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?

On a positive note - Azzuri Bay

Of late, this blog seems to have turned into a whine-fest. So, instead of writing about another horrible dining experience which followed yesterday's already bad experience (in case you are curious, don't worry, that will be written about too), I will write about a good dining experience I had.

Time: A couple of months ago. The occasion: S's birthday.

After considering and tossing several restaurant suggestions, S said, "Hey, why don't we go to the other restaurant in the Crimson Chakra complex?" That seemed like a good idea.

Crimson Chakra is a restaurant quite close to our home. However, it took my cousin A's recommendation before we finally paid it a visit. We had a good experience. We also noticed that the same complex housed two more eateries and decided that we would come back to visit those too some time. One of the two restaurants was what S was referring to.

We headed out to the Crimson Chakra complex. The other two restaurants were Cornucopia and Azzuri Bay. We picked Azzuri Bay which serves Mediterranean and Chinese cuisines. A lift whizzed us upstairs. We entered the dining area and were greeted with the sight of a pleasant and spacious arrangement of tables and chairs. But what took my breath away was the awesome wall which was entirely made of clear, glass windows. And from the windows, was a beautiful view of Adyar river and its surrounding areas. Whoo! Who knew Adyar river could look so beautiful!

Adyar River

We got a lovely table for two right beside the window-wall. I felt like I was seated on a tree-house. First, two iced popsicles were placed in front of us - what a cute summer treat! We then ordered our food. Food arrived promptly and was delicious. The portion sizes were quite big (S, as always, had the duty of finishing up all the stuff I transferred to his plate from mine. However, as I said, the food was delicious, so no complaints from S)!

Great ambiance, great food. But what impressed me most was the impeccable service. Our water glasses were never left unfilled. The waiter was patient with answering all the questions we had about the menu and even offered suggestions. The servers were attentive without being in in the way. All this service with a pleasant smile that did not falter.

We left a glowing recommendation in their guest book and a generous tip. What a lovely experience!

Thus, it was not very surprising that when sis visited about a month ago, I immediately suggested Azzuri Bay as a meeting place for lunch.

Sis was delighted with the great view and enjoyed the food as well. This time round, I was smart and suggested that we share an appetizer and an entree - even this left us quite full. Needless to say, we had another pleasant dining experience.

If you are in the Adyar area, check out Azzuri Bay. Food is a little on the expensive side but the portion sizes are generous besides the entire experience making it well worth it.

p.s. See, I don't whine always :-).

p.s.1 Nopes, I am not affiliated in anyway with Azzuri Bay and they are not paying me to write this review!

No Kumarakom for you!

There is this sit-down restaurant near my house in Adyar which serves Kerala cuisine. Kumarakom it is called. We once had food delivered from this place, with the result that neither of us cared for it much.

However, we read a couple of good reviews for the restaurant and it being near to our place (and thus, a potential can-take-guests-to place) and all, thought we should give it another chance.

Last Saturday was the day. We went to the restaurant and were shocked for find a crowd for more than 35 people waiting outside the rather small restaurant. No matter how much the restaurant host insisted that the wait time was 20 minutes (yeah right), it was quite obvious that we would not be seeing food for at least an hour. So we decided to eat elsewhere.

Today, we decided to be smart and call up Kumarakom in advance to make a reservation. Which was when we were told that the restaurant does not take reservations. Oh well. We then said we lived quite close to the restaurant and requested that our name be added to the waiting list. After all, the current wait time was 20 minutes (yeah right, again) and we would be there in 20 minutes.

Which was when we were told that our names would be added to the list. However, as soon as we showed up at the restaurant in person, our names would again be added to end of the list and we could wait as usual. Huh and double huh!?!

The husband sweetly asked why seeing our faces was very important to the process of adding us to that list and what pleasure the restaurant got out of making us stand and wait outside their restaurant when we could wait in the comfort of our own home. We only got a non-committal mumble in response.

Which is how, we are giving Kumarakom a miss today. No promise of tasty food can make up for such arrogant customer service.

No more Kumarakom for us. And, no regrets.

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!

So, you must be the elder sister...

When you and your sister are just a couple of years apart, it is a fairly normal occurrence for a person you have just met to incorrectly figure out who the elder sibling is. Especially, if you, like me, are taller as well as more broadly built (and I admit, weightier) than your elder sibling.

So, from the time I overtook my sis w.r.t height, I have heard my fair share of "Oh, you must be the elder sibling." Hearing it once was annoying enough but some of the strangers persisted with "Oh, but I thought you are the elder sibling. Aren't you?" even after I had corrected them the first time. Ooooh, you caught me! I am one of those weird people who pretend to be the younger sibling when they are not! Grr.

I know it shouldn't have irritated me so much. Especially since my sister, knowing how it grated on me, never took these insults (according to me) as an opportunity to tease me and instead was quite sweet about it. Besides, people thinking you look older than you are is quite low on the list of life's tragedies. Still, it rankled every time it happened.

With time, I reconciled myself to grinning at every wedding or family function or lots-of-strangers occasion I went to with my sis when I was greeted with "Oh, you must be P's (my mom) elder daughter" even as I inwardly ground my teeth. For, you see, I always translated this innocuous remark to mean "You look like the old woman of the mountains".

Then, yesterday, at a family party, a clueless relative by marriage stopped by, looked at me and my sis and exclaimed, "Oh, you must be P's daughters." Looking at me, she said, "I remember you." Then, turning to my sis she said, "I don't remember you though. You must be the younger sister who lives in the US." Sis pointed to me and mildly said,"No, that's her. She used to live in the US but moved back. I live in Mumbai."

Clueless lady could not get a clue still. Ignoring me completely, she continued enthusiastically talking to my sis, "Oh, you are from Mumbai? No wonder. You have that Mumbai look.", meaning it as a compliment. Evidently, according to Clueless, not only did I look older, I also looked like some fresh-off the bullock-cart villager. Gee thanks!

Obviously, I was annoyed. That was not the surprising thing. The surprising thing was, after a couple of minutes of bristling, I thought about it. a) I had no idea who Clueless was. b) There was no reason why what she thought about me needed to affect me at all. c) I thought I looked fine. d) Life is too short to be wasted over clueless people.

Two minutes after this introspection, I forgot all about the incident(till now) and totally enjoyed the rest of the party.

I tell you, this is the best part about growing older. Things which seemed like tragedies even a few years ago, no longer bother me much. The older I grow, the more secure and confident I am getting about myself and the less I base my worth on what others think of me. Especially when these others constitute people who have little or no role to play in my day-to-day life.

I must say, life's good :-)!

p.s. For heaven's sake though, if you meet siblings, wait for them to bring up the topic themselves instead of playing the "Are you the older one?" guessing game. Being mistaken for the older sibling is a pet peeve of many younger siblings I know!

Tamilnadu election results

Note: This was supposed to have been posted before noon today (May 13, 2011). Unfortunately, blogger decided today would be a good day to go into read-only mode. Thus you were deprived of my excellent (and now, dated) writing till now.

*****

And so, after a whole month of suspense, vote counting for the Tamilnadu Assembly elections was today. S and I turned on the TV first thing in the morning. Most of the Tamil channels were busy broadcasting the preliminary results. We surfed through all of them and were amused to find that the "results" varied widely depending upon which channel we were watching. Essentially, depending on which party's mouthpiece a particular channel was, the number of seats garnered by that party would be higher. LOL!

Thus, we resorted to watching an English news channel which seemed to be broadcasting something closer to the truth (as in, the results were an average of what was shown on the party channels).

But around 9.00am or so, it became quite clear that the AIADMK front was heading for a sweep. And the DMK party channels could no longer keep broadcasting their elevated numbers for DMK. So, some of the DMK party channels dejectedly switched to telecasting a movie or regular programming instead while the others somberly started sticking to the real results! Meanwhile, Amma clearly believes in rubbing her opponents faces in the mud. Because, Jaya TV (the AIADMK party's channel) for quite a while kept displaying such a low number of leads for DMK, in single digits in fact (the actual count then was closer to 33)!

Now that the numbers have pretty much coalesced and the final results almost decided, all channels are finally beginning to broadcast similar results. And with that, the last bits of the voting tamasha is coming to an end.

I admit, I enjoyed the whole election process a lot more than I thought I would.

Now, let's hope that this change of government brings at least some good news for the people of Tamilnadu. The general thinking seems to be that given the magnitude of scams the DMK front has been involved in, it would be difficult for the AIADMK to match up. Ergo, AIADMK will form a less corrupt and better government (I know, excellent logic for choosing a government. Still it trumps voting for a party because they promised a free food processor or some such)!

I really hope that Amma proves to be worthy of this trust!

Summer

How can I call myself a self-respecting fairly newly-returned NRI if I don't sigh, moan and complain about the weather? So, here goes!

It is so darn, horribly, terribly and infinitely frickin' hot. I now totally believe our bodies are made of of 98% water. Nothing else can explain the amount of sweat I shed every day and the fact that I still haven't run out of sweat. Or maybe it can be explained by the amount of water I drink every day. I drink like a camel. And still can put away more glasses of water at any given point in time. Phew! Summers in Chennai are really, truly HOT.

On the brighter side, with the advent of summer, a whole host of summer fruits have been showing their faces: mangoes, jackfruits, palmyra fruits (nongu), watermelon - yumm! Having to face summer in order to enjoy them even starts to feel worth it when one of those slices of deliciousness are sliding down one's throat!

But, remember that post from before? Kindly ignore the advice in that post at least till August unless and otherwise you are a masochist. The new advice is: at the first sign of a day-long power cut, put on your walking shoes and head out of the house to the nearest fully air-conditioned mall. Do not come back home till you are reasonably sure that electricity has returned to your house.

Like Mom sarcastically said, "The government is so nice. They force us to save on our electricity bills by not supplying any electricity. Then they also make sure we get our daily exercise by forcing us to walk around the mall". Dad quipped, " Yeah, I am planning to send a bill to the government to get reimbursement for all the money I spent as a result of all that mall walking!" See, we can now laugh through our frustration. So much character building, I tell you!

With the temperatures hitting 42C in the past few days, there is finally something I very, very, very much miss about not being in the US. The awesome California bay area weather. Yeah, those were good weather times!

p.s. In the last sentence, I had wanted to link to some post in which I waxed eloquent about the bay area weather. Then I realized, the posts I have about the bay area weather are the ones where I complain about how it was not to my exact specification! Truly, you never fully realize what you had till it is gone!

Vaanam - the review (sort of)

Before you start judging me for watching Chimbu movies in the theatre, this is what happened:

S had wanted to watch the Tamil movie Ko. Last night, he said he had booked tickets for the movie. Late this morning, we went to the theatre. We were well in time for the pre-movie trailers. A couple of movie trailers later, the trailer for the Tamil movie Vaanam popped up. The theatre was filled with ear-piercing shrieks and whistles. Wow! I turned to S and whispered wonderingly, "I can't believe a Chimbu movie is getting so many whistles for the trailer itself!"

Which was when S turned to me and grinned broadly, "This is not the trailer, this is the movie. We are watching Vaanam. I booked tickets for Vaanam, not Ko."

I think my face became smaller by 3 sizes. For, a) I hate the gimmicky lyrics and consequently the song "Evandi unnai petthan" in Vaanam and had mentally made a note to never watch the movie even if it was featuring anyone other than b) Chimbu, whose movies I think are usually cheap (VTV being the exception). Furthermore, the movie featured c) Anushka, whom I fondly call Anushka maami coz I think she looks like a maami with those big-round kohled eyes.

And now, S had successfully managed to make me sit in the theatre to watch a movie featuring all of the above. Aaaaargh! S, how could you!!

Anyhoo, after some 10 minutes of bristling (and thus happily not paying much  attention to the totally gratuitous opening song and subsequent fight sequence), I decided that I might as well make the best of a bad thing and settled down to watch.

And wound up being pleasantly surprised. The movie has five parallel tracks and of course, one knew that all the twines would eventually meet but it was quite interesting to watch how events would unfold to make that happen.

The stories are multiplexed with one another and hence, before you get too bored with one track, the next track is on. There are some funny one-liners in between to keep you laughing when things become too serious.

But the thing which I found was a very refreshing change from typical Indian movies was that Anushka (one of the more popular heroines in Tamil cinema now) was cast as a prostitute. That was not the big deal. The big deal was that she was unapologetically cast as one.

Otherwise, all Indian movies I have seen, which dare to feature currently popular heroines as prostitutes invariably have a long flashback about how a dead/alcoholic father, a mother racking with whooping cough, a crippled brother, an unmarried sister and numerous other pathos-ridden family members were the reason why the virtuous heroine took it upon herself to become a prostitute. No such stories for Anushka. She just says "I have no education and I took this up as a profession." and that's all there is to it.


Finally, even commercial Indian cinema seems to be growing up! Actors (especially female ones) need not always have to maintain their "good" image - they are acting in a movie and what role they play in a movie has no reflection on their real life!

On the whole, the movie was fast-paced and decent entertainment. While I wouldn't urge you to run out and watch the movie ASAP, it is definitely not something to be avoided either. If you voluntarily go or if you are caught in the theatre like I was, be happy and enjoy the ride!

p.s. In case you are wondering, both Chimbu and Anushka acted fine and I was not irritated by either :-).

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!

Of patti and crochet

I have often been told that looks-wise, I take after my patti (paternal grandmother). As in, I have a similar face-cut and smile. Note I said similar and not same. I wish it was the same because patti is one of those lucky people who have naturally smiling faces. Thus, it is very pleasant and calming to look at her. Me, er, not so much. In fact, I have been told by people who had the misfortune of waking me up from deep sleep that I have looked like the dragon that St.George slayed. Sigh.

Anyhoo, patti is also super-energetic (again, unlike me. I think I will have checked myself into a retirement home by the time I turn 40). She would rather be doing something than simply sitting around. Thus, whenever she visits, my  mom specifically sets aside tasks for her so that she does not feel bored.

Recently, I heard that patti had taken up crocheting again (she used to be an avid crocheter when she was younger). When she came to visit a few weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to know that she had crocheted a napkin for me.

Guess what she had made it out of? Off-white cotton thread which had been used to string flowers together! Apparently she was unable to get hold of regular crochet thread and hence landed upon this improvisation.  Talk about recycling!

However, patti's inner artist rebelled at the idea of leaving the off-white napkin without a border - "It looks unfinished", she said. Thus, she and mom hunted the house till they found some old leftover woollen thread. Using that, patti happily crocheted a maroon border around the it and gave the lovely napkin to me.

I promptly decided that it was too pretty to be used as a napkin and decided to use it as a part of the centerpiece for the coffee table in our house. Here it is:

See how subtly I worked in the showing off?

S and me were both super impressed by patti's enthusiasm and thus set off on a hunt for regular crochet thread for patti. After some googling and calling around, we found a store and bought her several balls of colored woollen thread. Patti looked like a kid receiving candy when we gave it to her - she just couldn't stop grinning!

I hear that she is busy coming up with new things to crochet. I can't wait to see them!