Happy New Year!

Chai in a earthenware tumbler that I bought at a handicraft fair over the weekend:

Wah - chai!

So cute - I know!

How are New Year wishes connected to tea you ask. Well, drinking tea makes me happy and comforts me too. My wish for you for this new year is: May you not face any trouble this year that cannot be eased by drinking a steaming cup of strong chai (or insert your favorite drink with appropriate adjectives).

Happy New Year folks and here's to your hopes and dreams coming true in 2012! *clink*

Serendipity

Last year (gosh, it is soon going to be a year - it feels like a lot less), when we decided to move back to India from the US, one of the factors which helped me feel a little less odd-woman-out was knowing that a bunch of my peers were moving back around the same time too.

One of these movers-back was my close friend, A (who has been featured on this blog quite a few times, possibly under different pseudonyms). Though she was going to be in a different city, we would at least be in the same country again!

Then, a few days back, A gave me the awesome news that she and her husband are moving to Chennai soon. Yippeee!

Like my sister put it, "Man, I don't believe your luck. You move 10,000 miles and not only do you have a good friend moving back to the same country, you also have her moving back to the same city! And then you tell me that she is probably going to live close to your neighborhood too. No fair".

Yeah, me lucky, I know!

Welcome to Chennai, girl! I am busy arranging the red carpet, the flower-girls and the band! We sure are going to have a grand ol' time :-D!

Exercising my franchise

A violet-mark day in my life! I voted for a government election for the first time today. Yes!

The voting came with all the attendant Indian-voting tamasha. We waited for over an hour at the election-booth while voting-machine malfunction was corrected. This was of course accompanied with plenty of shouting, self-importanting and useless stand-bying. Some people walked away in frustration but the majority of voters stood their ground declaring that they were prepared to stand for however long it took for the malfunction to be corrected. I was rewarded for my patience with a violet mark on my finger and a chance to press a key on the voting machine. Yaay - I am now a part of the democratic process!

Marked finger! And no, I don't have dirty nails - it's just that they put too much ink which then spread around!

Other stuff:
1. Since the time I turned 18, it has been a long-standing desire of mine to get that mark on my finger. I remember how my cousin sat on election-day furiously painting her finger-nails. Her sister enquired why she was doing so instead of getting ready to go and vote for the first time. Cousin smartly said, "I want my nails to look pretty when they apply that mark".

2. This election's campaigning has been a whole lot of fun to watch. The various party-affliated television channels showed speeches from their own candidates - some of them were pretty entertaining. There were also plenty of party-ads and smear campaigning too. Of course, there was our truth, their truth and the real truth. Very interesting. Ever since the campaigning stopped, I have been missing this entertainment a lot.

3. I hear quite a lot of working professionals have treated the election-holiday as a vacation and have gone out of town since today is followed by a lot of public holidays. I wonder how educated people especially can be so irresponsible. These people are probably the same ones who will later complain long and hard about how the government is awful and does nothing for the welfare of the people. Even if you don't want to support any candidate, at least file the option to not choose any candidate! At least you will prevent bogus-voting! It is your duty as a citizen of a democracy.

4. Why on earth is it taking a whole long month to reveal the results of the election? Something does not sound right at all.

5. Some of the election-related SMS-es that have been floating around have been really witty. Sigh, I am going to miss the end of the elections!

The ICC 2011 World Cup is ours!

Winners

We won and how! Congratulations Team India! Finally, we can stop looking back at 1983 and start looking at 2011. YES!!!!

Image courtesy www.cricinfo.com

Clean slate to write on

Happy New Year 2011, folks! Boy, 2010 went whizzing by or what? Though, like S said, instead of mourning for a year gone by too fast, I should look forward to adding many more new experiences in 2011. That's a great way of looking at it, no?

My 2011 got off to a flying start. First, we went on a family outing to a resort in Pondicherry. The weather was great, the company was great, the food was great and the beach was a stone's throw away. What more does a mini-vacation need?

Then, as if my cup of joy was not full enough, this happened: I went to the in-house spa to get a massage done. The masseuse first asked me if I was a student. Amused, I said no and stated that I was working. We continued talking about some other topic. In reply to a question, I started off saying, "Yes, my husband and I..." only to be interrupted by the masseuse with a, "What, you are married?" followed by, "Oh, then you must be newly married.". I am told I wore a cat which has drunk milk expression for the rest of the day.

Before touching the big 3-0 last year, I was briefly depressed and felt that as soon as I turned 30, I would be standing with one foot in the grave. Only after turning 30 did I realize that except for filling in new digits next to my age in application forms, absolutely nothing had changed. I was going to be as old or as young as I felt and not as dictated by the number of years I had spent on the planet.

Still, it was a total cheap thrill to think that I had looked young enough that particular day to be assumed a student. Especially, since being ID-ed is something which happens more and more infrequently these days!

Yup, like I said, this New Year got off to a flying start :-D!

Here's to a wonderful 2011 *clink*.

August 15

For the past few weeks, the newspapers, TVs and radios are filled with special Independence day offers. I have also spotted Independence day decorations at various commercial establishments. Of course, special Independence day TV programs are lined up on the various TV channels with a much longer line-up of sponsors for those various programs.

What a far cry from the days when Independence day meant dragging yourself out of bed on a holiday just so that you could have the pleasure of seeing a "Chief-guest" hoisting the national flag at school followed by the highlight of the day: a single piece of candy doled out to each of the captive students once the flag hoisting and the national-anthem singing was done.

It has been thundering and raining out here in Chennai since morning today. Ain't I glad those going to school days are behind me! Instead, I can wrap my hands around a warm mug of chai and cozily settle down to watch the Independence day advertisements and their attendant programs on TV.

Happy Independence Day :-)!

Home sweet home

The first reaction I got from most fellow Indians when I told them that I was moving back to India was the last one I expected: envy. Most of them sighed and said they wished they could go back home as well.

Thinking back, I guess it is a predictable reaction from most first generation Indians who arrived in the US thinking that they would go back to India in a couple of years. In reality, two years became three, three became five, five became ten and suddenly, the roots had grown so deep that acceptance slowly started to creep in that perhaps US was home now. Still, that does not stop residual guilt from popping up when someone else is implementing their original plan. There, that is my Freudian analysis for today.

Coming back to me, next week this time, S and me will be on a flight back to India, going back to home sweet home: Chennai, India. It took me time to get used to the idea that I will be leaving the country I have lived in for almost 9 years now for good. The bay area, especially, boasts the privilege of hosting me for 7 years continually, a privilege which no other city has had in all my years of existence. I will miss the city, its weather, its parks, its community recreation center, its roads and most of all, the lovely city library.

Still, the idea of being among family and friends, celebrating all the major festivals with pomp, not missing out on the various functions, eating delicious food, having a very well-entrenched support system and finally going HOME is very intoxicating. Both of us are very much looking forward to it.

India, here we come :-D!

The aim game

I have written about my not-so-happy bowling experiences before. Little wonder then, when we had to choose an activity for a team-outing at work, I steered clear of Bowling and Bocche ball (which sounded like it involved plenty of aiming as well) and voted for Laser-tag and Go-karting instead.

Most of the rest of the team voted for Go-karting as well. We picked a location which offered Go-karting as well as mini-golf. Now, while mini-golf involves aiming as well, during my previous mini-golf outings, while nowhere near the best, I had at least fared average, on par with most of the other participants. So I was not unduly worried about winding up as the mini-golf idiot.

Last Friday, after a hearty lunch at a Thai place, we decided to begin our outing with a round of mini-golf. Two teams were formed. We began playing. Plenty of good-natured laughter ensued when for some people, the ball merrily went over, around, beside, across but not into the hole. Oh goodie, if I was going to make a fool of myself, I at least had company. Hurrah!

Then my turn came, I hit the ball and to my pleasant surprise, it went right into the hole in a decent number of strokes, without much detouring. Nice!

We continued playing. Lady Luck, who had favored me for the first hole, continued to sit on my shoulder. At every hole, my ball went precisely where I wanted it to go, stopped at convenient places and never once overshot its intended position. Of course, there were other good players as well - but I could not believe that I could actually count myself among them.

Finally, it was time to tally up the scores. My team had won - yaaay!

And *drum rolls*: I was the one with the best individual score! Among 10 other people. Wonders will never ever cease. I had actually managed to play an aiming game well. Woohoo!

I acted totally cool like I was a born mini-golf pro around my colleagues. However, once I got home, I crowed to S about my "achievement" only about two dozen times over the past weekend. Now, he is just about ready to swing a mini-golf club at me the next time I go, "Guess who had the best score at mini-golf".

Funny how little things can bring big cheap thrills.

2010 is here ...

Wishing you a wonderful year ahead filled with all possible joy, happiness and prosperity!

*clink*

Pic courtesy here.

Another vacation, another wedding and am back

Did I say that the vacation to India for my wedding was my busiest holiday ever? Now I realize that I said that because I had not yet taken a vacation to attend my sister's wedding!

Sis got married on Dec 11th to Deepak (congrats again :-)). S and me landed up in des during thanksgiving weekend (just in time for the engagement) and are back after a hectic whirlwind two-and-a-half week vacation. Wedding was ton of fun and we had a blast at all the the pre and post wedding events. Only, I re-realized that Indian weddings involve an insane of amount of getting up eaaaaaaarly. So much so both S and me actually slept quite a bit on the plane back to the US (that is definitely a record for cannot-sleep-in-a-seated-position me). Now I need a vacation for my vacation.

Being in India made me realize all over again just how wonderful it is to be around close family and how much fun it is to participate in family activities. I also figured that after living all these years in the US, India is still the only place which feels like home to me. Super good thing, if you ask me!

I am going to be spending the next few weeks dreaming of des. And also spend the next few weekends and long weekends sleeping.

Anybody there?

Hola folks! After a long-ish break, perhaps the longest one on this blog thus far, I am back. And this time round I have a water-tight excuse as to why I could not blog: I was too busy. Okay, okay, stop rolling eyes! I was too busy because I was in India. That's better, no? But wait, it gets even better. While I was there *drum rolls*... I got married :-D!

Yup, Sridhar and I got hitched on the 24th of June, 2009 in Chennai. The weeks preceding and succeeding it were a huge blur of activity - I don't think I have ever been more busy in my life. But I we had a great time.

This is the first week that I am back in normal operation since our return (though, sadly enough, my work-brain has been forced to be on full alert for quite a while now).

Now, if all this isn't a good enough excuse, I would like to know what is :-D! But fear not gentle readers, I will certainly be more regular from now on.

A happy ending

Have you heard this saying which goes, only the child which cries gets milk meaning that unless you make a fuss, you are most probably not going to get noticed?

Well, I learnt that for myself today. Two days after I wrote my mighty annoyed post about the misleading cancellation policy at 24-hour fitness, I found a message on my answering machine from a Jennifer at 24-hour fitness who wanted to discuss my troubles with the cancellation policy. With a slight dawning of hope, I tried calling her the next day, but got her voice mail repeatedly.

This morning, I tried her number yet again and voila, she answered. As soon as I said my name, she recognized me immediately and even before I could say anything, she said that they would not be charging me for the month of May because I felt so strongly about it (duh, I bet other people who were forced to pay up in a similar way would have felt quite so strongly about it too). And since the last month was paid for, I could continue to use the gym till June. In other words, everything would work out exactly how I wanted it to in the first place!!

I reiterated to her that the gym employees had given me misleading information about the cancellation policy and Jennifer said that it was "mis-communication" and in any case I would not be charged for May. Hip hip hooray!

I don't know whether this one-eighty degree change in attitude happened due to their pity for my whining or because they thought I was going to take some action against them. In any case, I am pretty sure I *would* have been charged had I not expressed my "strong" indignation.

Ya, so the child which cries does not get to pay useless fees too.

Also, people who want to become members at 24-hour fitness can now do so if you promise me to whine nice and strong if you see any sign of ripping off :-).

Wishes

Some parts of the world are already in 2009. 2008 is fast slipping away in California too. Time to bid 2008 adieu *sniff* and give 2009 a warm welcome *yaaay*.

Wishing you a wonderful 2009. May all your dreams come true. May you have lots of health, wealth, happiness, food, sleep, vacations etc. etc. in the year to come.

Happy New Year!

Two things

I won an award, I won an award! Joy of Me, My Mind and Wilderness, has awarded me the "Brilliante Weblog" award! Yippeee! Though I don't think I deserve the award (*cough* modesty *cough*) I am much honored and am super thrilled. Thanks a lot, Joy!

As I have said before, I find a lot to admire in the writings of so many fellow-bloggers. Some of them are linked on the side-bar, most are not. Regardless, I am so glad I have got the chance to read them.

One blog which was particularly a super awesome find is Floridora's Last Quarter-Game of Life. I came across his blog a bunch of years ago when I randomly hit on the "next blog" link which appears on the Blogger header. I read his most recent post then and was hooked. Since then, I love reading his posts whether they are about day-to-day happenings or about his past experiences starting from the time of World War-II. His zest for life and sense of humor shines through in all his posts. Thanks for the wonderful blog, Floridora and here's to you blogging for many more years to come. You truly are a Brilliante Weblogger.

****

After three days of getting increasingly threatening threats to do his tag pronto, I am getting down to it. Pratap has tagged me to:

1. Make a word out of my name, picking a part-of-speech
2. I don't have to save the world but just spectacularly make an awesome sentence (with my name as defined above). p.s. this rather convoluted tag-rule has its origins in the tagging post.

Now, if you read Pratap's original post, you can see for yourself that I have already chosen a totally cool (and apt :-P) meaning for my name. I had defined archana as an adjective meaning "something wonderful in a special way" or simply put, "something awesome". So, you could use it in sentences like 'This is an archana dress", "Oh, she is my archana friend", "Look at that flower - so beautiful! It has a very archana color". Yeah people, you can stop laughing now. No, really.

Anyhoo, unfortunately, according to the "rules" (made up on the fly, I bet) as described by Pratap, I cannot reuse my original meaning and have to think of a new meaning. So here it is:

archana is a verb meaning "making and drinking chai".

Usage examples:
1. After a long day at work, he got home and archanaed.
2. Can we archana now?
3. Why have those folks not arrived yet? Are they archaning at their place?

Tada :-D!

This is a fun tag to do and does not take long - it will be great if at least a few of you take it up! Vishesh? SK? Archana? Saumya? Joy? Sayesha? J? Deepthi? All the people linked on the left sidebar? All my readers? Okay, that is beginning to sound desperate. Still, pretty please? You could use the comment space itself if you are so inclined!

300

This post is the 300th one on my blog.

Please wait while I hold my mouth open, palms on cheeks, in a newly-crowned Miss. World- worthy pose.

But yes, 'tis true!

In celebration, I decided to do something special - a new look for my blog. Yaay!

My aim was to keep it simple to reduce loading time for the few readers who actually come over to the site to read. It is still in beta-testing stage though - so pliss to adjust.

And oh, I was very smart and remembered to take a back up of my old template in order to safely put back all the stuff on the side bar with the new template. Only, I took backup of the wrong template. Computer science engineers are extra smart when it comes to such things I hear. Anyhoo, that is why some stuff that I had on the side bar previously might be missing. They will be re-added as they surface to memory.

So yes, me and my blog are still going strong :-)!

That's odd

I have written 28 (20 + 8) specific things about myself on this blog already. But this tag which Joy passed on to me asked me to list weird things about myself. So in this time's exercise in narcissism, I shall list 7 weird things about myself (pretending that none of the other 28 things about myself were in anyway weird :-P).

1. Whenever I eat cereals/oatmeal, I *have* to wash the bowl as soon as I am done no matter how much of a hurry I am in. I will not leave the place till the bowl is clean and dripping on the dish rack. Note: this obsession only extends to cereal bowls.

2. Similarly, before I leave my room in the morning I always fold the blankets/comforter irrespective of how lazy or rushed I am. Everything else can be nowhere near tidy but seeing messy blankets/comforters irritates me a lot. By extension, I automatically fold any bed linen lying around when I visit other folks too.

3. Many of my most favorite (current and past) songs are melodious but sad. I can listen to them at anytime, regardless of my mood. Somehow I connect with sad songs in a way which leaves me feeling blissful (!?!) and at peace. Some songs which have been on the list: Engey enadhu kavidhai, Laakad jalke, You'll think of me, Poongatrile, Tadap tadap, Linger, Pesa madanthai ... The most recent addition is Jag soona soona from OSO - the song is just so beautiful.

4. Though the above point might have lead you to believe so, I am usually not a morose person. I am optimistic to a fault, trust almost everyone whether warranted or not and generally think the world is a beautiful place. Kinda like the kid who, when given a crate of worthless manure as a christmas present, starts digging through it enthusiastically, “Because there’s gotta be a pony in there somewhere!”. You can imagine how easily I can get conned :-)!

5. I love croutons. All my plans of having a healthy lunch by hitting the salad bar are nullified by me topping the salad off with a whole lot of croutons. I am pretty confident that I can happily finish a "salad" having nothing but croutons in them.

6. Sometimes, when I am really enjoying something at current time, I start dreaming and longing for the next time of such enjoyment. I know, duh! Some living in the moment I do!

7. I tend to worry about completely running out of essentials and so, like a boy scout, I am always prepared. At my house, you will always find at least two extra cans of salt, tubes of toothpaste, boxes of tea, bottles of moisturizer (ya, that is an "essential" according to me) etc. in addition to the currently used supply. In case of an emergency, I think the grocery store can come borrow from me :-)!

Done.

No, this time I am not passing the tag to anyone. Only one soul (you rock, SK :-)) I passed the last tag to did it and I am now hurted *pout* *sulk*. Okay, okay, pipe down the celebration, will ya!?!

Update: Just realized that this is post number 250. Yaay :-)! I am too lazy to hunt for dancing numbers this time.

Training

Week 1: ~6 mile round-trip hike at Castle Rock.

Week 2: Series of short hikes over three days at Utah.

Week 3: ~8 mile round-trip hike at Rancho San Antonio park.

Week 4: ~11 mile round-trip hike at Purisima Creek Reserve.

Week 5: White-water rafting at Kings Canyon.

All this training sort of helped me do this:

Week 6: ~17 mile round-trip hike to the top of Half Dome at the Yosemite National Park.

YES - I climbed up Half Dome yesterday. I made it all the way to the top and back. And I am still alive and kicking. YES :-D!

With a long weekend gone by...

... can a travelogue be far behind?

Before you start groaning, two posts ago was post number 200 :-). Since I had said I would honor every 50 posts, here is the belated marker meant for that post.

Okay, you can start groaning now :-P.

So my friend S and me were planning on a vacation outside of the US for the Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately, the plan got grounded even before it took off. So S asked me if I wanted to go to Utah instead. Some other undergrad classmates of mine and a bunch of their (and S's) friends were planning to visit Utah's national parks.

Now, though I have heard a lot about most of the "other" friends, I have never met them. S assured me that they were very nice people and that they would be absolutely okay with my gate-crashing. Deciding to be more sociable and all, I decided to go. Spending a good chunk of money got me a ticket to Salt Lake City (sheesh, that darn place is 2 hours away by plane from where I live - darn these expensive long weekend flights).

Thursday, May 24, was the D-day. As with all other pre-trip nights, I had gotten minimal amount of sleep on Wednesday night - what with all the last minute packing and getting "ready". As an aside, while I love summers, it is a lot more difficult to choose and pack clothes for summer. In winter you could choose almost anything (including pyjama tops or that t-shirt with the huge stain or the comfy one with the not-so-gaping hole) as tops - the winter jacket is going to cover it anyways.

Anyways, on Thursday, V dropped me off at the airport late noon. I was well ahead of time. Given that, of course, the inevitable happened. My flight got delayed. By an hour. Thus ensuring that I would *certainly* miss my connecting flight at Las Vegas (LV). Ugh, ugh, ugh! Fortunately, before all my panic alarms could go off, they announced that the connecting flight would be held till we got to LV - phew!

Both my flights were of short duration and went off quickly enough. Once I reached Salt Lake City, I called S. My "welcome party" was waiting for me :-).

**Before I go further, there were nine of us totally - the girls S, G, K, B and me and the guys R, P, V and T.**

Back to the story. Due to terrible hunger, R, G, V and T had gone on ahead to have dinner while the rest were waiting for me at the airport. Quick introductions took place and we were on our way. Yippee, my vacation had begun :-D.

Dinner was at Denny's - why does every vacation include at least one meal at Dennys? There I met the rest of the folks. Dinner was spent in general talk and chatter. It was then time to set off to our hotel for the night.

All of us were too tired to talk much - so we all crashed almost as soon as we reached. We had a long day ahead of us.

To be continued ....

Note 1: To the best of my knowledge, this travelogue should be not be too long. Given that we did so many things over the course of four days, I don't remember too much :-).

Note 2: I did not know that Utah time was one hour ahead of California time. In retrospect, I shouldn't have sounded quite so confident when I went, "Hey, my plane arrived half an early inspite of starting off late" . Obviously (and more logically), my flight had landed half an hour late.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

After all the nice things my blog had to say about me forgetting its birthday last year, I learnt my lesson. So dearest blog, a very happy birthday to you :-)! You have already turned five! My my, growing up fast, aren't we?


In spite of all your assumed modesty, I bet you already think you are great. Nothing wrong in just thinking, huh? At any rate, must say I am really glad to have you around. I would lionize and praise you a lot more, but am feeling darn sleepy today. So will conclude with another "Happy Birthday, old thing :-D"!

Pricey P

This story is fresh off the press and I found it so funny that I wanted to spread the joy. Fortunately, I got P's consent to do so and hence I am posting this with a clear conscience O:-)!

Anyways, my dear friend P was feeling rather blue over the weekend. In order to cheer herself up, she decided to go to a posh book store in her city and spend sometime there. Dressed up well and everything, P set off. Once she reached the store, she started walking briskly towards the elevator.

All of a sudden, she heard someone behind her calling "Madam, madam...". A quick glance behind her revealed that it was the watchman. Why ever on earth would he want to stop her? P decided that he must be calling someone else. And, acting all pricey, she ignored him and continued to stride forward confidently.

Which was when one of her legs sank into the ground with a splash sound! Basically, she had just walked into a pool of water on the ground meant for decoration purposes. P turned around sheepishly and just managed to catch the watchman slapping his forehead with his palm and saying,"That's what I wanted to warn you about!"

At this point, P burst out laughing, all her blues chased right away. Apparently she decided to continue her day at the posh bookstore with one side of her jeans completely soaked :-)).

P told me all this over chat. I imagined the whole scene and was literally rolling on the floor with laughter :-D. My great regret is that I wasn't around to witness the entire episode live. Oh well, one can't always have everything that they want - I shall be content with this!

BTW, this is post number 150 :-D! And yet again, I bring out my non-dancing "dancing" numbers.

In case you are wondering, yes, I do plan to have markers for every fifty posts :-D! For the curious, post number 50 is here and post number 100 is here.

p.s. this post is titled Pricey P because P specifically asked me to not use the word 'pricey' with regard to her. However, what are friends for if you cannot not grant even such simple requests :-P! That said, P, thank you girl and you rock as always :-D!