As the year winds down...

I am off to Seattle in a couple of hours. The paranoid person that I am, I have packed my entire collection of winter clothes (plus a collection of summer clothes to wear under them - more layers are better, no?) after hearing reports of snow there. When I looked at all the stuff I had gathered to be packed, I felt like I was packing to move out of my apartment :-)!

After the longest time, I actually have check-in baggage while traveling local. To think that all this drama is for a matter of four measly days - heheheh :-)!

See ya all next year! May the year 2008 be the bestest year of your life yet :-)!

Happy New Year folks :-D!

Be good and safe on New Year's eve!

Benefits of blogging - updated

Remember that tag I did sometime back? An "interview" about my blog? This one? Well, it had a question in it:

Do you think there is a real benefit for blogging?

I gave some response at that time. But now I think I have the correct answer to the question: Blogging gets me homemade polis :-D!

Here is how:

A few days ago, conversation on gchat between fun blogger Rads and me went like this (English translation of Tamil phrases in italics):

Rads: oy
howdy do
i made polis ;)

me: Good good :-)
enakku venum :-( (I want some too)

Rads: bobbattus = bolis

me: can you fedex some over?
pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaseeeee

Rads: sure
address tha (give your address)

me: aiii nejamaava :-D? (yippeee, really?)

Rads: yes re
address give
yea

me: ooooooooh super cool
aiii (yippeeee)

Rads: give giev :)

me: wait me sending address immediately

**********

Sure enough, yesterday in my mail box, I found a USPS package with Rads' return address on it. In a super sweet gesture, Rads had actually sent the polis I had asked for :-)! I broke into a huge grin and opened it. Inside were nestled three delicious polis :-). They taste absolutely super-duper delicious. Thank you so much Rads :-D!

I tell ya, if blogging is indirectly giving me such yummy returns, I should seriously consider taking it up full time ;-D!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays folks :-)!

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.

Random weekend notes

- This kinda news might be getting old now, but I met another blogger friend past weekend :-D - Pratap (yeah that's The Kid). It was great to finally meet him in person - he is just like I thought he would be and it was super fun :-)! Seriously, it is awesome to meet people for the very first time and yet feel like you have known them forever. Viva la blogs (and la email, la gchat and la phone) :-)!

- I watched Ajith's Billa. Man, that guy needs some serious exercise - or at least should stop wearing fitting shirts when he has a gently protruding pot belly. He looked like a majestic temple elephant in the dance sequences - I presume his substantial girth precluded fast dancing. The movie itself was unintentionally hilarious - everyone in the theater was ROFL-ing even during many of the so called serious scenes!

- I put my hands on a Wii for the very first time. It is SO addictive - a whole bunch of hours went by without me noticing it till I realized with a start that it was past midnight. I am now actively encouraging the Wii-owning friend to invest in some more games - hehehehe ;-)!

- What is it with the Bay Area this December? A whole bunch of people I know are coming down visiting in the next few weeks! I was feeling sympathy for the poor sods who were going to come to California thinking it is going to be a tropical paradise - only to get a rude shock on encountering the cold weather here. That is, until the next point happened.

- Pratap (who is from the Midwest) showed up in a half-sleeved t-shirt. Ah, he must be thick skinned, I smugly thought. Then I met V and her family from Washington state. All of them, including her 3-year-old daughter, were dressed up like it was summer. V gushed, "Oh man, what awesome lovely weather you folks have here!" - while I gaped at her from my sweater-jeans-shoes attired self. Oh well, at least all of them conceded that night-time was "a bit" chilly.

- I caught up with V after a reallllllly long time. V is an old friend of mine and of course, it was great :-D.

- I am seriously short on sleep now. However a loooooooooong 4-day weekend is right around the corner. Eeeeeeehaaaaaw :-D!

Public Service Announcement

My dear friend Shilpa has resurrected her blog - yaaay! Just thought old readers of this blog who used to follow her blog too might be interested in the info.

Actually, the real reason is I thought I should do something constructive for her blog after pestering her so much to restart posting!

Welcome back, girl :-D!

Poker

A while ago, I had gone to see the latest James Bond movie - Casino Royale. All through the opening credits, I wondered why so much animation based on playing cards was being shown. Sometime into the movie, casinos and playing cards came into the picture sporadically. I still did not make the connection. Finally, when James Bond and the villain started playing a high stakes poker game, it finally hit me - the casino in Casino Royale referred to a gambling casino (duh!) and the cards in the opening credits referred to the poker game (ya, I can be pretty slow that way).

Despite this flash of enlightenment, from that point onwards, I could no longer fully follow the movie. You see, though I have dabbled in a few card games (trump, rummy, judgement, literature, ass and so on) poker is a card game which, though I have heard a lot about, I have never actually played and hence could not follow.

While the movie progressed with lots of excitement (for the people on screen) when words like full house and flush cropped up, I was totally lost. The only full house I knew of was when I had a lot of guests over and flush was something I did whenever I used the restroom. This considered, I just decided to decipher the results of the game in the movie based on the reactions of the actors.

Once I got back home, I looked up poker on the ever-dependable Wikipedia. Of course, nothing made much sense. Nevertheless, I dutifully forwarded the article to my parents, who were going to watch Casino Royale the next day so that at least they could enjoy the movie better. And soon forgot all about learning to play poker.

Yesterday, I went over to visit some friends. They had a poker set and we decided to play. V and me were new to poker having never played before. R and S were three games old and being more experienced, were our instructors. They explained the basic rules of play. Then, to help us all with determining our hand, we opened the wiki page with the hand rank details and used it as reference.

To make it more interesting, the four of us decided to start off with a five-buck-a-person supply of chips. After a trial round which V promptly won ("Beginner's luck!" R and S said), we started proper play.

None of us being pros or even seasoned players, each of us settled into our own style of playing. R would keep raising for no special rhyme or reason - his strategy seemed to be based on blind luck rather than anything else. It did not help that his luck supply was running rather low yesterday :-). S would get super excited whenever she got a good hand and would bet very high early on and thus cause everyone else to panic and fold immediately :-). V would keep raising the stakes. When the time came for him to actually show his hand, he would frantically start looking for all permutations and combinations which might lead to a winning hand. I was playing conservatively. If I stayed long enough in a round, it usually meant that I had something to show for it.

Initially, other than poor R, the rest of us seemed to be doing decently. Then, much to R's and V's dismay, the chips started vanishing from their piles and reappearing on mine or S's. Still, there was a lot of good natured teasing, plotting and joking going on. All the while, the excellent homemade fudge and fudge topping made by S kept us company. It was so much fun and we played on for a really long time.

At the end of the day, I had won the most (yaaay!) followed closely by S. R and V had, of course, contributed everything of what S and I won :-D! I happily said that we should do this more often ;-). V declared that the next time I came over I would probably be reaching for the poker set even before I took off my footwear - hehehehe!

So now I am a poker pro (!?!) . Say "poker" and watch me talk with great proficiency about Straight Flushes, Two pairs and what not.

And yet another item on the list of things I have always wanted to learn checked :-).

A sad hairy tale

Last week, I got it into my head that I should definitely cut my hair before the end of next week (December 9). Why, you may ask? I just decided it should be so for no particular reason. So I called up the salon to make an appointment with my favorite hair stylist, N. It turned out that N was on vacation and would be back only on the 15th of December which was beyond my hair-cut deadline. So though I had misgivings (I really need to start listening to these nagging doubts) I scheduled an appointment with another stylist for last Saturday.

Saturday noon I set off with great enthusiasm to the salon - phew, after months of long (by my standards) hair, finally I was going to get a new look with shorter hair. The new stylist, S, was a very friendly lady. She chatted about general stuff with me and then asked what I wanted her to do with my hair. So I said "Please cut it to shoulder length, with layers around the face".

She was aghast at the amount of hair I wanted to chop off and literally wailed "But why? You have such beautiful hair!" I said I was bored of my long hair. She confirmed with me again before starting to cut, "Are you sure you want to cut this?"

When I confirmed with a "Yes" again, she said more to console herself than me "Oh well, it will grow back." Then the cutting began.

She seemed to be doing lots of "different" kind of cutting with her scissors. Though I was interested by this new style of cutting, I guess I must have unconsciously looked alarmed for S reassured me, "Don't worry, I am just giving you the layers." At that point, my hair was still wet and was looking funky and cool. "Nice!" I thought "Hmm, maybe I should make S my regular hairdresser instead of N."

Then the cutting was done and she started to blow-dry my hair. Which was when I looked at myself in the mirror again and thought "Okay, my hair looks weird now. But maybe it will look better when she is done." Then, after some more drying and styling, S declared she was done and added (I wonder how much effort it took for her to keep a straight face), "You look so beautiful now!"

I glanced at myself in the mirror. Right! I looked like a Roman gladiator with a hair helmet :-(! Finally, I could understand the concern S had before she began to cut my hair! Did S have a premonition of this butchery? There was nothing left to be said so I just tipped her and left.

So right now, I have the ignominy of having hair which has such a weird shape that I can't quite describe it in words. I cribbed about this flop show to L and V during lunch today. L was sweet and told me that it did not look too bad and anyways it would grow out. V gleefully chimed in and chortled, "But you do know that a bad haircut looks even worse when it is growing out. Ha ha!" Sigh!

Now I need to locate my supply of hair clips so that I can hold all the chopped bits of hair in place so that even if it looks dowdy it at least looks non funny :-(.

And in commemoration of this event, here is the famous sher from Maine Pyar Kiya:

Yeh zulfain hain tumhari,
Ya resham ke jaal!
Kitne khush-naseeb hain woh
Kitne khush-naseeb hain woh
Choohe
Jinhone katre tumhare baal

Sob :-(!

Lessons learnt:
* Listen to nagging doubts.
* Don't have stupid artificial deadlines.
* Wearing scarves/woollen caps when going out might be the way to go this winter.
* If I want to get my hair butchered, I should at least go to a place which will do it at a much lesser cost.

L.A. Times - 1

This thanksgiving, the chosen vacation destination was Los Angeles. An undergrad friend's wedding at the Malibu Temple was the occassion.

Some highlights about the wedding:

- The wangled invitation which arrived about two months ago threw me into a fit of excitement - aiii, at long last, a chance to show off my saree :-D! I finished the accessory shopping immediately - I doubt even the bride was that prompt - heheheh! I later found that pretty much all the women folk had reacted with the same glee at the opportunity to show off desi clothes :-)!

- The wedding was one of the most fun ones I have ever been to. The crowd had a higher percentage of friends than relatives. The friends took the liberty of yelling out their observations right during the ceremony and the bride and groom reacted in real time :-). The entire atmosphere was relaxed and happy.

- The priest was a white guy complete with kudumi et al :-D. He chanted all the mantras in heavily accented Sanskrit followed by English translations. He conducted the ceremony pretty well.

- The wedding food was - WOW! Just like wedding food back in India. I think my friends and I were responsible for finishing up roughly half of the food in the buffet :-)!

- This being Amrikka and everything, the bride's and the groom's family had to pitch in together to decorate the mandapam, do the party favors etc. The end result was lovely and looked quite professional.

- All of us had a tough time digesting the fact that S was getting married. But the radiant bride and the happy groom were on stage for all to see :-).

- The wedding ceremony itself was an amalgam of customs from various parts of India. In fact there were some customs I have never seen before. For e.g., the couple did only four circles around the fire instead of the traditional seven. However, afterwards, the priest made seven small piles of rice on the floor. Each pile apparently represented some quality and the bride and the groom had to scatter the each pile together with their right feet (which part of India is this custom from?).

- In the after-the-wedding party at the bride's parents' place, it became obvious that the bride's family is super talented in the fine arts department. Everyone in their family seemed to know how to sing, play violin, keyboard, guitar - you name it! My friends and I were proud displayers of our clapping talent :-(. However, R in our group saved our collective (ahem) honor to some extent by playing the flute very well :-)!

- I ate so much food that day. The weirdest part was, I was bursting at the seams at the end of each meal time. And yet was ravenously hungry by the time four hours were up. My guilt was somewhat assuaged by the fact that everyone I met said I had become super thin - yaay :-D. (unfortunately this comment was later altered to "You look super thin in a saree. In jeans you don't look all that thin." - sigh)

- The wedding marks the first time I have attended any undergrad classmate's wedding. Finally - phew!

Finally, tip: Never ever try travelling long distance on the day before thanksgiving. It took us four hours to to get to a destination which is normally 2 hours or lesser away :-(!

Om Shanti Om

So this Diwali, the two big Hindi movie releases were Saawariya and Om Shanti Om. For some reason, Saawariya did not appeal to me at all at any time. Om Shanti Om (OSO) was slightly higher on the probability of watching scale inspite of the wariness I felt after seeing Shah Rukh Khan's "Though I may have six pack abs, I look like I am suffering from a terminal disease" OSO stills.


Yesterday, I finally watched OSO. Before going to the movie, I thought that at best OSO would be a brainless and logicless but entertaining movie. And boy, was I right! For a change, inspite of starring SRK in one of his more typical roles, the movie turned out to be total value for money entertainment-wise.

Some thoughts:

- Deepika Padukone looked stunningly beautiful in the first half of the movie. I hadn't been impressed much with her after seeing the movie preview stills and had slotted her into the plastic bimbette category. But turns out she can act as well!

- SRK's much talked about six pack abs did look great on screen. Man, he must have put in quite some effort to get into them into that rock-solid shape. However, one of the scenes in the "item" song featuring him had him dancing in a wet white shirt (!?!) with a seductive look on his face while buckets of water were being flung on him. I found it weird and totally hilarious. My friend V says that was meant to be a parody. Well...

- The Deewangi song featured pretty much the entire Bollywood film industry. It was more like a "Who's who" parade of Bollywood stars and starlets. I had an interesting time trying to recall who the various Ms. Watzisnames and Mr.Whosthats were :-)!



- I think they must have spent a total of 500 rupees on Deepika Padukone's costumes in the second half of the movie. The costumes mostly looked like a bunch of handkerchieves held together at strategic places. I was wondering about the number of safety pins it must have taken to keep those wispy clothes from falling off.

- Was "The Alchemist" credited anywhere in the movie? Some repeatedly used lines from the movie were totally taken from the book!

- This is one of the most ridiculous pieces of news I have read in a while. I can understand Manoj Kumar being upset at being caricatured in OSO. But how the heck did nationalism and patriotism come into the picture? I am going to use Manoj Kumar's logic now and I hereby declare I am a patriot. Henceforth, anyone who makes fun of me is unpatriotic and anti-national. You have been warned :-P!

- I really liked the ending credits where all the major contributors to the movie got to walk the red carpet for their fifteen seconds of fame :-).

Verdict: Can be watched once for sure. Just walk in expecting to watch an authentic masala movie complete with reincarnation, songs, mother sentiment et al :-)!

In Person

Finally, it happened. After about two and a half years of fairly regular blogging, for the very first time yesterday, I met face to face a fellow-blogger whom I have come to know through blogging :-)! I guess it was only appropriate that the blogger was SK, one of the very first readers of my blog :-)!

After I met her, I realized just how familiar you can become with a person just by reading their blogs. After a single hello, we were chatting nineteen to a dozen just as if we had known each other for a very long time :-)! It was good fun to finally see in flesh and blood a person I have read about so often. A very nice experience altogether.

Which is why I am now looking forward to other such meetings :-)!

p.s. Actually there were three bloggers (including me) there - but I have known Spark from before, so he does not count. Even though he was the reason why the meeting with SK happened in the first place :-).

p.s.1. I met SK's other half, K, too - now I also know the person she writes about so often :-).

p.s.2. SK looks just like her Orkut profile pic and sounds just as sweet as she does on her audio posts :-)!