Wo’Me’n and Machines!

Machines and I have had a love-hate relationship. I love how they run my life making it so much easier for me. I hate feeling helpless when they let me down. My friend and I once tried to repair a wet grinder, the motivation being home-made-dosas-on-a-budget. We ended up with a couple of bruises and scratches plus a dented grinder. Not to mention the urad dal missiles that fired around while testing it. I keep writing a note to self “Don’t even try things you are not good at” …but again, maybe I should get it tattooed in my hand or something, so that I remember.

Is this something fundamental in women…or is it just me :)…No offense at all, if you are one of those girls that figured these things out, I downright admire you, want to be you…it’s just probably going to take me more than just effort to get there. I initially got admitted into Mechanical Engineering…And am thanking the heavens that I switched into Electronics eventually. Would I have failed as a mechanical engineer, or would I have battled and survived it is one of those questions that will never get answered. I was never the girly-girl sorts who can’t stand a little grease on their hands. I think most girls with a brother don’t end up being that. I wasn’t the tomboy types either. I can hold a spanner or a hammer and even do a decent job with some assembly stuff…But there it ends…When it comes to actual machines, vehicles I have a brain-freeze. My problem hasn’t been so much with my outlook to doing these things as much as it’s about my ability to do it. Hence it’s my perception that there is some built in gender superiority when it comes to having the “iron-thumb” as I call it.

My dad is an engineer and he is one of the most hands on person that I know. Though a mechanical engineer by profession, he would try to fix every electrical and even electronic issue we had at home. I grew up helping him fix fans, fix the bore well, even try fixing the TV and spent hours listening to him talk about engines. Lots of times, it would whoosh over my head, but I would just listen. When he served at the IAF, he made sure that the fighter jets and helicopters were cleared for flying. He looks at the stuff that I do, and he thinks it’s cool..I think what he did was far cooler, interesting and challenging.

My brother got those genes…I missed them. My brother and I opened up the tape recorder as kids. After putting it back together, he slipped the seemingly “extra screws and random stuff” into his pocket. I would eye that tape recorder suspiciously after that wondering when it would break. He would always be so confident that it will still work while I was amazed it was still working. It’s all perspective I think.

My son has got his grand-dad’s genes for sure. I was busy fixing the shelves at home and he sprinted and grabbed the pencil lying on the floor and stuffed it into every hole in the wooden plank and started turning it around. He seemed to enjoy it so much! Grand-dad will be so proud!

As for me, I think that part of my brain didn’t develop much. I worked in a university fab with these huge furnaces and stations and would feel so insecure when something broke down. My Russian friend and lab mate used to say “Priya, just learn how to pull apart a car and put it together, you will learn anything”…I was totally awed and intimidated..Again this was not a guy who said that to sound cool. I have actually seen him work with his old car and with the furnaces that broke down in the lab. I would most intently slurp into my coke in the hope of catching a few extra minutes to think anything even remotely intelligent to say when he asked me questions as we(he) fixed the things.

So why suddenly am I thinking about this…. I was talking to my neighbor and he is thinking of buying a plane. OK, not even just that. “You can get a kit for a single seater private plane for 20 grand and you can build it”...he tells me. My mouth still wide open…, “Where will you park it” I ask like a meek kid. “At the Hangar of course”, he quips and I feel silly for even asking. I just couldn’t resist having the mental image of my accord parked next to a plane :) !! And he is taking pilot training now. And he is that absolutely down to earth and simple software engineer who is pursuing his passion. I instantly admired him for that. Fixing a plane from a kit….really!!!! ..And having the guts to sit inside it and fly it requires both competence and confidence.

After that conversation, I went home inspired to fix Abhi’s orange-berry toy. He loved it till it worked and now sits by it and presses the buttons hoping to hear something. I feel sad for him. If my neighbor can build a plane, I can repair Abhi’s toy. I will start with small baby steps and one day will get better :) ! So I get to it. Brought my tool kit and readied myself for the project…

B always tells me I pull a bazooka at a mosquito..He says that for different reasons. But now it sounded so appropriate. Huge tools, little toy, focused mom, anxious son, amused grand-dad.

After 2 hours of meddling around..with constant running commentary from appa of-course..Abhi came and patted the toy gently and sympathetically, pressed its buttons and looked at me…the verdict was out…

I try not to fall bang in the middle of such clichés but honestly for me, it’s like having two left feet and trying to dance. Pulled out my scribble pad from the handbag and started writing “To buy: Onions, cilantro, milk, new blackberry toy for Abhi!!”

Every artichoke has a tender heart

I have never had an artichoke till now..At the grocers, I have looked at it and wondered what to even make of it and put it back right where it belonged…the shelves. I don’t know of any Indian cooking that uses it..I am no expert..but having seen both my mom and my mom-in-law giving it a suspicious stare, I am sure they weren’t acquainted either..

So a friend of mine comes in with a suggestion. ”Let’s make an artichoke custard"..Custard ??!!? My eyes pop out.. :S !!.I have taken risks in life..But this is one I really wouldn’t want to...I just blurted out a few minutes earlier to her, that I am open to exploring new cuisines to get Abhi interested in food and wished so much now that I could have taped my mouth shut. She leaves the bag of artichokes at my counter and steps out with my son.

I eye this curious vegetable (or fruit ??!!? I thought we made custard with fruits!). It looked so prickly and harsh... Custard really!! With you?? I make nice warm paneer paratas for Abhi and he doesn’t seem to get interested in food...And we are going try to make artichoke custard to get him excited. It just seems soooo wrong!

The afternoon tryst with the artichoke was something to remember. So it was me, my friend and our little sous-chef trying to make artichoke custard. Abhi was interested in playing with this curious vegetable. He liked to hold it with the stem and bang it on the fridge door. Was he thinking "If I could just smash you, then these two women would spare me from eating u" ..My dad comes by the kitchen and I hear him murmur to himself "Custard? Custard?" in disbelief as he steps out ...A few min later, he comes back...”U are making this only for kuzhandhai right? “looking very concerned...And then he tells me, "I feel like taking a long walk" and walks out of the door. Lucky You!! Appa…

I looked at this abandoned vegetable (I am still trying to wrap my head around how to drop u in custard)...but nevertheless I am more sympathetic now. A friend calls in and while in conversation reminds me of my last post on how I should give the imperfect thing a chance, laughs out loud and hangs up....What timing...Me and my big mouth I think!! This is why I shouldn’t be writing philosophy!! This is y I shouldn’t be writing at all...

Then it gets even better, she pulls out a spinach bunch...And I am pretending to make something good with it hoping to distract her from her “main dish”. She goes “Nooo, this is for the custard”…Huuunhh!!??!! First it was artichoke and then its spinach and we are making custard ?! ? By now I am almost at her feet begging “I will make amends for any mistake of mine…Why ….why are we doing this..and why abhi…poor little thing, what did he do, cant u see his innocent little face ” …Its almost like she read my mind. “Priya, don’t worry, it’s made with salt not sugar” and she smiled at me like my main concern was addressed. “Why do we call it custard?”..I innocently ask..; “A custard doesn’t have to be sweet..You have savory custards, it’s like a quiche and we shall bake it” she quipped.

What’s in a name...u may ask..A name is everything. A name is an identity and if your identity just got switched a 180o, then it’s not a good thing. Thou shalt not be a custard to me ….In my mind, a custard has fruits and is not baked…Thou shalt never be custard to me.. Thou shalt be a quiche….And I closed my heart and moved on..We dropped in butter, cheese, eggs, nutmeg, and spinach. Then we were going through the motions of peeling off the leaves in the artichoke and fuddled with the soft and squishy inside when my friend mentions “Every artichoke has a tender heart…Its almost like a person…rough on the exterior, soft inside”. A giggle slipped out of me …the kitchen is such a great place for philosophy…if only we didn’t have to eat all of them.

So what happened at last….Yes, a spinach-artichoke-cheese-quiche came out of the oven..I couldn’t tell where the artichoke was..It was like me searching for the ladys-finger in the tiramisu. It wasn’t bad, but it wouldn’t find its way into my favorite dishes either …Abhi couldn’t care less..he bit into it, squished it with his hand and rubbed it all over the high chair and was ready to play. My dad was so relieved that no one forced him to eat it and passed on an empathetic stare to Abhi. It was a funny evening in hind sight and I learnt something. That custard is not always sweet and an artichoke is like a person – hard on the outside, with a tender heart inside. And I shall not make fun of it ever again…In this post, yes !! but no …never again :)

Give me a chance!

Have you ever felt that you didn’t get that one chance to prove it to someone you were worth it...?

A couple of weeks ago I was at my wits end with getting my son to adjust to his daycare. The inconsolable crying broke me, but I tried being strong. I would walk out trying not to look back, drive an extra loop to calm myself down, tell myself it will all work out and pull into work. But then he fell sick all the time and I was done with long doses of antibiotics one after another. I had to pull him out every time he fell sick. And getting any work done with a crying sick child was impossible. I was in a new job and there is not too much room for slack. I needed a solution….I started a nanny search again, interviewed people ..but nothing really worked out. It’s hard to hire someone to take care of this little person u love so much by just pruning through the paper resumes. Some of the best sounding resumes were just examples of good writing abilities….

Then I found this girl...She didnt have a strong resume, but she had a unique circumstance, and she connected so well with him. She didn’t come with the pre-requisites I had in mind for the ideal person. B & I talked to her and just as much as we liked her at the outset, we had an equal sense of apprehension again because of her unique story and how different she was from what we sought. There appeared to be something genuine and sincere about what she said, but I really couldn’t put a finger on what that was. It was a decision that was left to me. Everyone decided to trust my judgment, while I didn’t. My instinct asked me to go with her, my head wouldn’t agree with the decision. There was fear that it would be the wrong decision for me, for my little love. But as much as I wanted to judge and evaluate her, I also wanted for her to succeed.

If we could decide everything for ourselves with just logic and reason, life would be so much simpler, so much more robotic and more predictable. But its when the heart rules the head, life is spontaneous. Yes, to all the men from Mars ..I am one of those women from Venus and happy being that way. I was born with brains and I do use them...but it just doesnt win every battle. :). After several hours of brooding over the next couple of days, i decided to give her a chance. It was purely a decision based on my instinct.

Now, she is trying hard..harder than usual to keep me happy. More important than anything else, my little baby feels happy with her. She expresses her gratitude in several ways everyday for giving her a chance. And that gets me thinking about the people that have given a chance, an opportunity at several points when I probably wasn’t shining at my best and how I continue to walk that extra mile for them...and of the times when i missed that one chance that I really wanted so much. Whatever be the context, giving someone a chance is a risk you take for yourself or your firm or whatever it is that they have control over. And it may not always work out, but sometimes I think we should also set aside our impulse to seek out that perfect and ideal solution for us and give the seemingly imperfect solution a shot. It might teach us something and that lesson is worth it.

Don’t get me wrong…I am not advocating going with impulsive decisions, but sometimes and just once in awhile, we have to give someone who doesn’t present that perfect picture, a chance...and who knows, we may be pleasantly surprised at how happy we would be with it.

The tiny sapling that finds its way out of a concrete floor is the chance that nature gives it to live...

I may be wrong...don’t take me seriously if you think differently….This is just a random scribble on the wall :)

Baby steps into the unknown…

After a year I decided to clean up…dust the cobwebs, wipe the wall clean and scribble again…What a year it has been …:)!!!...

I was staying at one of the nicest cities around, B & me working in the same firm and could sometimes go home from office for a nice lunch faster than we could get to restaurants. Wonderful set of friends and SD was home sweet home… Life was peaceful and the sailing was smooth and we decided to change it :D!!..Toss in a B school, a baby, moving to a much colder city, much smaller place and to ice it all up, look for another job ….and some salt to taste....and this went from a warm soup to a cold sandwich. We are definitely out of the comfort zone…And hoping that it teaches us something important to carry forward…

A friend once told me a couple of years back…’I would never do three changes simultaneously…a new city, new job and new man in your life’….Months later, I did it and …here I am doing it for the second time around…new city, a new job search, a brand new little man in my life…

It’s been an interesting phase ..There is just so much happening that I constantly feel am running to catch up. So many changes that there is no frame of reference…I feel challenged and overwhelmed.. There’s B’s 3 lil words that come to rescue…nah…not those…but ‘Keep the faith’…and those of’course……I am taking baby steps into the unknown and so is my son…And truth be told, he is handling it far better than I am :)

Motherhood is teaching me so many things, some new and some things about myself. Life has changed….My little boy is teaching me persistence and resilience..He keeps trying everything non stop…Hes so fascinated by the world around him that I am giving the old polythene bag that keeps giggling at some second thoughts… Its teaching me to remove myself from the picture..As finicky as I could get about how things should be set around the home, my lil boy is in charge now…So my espresso coordinated room took a drastic dive to all colors with my boy’s wet stamp of approval all around!! B & I break each other’s records in time to change a diaper (And Yes, Of course I have the lead). Folks yet to be parents – this is info us rookies weren’t privy to …diapering needs to get done in single digit seconds..esp when ur boy learns to roll over, ur disaster radius just spread multi fold. And if u don’t like wet and dirty…u have a big problem..buy/rent a home that can be hosed down! Of course, with an indoor laundry……Moving from in-door laundry to a building laundry is a huge change esp if u have a baby…I am squandering and scavenging quarters all the time… And my handbag hasn’t jiggled away so loudly for a long time..But after the endless cleaning up after, his innocent smile is more than a reward. And lastly I have become one of those women who cant stop talking about ‘him’.

I am auditing some courses and get to school and can’t tell u how apart these two worlds are. Do u remember the last time u looked at a colony of ants and wondered why they keep bumping into each other and they move around business like….B School is like that. There is so much of an urgency to meet and know as many people within the shortest time frame that it almost looks robotic..Time is premium and there is a whole lot to accomplish…. There is no room for waiting… That’s a familiar world and I used to live like that…Of course I didn’t attend B school, but aren’t we all geared up to believe that we can plan every minute of our day and accomplish what we wanted if we just put our minds to it. As I get back home, the other world reminds me of the truth that no matter how much u try, u also need to learn to wait …wait patiently for things to turn around. I wait patiently for my son to willingly open his mouth for the next spoonful as rushing doesn’t work and being on a timetable doesn’t work. I walk him up and down till he falls asleep on my shoulder. And that is so true of life that, you can persevere, but you need a lot of patience to pull through the real tests in life, a lot of years for dreams to fulfill, a lot of years for prayers to get answered, a lot of years for true love to win….Life’s first lesson is patience and there is no timetable and my little son is teaching me that :).

This new phase is also giving me time to reflect on several things…on myself, my relationships, my strengths and my weaknesses…While I am trying to figure my present and future all together, I have decided that writing probably would help me fit the puzzle together.

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.