You Are Not Prissy

You're the furthest thing from a princess - and you probably stay far away from any princess types you know. You have an easygoing approach to living. It doesn't take a lot to make you happy. And when life requires it, you're ready to get your hand a little dirty. There's no problem you're too prissy to tackle!

How Prissy Are You?

Another moving story!

So the move went really smoothly and we are settling in slowly.
I have always had mixed feelings about moving from one place to another. For the first 21 years of my life I stayed in the same city, same community, even the same house. I went to the same school and had the same set of friends for 15 of those 21 years. People got transfered and moved all the time, in the part of the city we lived in, but my dad always opted out of the transfers and liked to stay put. I always envied the new girs or boys who joined my class every now and then. They were the lucky ones whose dads got trasnfered adn they moved boriya bistar to a new city. These new students were like honey, attracting all of us oldies who were desperate for a few new friends. We shared our lunch with them, got them random gifts, even shared the much adored 'scent rubber'(eraser) with them. How I longed to be one of those new students is known only by me. But the irony of the situation was not lost out on me. While I whined and longed to move to a new city, these 'new students' hated moving and used to be really sad about going away to a new place. I used to think they dont know how lucky they are...the ignorant fools!
Well, anyways, the 10 years of schooling, 2 years of working my butt off preparing for entrance examinations and 4 years of funfilled undergrad saw me staying at home, at the same home all the time and I longed more to get out! Well, my prayers(uff) were finally answered and I set out to start my first job(this was in 2002) and moved to Trivandrum for a couple of months. Once there, I was as usual excited that finally I was out of home (but missing family ofcourse) and had lots of fun with new friends. Then I moved to Mumbai. I still loved moving. I lived with a few friends intially and realized we didn't quite get along, so I moved to a new apartment and new roomies within a few months. The new roomies were awesome and I was having fun, when I had to move again, this time to Amsterdam. Sadly I bid adieu to all my roomies for a few months, when I was back in the same apartment in Mumbai. Now again my fun with roomies, shopping, food, movies comtinued. After a while the some of my roomies started to move(sigh...by now I was disgusted with the word) and I was dreading my lonely existance. One fine day, I was told I was to move to Triva drum on a new project and I did, boriya bostar bandhkar. I really hated this move. I had accumulated a lot of stuff, friends and memories in Mumbai and didnt want to throw all that away and move to a new place. By now I had started getting a taste of what those 'new students' felt when they moved from one city to another(finally!!). After a few months in Trivandrum came the move of a lifetime, when I left the indian shores for the US to pursue my masters. Now my atleast-once-a-year-move pehnomenon began. I moved in temporarily with a Tiwanese girl for 6 months, then to a makeshift apartment for a few days, then to a new apartment for a year, then I got married! After the wedding, I came back to do an internship so we moved temporarily again to DC. We came back to the university after 3 months, and lived in an awesome house for a year. The lease on that house was up and we werent sure how many more months we would be at the university so we moved into the university apartments. Barely a few days after we moved, I was offered a job and we MOVED to DC. Spent a year in the new apartment and towards the end, S got a job and we had to move again to move closer to his workplace. Thus, owing to these extreme experiences I have had with moving(ativrishti/anavrishti), now I have mixed feelings about moving. I feel good because I am moving on the a better(hopefully) place, and have the chance to do up a place all over again! I feel terrible because I am moving from a place where I have built memories and led some happy and some sad times!
SO here we are now! Anyone counted the number of times I moved in the last 6 years?

Moving thoughts

Thoughts in my head these days
-How do I know how many books to put in a box so that it isnt too heavy for the movers to carry? If I can carry it is it fine?
-Will the pots and pans box hold up?
-I hope the power/cable/water/gas at the new apartment is ready
-will the cleaners do a good job of cleaning the old apartment?
-where did I put all my jewellery?
-will there be any bugs at the new apartment?
-will the roads/traffic be ok from new apartment to the office?
Huh...I can't wait to move!

Marathon plans, dealing with hypochondria and indian television

I have signed myself up for the Marine Corps 10KM marathon and have been training for a couple of months now. Since I have never been a running person, it took me some time to actually get to a stage where I can now run a few miles and not drop dead! Starting from the stage where I could hardly run a few minutes to being able to run for 45 minutes, I have come a long way. The training is tough and there are days I wish I could just run the 6 miles without having to actually 'run' but as they say 'no pains no gains'! And pains there have been aplenty. i have this weird pain in my ankles some days, the legs hurt almost whenver I train, and yesterday while I was reading this article, I suddenly realized my feet were hurting too(yeah I do display mild hypochondria)! Consequently, I have spent most of my day at work today researching plantar fasciitis. I know I might NOT be afflicted with this disease, but the chronic worrier that I am, I have decided to stretch double time from today, try not to wear heels (i can hear my beautiful highheeled shoes crying for attention), and be on the lookout for any symptoms that might signal the onset of the condition! My obsession is atleast helping me make a few good changes in my lifestyle...hope they stick.
On a different note, I was talking to my sis today and we both were lamenting the degradation of indian television. Ekta's Kahani Hamare Mahabharat Ki, Dadagiri etc featured high on our bitchlist. We still remember lining up in front of the tv not so long ago(ok..about 6 years ago) to watch shows like Tu Tu Main Main, Khichdi, Shaktiman(yeah we are two crazy siblings who watched this show and also zipped around like shaktiman..haha) etc and not blinking an eyelid when watching them! Ofcourse I also remember the glory days of Nukkad, Hum Paanch, Yeh Jo hain zindagi and the like, that my sis missed coz she was too young to care. And look at what television has degraded itself to now? There was a controversy about this show Dadagiri(is that even a name?) where this hostess(ugh) slaps this contestant because he didnt win and he slaps her back and what do you know, the whole crew comes on stage and starts assaulting this contestant verbally and phsically. Most of the gaalis I heard blew me away. I swear I have never heard of some of the words before and some other really burnt my ears and I ran for cover! Apparently my sis was watching one of the episodes of Dadagiri with my ajji(grandmother) where a contestant is punished by dunking his head in a commode(yeah thats right) and my ajji ran away from the tv, into the puja room and stayed there till she forgot what she saw.....I bet my reaction would have been running away too(not to god though). Sigh....what happened to good old television?

Religion and stuff

I was blog hopping as usual and saw this post on the Mad Momma's blog. While the post itself is not controversial(some people might disagree), the comments sure fired a storm. Some of her readers seem to have taken offense to this:

And then people want to know why the lower castes want to opt out of the system and convert to a casteless society - be it Buddhism or Christianity. I’ve never stopped thanking my forefathers for the choice they made.

When I originally read the post, I never realized this line could provoke people. It merely seemed like a statement of personal opinion...but boy! were there fireworks or what!
A lot of people took offense because they thought she was demeaning Hinduism and extolling the virtues of Christianity. A lot of commentators wrote how she was worng in saying that and some even talked about Christianity and conversion! While its the reader's prerogative to feel bad or angry at what they read, it definitely is stepping over the line to lecture someone about how their opninions are wrong. I would not do that even with my good friends because differences in opinion are what makes us so diverse. Can I not sit in my livingroom and say what I think about anything at all? Why do we have to be so intolerant of diverse opinion? As long as we are not imposing on others or not hurting others in any way, how is it bad to hold ones opinion dear to one's heart? I do not like it when people lecture me about my life. I have had this happen so many times:
Have a kid now, dont wait too much, you are getting old, buy a house now, you need to invest
you should have done this...done that....wth? Of all the things I get to hear, its the "dont wait anymore to have a kid" that pisses me off the most. I have had people(women), who I was talking to for the second time ever say that to me! And all the while, I have held my anger and frustration back and politely nodded. SO here is what I am confused about.
There are two issues here. One is that we live in a so-called free society where (ideally) there is tolerance for whatever religious, societal beliefs and opinions we hold. Like MM holds the opinion that she is glad she is of a particular religion, so do those commentors BUT they seemed to cross a line when they hopped over to HER blogspace and tried to bully her! This then brings me to the second issue I am concerned about, When people seem to step over the line, should you give them a piece of your mind, or be polite and ignore them?

Blogging

Why does one blog? Why do I blog? Frankly, I do not know.
Some people blog for venting out their frustration, some to get noticed, some others to keep in touch with their creativity and some others just because its THE thing to do. Me? I blog for no reason(or a combination of the above). I have never given it any thought. Maybe blogging makes me feel like I am documenting my ideas so that I can read them sometime in the future and muse about what my life was like once. But there are diaries for that......so that cant be it! I blog because I want to blog. Maybe thats why I do not blog so frequently. Because I do not know why I want to blog, I am not passionate about it. Maybe I should sit down and think about what drives me to blog and then I would be more excited about blogging often! Until then......