The begining of the cloyingly sweet

I did not like 2009. No siree. It was all downs. Right from the beginning. Right from New Years day! The only part of the year I liked, nay, loved, was the summer. It was a lovely 4 months of, well.. nothing to do.

Anyway, it's 2010 now. Doesn't feel like a new year though. Watched the ball drop on TV. Whatte rip off. That's not saying I won't spend at least one cold 31st night at Times Sq. I will.

My cousins and I - we baked a layer chocolate cake. With chocolate icing and rainbow sprinkles. In every single book I've read, the cake acts as an omen. The Chalet School, Enid Blyton stories, L. M. Montgomery, An Old Fashioned Girl - they all predict the furture/the start of a new year/project/event with a cake baked for the occasion. So I was all "lets see how this cake turns out".

And the cake was super sweet. So sweet that my littlest cousin got a sugar high after eating a piece and half.

So, I guess this means this year is going to be super-sweet too. At least acc. to the books.

Mind you, I ain't complaining!

Have a great 2010, you guys!

Coming back to you...

After a recent trip to visit one of my best friends from school, I am missing all my school friends badly. So here's a post dedicated to all of them. :-)

There is something about your school friends which allows you to just be yourself. Maybe it's the fact that they know you too well.

You don't have to explain names and dates and events or books or teachers or TV shows to them. They went through it all with you once upon a time. They know exactly what(or who) they're talking about. They're just slightly surprised that you also remember that!

You don't have to(read: can't) pretend. They'll see right through your pretensions.

You don't have to worry about doing or saying something stupid. Chances are you've said something stupider and they still remember to tease you about it!

You don't have to worry about a bad hair day when you're with them. They were with you at the parlour when you got the worst haircut ever!

You don't have to hold back your opinions when you're around them. They know your reaction even before you do.

They don't look down upon you when you stalk people on facebook to find out the gossip. They're merely happy to get the news!

The remain some of the most interesting and fun people you have met till date!

And most importantly - it doesn't matter that you haven't met them in years (which it was in my case) and you are in completely different stages of your lives (both personal and professional). It doesn't matter that in those years you think you've 'changed a lot'. She doesn't and you guys pick up exactly where you left off and it feels like you're back in your pink and white having lunch under the trees!

'Tis the season to be jolly!

Judging by the number of people going "you haven't updated your blog in a long time... what happened?", apparently a lot more people follow my blog than I thought! Which suprises me, yes. And also makes me extremely conscious of what I'm typing! :-(

Therefore, from now on, more neutral stuff. No more angry growing pains problems and silly antics. No more kiddish fights and delights. More serious stuff. More grown up, thought provoking blogs. More science and research and less frivolous coffee tales. That will be my new year resolution.

And since it isn't not new year yet, let me proceed to tell you about the snowman we built.

So we wake up last saturday morning (alright, afternoon!!) to find that we finally have enough snow to build a snowman. So we promptly proceed to build one. Problem is, none of us had ever built one before and so it was all trial error. So we tossed a few ideas around and settled on building one giant pile and making creases on the side for the head. For resons all too obvious, that didn't work out. So one of the guys flicked a snow shovel from his neighbour(don't ask!) and his other guy took out his wind-shield scraping thingy and together they brought a LOT of snow from else where! Bring the only person with two pairs of gloves (what? I feel cold!) I had to pat down the snow as they drop it. So then we piled a bunch of snow on the ground and I patted it down to make the body. And they piled another bunch on the shovel and someone else patted it down to make a hemisperical head and we put one on top of the other and used the scraper to make the hemisperical head to almost sperical head. Then we took someone's scraf, carrots for eyes, stick for nose and hand and berries for coat buttons and voila, we made this.



Je te presente Flakes! :-)

Isn't he adorable?

Oh, and the cap, that's mine. And no, normally, it isn't covered with snow! Somebody *glares in the person's direction* decided it might be fun to douse me with snow as I worked hard on the snowman. *more stony glares*

Understandably, a snow fight ensued, but since they made me prime target, an account of it would not potray me in a good light, so why would I want to put up a belittling image of myself?

Anyway, we understand that that is by no means the best way to make a snowman and would be greatful to anyone who could tell us tropical creatures, how exactly to make one!!

I guess, I shalt bid you fine people goodbye, leaving you with the thought for the day:

You know those few seconds when you're on a flight and decending but haven't yet touched the ground? And then you hit the ground and you're going super fast? And for a fraction of a second you hold your breadth and when you see yourself slowing down you start breathing again? Do you think the pilot holds his breadth too at the same time? Kinda like when you jump off something high and wonder if you're going to fall unhurt, even though you kinda are in control? Or when you make a turn in a curvy road?
*sings*... and I wonder..

Since I know now a lot of people miss me on the blog-o-sphere, I promise to be more regular.Maybe you will get lucky and even get a blog on the Carolinas!

But for now, that's all folkes!

The poll (again)

So, aparently the poll on my blog (it's on the left - a little down) closed sometime back, can the winner was Calvin and Hobbes. So, what else is new? Calvin ROCKS! Anyway, in celebration, here's one of my favorites:



Anyway, new poll will be up soon. As soon as I figure out another fun topic to take a poll on. Any suggestions?

We are the Curies, powerful race!

Remember when you were in school, split into 5 (some schools had four) different houses. Remember how your activities revolved around your house - your favorite colour was (and in some cases, still is) your house colour (I have a senior who apparently colour coded her whole wedding to be green - green invites, green decor, green sari, etc.. - just because she was in the green house!), there was no one cooler than your house captain and prefect, winning the sports/dramatics cup was all that mattered!

In my school, the houses were named after famous women. I was in the Marie Curie house (I was a 'Curie', how cool is that?). We had, of course a house colour, a house slogan, a flag, a banner - you name it.

The slogan was a funny one. It went:

"Alpha, Beta, Gamma Rays
We are the Curies, powerful race"

How cool is that? Of course, i didn't really understand what it meant or the connection till I was in High school, but now that I think about it, whoever framed it was a genius!

And what is the point of this whole post?
Why, none as usual. DJ and I were talking about our schools yesterday, and turns out that everyone identifies people with their house. As in "Do you remember so-and-so? She was in Kellers(the red house - named after Helen Keller, of course!)". And the house(colour/name/symbol) always holds a special place!

So, I just thought I'll post about it since it's been long since I posted!

Until next time then.

Talking of Garden City..

Is it just me, or is Chennai really going green? There is a garden/park in every spare bit of land in the city. There is even a garden tucked into the Gemini flyover!! And Hadder's road has it's own petite garden - right next to the Oxford bookstore. And the garden at the end of Cenetoph's road - that's pretty too - overlooking the river and all. And as Mutt put it - Tiru.V.Ka park looks like a fairy land if you drive past it in the evening!! Do try to drive past it - even if you live on the other end of the city - it's totally worth it!

And apparently there is this huge 17 acre park coming up somewhere near the beach. And they're going to convert Woodlands drive in into a botanical garden as well!!

Not to mention the roads - GST as well as the first part of OMR are now a sight to behold! (I'm not gonna mention ECR, because the pretty parts start only after you leave Chennai). Oh and the tambaram bypass too - though, again, I dunno if you can call it Chennai!

I know we have miles to go, but not a bad start, eh? I'm so proud of our corporation. I mean, yeah, they do stupid things like put a flyover in Cenetoph's road (seriously, what's with that?!) and Sardar Patel road(which noone uses!), but then they also build something like the Kathipara junction (which I'm totally in love with, btw).

So now, it's singara chennai yet again! :-)

A city I once loved..

Once upon a time, when it was called Bangalore, this city had wide roads lined up with beautiful, giant, green trees. The trees used to be so thick that they used to block the sunlight to a large extent. The roads were wide - or maybe they appeared wide to a 10 yr old me, and the traffic used to be so little that they used to allow us to run across the road. The weather so cool, that fan used to considered a luxury - used by the rich during two weeks in the summer.

Once upon a time, you could go from one end of the city to the other end in less than an hour, and MG Road meant lots and lots of bookstores.

Once upon a time, we used to catch a double decker bus and sit on top and ride all the way to Majestic every time we wanted to 'go shopping'. There wasn't a mall every ten yards then, see?

Once upon a time, my mental images of Bangalore used to be covered with green trees and mist - lots of mist. Actual mist - not smog.

Once upon a time, Bangalore used to be called "the garden city".

And now...?

It took us two and a half hours to drive from Mysore to the edge of Bangalore (Mysore road) and another two to drive from there to Koramangla.

That's all I'm saying.