Oye! Main to famous ho gayee...

Poppins and Meira both wrote to me that one of my posts has been plagiarised. Copied word to word and posted as own by one of the bloggers. I was surprised as well as amused. SO after asking Meira how she figured that out she told me how a very personal post written by Kiran was also copied by the same blogger and in one of the comments to Kiran's post she saw the link of my post. Someone had left both my link and the copied one as a comment in response to Kiran's post.

But when I tried to open the link http://2writeornot2write.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/wierd-observations/ I got a message that the blog has been deleted. I was pretty sad that I couldn't see it by my own eyes. But then our smart Boo managed to dig out the post from cache and sent me this link - http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:jgLN5ODFKiwJ:2writeornot2write.wordpress.com/tag/observation/+2writeornot2write+weird+observation+lipstick&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ch

And my original post is here - http://doiwrite.blogspot.com/2008/12/observations-about-some-people-in-my.html

And frankly I've only one grudge against the person who copied my post. She had copied my post which was a total time-pass, fully-faltu kind of a post. So my post being highlighted in this fight against plagiarism makes a bit embarrassed. I've written much better posts and how I wish she had selected one of those :P

But must say, she did correct some of the mistakes that are there in mine :D

Jokes apart, I can very well empathize with Kiran for she had written that post from the deepest of her hearts for her hubby dear. If one of my personal posts had been copied I would have been completely outraged too.

Apparently a lot of her posts were copied from other bloggers. God only knows if it was just only a few posts that we managed to figure out or was the entire blog made up of posts picked up from other blogs.

All this makes me wonder why would anyone want to do it. It defeats the whole purpose of writing/blogging. Reproducing a post is one thing and copying and calling it your own is another.

I'm sure that person has learnt the lesson well and will be too scared to attempt something like this again :D

Common sense is REALLY not common at all

As I came out of office to leave for the day, the parking guy told me that the person who had parked the car in front of mine had not given him the keys. And he added the car owner told him that he knows me very well and he will let me know.

I was raving mad at the parking guy as well that car owner. After futile attempts at tracing the owner of the car for good 20 min, the parking guy managed to open the door of the car. But then that also didn't help as this guy had put a gear lock as well.

I blew up the parking guy once again. While I waited patiently, the owner of the car parked next to me came. And thankfully after some efforts I managed to take the car out.

But whoever owned that car will not be able to save himself from my ire. I'm gonna give him big bashing in "meethi chhuri" style.

I'm still so so so mad at this lack of common sense in that guy.


~~ Keep Smiling! ~~
Sent on my BlackBerry®.

I'm alive...

...and kicking as they say :).

Its just that office has been really REALLY hectic leaving me no time for blogs. Be it reading or writing.

Even after coming back from work, I've at least one client call to take. Sometimes the number goes up to 3 calls in the evening. And the situation is such that Betu takes a status of all the calls scheduled for the evening when I pick him up from his daycare. And the big smile on his face tells how much he wants my time when I tell him only one call today.

But I hope to be back here soon. My reader tells me I've good 800 unread posts. I know time and again I have been away from blogging but then I've come back every time. Right everyone? :D So will it be this time too. I just need to figure out how.

The bundt marble chocolate cake

Remember the bundt cake I had written about in this post but couldn't post pictures?

So I made that cake again yesterday and here is the pic of it :)

Looks beautiful na? :D

Edited to add: The recipe had been posted long ago here. I made 3 times the portions mentioned in the recipe.

Debate: Scolding other's children

I would like all of you who come to this Blog to openly debate on the topic "Scolding other's children*".

I've always been on the 'against' side. And thankfully nothing had happened so far to make me move to the 'pro' side until yesterday.

I've always believed in telling the parent about how their kid was behaving and how they should talk to their child about it. Same way I expected others to do the same. But yesterday, at Betu's daycare something happened that I broke this rule of mine and went ahead to scold the child right in front of his mother. The other kid pushed Betu in the splash pool right in front of us even when his mother was telling him not to continuously. If I had not grabbed Betu by his hand on time, he would have totally been in the water but thankfully he went down inlt till his knees. I took BetU out of the pool and bent down to the other kids level and on the top of my voice shouted at him.

Me: why did you do that?
Kid: *no answer*

Me: How many times did your Mumma tell you not to do that?
Kid: *no answer*

Me: How many times?
*the kid tried to look away*
Me: look into my eyes and talk when I am speaking with you.

Kid: 10 times
Me: Then why are you not listening to her?

Me: If I push you in the pool would you like it?
Kid: No
Me: so he (referring to Betu) wouldn't like it too. Nobody would like it. So you will not do it again.
Kid: ok
Me: Now go to your Mumma.

The kid was slightly shaken up after this and I could see my scolding did have some effect him. He has become totally immune to his mother's scolding.

This kid has the habit of troubling other kids and laughs when he sees them in discomfort or not liking what he does. He is just a bit too bratty and I know there are kids who are like that and its normal. But at times it gets too much and today was the day when I felt I had to intervene.

But I know for sure that if Anirudh had done something like that I would have done exactly what I did with the kid myself. There would not have been any need for other parent to scold my child.

I have also seen other parents who react badly to other parents pulling up their kids even when they know that their child has done something wrong and take their side. I find that very wrong. I agree no one would like their child being pulled up but then we have to see the reason and how the other parent is handling it.

I still stand by my rule as I had mentioned above and will not say anything to other's kids directly minus such situations.

Now you tell me what are your views on the same. What would you do and what you won't do? How would you do and how you won't? Any real life examples would be great too.
~~ Keep Smiling! ~~
Sent on my BlackBerry®.

What do you do when...

...you make stupid errors of the same nature 3 times in a row? I feel like swatting myself sore :(

I really didn't expect this from myself and feel so ashamed to have these mistakes being pointed out by others. And I don't have any reason or shall we call it excuse for why they happened.

P.S. Work has been terribly busy so no posts on any of the blogs. I hope to resume soon.

Sympathies...but why?

As we all know I've been on my own since Friday afternoon with Betu and hubby both traveling. And since then I've been getting a lot of sympathetic comments and phone calls. Everyone expected me to be feeling down and out, a bit low and missing Betu badly. I did miss him initially and felt quite upset. But from the next day, there was no such 'sad' feeling anymore.

I was doing little little things that I hadn't done in the longest time such as sleeping till 8 AM, watching movies (on DVD), lazing around... and I was having a wonderful time. It was such a wonderful breather to be on your own. Some of my friends were even getting jealous and telling me not to get addicted to it ..hehehe..right Monika and Suma? :D

But I still wonder why some of the other people were expecting me to be sad and depressed because Betu was away. Because I'm a mommy? And are mommies suppose to feel like that? Is it wrong if I didn't feel as they had expected me to?

But today everyone shall be back. And I'm really excited to meet Betu when I pick him up at the station tonight. I wonder how he will react on seeing me. Or will there be any major reaction or just a plain hug? Although I cannot imagine this part but I can definitely imagine his reaction on seeing the chocolate bundt cake that I've baked for him. He is gonna be super happy for sure :D

And sorry..no pictures of the cake..coz I don't have my camera with me :(

Missing badly :(

Its been 2 days since last I saw and or touched. But it definitely seems so much longer. There have been so many moments that I felt running towards and end up thinking "How I wish..*sigh*.."

I never knew I had become so crazy about until now. The things have to come such a situation that I'm feeling a bit depressed without. I'm missing really badly....my camera. :(

Hehehe..what did you think? I was talking about hubby or Betu? :D

But call me crazy, mad, insane..whatever. But this IS the truth. I'm missing my camera more than I'm missing them. Much much more. Infact I handed over my camera to hubby with a very heavy heart. I was surprised at feeling so myself. I don't know why. It was as if its mine..only mine.

Do you have any such object that you don't even feel like sharing with hubby or people real close to you?

I wonder...

Whenever I'm asked about the age of our son Anirudh and I tell them, lot of people look at me with an expression which I don't know how to perceive. The tones varied from questioning to awed to surprised and to even disbelief. I say disbelief because they ask me the year of birth even after I've told them his age. As if I would be miscalculating his age. Can a mother do such a miscalculation on the child's birthday at least?

And that leaves me a bit flummoxed if they are saying it in positive or negative. If I go by my instincts, very few people have said it in positive manner leaving me wondering why the others respond to it with negative.

Betu turned 5 about a fortnight ago and he is a bit tall for his age which shows he has taken the height gene from his papa who is 6'1". So he is definitely tall but he is not overweight or over sized. To put it in clear cut words he is NOT fat.

How do you all think I should react to such statements? I definitely want to ignore them. Sometimes I do succeed and there are times when I don't and that makes me feel a bit irritated.

Have any suggestions and any real life incidents to share?

A break...

..not from the blogging people...am too much of a chatterbox to do that. I'm talking about a break from the duties of a mother and a wife. As you already know that Betu is away on a holiday trip with his grandparents, today hubby also left for his official tour and they both would be back by Monday night. So till then I've total FREEDOM!!

Some of my friends asked me how am I coping up and I looked at them with raised eyebrows and said, "Coping?? I'm having fun!!" :D

After initial emotional, melodramatic moments, I'm actually enjoying this 'me' time. I've been watching some TV, reading "Sea of Poppies" and finally managed to watch the movie 'Iqbal' after having bought the DVD many months ago. Yeah I know I am invariably late in watching movies. Ok ok..make that VERY late. But haven't you guys heard of the saying "Better late than never"? :D

Anyways, coming back to the movie, I just loved it. In fact I was clapping away loudly and yelling "Yay! Yay!" when the main protagonist "Iqbal' played by Shreyas Talpade, took the wicket in one of the final and crucial match...hehehe... but it shows how much involved I was in the movie and how well made it is. Doesn't it?

And now coming back to my 'break', day 1 of has gone really well. Lets see how the day 2 goes. I'm sure it will be awesome too. I'm so loving this no responsibility, totally chilling out time. But I also know that I would want everything to be back to its routine soon.

I've to have my betu around me even if it means moments of madness. I've to have hubby with me even if it means getting on each others nerves.

Do I sound like one crazy person? Oh well...but you got that right. I AM one crazy person :D