Wishes

Happy Diwali :-)! May your Diwali be sweet, sparkling and wonderful!

Diwali special:

Tamil colleague stopped by my desk and whispered, "This is for you" as she handed over a ziploc bag with homemade murukku and laddoo in it. She then apologetically added, "Keep it out of sight - I brought stuff only for you!" My face lit up like a thousand lamps as I grinned back my thanks :-)!

Three of us decided on an impulse to put our noon lunches into the fridge and head to Saravana Bhavan for lunch instead as a Diwali treat. The rava dosas/parathas we ordered was awesome. But what totally made the day was when a waiter, in spite of protesting that all complimentary Diwali sweets had already been distributed the previous day, still showed up with three cups of fresh, awesome-tasting kesari, because you know, "You folks asked!" Yup, it was for free.

Happy Diwali again folks :-)!

Picture from here.

I hate you!

A while ago I saw a tag going around which asked the tag-doer to list literary characters they liked. I decided to give it a kutti twist and list literary characters I hated instead. To people whose tags I have postponed doing to do my *own* tag: please to forgive me *bambi eyes*.

Literary characters I hated (in no particular order):

#1 Dominique Francon: Let me start with a disclaimer. I have read only one book of Ayn Rand's: 'The Fountainhead'. Honestly, at the end of it, I could not quite figure out why so many people ooh and aah over it so much. I found it condescending and pretentious. But while I disliked the book overall, Dominique was the character who drove me over the edge. Such an opportunistic, leeching parasite. Wonder how someone can conceive such a character and consider her as the "heroine" (I know, I know the book is about Howard Roark - but if there is a heroine character in the book it is the bi***y Dominique, right?)

#2 Gogol Ganguli: Oh, why did such a colorless, self-absorbed and whiny character get to be the protagonist of 'The Namesake'? Gogol's unfathomable angst and self-generated misery got quite annoying after a while and I was cheering with all my heart when his wife decides to leave him.

#3 Amy March: That miserable imp! Why did she have to marry Laurie! Jo and Laurie were meant to be, not Laurie and Amy, come on! For the longest time since I first read 'Little Women', I was unable to recoincile myself to the Amy-Laurie pairing. How could you do this to me, Louisa May Alcott? It is only during the past year or so that I have finally decided that the Laurie-Amy pairing was not that unforgivable after all (yeah, yeah, I am sure Louisa is jumping in her grave with joy about this approval). But - I still dislike Amy. Oh, btw, I have never quite forgiven her for burning Jo's manuscript either.

#4 Fanny Price: She is probably the most sainted, martyred and unidimensional 'good' character I have read about. I never thought that a character from a Jane Austen book would figure in this list, but seriously, Fanny takes the cake for being the most annoyingly righteous character ever (you can almost see a smug halo tucked around her beastly head). If I had known her in real life, I would have tried my bestest to rile her up just so I can poke fun at her remonstrances. Quite an irritating character and her being the heroine of 'Mansfield Park' took out most of the fun of reading the book for me.

Okay I wanted this list to feature five characters but racking my brains periodically for the past few days has not brought forth anyone else to mind. So four it is :-).

If you always wanted to rant about fictional persons and were waiting for the chance, please to take up this tag!

Las Vegas revisited

* Never ever leave from the South Bay only at 5.15pm to catch a flight out of SFO at 7.18pm on a freeway-congested Friday evening. You might not barely squeak through not dying of I-am-so-going-to-miss-my-flight panic-induced heart attack.

* Las Vegas can be freaking colder than the Bay Area. While it might be boosting the economy, buying a touristy "Las Vegas" emblazoned sweat-shirt to supplement your woefully summery wardrobe does nothing to add to your fashion-quotient on The Strip.

* Where there is a will, there is no tiredness. Thus you can step out to have fun past midnight, unmindful of the long day, long flight and sleep-deprivation.

* Pretty heels look good on feet. But after several hours of continuously strutting about in them, you will feel like dismantling your legs and rolling your way to your next destination.

* If the rolling mentioned above is not an option, bend legs at knees and do duck-walk. You will look like a clown minus the big red nose, but your legs will thank you.

* Lunch under the 'Venetian' sky with live music in the background makes for a nice experience.

* Standing in 5 inch heels feels like doing a continous calf-stretch. It is impossible to walk in them without tottering. Net-net, the best place to wear such heels is in the store where you were trying them on for a lark.

* When staying at a nice hotel start sight-seeing right there. It is kinda sad to look at the hotel entrance while leaving for the airport to catch the return flight and exclaim "Oh, the exterior has all these interesting decorations? I never knew!"

* It is possible to return from Las Vegas without gambling even a single penny.

* Visit Vegas with super-fun friends. Because what one does in Vegas stays in Vegas ;-)!

* Mondays at work after a super-packed, super-fun, disappeared-in-a-jiffy weekend in Vegas will feel an eternity long. Suck it up - it was great while it lasted after all!

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!

Conversation at lunch

"Hey Archana, did you buy a new car?"

"Huh!?! No - why are you asking?"

"Oh, I saw you getting out this morning from a nice shiny black car."

(Realization dawning.)

"Oh." *sheepish grin* "I took my car for a wash yesterday."

(Laughter all around.)

Sheesh! I really ought to wash my car more often.

Tales out of school - 1

Reason for this post: I have been in reminiscing mode.

Of all the seats in all the theaters in the world...

Once, when we were in undergrad, four of us decided to go for a movie on a sudden impulse. We had heard that the movie Love ke liye kuch bhi karega was decent time pass. So on it was to the movie theater.

At the theater ticket counter, we learnt that the movie had started some 15 minutes ago. Ah, a masala Hindi movie - most probably nothing worth not missing would have happened in the first fifteen minutes. So, undeterred, we bought tickets anyway.

After being in the blazing hot Chennai afternoon sun, we were practically blind when we walked into the darkened theatre. Groping our way from the aisle, we walked down a row. M was leading the way and I was following her close behind. A and V followed. We filed past the occupied seats.

M finally reached an empty seat and was about to lower herself into it. Which was when my slowly returning eyesight saw to my horror that the seat was already occupied. M was getting ready to sit and the guy already on the seat was gaping in soundless open-mouthed disbelief at the prospect of his lap suddenly having an uninvited guest on it.

At the last moment I grabbed M's hand and hissed that the seat was already taken and that we should move on. Finally, we four safely found ourselves unoccupied seats. Of course, we giggled quite a bit after that at the remembrance of the averted disaster.

When the lights came on during the interval, we dissolved into uncontrollable laughter again. You see, the only rows of seats in the entire theater which had occupants in it were the rows we were seated in and the row behind it. Among those hundreds of empty seats, M had chosen a rare occupied seat to sit on. No wonder that poor guy couldn't believe his misfortune!

Reverse Dracula

Note the day, mark it, mark it! Ladies and gentlemen, today I finally did something I have wanted to do for a long, long time and have never done.

I donated blood :-D! And it happened in such a commonplace way - no red carpet, no majestic music, nothing. A couple of colleagues and I were doing our afternoon walk when I spotted a blood donation van. And I said, "Oh I have always wanted to donate blood. I should go see if I can.". Though colleagues in question did not want to/could not donate blood, they said that I should go.

So all three of us went in together. The other two were providing "moral support" for me and happily settled themselves in too. Which was when the blood collectors (!?!) told us that the process would take about 45 minutes. Uh-oh. So my moral supporters left after making sure I was okay with being alone with the Big Bad blood collectors.

The process was nothing extraordinary and went much along expected lines. It was kinda strange though to see my blood flowing into a bag aided by me squeezing a small rubber ball. After some time of squeezing, a beeper went off indicating I had donated enough blood.

A big bandage was wrapped around my arm around the needle-prick. I was then made to sit down for 15 minutes sipping from a bottle of water (I said "No!!!" to apple juice).

That's it, I was free to go! I was feeling all euphoric at having finally donated blood (though a friend smartly pointed out that it not euphoria but lightheadedness due to blood donation) and walked back to work.

I still feel slightly woozy though I am willing to bet a fair amount that it is just my imagination. But yaay, I donated blood!

And oh, I would like to give special thanks to my company which has made this event possible. Most of management here is out for the next couple of days leaving me plenty of time for useful activities like 1.5-hour long lunches, half-hour long walks, 1-hour long blood donations, catching-up-on-gchatting, middle-of-the-day blogging etc. Mucho obliged!

Evolution of friendship

I was in final year of undergrad when the movie Snehithiye came out. My friends and I thought it was a decent movie and good entertainment. The movie was soon forgotten but one of the messages from the movie was oft quoted by us even much later.

Tabu, who plays an inspector in the movie, comes to an all-girls college as chief guest for some function and tells the students that it is very easy for women especially to lose touch with their buddies from childhood and youth. Saddened by this prediction, then and there, the two female leads make a promise to be a part of each other's lives forever.

When I watched that movie, my first reaction was: "Hey, that is true. While my dad is in touch with his close friends from the old days, most of my mom's close friends are the wives of my dad's friends." It turned out that this statement was echoed by almost all of my other female friends. Then and there, we friends too made a pact to always be a part of each other's lives.

Immediately out of college, this was an easy thing to do. We had nothing better than to do than to keep in touch anyways! Thus every happening, big and small, in each person's life was shared in depth. Emails, instant messaging, phone calls - there was no dearth of communication. So much so, I took it for granted that my friends would tell me *every* single happening in their life in real time. I still remember getting extremely upset because a very close friend did not tell me about an important event in her life as soon as it happened.

Anyways, the first year out of college, I think my friends and I hogged most of the available bandwidth on the internet, on telephone lines and everywhere. In spite of being spread across two continents and thousands of miles, the bond was still there. I thought back to the Snehithiye dialog and thought, "Um, this is so much fun. Why did anyone make a big deal out of keeping in touch."

Towards the end of the second year, slight cracks began to appear. Everyone had more "responsibilities" (however you define it), and though news was still shared, it was no longer with the same limitless abandon as before. The network of people I was very regularly in touch with became smaller. But the ones I *was* in touch with - oh we were on call 24/7 for each other. Life was still good.

Then, somewhere towards end of year three, some of my close friends no longer seemed to be "0n call" for me all the time. Though I knew I could still count on them, I felt hurt by this sudden demotion. For the first time in my life, I started thinking twice about calling some close friends for fear of "intruding". And o boy, was I unhappy about this development. What had happened to us? I nevertheless still tried to keep in touch as much as possible - email, phone calls, everything - I saw wanted us to go back to the good old days. I missed it so much.

Then some more years rolled by. Initially I could say with a clear conscience that in case any communication stopped with any friend, it was due to lack of response on the other side. I would *never* be the person who did not reply to an email or who did not call back.

Time went by. One fine day, I guiltily realized that sometimes I was the one who did not respond. I wanted to, but somehow did not. Oh, I met up with most of my close friends a couple of times a year and we caught up with news often enough. But the constant communication was a thing of the past. I felt guilty but then...

Now I think I have finally reached the stage I have dreaded for so long. I have come to accept that frequent and daily communication with close friends is not something which is going to start happening magically by itself. Though it seemed so at some point, just because we are "friends", it does not automatically guarantee constant involvement. Everyone is busy with their own lives. Maybe this is another symptom of growing up - I don't know. The saddest part is, I no longer feel sad or angered by this realization. Because I myself am "busy" you see.

Don't get me wrong here. As I have said many times before, my friends will always be one of the foundations of my life and that is something which will never change. Friendship should grow and evolve as the persons in it grow and evolve - that after all, is a sign of a long-lasting relationship.

That knowledge still does not stop me from sometimes thinking back to the days of unbridled, joyous, no-holds barred friendship. Those times, I wish I could turn back time. It was not so long ago after all.

In a huff*

"I don't want to go."
"Pleaassee - I promise to be a good girl if I can stay at home."
"How about I just turn around and go with you to the park?" *bambi eyes*
"But she is so mean to us..."
"Waaah - I so don't want to go."

Finally, mom starts laughing "Archu, do you remember, you have actually *paid* money to go to these fitness classes?"

Sigh! Ya, I was whining about not wanting to go to my fitness class. I joined this new class where the instructor makes us do about 1200 abs crunches (not exaggerating) in one go. Needless to say, after 30 minutes of non-stop abs crunching (followed by another 30 minutes of equally painful exercises working other parts), I feel like my stomach has been replaced by a mass of pain. At this rate, I think I will soon be a human being whose top half and bottom half is (dis)connected by air - my abdomen would have run away due to sheer torture.

The sad part is I realize the root cause of the agony: I had taken a fitness-class break of sorts recently for about 3 weeks. Immediately all my built up resistance melted away faster than rain drops on a sun-baked pavement. I ask you, is it fair? I have been going for my fitness classes quite regularly for more than 3 years now and a 3 week half-break is all that is needed to bring me back to my "dear lord, I cannot bend" *groan*, "I can't walk fast" *pant* , "Does the sofa seat have to be really so low down? *ouch* status of the day after the very first ever day of fitness class. Sigh!

One thing to be said for all this trouble is, I invariably end every fitness on a mental high even if I sometimes physically feel like I have just been run over by an extra large truck. Which is probably why in spite of all my whining I still drag myself to my fitness class week after week.

--

Below is the fortune I got on my Linux machine today which prompted this post. Enjoy!

Fortune's Exercising Truths:

1. Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic. You don't.
2. Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart. So do heart attacks.
3. Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life.
4. Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing.
5. No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done quietly at your desk at work. People will suspect manic tendencies as you twitter around in your chair.
6. Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys mosts is tripping joggers.
7. Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity.
8. Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups, followed by one throw-up.
9. Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided.

--
*like in huffing and puffing.

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 :-)!