What is more painful?

Death coming to someone close to you suddenly? Or knowing someone is going to die in few weeks/months because of an illness?

Is that too sadistic a question? Maybe it is. But this kept going in my head for a long time and I had to put it down here. Your thoughts?

14 years

Yes. It has been 14 long years. Sometimes it feels much longer than that and sometimes it feels not so long ago when you went away. And it still hurts to think about it.

I miss you Ma.

What do I want?

These days work is making me take lot of trips and that too long ones ranging from 1 week to 2 weeks. And its taking its toll on the family life.

I enjoy the work I'm doing and personally would like to continue it. But its not working out from family perspective. From children's perspective. Nishka is too small and misses me badly.

I think of taking a job which is less challenging and less time/effort demanding just for the sake of kids and to be able to be with them. But that also means less money. But more than anything else I'm unable to convince myself to do something which may not interest me as much as this job does. What do I do?

I'm so confused. So torn...

What do you do when...

...you get a mail from a matrimonial site with the subject "Have you met your Special one!" after being married for 13 years (yeah..just 2 weeks to go for this milestone) and having two kids?

I just did a silent laugh :)

What do you do when...

...your soon to be 9 yr child notices the sign "Use Dipper at Night" at the back of a truck, misreads Dipper as Diaper, and asks "Why are they asking us to use Diaper at night?".

I was in splits when I realised what it was all about :D

Etiquettes in different countries

Just a while ago I came across this link - http://www.swissotel.com/promo/etiquette-map/ which tells us about the basic etiquette that we need to follow in various countries. And when I saw the one on tipping it reminded me of a funny incident during my trip to US.

On the last day of our trip we had free time and myself and the three of colleagues went out for lunch. So when the bill came I asked generally how much do I need to tip. One of them said that since it would already include service charge do not leave any and just round up the amount. So that's what I did. And then the guy who served us came and asked me point blank "You are leaving me 23 cents as a tip?" Man!! I was so embarrassed!! I asked him if the bill includes a service charge and when he said it doesn't I apologized and gave few dollars as a tip.

Later on we all had such a laugh looking at his face on getting a tip of 23 cents :D

What do you do when...

...you scold your 15mo child for scribbling on the wall and in return get a huge scolding back from the big brother for scolding the little baby?

*rolling my eyes*

How cool is that!!

Just a while back I came across this website - http://crayoncreatures.com/ which makes 3D figurines from the drawings of the children. Isn't this awesome? 

I just LOVED it!!

What do you do when...

...you lie down with your 15 month old to put her to bed. And after about a minute she sits up and starts patting your head saying "ninni..ninni"?

Role reversal?

Trip to Houston, TX

I went for a short (6 days) work trip to Houston, TX in the third week of December 2012. I was pretty excited as this would be my first trip to US.

But then it was so short that I didn't get to see around much. We were staying in downtown and client office was 15 min walk so pretty much stayed in downtown only for 4 days. Everything was 30 miles or more farther from our hotel/client office.

Nishka fared a lot lot better than I had imagined. Looks like she was a total angel in my absence. I was told that there were times when she would be a little quiet and mopey kinds but on the whole pretty fine. My in-laws had come over to help out taking care of kids.

Met a cousin and his wife from hubby's side of the family. On the 5th day (Friday) they took me to Galveston, the bay area, and the aquarium. On Saturday we had about 2 hours before I had to reach the airport so managed to quickly go to the Museum of Natural History and the butterfly park in the same complex.

On coming back, when people asked me how did I like it there, I said what I liked was traffic rules being followed by vehicle owners as well as pedestrians, clean roads, quick emergency services (saw many a accidents there). Rest pretty much the same - quality of construction, the malls, the offices - we all have it as good in India now.

Lot of people had told me you might have trouble with the food but seriously I had none. In fact I ate lot more than I eat here in India :)

I hope next trip happens soon and I get to go around town more. Let see...