Things to do - done list!

What I've been doing the last couple of weeks feeling like a busy busy girl:

• Trying to catch up on reading and not really succeeding
• Gone for the Juggler's niece's Godbharai to Baroda where I might complain, have not eaten Gujurati food - rest was nice
• Said Goodbye to 2 girl friends with massive staggered farewells including trips to Goa, clubbing and the finale - bar crawl last saturday.
• Went for a wedding peripheral exhibition with the other bride to be
• Started watching Season 6 of 'Two and a Half Men'
• Spending girlie nights at the partyhouse [read house of juggler's best friends]
• Started Homeopathy and reasonably pleased with the results
• Discovered yummy cupcakes at Sante
• Had extreme period pain and gotten up twice at 4am with it[Please remember this blog is also for posterity so im allowed to mention random details of my life!!]
• Not watched any movie worth talking about majorly - liked 'Kaminey' but that's it
• Realised the minimum number of people I need to call for the wedding is 125!
• Loving the music of 'Wake Up Sid!' espescially Kya Karoon?
• rediscovered a love for Indian chinese food - Mr.Chow's Zindabad!

Little things make my life!

Random Thoughts

Random Thought # 1: In India, in the 80's action films were so popular coz people wanted to rebel against the sytem, they saw the 'Angry Young Man' as their representatives, fighting against the injustice [I've heard License Raj was not so good - I don't know!].Therefore cotton candy movies do well today coz people aspire to lead those lives which is a possibility in this open economy. They see the young urban adult as someone who they can possibly be given enough time etc.

Random Thought # 2: Indians are not service oriented people - we always try to cut corners - we are subservient by nature but contrarily, we cannot excel at service. It is at odds with our personality - in contrast, the chinese are extremely service oriented without the personality to drive it. What the world needs is front office Indian and back office Chinese. (this came after discussion with thebride)

Random Thought # 3: Why Oh Why cannot I be a particular person? so I don't have to spend 10% of my time rectifying my own created messes. I think I need a chinese back office for me.

Random Thought # 4: I love Girlie nights, I love my girl friends and I hate it when they move away espescially 2 in the same week.

Random Thought # 5: Next year, should I go back and study something unrelated and try and change my life direction or should I just stay where I am?

Funeral blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
- W.H.Auden

I first heard this poem in the movie '4 weddings and a funeral' and till date, it makes me cry.

So many things - so little time!

I'm finally motivated to blog....couple of things have happened in life - went on holiday, got engaged, parents met etc etc but let's focus on my favourite subject - travel.

The bride is planning a 10 day vacay in Italy - making me incredibly jealous - very excited for her but still incredibly jealous and we got to discussing our top travel destinations that we want to visit. All of The Bride's currently seem to be in Europe. (1. paris 2. rome/ venice (though now florence also) 3. london 4. dublin 5. scotland. 6. moscow. 7 prague. 8. berlin).

I have a travel agenda for the next 3 yrs where I plan to strike off 1.New York 2. Istanbul (Turkey) 3. Angkor Wat/South East Asian island preferably Koh Samui. Post which, I will be looking at South America - Inca and Mayan civilizations{Machu Pichu- here I come!!] and also torn between the Eastern European countries like Prague etc. This list does not even include a trip to New Zealand where I will spend more than 6 days this time and explore the South Island.

There are so many places in the world that I will never get to see and this really causes me pain!

I will get down to making a comprehensive list of where all I need to go in the world and post it so I can have the pleasure of ticking it off/striking it through when I'm done!

Also, I have discovered new music after quite a while - In addition to the love of my life Robert Pattinson, 'Twilight' film also introduced me to a band called Muse whose track 'Super Massive Black Hole' is in the soundtrack. I really like the sound and realised how much I missed knowing good music or just hearing different things. In the middle of these discussions, I learnt about Damien Rice and also the sound of Gomez both of which I'm currently enamoured and listening to on loop on youtube. It's music like this which makes me realise why I need a Mp3 music player and why just radio on the phone is not enough!

I also appear to have given up reading - the last books I read were on holiday - Curtis Sittenfeld's Man of my dreams - eminently skippable and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go which I found very interesting - I also remember watching a movie on the same thoughts - 'The Island' starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johannsen. Since then I have started a Joanne Harris 'Rune Marks' and the last in the Thursday Next series 'First Among Sequels' - both of which are still pending completion.

Mommy mania?

I'm surrounded by babies - it's a sea of them - let me count it! My BFF had a baby boy in Jan, The juggler's BFF has a baby girl last Nov, another friend of ours had baby girl in early Jan, next one is due in Sept and that's within like the immediate friend's circle - there are a multiplicity of babies that we know of - both my bosses had kids, other friends have produced little ones - and they all put up photies on facebook making you a part of their lives since you see the change in the baby everday - anyway the point is all these babies are making me broody! It started with my niece who is the apple of my family's eye - and I'm telling you - there has never been a kid as smart as her, but any way I digress!
I can spend hours looking at photies of other people's kids - which makes me somewhat creepy stalkerish but still....I'm really getting angsty to have kids of my own but the steps to achieve tht in India where you need to be legally bound etc etc seems to freak me out where I appear to have upped the drinking etc which will prevent me actually getting to that state! It's a vicious cycle I tell you- one that I have less than a year to break!

RIP - MJ

While I agree that Michael Jackson created some fabulous music and he rocked the 80's and some of the 90's - this massive outpouring of grief is way beyond my understanding. For the last 10 yrs or so, the man has been a recluse with accusations of paedophilia and paying women to have his children - he has declared bankruptcy and dangled children out of balconies. Obliterating all that, there is still no need for my facebook page to be completely filled with all these memories of MJ - which is actually a list of his songs and other random facts. None of us knew him personally - his music is what we remember and that still remains - we can still own those records - I think we should all go out and buy it so that his children actually inherit something not just a memory of a King that used to be!

Astrological help?

I've been having one of those months where nothing seems to go my way - it's not necessarily a major catastrophe but it's one of those season's where I overlook all the little things and land up not in trouble but with a leaden weight of guilt in my stomach - this in turn leads to wanting to drown my sorrows in alcohol which further leads to late nights and the cycle continues.

This has always been my biggest problem - I used to have a higher than average intelligence and I can retain information - I'm willing to work hard and I can work smart but I lack an attention to detail! so it will always be the small slips that catch me and these will always come at a time when I am facing a larger issue which is not necessarily my fault but compounded by this minor infraction, in totality gains a larger meaning.

I've discussed this with friends who also screw up and from their experience, we are not the only ones who screw up - others do it too! they are just more proficient at denying it or avoiding the issue altogether. It's just lucky few, who seem to do it consistently and feel it majorly. The best solution is over look it and pretend it never happened. Yes - good in theory, in practice crap - coz I'm one of those people who admit fault and always with an expressive face, cannot drum up cheer in the face of flaws.

For non work related issues, a classic example, cheap deal to fly to HKG - ticket for Rs.15K. Grabbed it, trying to work out dates and find out when the juggler is going to be in HKG. The first set of dates I chose had expired by the time I finally went to pay. When I decided on the next set and got leave approved, I went ahead and booked. 30 minutes later, it turns out the juggler will be in HKG the week after me....and 3 days later, during a discussion with my parents about how I think I won't have to change planes at the halt in SQ since it's only a 15 min difference, it turns out yes, it is a 15 min difference with an additional 24 hrs!! Yes, I have a whole day in SQ - which is not such a bad thing since, I've never seen and I have a cousin there so it all turned out ok but it's the attention to detail thing again!

I'm hoping that my moons were not in alignment this fortnight making the coming week, a pleasant experience otherwise as my twitters often read, this day/week/I need to curl up and die!