This deserves a blog entry

Wonderful blogger sister questions my absence from this blog.

Ah well, what can I say

Qi

You and your negative Qi

Me and mine.

The Feng Shui lady was wrong.

Be nice to the next person who comes in.

Goodbye.

Tattoos & Regrets

I got myself a tattoo 2 years ago. Thankfully, as of this moment, I'm not regretting it. And I hope to never ever regret it. In fact, I've had plans of embellishing it for a while now.

But the better part of this year has been spent in quite a bit of regret about some of the decisions I've made. Thankfully, my support system of family and friends is superbly robust and I've hopefully come out a more sensible person on this side of my adventure. Yeah, for all it's stress and nuisance, it was an adventure.

I've always tried not to be ashamed of my regrets. It's difficult, but I make an effort to acknowledge them and hopefully learn something from them. And when I came across this talk on Brain Pickings (falling in love with this blog!) yesterday, I felt it was fitting to share it with the world.

Funnily enough, I happened to chance upon this video at a time when I'm all set to ctrl + alt + del my life. Again. It's comical. Almost. Heh.

"The point isn't to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better.”

Worth a watch.

If you ever meet an alien

This poster is cult. It's also worthwhile for all to go through and remember. Just in case.

Wedding Season Musings

With one of my dearest friends getting married last week, my responsibilities for this wedding season are officially over. Some musings on the season that was.

--

With Facebook as a point of reference, I can safely assume that EVERYBODY I know is at one stage or another of the "Find mate - Date - Marry - Have kids - Generally be happy in life" cycle. As for me, on a normal day, my thoughts usually swing back and forth between

and

--

As if there weren't enough awkward social moments around already, there is a new one on the block - Wedding Invites on Facebook. I find handling these invites a rather tricky task. Because most of them are from acquaintances who aren't close enough for me to make the effort of attending their wedding but then they aren't complete strangers either. So I can't just reject the invite because that would make me come across as a rude heartless woman who doesn't want to have anything to do with your moment of joy. So till someone comes up with a socially acceptable response to this new found nuisance, I have decided to just let the invite languish till it expires and on the day of it's expiry I leave a heartfelt message to the person getting married in an attempt to redeem myself of my socially ambiguous behaviour.

--

Two weddings and neither of them had the most irritating video camera guy shining his gazillion watt bulb on your face and record your actions as you impatiently waited for him to go away. No close circuit TV on which the cameraman would project your face and then embarrassingly freeze it for all to see and laugh at. Definitely a change for the better and I hope this trend catches up with others planning to get married as well. Who watches those videos later anyway?

But.

There were awesome and irritating photographers at both weddings. 

Ones which made the bride and groom repeat their actions so they could be captured perfectly. Ones that made the groom change directions so they didn't have to be disturbed from their cosy positions. Getting married is an extremely personal and romantic moment and the bride and groom should be left alone while they are at it. And pesky, over enthusiastic photographers totally ruin the sanctity of the ceremony that is supposed to be so special and intimate. 

But great pictures. So I guess, no one is complaining and my rants account for nothing.

-- 

Almost as if to balance the awesomeness of people getting married all around me, I heard of a marriage gone terribly terribly wrong. Totally convinced now that getting married because everyone around you is expecting you to get married and because it is the 'right thing to do at the right time blah blah' is the worst thing you can do to yourself. Also convinced that intuition plays a big role in getting people together. And when you know it, you just know it and you gotta wait till that 'know it' moments comes. And be prepared to accept the fact that it may, possibly, never come.

--

Vidai.

That one moment in a daughter's life that totally undoes every other screwed up moment she has had with her parents. And being a particularly difficult daughter myself, I know how screwed up things can get with parents. 

When I saw my friend bid adieu to her mum and dad, it struck me that this has got to be the single most difficult moment of a girl's life. To leave your parents and go away to call some other place your home. And no matter how difficult and impossible  things with your parents are, they are your parents - the only people on earth who can put up with your nonsense and still love you. And that one last hug is hard to let go off and totally wipes the slate clean of any misgivings you might have about your mum and dad. 

I think Vidai was invented for this sole purpose only.

To Do: Make To Do List

I have a truck load of packing to do for a wedding I have to attend. The kind of packing the requires one to make a To-Do list. How daunting. And while I was been busy procrastinating for the last hour just going through all my RSS feeds for the day, look what I found (click to expand):

That my friends is a recreation of the To-do list of one of the most awe-friggin'-some humans to have ever lived on this planet - Leonardo Da Vinci.

This blog led me to this beautiful illustration by Wendy Macnaughton done for a yet to be published book Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, and How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image 

Just look at the things on his list. He has "Draw Milan" on his list. 

His To-Do for the day was to draw an entire friggin' city. Besides learning how to 'square a triangle' and 'measure the sun'. And after he's done with doing all these awesome things, he has to remind himself to 'Get some Sleep'

All my list has is

Pack clothes.

Lock cupboards.

Carry money.

Close all doors.

Bah, how daunting.

Nature. Beauty. Gratitude

One of the most  beautiful and inspiring videos I have seen in my life. Goosebumps!

We have so much to be grateful for, we can't even begin to imagine.

Thanks Rohini for sharing it!

Bad news never had good timing.

I don't know what they did to the poor kid in school, but my maid, Rosy's, 5 year old apparently had concussions on Saturday and he had to be rushed to the hospital. Rosy tells me, she suspects he was beaten up by the teacher.  Ever since, the boy has been having a fever that won't subside.

So the little boy was subjected to an EEG and the family took him to NIMHANS a multiple number of times before they could meet a doctor. The doctor has informed her that the concussions were the side effect of being extremely frightened and there is nothing to worry about.

But Rosy isn't convinced. And for some reason, she has sought some sort of a solace in me. So after telling me every detail of her ordeal, she asked me for one small help. To go through the EEG report and tell her if the doctor has been lying or if everything is indeed okay. Apparently, the boy has had 'fits' before and she thinks this recurrence could mean something more serious than just fright. I agreed, obviously with the caveat that I might just draw up a blank on reading the report.

I did go through the report today and I read phrases like "abnormal electric activity" "requires clinical correlation" and the sense I could make of these disjointed phrases was that, there is something going on there and it could be nothing or something and that can be confirmed only by a doctor. 

Bummer.

I've been feeling queasy ever since I saw the report.

Firstly, where is the world headed when a woman would rather trust me than a qualified doctor with telling her the "truth".

Secondly, what is this "truth"? Is the boy okay, is something wrong with him? I hope the doctor who told her it was okay is right. The helplessness is very unsettling.

And finally, for a moment there, I was put in a position where I had to break 'bad news' to someone. Since I wasn't sure of what the report actually meant, I thought it best to tell her what was written, verbatim. The weight of her expectant eyes as I read the report was too much to bear. Imagine someone pinning their every hope on your next words. Can't even begin to imagine what a doctor goes through when he has to break the news of a loved one being beyond cure to her family. And her face just lost all colour when I told her what it said. I wish I could just tell her that the report was nothing. But I didn't want to tell a lie that could prove a hindrance to any further treatment that might be required.

She's taking him back to the doctor today. I hope the kid is okay.