Gotta be a better Ambassador

A week back, I was having lunch with my colleagues and one of my colleague mentioned that she loves Indian food and that just yesterday she had an eggplant dish.

She couldn't remember the name of the eggplant dish she had, and being the only Indian on the table, I believed it was my responsibility to help her out, so I started with my list......"Beigan bharta", "Beigan curry", "Beigan ..... right then my Chinese colleague said "Beigan Masala!" and my American colleague went.....YES! I sat there feeling dumb, embarrassed, looser.... I can add more synonyms to it, but you got the idea I believe.

So when yesterday, my manager was scanning through resumes for potential candidates we are looking for, to fill a position in my team, and asked me, "How is Anna University?, Is it a good one?". I very confidently said, "Hmmmmm....I have never heard of it". She said, "If you have never heard of it then it might not be a good one". I said, "Yeah, may be, there are lot of new schools coming up in India".

Out of curiosity, I searched for it on the web and was one more time dumb founded. Anna University was ranked top 5 in India, even above IIT Delhi and IIT Kharagpur! I felt like jumping in the sea, but all I could do was accept my ignorance. When I told her that it 's top ranked University, she gave me a glance of, "How could you have not heard of it" and smiled.

I got up, went to the kitchen, poured myself some green tea and decided that I am going to be a better ambassador to my country. So, I started getting current by reading Indian New papers online and all I could get current about was politics and Bollywood.

Say, that is why it is called General Knowledge (GK).....

PS: Please leave your comments, if any on the blog itself. Thanks....

Confession

Before we had our second baby recently, it used be a regular point of discussion among us friends, if one should go for a second kid. Given we would always be struggling with taking care of our first one, having another, had to be a well thought, discussed and consulted decision. And for the outcome of the discussion, it would always be that two kids can entertain each other and you are "off the hook" pretty much. Especially coming from parents of two kids {and more}, we fell for it, literally.

Now that we have two, the statement of they can entertain each other doesn't quite seem to be true, atleast not until now. It's been few months now and we are never "off the hook" at all, instead both of us are pretty much "stuck" with atleast one of them at any given instance. Both the kids "demand" completely different level of entertainments, if you know what I mean and if you just said yes to that, trust me you don't, unless you have two {or more} yourself. So....... when we met this family of three (they recently moved into our neighborhood) last weekend, the memory of the days of all the discussions of going for second and the faces of all our dear friends who coined the phrase "off the hook", was fresh again.

With their daughter around the same age as my Tammy (my older one), playing in the room upstairs, we mommies decided that we should be in the same room so as to keep an eye. During our conversation the lady complimented me for how great I look for the fact that I just had a baby. I really liked the lady, coz if you don't know, "looking great" or "you have lost all your weight" is the sweetest compliment you can give to a new mommy and she was going exactly by the books.

I guess most parents to one kid, consider a lot before taking on the decision for the next one, I believe going or not going for more just comes out naturally after that.

So when she asked me, "How is life with two kids?", " How did we decide on having another kid?" etc, you would wonder what my reply was. Well, I can summarize my answer by saying that I gave her the concept of "off the hook" myself.....surprised?.....yeah, I was too......and honestly I really liked the family......I still am trying to figure out what got into me. I looked at the closet mirror in front of me and I could see the devils horns on my head. It's been four days now and I feel really sad for not giving her the true picture of life with two kids.

"Off the hook" is only a hope for us right now, "We are stuck" is the current slogan.

{sigh}.....So help me GOD......'coz I have sinned.........

To be the Best!

"Mommy my piano doesn't work. It is broken, I think"
"Don't worry sweetheart, papa will fix it. It needs new batteries"
....
"Mommy, look at my shoes. This is not right, yes mumma?"
"Don't worry baby, we will show it to papa. He will fix it with a glue."
....
"Mommy, I want to open it and play with it"
"Hold on dear, we have to wait for papa. Papa will assemble it first, then you can play with it"
....
"Mommy, I want to ride my bike." "
Wait for papa to come. He will teach to how to ride it"
"Mumma, papa can do so many things"
"You bet! papa knows everything, He is the best Daddy"
"Yeah, my papa is the best! He can do everything."
"Mommy, I love my papa so so much"
....
[And last week]
{tuck} The chalk falls on the floor and breaks
"Papa....this broke"
"That's ok dear, now you have two chalks to write with"
"No papa, I want the big one. You have to fix it."
"Fix it! No one can fix it."
"Papa but you have to....you have to fix it"
"Why"
{convincingly} "Coz otherwise you will not be the Best Papa anymore!"

My little back seat driver

When my little Tammy learnt about traffic signal I was very proud.....of myself.....ofcourse for obvious reasons.

Red says NO,
Green says GO
and Yellow says SLOW....SLOW....SLOW!

that was our little traffic signal song :)

Tammy has learnt a lot more by now about traffic rules. STOP sign rule, bike lane, right of way etc etc and she would make sure that I follow all of them......all the time! It is fun most of the time to hear her from the back seat guiding me thru the traffic, can't deny that it gets irritating sometimes.......or let me confess......most of the time. But who would have thought that the most pain in the @$$ rule would be the Yellow signal rule.

My reflex action to the yellow light would everytime be accelerating a little to reach the other side ASAP and little Tammy would always notice this tiny acceleration and would start screaming.... "Mom, it's yellow light, you have to go slow.....slow mom.....slow. I am not talking to you now. You did a wroooooong thing. When its yellow light you need to...." and she goes on and on about it until something interesting catches her attention.

So yesterday I decided to not accelerate when the traffic light turned yellow........and the light I picked to follow this rule had cameras..............which meant "No forgiveness" and all the rest happened in the fraction of second -

- I took my foot off the accelertor which slowed the car down....so I was following the signal.
- I judged that I will make it to the other side assuming that the car behind me will stay put and wait for the next light.
- Wrong assumtion! The next car followed me and I knew right then that he/she will not make it.
- The guilt feeling of me being the reason for his/ her bad luck today creeped in.
- I prayed god to help him /her.
- He/She quickly went to the next lane and crossed the intersection along with me.....making it to the other side just in time.....my prayer was heard.....fast!
- I thanked god for helping him/ her out and got honked at by him /her.

Woah! that's it....I decided I am not listening to my little back seat driver anymore.

On the Side:
I narrated the story to my husband and when I was using "him/her", "he/She", he paused me and said, "Oh! the driver was a HE" and continued looking at my expression questioning how...."the fact that his mind worked fast and he moved to the next lane and saved himself......is a proof in itself".

Hhhhhmmmmmmmmmm.......

Father's day on the raceway

It's been quite sometime since I last blogged. Just been very busy with everyday life and I have so much to talk about. Our father's day experience was sitting in my "My Documents"
for quite sometime now so I thought let me spring back to blogging life with that. So here it is.....

Well, I thought I had a very well planned Father's Day (june 21st). Least did I know that the lack of mishap could also make a day boring.....literally.

I planned our day around the NASCAR Race in Sonoma at the Infineon Raceway. Got the NASCAR Race tickets, planned the dinner out after the race, packed the backpacks with sunscreen, sun glasses, ear plugs, caps, lots of water.......oh and the tickets :) Since my company was sponsoring one of the car in the race we were invited for a photo shoot opportunity with the driver Bobby Labonte and the garage tour.

We were very excited and I was so sure that it will be a great day. Plan was to be there by 11:00 for the photo shoot, then do the garage tour at 12:00 and then watch the opening ceremony of the race at 1:30 and the race from 2:00. All we had to do was be there by 11:00 and the schedule would just fall in place.

So much for the plan of leaving home by 9:00, we only started at 9:45 only to realize that we were out of gas. So the starting time got postponed to few minute to 10:00. Fortunately, we didn't hit any traffic on the way coz we were still pretty early per the race schedule. Unfortunately though, the line to the parking we were in was going to the parking which was the farthest to our seating area. We were still in the line to the parking at 10:50 and we knew the photo shoot opportunity was not happening. Not much harm done though. We are not a die-hard fans of Bobby Labonte so missing the photo opportunity didn't really do much to our race excitement. When we reached our parking lot, we saw a long line to take the shuttle to our seating area from the place. So we decided I should get down and stand in the line while daddy parks the car. So I and my little one, we joined the line to the shuttle and were waiting for daddy to join. And the waiting got a bit too loooooong coz daddy got out of the parking area from different side and couldn't figure out where we were. So for next 30 minutes we were lost and to top the drama, I picked up the wrong backpack, so my cell phone was also with daddy...{sigh}. The guy next to me was nice to lend me his cell phone and we had a family re-union in 15 more minutes.

By the time we took our shuttle it was 12:35 already so there goes the garage tour opportunity. Still no dent on our excitement to watch the race. After two shuttles and one golf cart ride we were at our seating place and the first thing that came to our mind was.....we need to eat! and we did. We were in the nick of time as the opening ceremony was about to start and the air show had started. There were planes and choppers hovering on our head doing awesome tricks, emitting American flag colors, followed by fire works, sky divers, National Anthem, salute from tanks and fighter planes flying very low right above our head. AWESOME....BLOSSOM!!!!

And then the REAL thing started....THE RACE!! They took couple of laps at normal speed, and the third lap was VRRRRROOOOMMMMMMMMM......so loud, so fast, so thrilling...it was amazing. After few laps though, our excitement kinda started to die down for the mere reason that there so no accident or even a minor mishap that we could be the first hand spectator to. Well there weren't many mishaps anyways and the very few that happened could not be seen from our seating area. We had pretty good seating though, with the longest (and straight) of the race road in the view. But I suppose most accidents happen on the turns. Something we learnt for the next time.

A lot happened the whole day, but our excitement was dampened by the not happening of any mishap during the race. We could not take it after around 25 laps and decided to head back. We did some photo shoot with the race cars on display and checked out the trucks which carry the race cars. The daddy sneaked out to get the racing experience up close from a small opening around the exhibition area where the divider /separator was very close to the raceway. On our way back to our parking-lot we over-heard many other families talking about the no-mishap race and that how disappointing it was. Guess, we are not the only people with twisted mind in this world :)

The dinner plan was in San Francisco and we loved everything about the food. And then we headed back home, everyone tired and exhausted, ready to crawl back in the bed.

Overall the day was not that bad and for both of us it was the first time we went to a NASCAR race, well any motor race for that matter. But will I go again, I don't think so. I'd rather watch it in the comfort of my home. Not sure if it would be the same for the daddy though. I still have to ask...

Floating in the Air...Now that would be an achievement!

My company introduced Yoga classes for us employees last month. Today was the orientation class giving us information on what to expect and Q&A at the end. The class I picked involves breathing techniques, light stretching and meditation. To give us a feel of it, the instructor showed us few stretching poses and a 3 minute meditation. I felt really relaxed when I opened my eyes at the click of his fingers. I had heard great things about meditation so I am already pretty excited about the class and when just 3 minutes can make me feel this good, I am sure an hour long class will do wonders.

Well, I am not promoting Yoga here. I don't really care about how you take care of your health. Hell, I don't even take care of my health. Talk about all the junk food I eat with the only exercise of my life, 5 minutes run to catch the train every morning. So I definately cannot be the speaker to health and hence that is not what I have for this blog.

Back to the feeling good moment I was having after the 3 minute meditation. Next was the Q&A session and the instructor asked us to speak whatever was on our mind. And since he asked for it, I did. I asked if meditation can make you wise. More like the saintly souls, like people who preach about aspects of life and encourage you on how better to live it. I asked him if I can be that person who can see the reality in different perspectives and colors, be calm in complete chaos, stay composed in a complete disaster situation.

Yes, my question was long but then I had to frame it right to get my answer. I sure turned the heads in the room. I guess because most of the other questions were about, "can we medidate sitting on a chair?", "should we move the center table to the side?", "isn't the room a little chilly, is there a way to just increase the temperature of the room a bit?" etc. Few laughed at my question which I find a bit intruiging, coz' I was very serious and I feel so was my question. I sure made the instructor go in deep thoughts and then he started answering, the gist of which was....depending upon how seriously you take meditation and how often you do it, it can do wonders from helping you stay calm and composed to giving you the ability to even lift yourself up in the air and more. Although after sometime you need a guru to guide you through your mediation practice.

Well, sounds awesome. I am not sure how seriously I am going to take this class but if you ever see me floating in the air, don't tell me that I didn't share the secret with you.

Morning Of The Big Day

In my bed,
I heard birds chirping,
From the window,
Sunrays were entering.

I pulled my blanket,
And turned my side,
Thinking about the morning,
I then realized.

Someone was calling me,
She had something to say,
And asked a peculiar question,
‘Do you remember, what is today’?

I turned my side again,
And heard the voice asking the same,
I tried hard to recall,
But it was all in vain.

Just then a thought,
Passed through my head,
I threw my blanket,
And jumped out of my bed.

I ran for the calendar,
But stumbled on my way,
My mom gave me a hand & said,
‘My darling, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’

-written in '97 on my Birthday