really sorry for the dead blog :P

oh. em. gee.

happy new year!! I usually do something radically different in the first week of the new year (and then revert to old habits :P) but nothing yesterday! gotta sit and reflect and declutter! after I now try my hand at baking (with a mix, duh) hehe. more later, byee!

can't even make thayir. epic fail.

(yes i'm emo. looking for happy movies to get back into christmas spirit.)

@#$%&*&^@%$^#%!@#$##@!%$#^^&@##@@#@$**&*#&*^$&!!

and it's because the site guy who gave me the measurements messed up, thereby wasting several hours of my time on wrong calculations,
and because the oh-see-how-far-i've-come-in-life boss just woke up and realised there's a deadline, and doesn't know how to take on one job at a time despite severe lack of manpower.
damnnnnnnnnnn it. supremely pissed.

i'm trying but i can't find any silver lining here.

Cyclonic weather here thanks to some "வார்ட் புயல்" in Sri Lanka. Crazy rains and then the sun comes out for 15min before it rains again! naansense.

I watched a cricket match after eons. India vs SL. India won! By 3 runs. And honestly I was super irritated at the end of it coz they were fielding so uselessly, throwing anyhow and not bending down properly to stop boundaries. But Sehwag was pretty awesome. And Sangakkara's face was soo miserable aww.

Rotting at home is awesome!

hiiii from Singara Chennai! The parents had decided to make a trip to India coz appa had some official work to do, and I wasn't sure about my leave and stuff so had firmly decided not to come. And also, I'm always here in Dec so wanted a change and thought of going in Jan, or July for Padma's wedding. But last-minutely, plans changed and I went along, leaving teens alone at home for about 11 days. womg, I know but he was alone for a week last year as well. And I'm leaving for Singapore this sat and will reach on sun morning, so will have time to make sure the house is in living condition before the parents get back one week later hehe. But I think he's managing fine coz he's quite smart and sensible in that sense.

Anyway, leaving singapore wasn't how it usually is. These last 2-3 weeks were extremely taxing and involved working late daily, 9ish was the average, and it even went as late as 11.30. So it was bad. But silver lining was, I fell sick and got an MC for the day of my departure so could help out with the packing at home and stuff. SO MUCH TENSION man. Until the last minute. And my poor chauffeur had to come all the way across the country, only to spend like 2 minutes with me :( but thank God for him and his fast driving hehe. (6 min to the airport!) I was maaaajorly emo-ing in the plane after that.

From South-East Asia to the Indian Sub-Continent:
The plane journey was normal. Flight took off about 20min late, after waiting for many last minute passengers (IST) and landed 3 minutes late which is typical of SIA! And baggage came quickly so patti and chithi didn't have to wait too long at the airport. For a change, I'd opted for Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian instead of the bad, stale jeera rice that they always give for Indian veg. And got SO MUCH scolding at home from everyone coz apparently teenu and I had asked for ovo-lacto a coupla years back and hated it. I had absolutely no memory of this and still insisted on trying out something new. And luckily I did! Got cream fettucine with capsicum and olives and parmesan cheese :D compared to the bad, stale jeera rice and squishy okra curry and dhal which the parents got muahahahahha. Hopefully the return journey'll be good too. So for once, I actually ate SIA food. Oh and there was kit-kat ice-cream for everyone! Usually they give some weird raisin pudding so this was a nice change. And despite my flu which was MC-worthy, I ate the ice-cream and happily fell sick later. The movie selection wasn't that great. I always try to watch the mushiest rom-com possible, to make me feel high and forget about air-sickness. The only one they had this time was All About Steve with Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper. Not at all romantic sigh. But managed to watch the pilot ep of Better off Ted and he's a highly shoodu engineer geek so yay.

Anyway, so we went home close to 11pm, and had to unpack and repack coz we were leaving for Bombay at 10am the next morning. Just me and amma. Coz appa was off to Bangalore for his official trip. Couldn't really sleep thanks to the blood-thirsty mosquitoes sigh. So woke up early and stressfully packed. Sigh too much stress man. And we were off to Bombayyyy!

From the East Coast to the West Coast:
(I realise I always take beaches for granted since they're there in Singapore, Madras and Bombay, all being coastal. Never thought about how it would be in the inner states. Ah I love beaches. Ok anyway.)

We took Jet Airways Konnect to Bombay and reached home around 4pm. So this was on Wed evening. Shopping started immediately! And continued till Thurs evening hehe. And at other times when I was home, I was doing my favourite newspaper puzzles and yakking with patti and thatha. Time passed really quickly :( On Thurs evening, the grandparents wanted to take us to a nearby Gujju Thali place for a buffet kind of dinner. Lots of dhoklas, makai (corn) rotis, dhal and kadi (sweet moor kozhambu), and kicchdi! Typical gujju stuff. It was good. But taste-wise I prefer Punjabi for its paneer :D No time for Bhel and other Chaat stuff, which was sad.

The next morning, they took us to the nearby theatre to watch Paa (Rs. 70 only! slighly over 2 bucks). Different kind of story, and very touching. And I was in some emotional state so you know what happened :P Still, I liked that it wasn't too draggy and drama-ish with lots of crying. There was humour and nice dialogues which make one think! And I actually understood the whole movie without subtitles :D :D :D (this is an achievement coz the previous time we watched Om Shanti Om without subtitles, I translated the whole story wrongly to teenu and he never forgave me for that hehe). Yay my hindi's improving.

After the movie, Neha came over! It was awesome seeing her again after a year :) :) and this time, it was quite late for her to go home after 11 so she stayed over and we had an impulsive sleepover! So much fun. But I'd happily neglected my packing, and there was quite a bit to do after all the purchases, so again, Sat morning included stressful packing :P and teary goodbyes. Neha came to the airport too with lots of sweets and savouries so that was a sad goodbye too. Can't wait to meet her again.

The Bombay airport is such that no one but passengers can enter. And once you enter, you can't leave. Total nonsense. So even though our IndiGo flight was delayed by about 30min, I couldn't go out and talk to neha. So amma and I just walked around, looking for bookshops and interesting stuff. The waiting area was terribly packed. Oh btw there were so many jams on our way to get to the airport coz of the wedding season (I saw random bunches of people dancing on the roads, with decorated horses and a huge marching band hehe.) And these traffic jams followed us to the airport as well, on the tarmac! The domestic flights have buses that take us from the terminal to the plane, and there was a jam there. And after we boarded the plane an hour late, there was a plane queue for take-off!! Crazy. So jams EVERYWHERE. So we reached Chennai really late and everyone there was tensely waiting and praying feverishly and all. It was quite bad. But anyway, that was the end of the Bombay part of the journey.

Last leg of leave:
Back in Madras. After all the rushing around in bbay, I just wanted to relax at home in Madras. Woke up nice and late on Sun morning, but had to go for visiting coz parents were to leave for their own little trip on Monday morning. After they left, I felt very odd. It didn't seem like how it does every year. No teenu, no parents. Cousin's in US. And everyone seems sicker than usual :( :( So I was badly missing Singapore. Then I checked my office email and remembered all the annoying people there and now I'm thankful that I'm here :P Got to catch up with the loosu paiyans back home too, over msn and phone so feeling a lot better now.

The temperamental weather is the same as last year so it makes it tough to go out. Not that I CAN go out anywhere alone, since I can't even cross a road here :P But need to meet up with keeths! (Oi, call me quickly you busy person!) At this point, I'm just rotting at home watching long movies (Quo Vadis!) and cricket, and reading Mahabharatha and my Learn Hindi book :P soo fun to slack! And I'm nicely putting on weight too sigh. Another 4.5 days of this to go heheh. Beware. (note to self: daily gymming pls!)

wogay will go read now. Or take a nap. mmm. rainy weather. byeeee.

ok not really emo-emo, but some weird amalgam of emotions that i always feel when i leave singapore. heh. life this past month has been quite mad, esp last two weeks, so dunno when i'll update but will try to write soon! and when i'm a bit more normal hehe.

sigh soooooooooo emo :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

dumb idiotic mood swings GAHHHHH. wasn't this supposed to happen during teenage years. ugh. it's happy one moment, sad the next, then mushy and high, and then super depressed. wth.

Christmas decorations are nearly up! So gorgeous at night especially. Except for the slightly creepy looking santa and skinny snowman figurines hehe. Tang Plaza had this band playing for about an hour, right at their entrance and there were actually couples dancing to their songs! Such a rare thing in singapore man :D and they weren't vellai/ang-mohs! :D definitely going there again in december to walk along the whole stretch (and take tons of pics hehe).

I forgot to mention the other day. At sentosa, we took a bus (we normally walk/tram) and caught a glimpse of the upcoming IR. AND ROLLERCOASTERS!!!!! Really large, proper, dangerous ones (NOT LIKE FAMILY COASTER @ ESCAPE)!!!!!!!! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! 2010 COME QUICKLY!! Tho if it's as expensive as Universal Studios in Hollywood, I guess it won't make sense to keep on going there.

Also, Euro-Blog updated! Salzburg Day 1.

I'm on MC today, with a sore throat. The break is very welcome, though I've wasted the whole day rotting and now feel rather useless. Better get back on track. Though I admit I have been checking my office mail and answering everything promptly :P

Watched Midnight Bayou, my third Nora-Roberts-novel-made-into-movie and it was really good! A lot better than Blue Smoke and High Noon, coz in those, it seemed like they tried to fit too much of the story into the movie so it felt very abrupt. This one was nicely done, incorporating the past lives and ghosts thing very well. And it was a little creepy too. I didn't even remember that ghosts were involved. Sigh no more spookiness. Only kookiness! hehe. byee.

had an awesome day at sentosa! it seems to give an out-of-singapore experience, which is nice once in a while :) anyway, i mainly wanted to mention the halloween spook-tacular night which was on today and is also there on the 31st. when we were at imbiah lookout today, the front of Images of Singapore looked completely different, with a spooky-looking entrance and booths selling tickets to enter ($22 I think) and face-painting n stuff. all very nice to look at. but there were also these random people walking around, dressed to scare! zombies and other dead creatures. aaargh i was obviously completely freaked out. the ones posing for photos were harmless (since they were busy) but the others were bloody freaky (pun intended)! so if u're into this halloween stuff, i guess it'll be nice to check out imbiah area this sat! there's also something going on at night safari I think. can't even imagine, considering I get spooked even without the halloween features :P luckily I had an arm to clutch madly today hehe.

K so I'd written and published a looong blog post just now, eating into my dinnertime n stuff, and when I came back and re-read it, just got increasingly annoyed with myself and deleted it. omg how many times do I have to whine to the world to complain about sept?! sigh. It wasn't even THAT terrible, the way I'm making it out to be. But apart from those 5 reasons I'd written earlier, there were two more which made the month suckier - the AT totally busy at work with an absolutely MAD schedule, and getting increasingly closer to quarter-life crisis!

So a review of the month: I have to admit, the first day was indeed crappy. At work. Involving a meeting with the management committee and major embarrassment on my part. And that's when, with the help of others, I realised that if I continue to be this weak, there's no way I can survive in this cut-throat world. And this is just the beginning of adulthood. What happens when I do further studies, in addition to work, and then marriage and responsibilities, and then KIDS?! omg. So then I started thinking of myself as some spineless sap, with no purpose in life. As vidhu put it, an Existential Crisis. Dumb insecurities which creep into my mind and completely change the way I think and do stuff. Wasn't suicidal or anything, but just very blah about life. And again, made another realisation, that I have to start constructively contributing to the world. And improve myself as well. Today, I just randomly flipped to a page in 7 habits for the teenage soul, and the first thing I saw was:

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change

This immediately struck a chord. I keep saying the same stuff, but I dunno, it's some kind of temporary inspiration/realisation I guess which keeps coming and going. I'm the one who controls my life. If I want to see some kind of change in my life and lifestyle, I'm the main person who can make it happen. True that environment, bosses, family, etc play a very big part. But ultimately the choices are mine right? So I read that really optimistic post I wrote some time back about wanting to REALLY experience life and now feel much better. Also, it helps that Oct has been pretty great so far. Oh man I'm totally digressing and talking about a whole lot of things at once.

Right so the first day was bad. Navarathri was great - lotsa arguments and annoyances but the end-product was totally worth it! The concert - oh GOD. Voice totally died coz it was being drowned by the instruments, but others all say it's coz of my nervousness. I'm sure both played a part. I was definitely not confident for one of the songs, and that was the longest one. So I was pretty upset after it ended but the immense relief took over shortly and after that I didn't care too much :P anyway, that's another avenue that needs to be improved on.

Um oh and the fact that we only met ONCE the whole month was rather sad, and timings clashed so badly. But the birthday celebs were really sweet :) I was not at all looking forward to it actually, and was very busy with work on that day. But 13th, 14th and 15th was lovely with all the wishes, outings, surprises and catching up. Thanks you guys!

I think I've started blabbering. It's past 12.30 and I should be sleeping but I feel weird. Gah. Oh went to the library one day to get myself some chick lit and got six books of fluff (yes the limit's SIX books now wooooot!). Brainless feel-good chicklit is so awesome, and somehow inspires me heh. So did Gossip Girl wth. I felt I need to put in more effort in how I look, to feel better and more confident. Does that go into "shallow" territory? Anyway. First weekend which wasn't completely packed so I took time off to smell the roses (i.e. watch dumb tv shows and drink tea and read) and catch up with people. Watched The Time Traveller's Wife! Went without expectations and really liked the movie (after not really liking the 5 previous movies watched previously). It was a really rejuvenating weekend. Maybe that's why I'm still awake now. I feel high and drunk. Ok maybe diary-writing will help. I hope I don't end up deleting this post too. Goodnight.