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...

Baking and Birthday

Another year gone by. A happy year I would say.

So to make the day happier I started with baking some stuff. It had been ages since I baked and I just loved it! After baking three things I wanted to bake some more!! Hahaha...

So I baked a banana-walnut cake, a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies and a chocolate layer cake.

Seeing the awed look in betu's eyes made it all the more worthwhile. And the way Nishka relished both the cake and the raisin was the final stamp of satisfaction for me.

Here are the pics -

I also baked a simple cake and layered it with whipped chocolate cream. The look isn't great as I didn't know how to smoothen the cream.

As it is every year was flooded with emails, SMSes and calls from friends and family. It just overwhelms me. Every year.

Ended the day with a dinner out at DimSum Bros, New Friends Colony. The food there was great and so was the ambiance and the staff.

So like always a day well spent!

Bliss

Bliss is when hubby dear prepares the gajar halwa! And you just sit, eat and relish it! :D

Yes, hubby dear made the first gajar halwa of the season. It was his first time but it wont be the last! As now we have decided that making gajar halwa will be his job. I used to make it the long way...with boiling/cooking the grated carrot in milk. He tried the shortcut way by pressure cooking it for a while and then just adding khoya (condensed milk) and ghee. It was much faster, required less effort and consumed less fuel. And yet tasted so yummy!!

Orange peel

The season of oranges is here and it brings back many memories revolving around oranges as kids.

Remember how we used to squeeze the orange peel in the eyes of our friends taking them by surprise and making them squint because of the prickling sensation?

Remember how we used to make threads from the juice of the orange peels by rotating it around the plastic rulers? It would leave the scale all melted/shrivelled and basically useless. God!!! How many rulers we ruined in this process!! :D

And it also reminds me of an incident from school. I must have been in 7th or 8th standard. And I was eating an orange while waiting for our English teacher to come. The teacher came and I shoved the orange inside my desk. We were then asked to read a story from the book quietly. And I in total absent mindedness started eating the orange again while reading the story totally forgetting that the teacher was in the class.

And as well all know we can smell anyone eating an orange from 20 yards. So obviously teacher smelled the fragrance of orange and started looking for the culprit. And then she saw me chewing and asked me to stand up. It was only then that I realized what I had done. I quickly swallowed the orange inside my mouth seeds et al. When asked about it, I tried to lie that I wasn't eating. I was so damn scared I still remember.

The teacher than asked another student to check my desk and of course that student confirmed seeing an orange there. Thankfully since I was in the good books of the teacher as I was one of the few students who were good in the subject, I got away with just a good shout from her. And boy did I feel glad about it then?

What do you do when...

...you see your child being taught wrong pronunciations by their grandparents? I kept quiet as I thought correcting that time would be taken as embarrassment/humiliation by the grandparents. It was hard to keep quiet. To see wrong and still be quiet.

If the child learns the wrong pronunciation, not only will he speak it wrongly but also write it wrongly.

Confused. Clueless. 

What do you do...

...when it saddens you on the news of the demise of a distant relative? Even when you had just "seen" the person couple of times? When there has been no interaction with this person? When there has been no emotional attachment?

It hurts me to think how a person perfectly fine two days before, gets a fever and the next day we hear of the demise.
It hurts me to think that the person was just 40 years old.
It hurts me to think about his wife.
It hurts me to think about his children with the youngest child just 10 months young.
It hurts me to think how suddenly all this happened, how it has left everyone totally shocked and unprepared for this sudden death in the family.

I'm feeling very low today just thinking about it. And it again makes me realize how uncertain life is. You do not know whats in there for your the next day.

Ooh..I love this!

What about you?

http://www.retronaut.co/2012/10/turniture-by-lester-walker-1970/

What do you do when...

...there are multiple cars parked next to each other and you are trying to figure which side of which car to use to go to the other side when you hear your 8 year old say "Aap to kahin se bhi fit nahi aayogi!" (you will not fit through any side) and runs away giggling?

I guess its time to really do something to lose weight.

What do you do when...

...one day you wear a bright colored floral printed pyajama unlike your usual plain colored ones and your 8 year son, with a totally flabbergasted look on his face, asks you "Why are you wearing such girly stuff? Take it off!!"?

And when I responded "But I'm a girl!" was snubbed "But this is tooo girly so wear something else!"

*Rolling my eyes*

Rainbow

Couple of days back  while returning from work, it was raining. And by the time we reached near Vasant Kunj area, I suddenly spotted a rainbow. Ohh how it made me excited. Just like a child. It was almost a full arc, with each color vibrantly glowing and clearly visible.

I kept peeping out at the sky every 2-3 minutes from the car window to catch a glance of the rainbow. I do not remember when I had seen such a big rainbow before. Or for that matter I couldn't even remember when I had seen a rainbow last - big or small.

I wanted to click using my phone but the battery was almost dying. I SMSed hubby about it as he was to pick up kids from the daycare and maybe he will show it to Anirudh. But by the time he reached the daycare, it had turned dark and the rainbow was gone.

Is it just me who gets excited at rainbows even now? Or do you find them beautiful and get excited on spotting them too?

Foot in the mouth disease

A guy asks me "Have you lost weight?"

I reply: "The weight scale doesn't say so but my husband thinks I've."

I wanted to hide somewhere after I realised what I had said.