What I hate about new year wishes

Yeah you read that write. There are things that I hate about new year wishes. Especially these SMSes that keep pouring and pouring and pouring in. It gets so much to respond to all of them. So after responding to about 7-8 SMSes I just stopped.

So if any of you who sent me an SMS and I didn't reply, please don't think I didn't because I didn't want to. I thought of you and sent my good wishes in my thoughts itself :)

Not satisfied still? Ok..then please accept my wishes right here :D

"Hope you all have a wonderful year ahead which is filled with lots of joy and good health for you and your dear ones!!"

2009 has arrived...

..and somehow it feels no different than any other day. But then is it supposed to?

Anyhow...we had a wonderful impromptu celebration with a cousin bro, Avi bhaiyya, who stays close by. And when I say close by, I mean a 2 min walk :)

We had no plans of going anywhere and I was busy making the eggless orange cake when he called to ask our plans. When we said none, he called us over for some soup and macaroni salad. Who would have said no to that :D

So off we went to their place with my just out of the oven orange cake which was devoured and finished within 10 mins. It was then followed by some good Indian white wine and must say it was awesome.

After licking the soup bowls clean and eating yummy macaroni salad, we came back home by 11 PM and I promptly dozed off while putting Betu to bed and woke up only around 8 in the morning.

Here is the pic of the orange cake that I've intentionally mentioned too often ;) Although the picture doesn't do justice to the cake. Am planning to make it again on Sunday and shall click a better picture of it then.

You know its recession time when...

...the career openings supplement in your daily newspaper gets reduced to mere 6 pages from an average of 20-24 pages.
~~ Keep Smiling! ~~
Sent on my BlackBerry®.

Parental/Peer pressure on children

I just now read this article where a girl of 9 years becomes the youngest person to become Microsoft Certified Professional. And immediately my thoughts were "WOW!" When I thought of myself at that age I realized we were too busy playing stapu, reading famous fives and watching Telematch to be doing anything so intellectually driven.

Then my next thought went to the "parental pressure" to perform high in academics. Lot has been said about it, more in the negative way, and how its not a good thing, the long term psychological impact etc etc. At the same time I feel without a bit of parental pressure, we kids would not have even picked up a book to study. We would have been playing and whiling away our time. Its the parents who need to push us to study. Without this push I wonder if most of us would have reached where we are today. And its also the parents who figure out if their child has the capability of doing something outstanding and to provide means and support and sometimes even put a bit of pressure for the kids to take on the roads like this little girl did.

But this doesn't mean that I'm pro parental/peer pressure. There has to be a balance. In this era we as parents need to constantly guide our kids into focusing on studies more than what was required earlier because of the amount of distractions such as internet, movies, over use of cellphones etc is there. Arriving at this fine balance of studies and extra curricular activities is the toughest part. I really don't know if I will be able to strike any bit closer to this balance even though I would definitely be trying consciously.

We parents also get pressurized by the peer to further pressurize our kids to perform. "Ohh my child can do this and that etc" and that gets us to think lowly of our kid if he/she cannot do the same. And then we tend to push our kids to be at par with the child of our peer group.

I faced this a lot when we got Anirudh admitted to formal school. Everyone was asking us why are we losing 1 year and why are we getting him admitted in Nursery instead of KG. First of all I didn't have a choice, thanks to the chaos caused by rules changing every year. I agree I was under the pressure and kept thinking of how can I avoid this loss of a year. After many sleepless nights I realized, it doesn't matter. Its just fine. Its only one year. He has a full life ahead of him and if he turns out to be extraordinary brilliant and super intelligent I will see if he needs to be promoted to a higher class. But not now. Let him be in Nursery. And after 10 months I'm happy that I took this decision.

And not so long ago, when we were called to see their half yearly progress reports, I didn't go to see how has he been graded, has he scored well or not. Nopes. I just wanted to talk to his teacher if he has been enjoying school and not being a brat. That's it. With my daily conversations with Anirudh I knew he has been picking a lot of new stuff from school and I was happy with his progress. But when I saw parents of kids in nursery and KG discussing and comparing the grades of their wards, I realized this is what the parental pressure is. And this is what I definitely don't want to be doing. I just smiled to myself and walked away.

I don't know if I'm making any sense here but I hope you see the point I'm trying to make.

It woke up from its coma!!

Yippeee! Am so elated and so happy and so jubilant and so...ok ok I will stop. Still don't know what I'm talking about? Really no?

Its my BlackBerry!! Remember I was trying to make it learn to swim but the poor thing had drowned? I had been surviving on the borrowed BlackBerry till now but that also had to be put to rest thanks to my temper :(

So the Christmas holiday went trying to revive both of them and managed to revive my pearl partially. I say partially because I still needed to buy a fresh battery which I managed to do today and its finally woken up from its long coma after we spent 2.5K over it. The one that bore the brunt of my anger still needs to be repaired which am sure won't take too long. We need to buy the display screen which is going to cost us 3K only!! :(

After being phoneless and blackberryless for more than a week, its really good to have it back.

Ok ok..go ahead and call me addicted and I won't stop you coz I know I'm :)

I burnt my brownies...

While going through my recipes sheets yesterday I found a quick easy recipe for blondies (a kind of a brownie). So when I reached home I saw that I had all the ingredients at home to make them. Me and Betu together worked on it and got the batter ready. I spread it on the tray and kept it for baking. 7-8 minutes later I could see that the living room was getting a bit smoky. It took me about 5 seconds to realise what was happening and I ran to the kitchen but alas..it was a bit too late.

I had actually forgotten to turn down the temperature knob after setting it at highest when I preheated the oven.

But I still managed to save 6-7 of them from the sides and for the rest I scraped off the darkened tops. It wasn't as soft as it should be because instead of baking at lesser temperature for longer duration they were baked for shorter period at high temperature. Here is the pic of the 'saved' ones -

I'm definitely going to be making these again coz if they can taste this good the way I baked them, they would taste heavenly if baked properly. Here goes the recipe for those wanna try-

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 1/4 cups light brown sugar (powdered)
  
• 2 2/3 cups plain flour
• 3 eggs
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chocolate chunks
• 1 cup chopped walnuts; optional

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Grease a 13×9 inch baking pan or line the pan with parchment paper.
• In a large bowl, mix together oil and brown sugar. Then add the eggs one at a time and beat until smooth.
• In a separate bowl, sift together dry ingredients and then add them to the brown sugar mixture. Mix well.
• Stir in chocolate chunks & walnuts, if using.
• Spread batter into prepared baking pan. Batter will be thick!
• Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool. Cut into squares as desired.

Personal Notes:

• I used only 2 cups sugar and still found it to be a bit too sweet.
• Since I didn't have brown sugar, I used normal sugar and added 2-3 tbsps of cocoa powder.
• I used raisins instead of walnuts and chocolate chunks since I didn't have any of both.
  

I'm loving it!

Thank you Mampi and HDWK for these lovely gifts that you got for me when you guys came over.

Mampi, you shall be the culprit behind all my weight gain because of gorging on this delicious chocolate walnut cake. I've already eaten 75% of it in the 3 days..all by myself!!

And Howdy, thanks for such a beautiful candle in a glass bowl. Its just beautiful!! And see..it goes so well with my place mats :D

Whats the worst thing you have done in a fit of anger?

I'm so so mad..at no one but myself for acting so insanely...

I threw whatever came in my hands on the ground on Saturday morning during a MAJOR fight with hubby. I had reached my saturation point that day.

It was only much later I realised I had thrown my wallet, table mats and *sob* *sob* my phone too..its broken now...bwaaaaaaaahhhhhhh..I really want to whack myself. I've never done such things before and I have made a resolution "Never again"

So here I'm phoneless and more than that Blackberryless since Saturday :(

Meeting friends

Imagine this - Calling a friend every 1 hour who is traveling to Delhi to find how far is she and where has she reached. And when she arrives, you are hugging each other tight even before the friend takes a step inside the threshold. You are so busy chattering away that it takes you a few minutes to realize you didn't even offer them water after their 7 hour journey.

I'm sure each of you would have imagined two very good friends meeting after a long time. But obviously. But what if I tell you I was meeting her for the first time? Yes..thats right. We WERE meeting for the first time in person. Our main interactions were through the blogs and a little bit from the chats. I'm not talking about anyone else but Mampi! And we were joined soon in this ecstatic bonding session by How do we know.

I just cannot describe how much fun we had. The word 'fun' also doesn't describe what we all felt. And neither will I try to explain it. Nothing will come close to it.

And it was not just us. Anirudh and Howdy's son also had such a wonderful time! For a moment we felt that probably they were having as much fun as we were :D

Not to forget Mampi's hubby who was so sweet because he patiently sat with us yacking females despite being the only male in the house. I guess the 2 young boys can hardly be called company for him.

I had always read that it takes no time to make friends for life. And I could actually feel so this time.
 

Who says different religions can't stay side by side?

They definitely do in our house -

We celebrate Id with the Khans who are our next door neighbors. I take gifts for their grandchildren and Anirudh gets Idi from them.

We celebrate Lohri with out Sikh friends and they celebrate Sankranti with us.

We put up a Christmas tree for Christmas celebrations and my christian friends celebrate Diwali with us.

We all can stay together and be happy but only if we all want to! The decision is ours and don't we all know which is the better way? :)