Weighing me down

A couple of months ago, my work place launched a wellness initiative. Basically, it was a program to encourage its employees to become more fit.

I thought this was a great idea. Since, at any given point in time, I am usually on a quest to lose weight (the last time I was too thin happened in 2007). This event seemed like a good excuse to kickstart my fitness plans with vigor.

You see, when you are heavier than you know you ought to be but still not heavy enough for others to notice it, the road to losing that extra weight is paved with good intentions. However, actually traversing the road requires a lot of willpower, determination and most importantly, a GOOD reason to lose weight.

The last time I was super motivated was during the months before my wedding. I was so determined to lose the extra weight and look all slim and fit in our wedding pictures that I actually managed to pull it off pretty decently.

Since then, I really haven't had good motivation (looking nice in sister's wedding - um yeah, but eating all the wedding-related goodies sounded better, looking nice in summer clothes - um yeah, but I already looked nice enough in skirts and it was not like I was going to frolic in a bikini).

Getting married again was not an option. So, while I exercised okay-regularly, I decided to view my higher-than-my-liking weight with an indulgent eye.

Still, when the work-place initiative rolled around, I was happy to join in. For, the higher-than-my-liking weight niggled in the back of my head and I now had a goal to work towards!

Thus started the regular exercising, walking and daily logging. To my delight, soon, my arms got leaner and my clothes fit better. Filled with hope, I stepped onto the weighing scale.

Noooooooooooooo! I weighed exactly the same as I had done earlier. To be sure, I weighed myself again the next day. Great! I weight 1 kg more than I had the previous day. Ugh.

At this point, I was quite sure the weighing machine had stopped working. So, in the time-tested Indian way of repairing stuff, I shook it, banged it a bit and stood on it again. Yeah - it still showed the same weight.

Maybe it was stuck. So I dragged S and made him stand on the weighing machine. He weighed *lesser* than his normal weight range. Grrr. S is a lucky fellow. The moment he starts any kind of cardio exercise, he drops weight like crazy. Thus, he is forever being greeted with "Oh you have lost weight" as soon as he decides to jog for like 3 minutes a day.

Anyway, it was obvious that it was not the weighing machine's fault. For some freaking reason, my weight refused to go down :-(. Yeah, I have heard that people usually gain weight after beginning regular expercise as muscle weighs more etc. etc. But by that logic, I must now look like a female Arnold Schwarznegger, which I don't.

I am now at my wit's end. I thought of throwing in the towel and replacing all my exercise and walking with uninterrupted net-surfing/book-reading while munching thattai and seedai from Grand Sweets.

But, upon introspection, I have decided to not let a mere weighing scale beat me. So I have now started a food dairy to keep track of what I am eating and see what I can do there. And if that does not work too, I am going to trash the weighing scale. Haha, take that, you sucker!

Any tips, gentle readers?

Health & Glow

When I was younger, I absolutely hated shopping. So much so that I sometimes had my sister select my clothes and other stuff because I did not want to go shopping. Of course, this choice came with inherent danger. For, my sister seemed to select my stuff depending on how our relationship was at some particular point. So, while sis has selected some beautiful churidhars and cute tops, I have also been saddled with green-colored jeans (I am NOT kidding you) and a post-box red school bag (gosh, my friends never let me live that down).

Now that I have grown older and wiser, I do enjoy shopping from time to time. But some places, I can *always* window-shop without getting bored. This list of places includes stores which sell cosmetics. Though I don't use much beauty stuff on a regular basis, I love looking at what's available. I will admit that I have a problem knowing when to stop when buying eye-stuff - especially since I hardly ever wear eye-makeup - but on the whole, simply browsing or spending on inexpensive bargains usually keeps me happy.

I had a few stores ear-marked for cosmetics-browsing back in the US. Over here, the obvious first choice was Health & Glow.

Or so I thought till I stepped into a Health & Glow. This was when I realized that the shop was lined end-to-end with sales-people. Really. Till date, I have never seen any other store where the sales-persons outnumber customers by a ratio of 5:1.

You would think that with so many sales-persons, the service would be outstanding. Again, no. First, any product you ask for is either a) Out of stock or b) Not arrived yet or c) not available in the size you need.

If at all the store does manage to carry the product, you will get to participate in the sales-person relay. This is the game where you tell the sales-person nearest the door what you want. This person relays the product name to the next sales-person in line. And on it goes till the sales-person nearest the shelf housing the product will randomly point towards the shelf and say "It is here". At this point, you can bend/ get down on your knees while you search and try to figure out which exact rack of the shelf has the product.

While you are thus hunting for what you actually need, the sales-persons will begin the let-me-try-to-sell-you-a-product carousel. This game consists of a different sales-person stopping by every 30 seconds to ask if you need "ABC conditioner" or "XYZ face cream" or "PQR body-scrub". If you get really annoyed and answer tersely, the carousel slows down to about 1 sales-speech a minute.

What if you just want to browse? Heh. Good luck making a trip around the store without tripping over at least five sales-persons.

Really - what exactly is Health & Glow's business strategy? Always show a full store by having a shop filled with sales-people? If that's the case, the sales-persons should at least not be wearing uniforms! Or if H&G is trying to prevent theft, won't it be cheaper to tag all the products with anti-theft devices instead of paying salaries to so many people?

All that H&G has achieved is to make me quit the store as soon as I buy what I actually need because I hate being hounded while shopping besides hating feeling claustrophobic. Thus, H&G misses out on any impulse purchase that I might have made had I been allowed to browse around the store in peace. While this is good news for my wallet, I doubt this is the kind of customer-reaction H&G was going for!

Thank you H&G, for curing me of my cosmetic-browsing tendencies!

Jana gana...

Who has sung the Indian national anthem which plays at the beginning of every 2011 ICC World Cup cricket match featuring India? Why on earth are they singing it soooooo slowly? It sounds more like something sung as an accompaniment to a funeral march (going by some of India's performances, perhaps it was appropriate but that is a whole different topic).

Especially during the last bit of Jaya he, Jaya he, it seriously sounds like the singers fell asleep to their own singing, woke up with a jerk, remembered they had not yet completed the song and finished singing the rest of it. There are such long pauses between each of the Jaya Hes!

Aren't anthems supposed to inspire you? And shouldn't that inspiration be to enthusiastically DO something rather than enthusiastically hunt for the nearest comfortable couch or bed for a snooze?

We have an awesome national anthem - is it too much to ask for it to not be sung by what seems to be a bunch of geriatric people woken up from deep sleep?

Update: Oh we won, we won! We won the match against Australia! I really should stop watching these matches - my heart isn't built to withstand such stress! But yeah, we won :-D :-D :-D!

Indane

Indane is a great Indian company which sells LPG cylinders. Indane considers itself to be God's gift to Indians and makes sure you treat it with respect. After you register for a new connection with them, you wait, wait, wait and continue waiting till it generously decides to bestow a new connection to your name. Oh, the connection is not free or anything, of course, you have to pay for it. That way you can pay and feel extremely grateful for getting something you paid for too. Win-win all the way.

Among the other rules for getting a gas connection, is the rule that you should not have any other gas cylinder in house when procuring a connection. So essentially, when you wait, wait, wait, wait and continue to wait, you are expected to subsist with either wood-stoves or induction stoves or just keep buying your food from hotels. Since most people are not insane (wood stoves are too smoky, induction-stoves - haha, with the highly reliable electricity available here, you are kidding, right?, hotels would be too expensive and unhealthy), they borrow gas cylinders from kindhearted friends or relatives while they wait for the new connection to appear.

We applied for our LPG connection in August last year. After months of telling us they were processing our application, we finally got approval in the first week of February this year. Yaay, we got it in just 7 months - aren't we extra blessed or what? Right during the application process, S told the gas agency folks that we had a borrowed connection with a borrowed regulator due to the long drawn-out process of getting a new connection. Shouldn't be a problem, S was told.

Two days ago, a gas inspector came over to our place. Not for inspecting that the kitchen is well-ventilated or that the gas cylinder would be kept in a safe place. No siree - that would actually make the inspection useful.Turns out, his only job was to make sure that there was no other gas connection in the house.

Since I had no intention of dragging the borrowed cylinder and hiding it under the bed as soon as I saw the gas-inspector at the door, the inspector saw the borrowed cylinder in all its glory. The inspector then magnanimously told me that he would not report the existence of the other cylinder so we could get our own connection. I could not believe how he could shamelessly declare that while Indane took its own sweet time to grant us a connection, we are not supposed to have any alternatives. However, I did not say anything. In retrospect, this was apparently a mistake*.

Today I call up the Indane gas-agency asking what happened to our first cylinder which was supposed to have been delivered hours after the gas-inspection took place. Then we got the news.

After seven months of making us wait, the Indane Gods had gotten angry with us. Since we had a gas cylinder in the house, they had decided to cancel our application.

But I totally get it - how dare we mere mortals use borrowed LPG till the Indane Gods decided our time to use a LPG cylinder had come? Stupid, stupid mortals! When you are registered with Indane, till Indane says so, you don't get to use LPG. And hear ye mortal, Indane shalt make you repent your presumptuous folly. No LPG connection for you!

Thus, as of today, we are no longer in line for receiving our own LPG connection from Indane.

All this is happening in a the country which is aiming to become a future superpower. Bless its little heart.

p.s. BTW, the name of the gas-agency is Kalarani and it is located in Mylapore. Just letting you know so you know upfront what you are facing in case you get cursed and get assigned to them!

* When S went to the gas agency, he said the employees there actually hinted something like we had not grovelled enough for the connection. I guess I should have shed copious tears of gratitude and kissed the gas-inspector's feet when he magnanimously said he would not report the borrowed cylinder. Totally my fault.

Weird tag lines

I simply *had* to write about this somewhere. When stocking our kitchen after we moved into our new place, one of the things we bought was maida (all purpose flour). Now, I am quite used to some desi products having funny-sounding names (kali mark, bovonto, seval-mark beedi (translated to cock-mark beedi), sudermani veti, poomer veshti, Bommi nightie etc. etc.). But the new love for having tag-lines associated with products have me reeling again.

So our maida had the brand name Naga. The tag-line? Naga - the glow of satisfaction.

??!?! So the maida glows or it glows when made into parathas or the Naga company owner's face glows when he sees the profits? No idea. What an irrelevant and weird tag line for an edible item I thought.

Then I saw this ad on TV today: Naga bubbly-bubbly maida. Complete with a lady singing about her bubbly bubbly son and bubbly bubbly husband and how they eat bubbly bubbly parottas made with bubbly bubbly Naga maida.

Ayooooo! I tell you, this company needs a new marketing team, stat.

You know you have been working too hard on new technology...

... when you google for a recipe for Vegetable Pulao and are surprised to not be flooded with the usual results featuring a cornucopia of foodie blogs and instead seeing generic food sites.

Then realize your search term was not "Vegetable Pulao recipe" like you thought you had typed but "Vegetable Pulao example"

Sigh. And they say working remotely is so much more relaxing.

Right.

Mummee

With the number of reality shows broadcast on Tamil television growing by the minute, the number of judges required for judging such shows is also going up exponentially. Thus, any person who is even slightly famous (read: acted in one movie) can be spotted "judging" one or the other of these reality shows.

S and I were watching one of these shows today while playing cards. The show featured participants who had some special talent to showcase. The best of these participants then got to go to the next round.

The judges were JM (male) and JF (female) both of whom have in all probability acted in 3 movies(combined total) so far. Which explains why I have absolutely no clue who these folks were. But I can tell for sure that both these judges were definitely over 20 years of age, quite possibly older. Definitely not 2 years old. This point is relevant later in the post.

On the show, one of the participants let hot candle wax drip all over himself (!!!!) and finished the act by dripping wax over his tongue (!!!!!!). Not surprisingly, JM and JF ooohed and aahed over his ability to endure pain. JM then jokingly told JF that she should try to drip wax onto her tongue too. JF refused pronto - obviously. Then JF volunteered that she would let a bit of candle wax drip over her hand instead.

The compere promptly brought over some lit candles to the judges table. JF was about to drip wax over her hand when she suddenly stopped and said in a childish voice, "Wait a minute. I need to ask mummee". I thought this was her way of releasing tension before doing some thing.

Nopes - JF was serious and her mother was in the audience. JF turned her head to mummy to wait for the response. A second later she said, "Mummee said no, so I am not going to drip wax."

I was gobsmacked. Which adult person asks their mother to give them permission to do something so trivial? On TV? Especially when they are judging some show? Unless of course, said person is 2 years old which JF was most definitely not.

I have heard that many adult actress's mothers come along for shoots. Never realized that this could be because darling daughter might die otherwise because she could not ask Mummee permission to breath.

p.s. In case either the channel or JF thought it was "Awww - so cute!", unfortunately, it was much more like "Ugh - so retarded!".

Follow up

When I made the move to India, a friend told me that the most important tool to I would need to settle down would be the ability to follow up. Though S was doing quite some running around even then, I was still in vacation mode and did not quite grasp the importance of that bit of advice. Now that I am in active settle down mode as well, I cannot believe just how much following up every single activity requires.

Example scenario: Placing an order for something.

Me: This is what I want. Can you please note down the order and deliver it within two days?
Salesperson: Sure, I will note it down as soon as I hang up.

Two days later.
 Me: What happened to my order?
Salesperson: Oh, when did you order?
Me: Two days ago.
Salesperson: Oopz, it wasnt registered. No problem madam, now I have noted it down.

Two  more days later.
Me: I hope you are sending my order today.
Salesperson: Madam, sorry, somehow we missed it.
Me:  !@#$%^*(!*
Salesperson: I really apologize. I will definitely send it to you in two days.

Yet another two days later.
Finally it arrives. Turnaround time for a 2-day thing is usually a minimum of 6 days.

-----
Now imagine doing this for every single thing - be it a gas connection or an internet connection or a plumber visit or a product demo or anything which involves depending on someone other than yourself. Do you wonder why I have lost half my hair due to sheer frustration?

Being out of India for close to 10 years has made me forget that this is how it happens in India. But seriously, who enjoys doing this? How come things which are taken for granted in most of the rest of the civilized world become Herculean tasks in India?

And to think my biggest worry when I moved to India was thinking about the weather and the traffic. How laughable.

Grumble-grumble

Anyone know how to uninstall that newly added annoying, annoying, annoying, annoying --> infinity left bar on the google search results? Google had such a clean look - why did they have to go and tweak it? At the very least, shouldn't they have made these bells and whistles optional? Sigh.

***

What do you do when someone asks totally inapproprite questions? I just overheard two colleagues talking. One of them, say A, was enquiring about the other's (say B's) baby. B made the usual blah-blah comments. Then A goes, "Are you done?". B looked confused and A helpfully clarified "I mean, are you done having babies or are you having one more?" The expression on B's face was priceless and she spluttered some response. Seriously, since when did someone's reproductive habits become topics of casual conversation? I have noticed that people of Asian descent are more likely to be the perpetrators - probably owing to the Asian culture of "everyone's business is my business as well".

***

I uninstalled the Facebook app for iPhone. I realized that my tolerance for reading daily status updates like "Yaay - my kids finished eating their bowls of cereal completely" and "Watzisname is twiddling her thumbs" is pretty low. Must say, my quality of life seems to have improved.

***

Phew - I sure sound grumpy! On the bright side, the weather today is gorgeous. A perfect California day - cloudless, sunny and pleasantly warm. Niccccceee!

Spotted

New kind of herb tea at work:


Am wondering if they are trying to send some kind of message here.

Faith

While driving to work this morning, I was hearing NPRs broadcast about the latest series of allegations of child abuse against priests in the catholic church. These priests are supposed to be people in God's service and they behaved worse than animals! Even more disgusting is the fact that their higher ups actually tried to protect the predators instead of stripping them of their titles and kicking them right out of their community. How will people continue to have faith in a religious institution if they know that even the most vulnerable and innocent members of it have no safety?

Not long ago, another of those Hindu Con men, sorry God-men, in India got exposed for what he was - a greedy, lustful charlatan. This is not the first time this is happening. Religious and spiritual figureheads being caught doing immoral, illegal and criminal activities is something which happens in India with even greater regularity than the coming of summer. In fact, the more I read such news, the more I wonder every time I hear about a new God-man or spiritual guru, as to when exactly that person will be found to be a fraud as well.

Given that such news has become a fact of daily life, I have never been able to look up to a religious or spiritual figurehead. Since childhood, I have always strongly felt that my religious faith and my spiritual inclination is something intensely personal between me and the supernatural force that I believe guides the universe. I do not need a "broker" to talk to God or a spiritual guru (the very term spiritual guru sets my fraud alarm bells ringing) to guide me onto the path of truth or whatever, thank you very much. Really, I cannot see what makes someone else, who is just as human as I am, closer to a higher power or more blessed or more divine because they claim that is so.

However, there are plenty of people, not necessarily illiterate or uneducated who totally believe in their gurus no matter what anyone else says. I was seeing a rather disgusting interview on the internet the other day where the fraudster Swami was giving some cock and bull story as to why he was inculpable and the interviewer was actually looking at him like he believed every word was true! Whoever came up with the phrase "blinded by faith" knew what they were talking about.

I guess for every hundred fraudster gurus out there, there might be a genuine guru. But if you were so enlightened and free of the materialistic world, why would you encourage people idolizing you and worshiping you as God? Isn't renunciation of all worldly wants the first step towards a "pure" life?

However, as I said, faith is something which is intensely personal and I have no interest in questioning other people's choices and beliefs especially since I get annoyed when people question mine. Live and let live without causing any harm to anyone is my motto.

Still, it does not stop me from feeling anger at the gullibility, naivete and faith of people which enables the fraudsters, every time such an expose happens.

You know work is ruling your life ...

- when some days you don't even get online to do the random surfing/blogging/blog-hopping/chatting after getting back home. And don't miss it (yup yup, I have not been kidnapped and replaced by my clone. Or so I think).

- when you haven't done one of your erstwhile favorite timepass activities - looking at your blog's visitor stats - in ages. And don't even realize it.

- when, given the looming deadlines, you start having second thoughts about the wiseness (is that a legal word?) of your decision to do the company-sponsored trip to attend a conference in a fun destination .

- When the only thing you can think of when talking about work is marvel over just how much you have to do.

- when you haven't posted in a while and yet glance anxiously at the clock to ensure that the latest whiny post is not going to take more than 10 minutes.

The last point is the reason why this post's quality is even lower than the already low post-quality threshold on this blog.

Hopefully I will get used to this madness soon and start churning out inanity more frequently for your reading pleasure :-)!

Cold

What's up with the Bay Area weather these days? It is so cold all the time. Which is kinda okay, since I always have the choice of staying put in my apartment, turning on my heater, curling up beside it and never going out. However, in order to be able to afford the above said heater and apartment, I need to work. Which brings me to my actual grouse.

Whichever sadist designed my workplace decided that the air conditioning in here has to be directly proportional (and if possible, be lower) to the coldness of the weather outside. The cubicles are chilly enough. But the conference rooms are even worse. Stepping into one of them is like getting into the freezer compartment of a refrigerator.

Today we had a day long meeting and I sat in the conference-room like a salted snail, shriveled into a ball with the least possible surface area. A colleague looked at me concerned and asked if I was really that cold. Another sympathetically observed that it does get colder inside the office as it gets colder outside.

I have been wearing more and more layers of clothing to work everyday. Other than making me look more and more like Tuntun, this has not made me feel any warmer. It is just a matter of time before I go all out and wear my woolen cap, gloves, muffler, thermals and winter-outerwear inside the office.

The cap should help muffle the sounds of pointing and laughing I guess.

Responsibility

What rot! I know I ought to know better than read such stupid articles - but here is an excerpt from an article which talks about a wife catching her husband cheating on her with her best friend. This is the advice a psychologist has for the philandering husband:

Instead of looking back through his marriage for the root of his problems, Dr. Robin tells David to think back even further. "All of us get wounded in childhood. You did not create this kind of self-destruction in your life, in your wife's life, in the lives of your children without a wound starting in childhood," she says. "Who pulled the rug from underneath you? That's what you've done to your family, and we learn that behavior somewhere. … Someone teaches us how to be mean."

I would like to know how it has become so common these days to absolve yourself of responsibility for your own actions and instead conveniently place the blame on something "bad" that *could* have happened eons ago. These are adults we are talking about - not mentally retarded two year olds. If a person cannot handle the weight of responsibility for their own actions, then perhaps they are not fit to operate as an adult and need to be put under constant care 24 hours a day.

This convenient offloading of responsibility irritates me no end. So am I entitled to be the biggest jerk of the century because, um, in my childhood some kid ate apple pieces from my snack-box when I was not looking? Maybe psychologists need to find deep and hidden meanings for ordinary mean and unacceptable behavior just so that they can stay in business.

I thought growing up involved learning to have control over who you are and trying to make yourself a decent member of society. Not just getting the right to vote, drive, smoke and drink.

Zzzzzz, yawn and such

To the four or so people (did I tell you, you ROCK :-)?) who still check my blog for updates: apologies for the even more infrequent posting of late. Believe it or not, I am currently on the infrequent-posting mode because I am sorely lacking on sleep :-(!

It all started off with my preparation to go to Boston about two weeks ago. I wound up with five and a half hours of sleep on the night before I left - what with the packing, prepping and everything. Turned out that would be the most amount of sleep I would get on any one night for the next five days. But the Boston trip was PLENTY of fun :-D! Which made it all the more awful when I returned to the bay on Sunday night and realized I would have to go back to work on Monday.

I tell you, last week was the longest of my entire life. I swear time halted for a few hours everyday. By Tuesday evening I already felt like I had been in the same week for more than 2 years. I desperately longed for the weekend so I could catch up on some much needed shut eye. On the brighter side, every night last week, I fell faaaaast asleep about 5 seconds after my head hit the pillow :-). When Friday evening finally came I was giddy with excitement, disbelief and relief. Yaay, the whole weekend to sleep!

Well - man proposes and God laughs. While Saturday went by with a mega overdose of lounging around, Sunday again turned out to be one of those fun but hectic days. Net result, I had to threaten myself (all over again :-() to get out of bed this morning even as my eyes stubbornly stayed shut.

I need another weekend stat. Any help, anyone?

Ya, I am done with the cribbing now. Ya, maybe not posting anything would have been a better idea probably :-).

Why o why!

What's with this obsession of owning accessories which proudly display the initials of the designer label manufacturing it? Like LV, C etc. The initials are not in just one discrete place. No siree! The darn bag/purse/suitcase has those initials stamped all over it. Case in point, look at this ad I recently spotted on the back-cover of a magazine:

I was wondering why Gorbachev had a cheap-looking GRT look-alike bag beside him till I realized it was an ad for Louis Vuitton and that the lettering on the bag was not "GRT" but "LV". For those who don't know, GRT stands for G.R. Thangamaligai, a popular jewelery store in Chennai. Depending upon the amount of money you spend at their store, as a "compliment", they give away free bags/wallets/purses etc. which are boldly emblazoned with the store logo. These "compliments" are renowned for their uselessness since the prominent GRT logo on those products render them pretty ugly, thus putting them into the I-won't-be-caught-dead-in-a-ditch-with-it category.

Now, if only GRT were smarter, it would associate the letters GRT with some "designer" label. I bet there would then be a flourishing market for the "designer" stuff and people would willingly pay for it. So what if it looks super-duper ugly, now the whole world knows I can afford to buy a designer brand! Yaaay!

I just don't get the logic :-(! Do you?

Forgotten

I created a new gmail account sometime back (four months ago, I guess). Now I need to remember the account name. No, my life does not depend on it. No one else's life depends on it either. But I am obsessed. I need to remember it RIGHT NOW. Fifteen minutes of hard-core thinking and trying has gotten me nowhere. I don't want to spend any more time on this. But I don't think I will find peace till I do remember.

Any help, anyone? Or is it high time I booked an appointment at the OCD-treatment clinic :-(?

Update, 4.27pm, Friday, May 11 2k7: Yaaaay! Yes, yes, yes! I remembered. Now my soul will be able to rest in peace :-P!

Aaaaaargh!

I admit - I love chewing gum. Whenever I feel the urge to chew on something because my mouth is feeling bored, it is usually chewing gum I reach for.

But, when I chew gum, it is with my mouth closed and making little noise. I don't go CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP with my mouth open as though I am a particularly bad-mannered Godzilla eating the human contents of a major city. Neither do most other people I know.

Then, why, oh why, do I land the misfortune of being seated right across a Godzilla like person? I can hear the CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP even as I type. If I lift my head a little, I can get the visual aspect of the scene too. Lord, can't people even be able to choose a seat in a library in peace without running a background check on the people sitting across?

I knew it, the Gods simply cannot take me trying to put in some amount of work on a Saturday afternoon. Grrr!

Now, if you will excuse me, I will go and hunt for another spot to sit :-(.

Grumpy

Last Sunday night, after a long time, I was feeling extremely non-thrilled about returning to work on Monday. I guess four days of major chilling out where the maximum exertion at any point involved getting out of the house to meet friends or go shopping can do that to you. Anyways, I was chatting with my mom on Yahoo voice chat (it is pretty good, btw) on Sunday night and I whined "I SO don't want to work tomorrow. I want some more vacation. Sob!" "Tomorrow is Monday and I have to work. Not fair." and on and on I went. Mom tried putting in some cheering up words. But I drowned it all out with my incessant whining. Finally, mom said "Go to work like a good girl and I will ping you over chat tomorrow morning after you reach work".

All at once I burst into laughter. It threw me back to my childhood, when I first started going to school. I was one of those clingy last-born kids and back then, going to school was the ultimate tragedy for me every morning. So when leaving in the morning, through my tearful farewell, mom would sometimes say "Go to school like a good girl and I will come and meet you during lunch time."

Some things never change, do they?

*************

After the ultrashort pre-thanksgiving work-week which went past, this work-week has been insufferably long. And for some strange reason, I have been extremely lacking in sleep too.

So last night, I decided to force myself to go to bed early. I think I finally went to sleep at 11.40p (my original plan had been for me to go to sleep at 9.00p sharp). I was happy in slumberland and was having a dream involving an argument with my sister. Suddenly an annoying sound got added as background music to the scene.

Even in my sleep, I was wondering how come such horrible music had been added. Then, it struck me that the the "music" was kind of familiar to me. I woke up with a start as I realized that it was the fire alarm of my apartment. I checked my cell phone clock - what the heck, it was 4.34a in the morning :-(!

Mechanically I pulled on my shoes, jacket, thrust cellphone into my handbag and went outside the apt. A neighbor outside kindly said that it was probably just a false alarm and I should just wait inside. But even my groggy head though of self-preservation. What if I went back inside and fell asleep and by some chance this alarm actually turned out to be real - the scenario did not sound good.

Apparently, only seven other ppl in the entire apt had thoughts similar to mine. Everybody else stayed put in their apts (or did not wake up to the sound, don't know). The bunch of the seven of us stood outside the building, watching the fire-truck arrive. After spending another ten minutes in the chilly November air, we were given the all-clear to go back home.

Of course, nothing works as good as bracing 33 degree Farenheit (close to 0 degree centigrade) air in clearing your head off sleep. As I reset my alarm to make up for the lost time, the last vestiges of sleep were deserting me.

Needless to say, I had horrible trouble getting back to sleep. First, my fingers felt cold, then my toes followed suit and finally my head felt cold too. This scenario repeated itself for a long time. Then my fingers started feeling too warm, followed by too warm toes and then by too warm head. Ugh, ugh, ugh! I don't know when I fell asleep but when my reset alarm rang at 7.45a, I felt like I hadn't slept the whole night.

If it is possible, I am even sleepier today than I was in the past two days. Best laid plans - hmph! I don't think I can really be blamed for being irritable, grumpy, moody and cross today. I have been trying my best to needle anyone unfortunate enough to communicate with me :-(.

This week has gone on forever. I want my weekend right now!

When I whine, I whine in style.

The day before thanksgiving

Thanksgiving and Christmas in the USA is like Diwali in India. I realized that all over again last week when, at the end of my fitness class, the instructor wished us all a very happy thanksgiving, a wonderful appetite and lots of nice food.

All at once, out of the blue, I was hit by a huge wave of homesickness. No matter how much I enjoy the holiday season here, it will never be the same as celebrating festivals at home in India. For the simple reason, I have not celebrated thanksgiving or x'mas since childhood and for me they do not hold any major significance other than getting a few days off from work! That day, I sorely missed celebrating a Indian festival in the traditional (read, celebrating in India) way for five whole years (is it really that long?). I just wanted to exchange thanksgiving for Diwali with my family in India.

Don't get me wrong here - I am not one of those morose party-poopers. As I said, I love the festive spirit anywhere. Add the cheerful crowds, the lovely lights, the decorations and you can't help but feel happy. I also try to take part in the celebrations as much as I can. Just that it never affects me quite the same way as seeing twinkling lamps and hearing the loud crackers and stuffing my face with lot-more-than-good-for-me sweets and snacks.

*Excuse me while I contemplate a bit.*

Okay, that's done. And I realize all over again that most of what happens to me is a direct result of conscious choices I have made and so I should not whine too much.

Actually, though the post does not sound that way, I am currently in a wonderful mood :-). I think the thought of four days off from a recently kinda hectic work schedule has a lot to do with it :-D!

To add to it, everyone around me is in a cheerful mood today and smiling. My manager treated me to a wonderful lunch and then encouraged me to go home early. "Don't work too hard today - you can just sit and surf the net after lunch if you want to"!

Me being very duty-conscious and everything decided to take him right at his word :-P! And then, to take it to the next level, I decided to sit and write a blog-post at work (not that I have not done that before, I have - but this post is written with a super clear, surf-excel-clean kind of conscience) :-D!

Ah, don't I love the holiday season!

Happy thanksgiving, folks :-D!

Update: Okay, doesn't look like I am going to spend the rest of my afternoon surfing :-(. There are 'issues' to be resolved. Oh well, you don't get paid to surf the net or to write blog posts :-)!