Congrats to the proud daddy!

gu gu ga ga! Incase some of you are wondering if I have gone crazy... I havent! This is how NG's baby talks and if you want to hold a conversation with her, you gotta learn the language too!!

Yep! The first baby in the group has arrived! NG became a daddy to a beautiful baby girl at 11:21:04 AM on June 23. Both the mom and the neonate are doing well, even though it was a C-Sec delivery.

Watching NG hold that tiny bundle was a beautiful sight indeed. I wonder if he realises he will soon have to worry about admissions, teachers, bullies and homework. He shall now have to spend sleepless nights changing nappies, wiping tears, watching toothless grins, staring at a beloved expressive face.

NG fell in love with his baby doll the moment he saw her. I distinctly heard him murmur something about tearing apart any boy who so much as smells the air his precious princess breathes. Looks like NG has forgotten the lustful leers he gave P!!!

Here's hoping that Angel finds super friends... Just like I did!! Friends who will deposit her in a cab after a party and warn the cab driver to be careful! Friends who will be ready to break her bfs nose if he so much as thinks of parting!

Friends like NG, RM and AK... 3 horrible grumpy, grouchy, mean, silent men, who will rarely open their mouths except to snap at you but if you can look through that charade mask, you will find wonderful people inside. Friends who will always be there for you... no matter what!

Nimish!! Congrats buddy!!! :o)

Today, I am feeling.............

Kinda blah :o(

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
---- Dorothy Parker


I have some wonderful friends. Thank you lord! NG (that sweetie!) called me up last night and played me dont worry be happy - the Bobby Mcferrin number to cheer me up. Its small things like that get me all warmed up inside.

And then RM treated me at "little Italy" today to bring a smile on my grumpy face. Besides the food (which always cheers me up!), the sight of this girlie in her Lululemon did make me laugh out aloud. For the uninitiated, Lululemons are the craze of the season as all the hotties try to fit their asses into these body hugging, low waist, lyra work-out pants.

Anyways, this babe walks into the restaurant with her baguette purse under arm, Nokia in hand, and Lululemons on inside out. I just couldn't help but laugh out loud.

(Please excuse the superficiality and ignorant bitchiness of what follows.) Now sweetie, I know that flat seaming makes it difficult to tell one side from the other, but your size stamp goes on the inside. Unless, of course, you wore them that way on purpose so that we would all know you wear an extra small... in that case, I believe I've encountered a whole new breed!

On a seperate note, I'm proud of myself for starting on the new assignment already, but I'm still a little bit frightened by the amount of work I have to get done in the next three days. Otherwise my mood seems to be turning with the weather, cloudy with a chance of showers.

What a day!

Saw this girl on the way to work, properly dressed to the hilt...walking down the street, with the back part of her kurta raised up, stuck inside her pajamas :) she did not realise it and I ofcourse did not bring the fact to her notice either and walked right behind her with a straight face :) Mind you, it was a very funny sight.

I feel pretty sick. My football team got killed today. It was our first game. I can't believe we lost. Our best player was sick and didn't come and goal-keeper let 5 balls through. I was shocked!!! I was hopping mad! Bottomline, we lost 5-0.

Well, got to finish six + one + one documents today, so better get cracking !! Also have to compile the questions for a certain quiz at work... the people who'd promised to help haven't helped (Traitors!!!) so I'm doomed!!

Its late at night and I need some energy. Made myself a hot cuppa earl gray tea. But that wasn't enough, so I ate the contents of the teabag. Now, I'm feeling full of vim and vigor, despite the pain in my chest!!!! What ever will I do next? Somebody help!

Thank you God!

No distance left to run

A deeper pains fills me today
After ridding myself of old pains
It shocks me to realize
How I'd grown to befriend misery

Is this masochism in my fate ?!
Or are we all like so ?
Newer pains we hate
When older pains we throw.

Stockholm syndrome ?
Or is this my 'real' home ?
Seeking pleasures from my past
Gloomy shadows that were cast

The deeper pain fills me today
It fills me deep and horrow
A deeper pain kills me today
I have found new sorrow.

When I hear of the millions of underprivileged, homeless and hungry people around the world, I feel I have no right to feel unlucky. I have not the prerogative to consider myself unfortunate in any way whatsoever. And yet I sometimes do. Yet, even with this knowledge, I persistently find reasons to be unhappy to the extent of being depressed. I commit the sin of placing myself in troubled faith; I have only to remind myself of people who have no food and water to live. Then I know how kind god has been to me.

Hark that Bark!

Our neighbour is unwell and has left her mutt under my care!! That dog is absolutely crazy. All he does is bark... all day long, at anyone and everyone for no apparent reason! Last night he barked at me too... but that was because I wouldn't share my pizza slice with him.

Snowy (a Pom.. hate that breed!)has a very loud bark, and I think I am going deaf. I have closed all the windows so that he won't look out and bark. But he is too smart. He just sits near the window and barks... for no reason! So I open the windows for him.... thinking that he'll look outside, keep himself entertained and stop driving me nuts. He jumps up onto the window sill, contented and smug... and starts barking. Pomeranian !! I rest my case!

There's no winning with the pooch. I wish my neighbour gets well soon and comes back!

Foot Foibles

Cold feet warm heart. I must have the warmest heart in the world then cos I sure as hell have the coldest feet! Some facts about my feet:

• Love walking barefoot on the cool floors.
• Love painted toenails but I’m just no good at doing it myself.
• Love walking barefoot in the sand.
• Hate wearing socks or anything that sticks to my feet unless I absolutely have to.
• Hate wearing anything on my feet when I’m at home.
• Have stepped on a thumbtack and pushed it all the way into my heel. Ouch!
• Have lost my big right toe’s nail twice and had it grow back quite normally. Thank God!
• Have permanent sandal-strap marks in the summers; feet are the first to pick up a tan.

I am very envious of those soft, pink and white delicately painted and scrubbed ones; but mine have held up to my idiosyncrasies pretty well and as they’re the only ones I’ll ever have, I better learn to take better care of them.

Ok feet, let’s get you all scrubbed up now.

Arigatou, Merci, Thank you, Gratia, Danke...

I don’t think I ever thanked you for being a wonderful friend that you are, for always being around and for supporting me in all my (mis)adventures. You really must be NUTS! (but we of course call you nuts for a different reason ;o) I feel nostalgic…

On your 24th birthday, we were on a kitty rescue mission!! The poor little kitten was stuck on the ledge. The PoA was simple. We would lower a bucket with some food strategically(!) placed in it. The kitty would smell the food and would walk happily into the bucket to eat it. We would then pull the bucket and the kitty up and viola!we would have done our good deed for the day.

You (after much cajoling) donated your burger (it smelled really good inspite of being a left-over from your midnite b'day party!) to lure the kitty into the bucket. However, the kitty had other plans. It opted to jump from the 4th floor of the hostel building. I remember clutching your hand in horror as the kitty jumped. OMG we killed it!!! But the kitty (with its seven lives) landed on its feet and walked away unscathed. We were the “laugh” of Brigittines that week…. and did we care??!! We were already on our next adventure.

Happy Birthday, Sandy Nuts!!! Wishing you a lovely life lil kitten! Take care..

How accident-prone are you?

And I thought that no one could be more accident-prone than little ol' me. Admitted that I can get my legs entangled while talking and fall flat on my face but Sharon takes the pole position. No one (and no one) can ever beat my ex room-mate - SP.

Q: How many of you have managed to get your ear stuck in a door?
Yes, you read it right. The ear. The one that receives audio signals and sends it to the brain. No, her ears do not protrude like a goblin’s. She’s got nice pretty well proportioned ears. How did she manage to stick it between the door? Don’t ask me! But that’s something that would never happen to me. Hair stuck caught in a car fan, yes. But, ear stuck in a door, never.)

Q: How many of you have managed to fracture your hand while dancing?
(Sharo was dancing with the stud in one of her office parties. Stud to be read as the biggest loser who thinks no end-to-himself. He asked her for a dance, claiming that he’d been attending dancing classes. He twirled her around in an elaborate dance routine, and he FORGOT to let go off her hand. There was an audible crack as her bone broke. Audible in the loud party music.)

Q: How many of you have got your foot tendons injured while dancing?
(This time she swears she was careful. She was careful not to dance with anyone who claimed to be a good dancer. She lucked upon a guy wearing heavy boots, who stepped on her TWICE. She bit her lip not to cry out in pain. With the music blaring, there’s not much point in crying out aloud. She asked him sarcastically, if he’d been attending dancing lessons. He told her, his face red with pleasure, that he needed none as he danced well naturally.)

As I said before, she’s the winner hands down (or bones broken).

Drunken Noodles

After weeks of plotting and planning we finally made it to Shiok for lunch. My partners-in-crime this time were Supreeth (SR) (who I was meeting for the first time) and Aarti (AC) (who’s probably a little tired of seeing me so often :-)

We settled into the comfy seats and attacked the food and drinks with great relish. We must have made quite an interesting sight - two hungry women wolfing down food like there's no tomorrow! SR was a little more polite. But the food was good. Or we were hungry. Or it might have been both. All I remember is stuffing me self to the gills.

We had Thai Drunken Noodles (aka Pad Kee Mow), a lovely shrimp dish, a really nice tasting rice. As you can see, I am not so good with names. To top it all, I had a green concoction called Madhu’s Illusion, which turned out to be more potent than I first thought.

Madhu's restaurant also has a compact lounge area next to the dining area where you can relax and have a drink but we decided not to venture there. I don’t think I would have made it out of the door for a long time, if I had.

We started at noon (we were the first eager ones in) and they finally had to shoo us out at 4 p.m. after we had stretched their hospitality to the limits.

BTW, Shiok (pronounced 'she-oak') is a Malaysian-Singaporean slang word roughly meaning damn good, heavenly or yummy. Yes, Shiok was shiokly!!

Another reason to be grateful

Jim Cooke lives in New York State. He has normal eyesight, but he cannot recognize his own face in the mirror. He has to shave by feeling his way around his features. In 1995, then aged forty-eight, Jim went in for a brain operation. When he came round, he realized something was wrong. It took him several days to figure out that he could not see faces properly any more. Jim was now suffering from prosopagnosia. This term is derived from prosopon (‘face’) and agnosia (‘lack of knowledge’), and refers to a disorder in which people can see most things normally, but when they look at a face they see only a canvas of features that do not form a meaningful image. They cannot recognize the face as someone familiar.

You can be born with this rare illness, but more commonly it occurs as the result of adult brain damage. While the brain as a whole is involved with most perceptual functions, there is a tiny, specialized section of the brain that is intimately involved with the recognizing of faces. It is called the fusiform. In a scanner it lights up with electrical activity whenever a person looks at a face. If the fusiform gets damaged we cannot recognize the face as a face – and Jim’s fusiform area was damaged during the operation.

Jim explains that when he sees faces: ‘It’s almost as if everyone’s wearing stocking- masks.’ It is disturbing for Jim if people recognize and approach him in the street, since he has no way of placing them or guessing who they are. Most of us forget the odd name or face, but Jim can’t see faces at all. Most distressing for Jim is the fact that he cannot respond to the faces of his own children. When he goes to meet his twenty-year-old son Tommy, or his eighteen-year-old daughter Cindy, he cannot recognize them. Tom and Cindy have learnt to cope with their father’s illness. They make sure that they say ‘Hi Dad’ or identify themselves every time they approach him.

Prosopagnosics evolve complex strategies to deal with their illness. They become expert in differentiating voices and clothing, so as not to give away their problems. But for anyone, this is an enormously debilitating illness.

Jim Cooke says that: ‘When I look in a mirror, I’m not there. I’ll see items on the wall behind me, but a blank in the middle…’ - From The Human Face, Brian Bates with John Cleese