favorite abode to return to after long trips, after tiring days at work...we ended up buying so much of stuff...

My earliest and undoubtedly easiest way to remove clutter was to stuff them all up in the cupboard and slam the door tight and shut...The avalanche that gets out when an unsuspecting victim (mostly my mother) opens the door is another story..

Since then, I have grown and matured..I have resorted to distributing my junk around into shelves, over the door hangers, beds and ottomans with storage; under the bed boxes...I obsess on furniture with extra storage. I seem to use every bit of them. We picked up this tall armoire from Ikea which seemed to be my dream to get all our clutter hidden in one location, safe and secure and from every one's sight. One slight miscalculation i made was to compare IKEA ceilings to my apartments’. After a pretty loud “aan-haan..I now get it” to a weary B who explained to me how the longest diagonal of this newly purchased cuboid was taller than our ceiling and hence even though the armoire as such was shorter, we cudnt assemble it down and lift it up..We assembled it vertically telling ourselves that we would never do this again..ever!!. But our weekend of weightlifting has so far paid back its price in full.

I am not exactly a conventional shopaholic…its just cool gizmo’s and spacesavers/organizers I seem to have an addiction for. The oxymoron that it may seem, the net result of it is that my home is cluttered with space savers that encourage u to buy more junk with the excuse that they shall still be easily organized and retrievable on the rainy day when I want to find a need for them.

But after one nailbiting experience searching for an important document, I resolved to change... having realized that the clutter in my room has direct correlation to the clutter in my mind. Hence the project Domestic dieting….

What followed on our path of self realization were numerous donations made to GoodWill. After a whirlwind of donations, the guy there started giving us this smile of familiarity that said "See u tomorrow"...

The next was the motto Go green, Go Electronic, and Go Minimalist…

And as is with real dieting, domestic dieting doesn’t work….atleast by itself.

We adopted a minimalist regime to see if our "accumalation tendencies" can be curbed. We cut short the 5 varieties of cereal we have to 2 (I couldnt get myself to eat the wheat bran stuff B does even if it means I would be much healthier)...cut down 5 pickle, 3 sauce combinations to one. We avoided stocking the 4 brands of tea we dont drink. I tried doing my grocery shopping on weekdays after work, so I would be too tired to overbuy. I am also going electronic on everything - winding up with the innumerable CDs I have that I have stopped playing thanks to the ipod era. We have a bunch of tech books in computer science which we plan to dump on B's poor sis for her only fault of having graduated with a degree in comp science. I resolved to get myself a new t-shirt only if throw two out. Net result, my colleague thinks I don’t have clothes now :( !!

This attempt to donate, sell and pawn off the stuff I have, has taught me that I am never going to be a minimalist. I still love cool gizmos…..I still like to mix things up a bit starting from cereals to placemats. So the next time I decide to move, I just plan to move to a place with a garage and lots of storage and I will stuff all my odds and ends there out of everyone’s sight…Childhood ways are hard to change.

Memories of an Angel...

An angel left to become a star
Memories are all that are left behind..
Yet, while away you watch me on ..
So when i am in darkness, be a guiding light.

Every sweetness you embodied, ever so warm
In my every laugh and cry you joined..
With the wisdom of a teacher,with love of a friend
Every fault you did forgive, every kindness did remind.

You spread ur wings to cover us all...
You brought hearts together, that were distant to bind
Amidst any sadness, a happiness u did find
A heart far bigger than ur home, u always had..

A silver lining you always sought
Ushered beauty into life with an income so few
Cheer and smiles you had always brought
Despite much in life u had been through

I saw u sit and watch me become a bride.
Frail, weak and weary u had become
U watched me with all happiness and pride
Your legacy of strength, I shall hope to carry

Much was different from what you had prayed..
But full of hope and faith, u still stayed..
The sun had set, and will not rise tomorrow...
I look at the skies, and know u shall prevail..

I knew that this day would be seen
Yet bitter is the pill to swallow.
I have your memories to cherish and keep
Dearest paati, will always love u...

150 Things to Do Before You Turn Thirty

My friend tagged me on this list. And though I guess this list was tailored for an american lifestyle, was glad that I had done a couple of things :)… Have 7 more months and a long way to go…

The rules are:
The things you have already done - make them bold.
Blue is for things that you are dying to do!

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Taken a midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theatre
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on a television news program as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking with the windows open – not exactly, but almost :)
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a TV game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for 30 hours in a 48 hour period
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. States
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad and The Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

Dance like no one's watching...

Most of us have been stuck in transit waiting for connecting trains, planes or buses and spent that time looking around us, observing people as they walk by, picked up a magazine that we dont typically don’t read, paid more attention to whats around. If so, why do we find it hard to apply it back to life.

Its been a week of serious conversations for me, mostly talking to my friends ‘stuck in transit’ in real life, some poised to move on to the next phase, some struggling with issues with the current and looking to hit a fast forward button, some regret missing out on something, wishing they had done things differently…

One of my dearest friends was caught up feeling miserable about the whole process of finding someone and getting married...One wants to switch her jobs badly because she is not happy with it, one is wondering why he left a good job and took up an MBA to graduate at a point when everything looks so bleak.

Somehow we are constantly in pursuit of something… As kids in high school we want to get past the boards and into good colleges. Then it’s about jobs, higher degrees, better jobs, finding the right person and getting married, wanting a home, kids and then we get so buried in our work and kids that we wait for them to get somewhere before we can take a break and do something we have always wanted to do. The present remains mostly an investment for our future, grading ourselves based on our progress..We are unhappy if we are stuck somewhere in this natural progression... To give a sense of the conversation with my friend….

Me: Its not about you…Take it easy, don’t bring it down on urself..
She: No, it’s got to be about me that I am still here; I am investing so much time and energy.

Its in our psyche that we have to be somewhere, have some goals all the time. If not, we are somehow not successful..If we constantly latch onto the next journey the moment we get to a destination ....then, when do we actually sit down and enjoy the present? Can we actually free our minds from the thought of ‘what next’..?Can we actually get a blank mind and soak it in today…live today to the fullest…

And then I read these lines…

"Work like you don't need money,

Love like you've never been hurt,

And dance like no one's watching."
--- Satchel Paige

This whole thought is fascinating and infectious….Could we detach ourselves from our expectation and fear that we might fall short of it – getting rewarded, getting loved back, getting a word of praise, and leave judgments aside and throw ourselves completely into something?

Work like you don’t need money….I wish I could do that :)….I really don’t have a hobby that would pay me anything but satisfaction. And we need to pay the bills ….But surely, one thing I have been missing is taking time out for in the recent years is my hobbies. Someone recently asked me what my hobbies were, and I had difficulty in putting my finger on one thing that I had actively pursued in the last 5 years…It was embarrassing and awkward….. But I had hobbies which I loved. I used to love sketching and painting, I danced for 10 straight years, I had a major liking for interior design that I almost studied it. Now my hobbies have degenerated into watching sitcoms, listening to music, window shopping and watching more sitcoms….The only worthwhile thing I have taken up more seriously of late is cooking. I have started to slow down and enjoying cooking instead of taking it as a task that I need to perfect. I have stopped relying on my 20 min rush recipes. I have started to observe the spices I use and the flavors they have, and have started to experiment with understanding (or so I believe!!). I bought myself a keyboard (casio) a year back in the hope that it will be my sweet diversion, my new hobby. I have yet to find time to take it as a serious pursuit…..

Hobbies make our life more fulfilling. Its something we enjoy, we don’t have any targets or expectations. Its our creative vent out and we can give ourselves as many chances we need to perfect it out, and there is no fear of failure (I don’t like the look on B’s face as I say this and cook…but never mind him…); Its working like you don’t need the money…

Love like you have never been hurt….If a past of hurt shadows ur emotion, you are just pulling back in defense. There should be no reservations in love, no preconditions, no fear. Don’t lock yourself up, Go with an open heart. Will I get hurt again; Yes, I may …but atleast I will know that I gave it my all. And there shall be no regrets.

And then there’s my favorite line..Dance like no one’s watching..
Observing young children teaches you one thing. They have no fear …of falling, of getting embarrassed, of trying new things. I have always had a hundred thoughts zipping in my head when I held a microphone and looked up at a room full of people. And yes, it took me blurting out “Good Evening everybody” a couple of times during bright early mornings and flashing a foolish giddy smile when I realize this and my many other bloopers to finally get comfortable standing over there.

Its that constant sense of “will I be able to keep this conversation interesting”, “will someone laugh if i told them a joke now”, “will I meet my own expectations” “Am I nervous and will it show” and “OMG, did everyone notice that I blurted something wrong”…….and It takes me a while before I get comfortable chattering away without watching (Sometimes, that hasn’t worked out so well…:) but still..). I have also learnt over the years that being able to laugh at ourselves is a skill that makes us feel less intimidated by the situation….So let go of inhibitions, don’t always seek approval, Dance away to express yourselves, like no one’s watching …. If someone see’s you falling flat on ur face, just smile back and it wont matter as much….

Sometimes we just need to slow down…. Scenic drives aren’t freeways, they are these windy roads telling people to slow down and watch around. And when we are stuck at a transit point in life by something we cant control, we need to drop the sense of urgency to be somewhere and live the moment… Spend some time to enjoy the little somethings of ur life.

Embracing Change.....

Resistance to change ...Starting from studying it in Newtons law to seeing it in everyday life, I have realized I dont respond well to change ...In things big and small...
I like holding on to my old jeans even if the hems are completely frayed, I dont like too many remixes to the original, I get very uncomfortable if someone adapts a classical song to a western tune, I like to find my stuff in the same place, I experiment with food within certain defined confines, repainting my room is a serious decision to take, I tend to notice and get concerned about small changes in the way people talk, I have always clinged onto anything dear till the point i had no choice but to let go. I even feel sad about throwing my first laptop which hardly boots up and shuts down every 5 min.

Recently i have been forced into a small change i dint so much desire...switching to Office 2007...For some vague reason, we had a mandatory switch to 2007. I lost my old templates, I was searching for options all the time, they have these disappearing panels, and making some changes on a graph seem more work. All of a sudden I am this rookie longing for that straightforward drop down options and trying to figure out a way to cope with this change. It was like having this cool gizmo which you can’t use. The appearance looks better...But won’t i understand the option "filter" without having to look at the funnel? My first panic call happened when what i usually take 15 min to complete was taking me an hour as I was playing this hide and seek with the different options. I called the IT folks who manage this stuff and asked "Is there any way to switch back to the older version?" and the reply was "No, it was a mandatory change"....

It was forced change..I couldn’t undo it. And I was suddenly able to empathize with the old mom's and dads who would wonder what was happening when the Digital TV switch happens and their old analog TV set screen blurs because they didn’t buy some box. I feel the same way about Office 2007.

I was reminded of my dad’s experience. He very much resisted getting absorbed into this Internet dominated world and the compulsion to keep up with this change swept through his life just 2 years before his retirement. And when he first started trying to get the hang of it all, he used to come and very seriously check with me "Would the email have reached by now" 2 days after sending it... :)

This small change also made me think about how I have dealt with change all the while. I like things where they are in most cases. It’s like a relationship of trust has been established. And if things change, it’s work to build it all over again. I like the constancy of the life and love. And though change by itself may be good or bad, it brings with itself a huge uncertainty, expectation and fear. Change however is a constant companion and I am constantly trying to establish my reference.

Change has been good several times too. Moving to a new city, getting married to someone I enjoyed being with, cutting my hair really short and trying to look at the mirror without laughing, wearing a real bright red sweater for the first time in more than 10 years and realizing it wasn’t that bad on me at all, trying to wear shorts and daring to walk past my door in it and also bringing myself to actually start writing stuff about myself in public domain.

Change is what drives us forward, helps us understand ourselves better and makes us stronger…Some are the changes that open up possibilities that excite us, some are the heartbreaking moments which we struggle with, some are the results of the conscious choices we have made and some have just swept us off our feet when we weren’t watching.

I am sure, a couple of weeks from now, my discomfort with this new version of Office would be gone…And something new will step in to challenge my sense of inertia.

“The future has a way of arriving unannounced.” – George Will

You have got mail ....

I hate checking my mails...not my emails...by now I have an addiction towards email that I check them every couple min..faster than they come in usually. I am talking about snail mails. B somehow dropped the habit of picking up the mail every weekend strangely synchronized with the fact that I was selecting our rental movie DVDs these days…

Anyhow, I pull out the innumerous grocery coupons, tire change and killer deal insurance options, all the 'to the resident' and 'to our neighbors' copy of grocery coupons and dating services (why do my neighbors love me so much) all stuffed into the narrow box, hoping that my blockbuster DVD isnt crushed and cracked in all this pressure, and tossed most of them out into the bin. Glad that I was done with this ordeal, I plop the remaining mail on the coffee table where it will rest till the next mail comes in and eventually get stowed away into my closet, when I am expecting visitors and finally die its death in my shredder unopened. If one of them were to come alive and write a tale of their life, it would be pretty sad....Anyhow, while I am mindlessly gazing at the TV watching around 4 shows at the same time , I chance to spot a handwritten name...my name ..on a letter...

Its been ages since I got a letter that was not a bill or statement or a credit card offer or a fine… on my name.

Well, it could be my dentist, he always sends these nice cards every season wishing you for the season and reminding you to come by and take care of his business and your teeth....But no, it was a letter, and from an old friend...who obviously didnt know how I treat my snail mail. Super excited and thrilled I pulled out the 2 sheets of the impeccably written letter.

It was refreshing that I dint have to re-read thru a bunch of acronyms and go ‘ahh-haan...now I get it’..She had used more or less complete sentences. It felt very nice that someone had sat down and taken the trouble of writing this long letter. Considering that my entire communication system had degenerated into one line emails, chat, orkut and facebook messages, this was eye opening into my own self. As a kid, I used to make my own cards...well partially bcos I couldnt afford to buy many cards on my pocket money, partially because I liked to do something different. Also, I believed I wanted to spend more time on a gift and hence I would end up stalking my best friends with hand made cards till they told me how much they liked it or if I liked them way too much I would give them hand made sketches and portraits I drew off magazine covers and rag them to hell as to who it looked like.

S used to write me letters through undergrad days, and that used to be great. He was pbly the only friend I have who has managed to hold on to everyone he knows even when email wasn’t around..So my letter writing days continued into undergrad years, thanks to him. Then with the access to email, everything died. With email, it has become a way of convenience to express our constant sense of urgency. I phased out from an e-card splurge to express myself (or rather the card’s own words) in college years to simple notes these days.
In all my enthusiasm, little knowing how linguistically dysfuntional I had become, I started to write a letter back.....and realized y I shouldnt be doing that ...

1) My handwriting used to look quite good during school days though you had to tilt your head through like 45 degrees and squint your eyes a bit for it to make sense, it used to fall under gravity...but very symmetrically so, and now its reduced to some drunk chicken scrawling. I couldn’t read my grocery list.

2) I also like to write as I speak...meaning I get verbose and get lost in my own tangled web of words. Not to mention the very unsettling fact that whenever I wrote long emails, I got the shortest of replies !!

3) My grammar is bad (honestly who cares about grammar or punctuation in emails anymore?)...And I have started using a "?" as a sole punctuation to differentiate between statements and questions apart from my inexplicable love for exclamations and extra period marks. I strongly suspect my inability to bring a statement to a logical conclusion to be the reason for leaving them in such suspension.

4) For some reason the apartment outbox is right over trash fueling my apprehensions that some of the mail will drop into the trash can unnoticed. So I never posted anything from there. Which later went down to ‘I never posted anything at all?’

5) I am bad at posting stuff. I finally paid up my copay at the hospital after 6 months, purely out of embarrassment that the only mail I was getting was a reminder from them.

6) They keep adding these 2c to the postage charge and I keep looking for those additional stamps.

7) I will convince myself that I am doing my part saving trees

8) Most of all ...I am lazy and at a total loss for words.

I opened my email, typed out a nice email with a lot of emoticons to help assemble my thought and sent it out...Better electronic than never.

And the Oscar goes to...

A R Rahman !!!...and not one, but two...Totally thrilled..Really made my day....

Good things in strange packages

I watched this movie ‘Luck By Chance’ over the weekend…About a bunch of new actors waiting for their big break trying to spin the wheels of fate to their favor. The protagonist of the movie says - Success and failure are what you decide for urself. Its a matter of perception.
The way we play the cards that are dealt lets us see the situation in a different light…
I have been having a tough couple of weeks, mostly due to work. I have been looking for some changes for quite some time now and i just dont seem to be catchin up with lady luck. I have been feeling so stressed that i am not where i want to be.

Then my friend reminded me - Good things can come in strange packages. Just because it doesnt look right, doesnt mean its wrong.

I like to complain once in awhile. But at the end of it i think I am an incredibly lucky person. Blessed with friends who last a lifetime. Had my share of rough rides and tears through it, but have had some pleasant surprises around the corner. And things have come in for me when i least expect them and sometimes in the form i least expect them to take.
And now everytime i hold the oars and try to battle the tide, I should tell myself to let go. For the tide will turn around and float that strange little package towards me with something i love.

Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons. ~Ruth Ann Schabacker

Slippery Slopes

When something can go wrong, it will....
B is super thorough and so he does the planning, and I am super impulsive - and i work on execution, hence we find the magical 'im'balance..We didnt need Murphy to make this worse....We went skiing this weekend and B spent almost an hour telling me and his kid sis H the nuances of skiing, the do's and more importantly the don’ts..Not to mention that he had ensured that we arm ourselves with every thing that the ski section had..I had the music and snack packs for the long drive...These days grocery bags come with nice padding - I say to myself...We load a household of stuff for our one day road-trip ...We are light packers - Thank you, but with us, you wont miss a thing ;) !!...
And then Murphy joined us .... We realized at an unholy hour of the morning that we did not buy the snow chains !!! Snow chains weren't really needed we learnt, but the highway trooper would send you back if u dint have it...
How many stores that open early on a Sunday in Southern California carry snow chains...Very few - we realized...Several GPS searches and stores later, we found a lone package waiting for us.
On reaching the ski resort, we saw that we had missed B's gloves. Damnn !!...He was full of remorse and guilt cursing himself as he parted with $40 for a new pair while his old ones were hiding in the in the food bag (remember the nice padding in the grocery bag) in the car. Next was our discovery that both Cingular and Verizon have poor signal strengths in that area. After a couple of hide and seeks, we were all set for skiing. B went his way to his slopes. He would take the advanced slopes, so we petty beginners would not have his company to guide us through our mis-steps !!. J We got to the beginner slopes just to find that H and B's ski's got exchanged and while B was trying to squeeze his big boot into his ...H was wondering if a latch broke off on her's ...While it was taking an hour for them to sort that out and get back on the slopes, I was now an expert at ..... falling !!! Just when I thought I got the hang of it and did a small cruise around in all my pride and style and was waiting for the thunderous applause in my head....BANG !!!!...a fellow desi boy rams me down, and we roll down the slopes all the way to the side fence in total bollywoodish style...except that this was hardly romantic...I had discovered a couple of extra muscles I had never known existed. Now the challenge of walking up the slope..It felt more like walking on a treadmill, it was sucking energy, but I wasn’t moving an inch. Worse still, fellow desi boy was holding me as his anchor.
A couple more hours, and we were exhausted as they closed off the slopes and B joins us after his complaints on how these silly beginners were hardly moving on his slopes. Cramps his style .. J. ...We moonwalk towards the equipment returns and am I glad to wear my sneakers back, felt like walking in the heavens. I never appreciated them so much.
B wants to know if I will do this again...I smile back, yes I will. In spite of all the aches and the confusions, I loved it

Its a love affair..

If Target looks red on a regular day with red and white color co-ordination on absolutely everything...how does it look right before Valentine's Day ....REDDEST !!
The store is stocked to the roof with roses, heart studded balloons, cute to cranky stuffed teddies all professing their love in cheesy to comic lines and enough chocolates to keep the dentists busy for the rest of the year.
The entire marketing and advertising community is in love !!...... No, its not just candies, roses and diamonds to send girls buckling on their knees.....Even the Food and Oil industry is in love.....How else do u celebrate this Valentines day with a 'healthy heart' :) ....And if you want to save a file today, you can buy one of those heart shaped flash drives with gem stones (?!?) stuck on them (OMG !!!)
If you are planning to stay at home to escape it all, beware, the hearts are barraging through the air waves and into ur TV sets creating the urgency for you to go out and prove to ur girl how much she means to you...all in the the hope that the frantic and extravagant spending would provide the much needed stimulus to 'jumpstart the economy'. Amidst this whole chaos, St Valentine seems to be missing the mention
Happy Valentines Day Everybody !!... :)
I don't understand why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine's Day. When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon - Anonymous :D

Remember When

January means overhauling and cleaning for me...I like to make a fresh start every new year...I always did it, as a kid, in undergrad and grad school days and now....It also means digging into some nostalgia ..looking into a box of keepsakes stowed away in the closet

Isn't it amazing the amount of value sentiment adds to something. I was looking at the cassette a dear friend gifted me for my birthday in my undergrad. It doesn't play now, I have pbly played it a zillion times to wear it out. I glanced at it while i recounted each memory that went with it. I dusted it and put it back where it was - in my treasure trove where I also found my first perfume bottle which Appa had got for me . Its an old small empty perfume bottle - one of those tiny hankie perfume sets. Different smells bring back memories of different periods and its uncanny that the brain has the capacity to relate to these and open up the floodgates of memories - a canvass of colors.

A cassette - Sixty Rupees

A perfume bottle - Thirty Rupees

The memories they bring - Priceless..

There are some things money cant buy...

Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things. ~Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal

“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.”- Oscar Wilde.

My first step into the blogosphere.