Countdown to new year....

As places across the globe ring in the new year ....... and we wait ( 12 more hours) for the clock to strike midnight in Seattle, I am sitting in my cozy little living room, my only guest our first live christmas tree, listening to old songs and reminiscing the past year.

We are having friends over for the countdown to new year. Space Needle is a glance away and I have read they countdown by moving the elevators up each floor and having fireworks from all around which ultimately culminates at the very top.

But I am digressing, this year has been quite the high and the low. It started in Paris :). Then continued with a personal achievements, personal downfalls, successes, failures, traveling no end and enjoying some of the most scenic places.......and ending in Seattle.

Apart from everything above, the thing I am most happy about is that I was finally able to escape some sort of shell and rediscover myself through my hobbies. You will not believe the amount of reading I have been able to complete, all thanks to the brilliant service at Seattle Public Library. Here is the list:

•   Twilight Saga : twilight, eclipse, new moon and breaking dawn
•   Water for elephants
•    Snow
•   Middlesex
•   Audacity of Hope
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

I should be truthful. The Twilight series and Sarah Gruen's book are the 5 I have completed, the rest are in the process of being read :). But this is still progress..... from nil to 5 .......and I am happy.

I also changed my blog template. Actually I was trying to enable the Amazon associates search bars, and you need to upgrade your template for that. I still have my old lonely chair template saved somewhere though. I need to restore that or come up with a brand new one. I happened to be searching on the net for blog templates and surprise surprise, I found even this is a business (check out Artisteer )


Getting back to new year resolutions: that's an easy one:

•  Lose weight
• Be positive
• As always Conquer the world :) : and by that I mean someday you will be forced to read a book written by me.... :) 

That's all for today and now... Happy New Year !!

Introspection

As I near the one year birthday of one of the momentous happenings of my life - my wedding .... I can't help but think that this year has simultaneously brought some of the best and some of the worst, some of the happiest and some of the most downhill, some of the most enlifting and some of the most humiliating moments of my life. And as the itouch borrowed from Joy spins out songs from the Bengali movie Antaheen (endless wait ...) , I sit and reflect on what made 2009 ....... 2009 :) (apart from copying Dickens' opening lines of Tale of two cities.)

After trying for a year, and going back and forth and forth and back, I have finally taken the decision, and things have worked out in favor of moving to a new team....today. Oddly enough, I feel relieved and depressed at the same time. Heaven knows that I have been over many mountains in this team, spewn a lot of my work related stress on my home and yet .........it is an association of 2 years and almost (but not quite) 7 months and I feel sorry I have to leave. I had joined my company on 21st May, my birthday. And I would like to move to the new team on Dec 21st - makes book-keeping really easy. :) Maybe I am the good kind of scared about whether this is the right decision about my career, my life at this point. I will always wonder if I made even a tiny impact on this team though.

This year we started in Paris and we will probably end at home in Seattle. But in between we have seen a bit of paradise - the glaciers and ice-bergs of Jasper, hiked miles till we felt we would drop, drunk an amazing blend of tea at a tea-house at an elevation of 3500m (?), watched sound of music in a live backdrop, eaten hot fish and chips from Ivar's, walked hand in hand through our favorite Farmer's market, taken the Paradise trail and enjoyed wildflowers in their glory, visited endless relatives and eaten luchi and begun bhaja at a surprising rate and never got bored of it, enjoyed the company of everyone closest to me being at home at the same time .... and then lost my dog to leave behind - forever - an empty spot and my now incomplete family, renounced social contact to lose ourselves in each other, regained friends when we returned to reality, fought and cried as we adjusted to the newness of marriage and frustrations, smiled and joked, laughed and played, loved, lost, won, and....... lived. Makes you smile doesn't it. :)


( Add to that the surprising small pleasures of life - like picking up the book you placed on hold from the library only to find that a second book that you had wanted is also available - I guess this will relate to only the book-lovers out there. )

I'll end with the lyrics of the song I am listening to..... (since I replay it over and over, I usually have the capability to drive anyone in my near vicinity - nuts - in a very short time :)). These are in Bengali -

Ferari mon

Alo alo rong jamkalo chand dhuye jai…
Chena sona mukh janasona hat chhuye jai..
Fire fire fire ghum ghire ghire gaan rekhe jai…
Kichhu michhu rat pichhu pichu tan deke jai…

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
beje gechhe kakhon….
Se telephone…

Chena sona mukh janasona hat rekhe jai..
Fire fire fire ghum ghire ghire gaan deke jai…

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…

Choto choto din alaper rongin ..
Nurir moton..
Chhoto chhoto raat
Chena mou tar ..
Polisher bon..

Ahaaa aaaa haa

Agochhalo ghor..
Khorkuto moy
Chilekotha kon..

Ahaaaaaaaaa
aha haa

Choto choto din alaper rongin ..
Nurir moton..
Chhoto chhoto raat
Chena mou tar ..
Polisher bon..

Agochhalo ghor..
Khorkuto moy
Chilekotha kon..

Kotha chhilo hete jabooo chhayaapoth….


Ummm hhhh hhh
Ferari mon…
Beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…



Kichhu michhu rat pichhu pichu tan obikol...
Alo alo rong jamkalo chand jholmol…

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
Beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…



Guro guro nil rong pencil jochhonar jol..
Jhuro jhuro kanch agun chhoyach dhekechhe anchal…
Footpat e vir jahajer dak phire chole jai..

ahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


Guro guro nil rong pencil jochhonar jol..
Jhuro jhuro kanch agun chhoyach dhekechhe anchal…
Footpat e vir jahajer dak phire chole jai..


Kotha chhilo hete jabo chhayapoth………

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
Beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…

Alo alo rong jamkalo chand dhuye jai…
Chena sona mukh janasona hat chhuye jai..

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
Beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…

Lights in Seattle

Since I am in the mood today, I might as well make up for all the times and days that I have not written a word...... just been busy in coming back from work, cribbing and cooking up arguments over trivial matters, spoiling everyone's mood and going to bed without dinner...... (I am exaggerating .... a bit :))............. and do some back to back posts.

I take that back that I once said USA would never enjoy the festival of lights as India did. You should just be here now .... so close to Christmas. There are festive lights on verandahs, terraces, christmas trees decked in lights peeping out of windows......... truly looks like a season of miracles. :)

One of my favorite parts of each day is when I meet my husband near my office or bus-stop and we both camper on to the waterfront pier bus to scramble home. And this is when we take in teh waterfront, the lights, the people, and the decorations and all the signs of christmas. He has to take a 5 min diversion on his bus-route just to meet me, but that's part of why it is all that more special. As for me, I relive being a school girl in pigtails, being received at the school gates and accompanied home. I know this simple pleasure won't last forever, my office is moving to a new destination and that might be too out of the way to actually meet and come home together or set out together. But that's why I wanted to write it down......so that I can treasure it forever even when it is no longer something we can do .......... as something we used to do and shared so much through. Ofcourse, it's not all that rosy and romantic.... more often than not, what I greet Joy with - is a face wrought with the stress and frustration of the day. But well, not everything is perfect..... and maybe that can be my next affirmation (see previous post) ...... to leave work at work and smile when I leave office. :)

Affirmations

Today has been a good day. For once, the stars were aligned exactly as my horoscope said they would be (yes, I am big into horoscopes - big into seeing how they rarely come true ........but still depending on them to ascertain how my day will turn out.) and things turned out my way. And so I am indeed glad that I read what I did today ... about which I shall tell you in just a minute - let me take this minute to bask in the glory ..... like so many others....... of this moment where I am holding the stage :).

Anyway, since a few days/months, I was at a point in my life where I had hit the peak of imposter syndrome - I felt I didn't know anything. I was a failure as a computer scientist, I should have chosen some other branch, become an author. Everything and everyone I saw around me, made me feel as if I could have done that and been good at it....... anything except computer science.
I don't know what led me into this black hole - because isn't it true that you can't make others make you feel inferior without your consent.

So just when I had hit rock bottom, the planets became aligned and mercury moved into jupiter's retrograde or some such cosmic thing and things seemed more positive than they had in days.


I had gifted my husband, Joy Dilbert's 20th anniversary edition book and this includes an introduction by Scott Adams on the events which led to Dilbert. He writes about affirmations wherein he would write out 15 times each day about achieving a personal goal. There is this one time when he made a foolish bet with his colleague on beating her score in gmat, picked a score of 94 and practiced his affirmation of "I, Scott Adams will score 94 in the GMAT". He says he is a great cynic when it comes to believing and he doesn't think that magic was at work, but when the score came out, after having consistently obtained seventies in all his practice tests, he stared at the report of 94 - exactly as he had visualized it.

So here's today's lesson, go write down a personal goal that you wish to achieve and continue doing so everyday. Maybe you will see how weird "coincidences come together to make it come true".

My Calling

Everybody, at some point of their life or another are faced with the question of "what is my calling in life?" Is this what or why I came into the world for.... of course you need to have the luxury of circumstances to indulge in such questions.

So, it is not surprising that as I near my 30ish crisis ( I am still a year away though, so not THAT old already :) ), I start questioning myself about - what am I doing now, is this what I was meant to do, am I happy doing this..... and though there are never going to be answers to that, I suddenly realize there are a lot of things I am not doing. I am not learning french or for that matter a new language, I am not volunteering anywhere, I am not reading at the rate I would like.


If you have read between the lines, I am sure you would have guessed that all this is arising from some dis-satisfaction with my job. Basically right now, there are 2 spheres in my life, my work and my home. And I have seen others successfully disassociate their home lives from their work life, and possibly due to my immaturity I have not been able to do that. I always carry my work problems home and make a mess and tangle of my home life. Well, everybody introspects at some time, and I guess my time has come. I feel there is some other calling in my life which I have not listened to closely enough. ....... we'll see where it leads me.

.............................

Bruno died yesterday.....Nov 6th.

Finding India abroad .......

Ofcourse I can never rediscover or recreate India abroad, not through Durga pujas or Dandiya festival celebrations or selected hindi film screenings. But imagine my joy when I discovered Ndtv.com and live screening of the news as seen back home. :) I have been skipping about in glee, and clapping my hands once I realized I will get to see all my favorite ads (call it ridiculous if you must!!)

Not that I have ever been a stickler for news (starting today I will be: my horoscope says that the more constructive feedback I take in today the better for me in the long run ;) ) ...... I must have been the worst at quiz (except literature) and gk in my school...... and throughout college life - all the hindu and times of india newspapers that I got would end up in the waste paper basket. It's never late to recover though. So after reading all about Indira Gandhi's 25th death anniversary and about state politics in my home state, I googled out two of our bollywood heroes blogs.

The first: Aamir Khan
The second: Amitabh Bachan

That's old news for many. I myself have happened on them before and forgotten them. But then since today I am supposed to work on improving myself (again by my horoscope :)) so I'll make new beginnings. I tweeted for the first time in my life, worked out on Wii fit plus ... let's see what else can I break my head on..... ( but you know these signs, it's the over-enthusiastic beginner trying to rediscover him/herself.... very quick downhill slope trend :)).

Bruno still fighting...... Baba is home so Bruno is spending as much time idolizing Baba now.

I am on the verge of giving up on something but with this new found joy of self discovery I might just have to brave it out and stick on, let's see.

Losing a dog....losing my dog .....losing Bruno

How many of us, when frustrated with life simply wish that we were dead ! Sometimes life shows you the true meaning of your words. My little dog of 12 years is suffering from cancer, now quite rapidly and steadily plummeting towards his death.

We had hardly believed he would survive so long - the mass of cancerous cells swelling into a tumor, ebbing away on excision, and reappearing with mightier force the next time around. I had not dared to hope of seeing him alive when I arrived home. And yet there he was, to welcome me, possibly for the last time. Remarkably thinner, with a white bandage masking the left foreleg, where he had undergone repeated excisions to keep the cancerous mass under control.

As I said life shows you - even though I argued with Maa, that Bruno was so alive because he didn't know what was plaguing him, that he was dying, I or for that matter everyone of us everyday would bow to the spirit of life in him...... whether slobbering over chicken rolls and forcing us to give him two thirds of what we ate, or shaking his head with his favorite moo pillow tight in his teeth in that "bullish" way to play with us or refusing to come home when we was taken out for his walk or sniffing out a cat and chasing it till it had run out of the neighborhood..... it seemed all he wanted to do was live...... for the simplest pleasures of life as he knew them.

It's hard to accept death, even when day in and day out you see someone waning in front of your eyes. And that is when it hits you with its solemnity. Something beyond your control and fighting, something that is really not jokeworthy at all, the gap which death creates can never be filled up. Ofcourse these are all known and morose thoughts and that is why it is best left unsaid, best not dwelt upon, but "accepted".

Let's leave it at that though and move on to more cheerful thoughts and memories....... here is a video link to Bruno's forays into the Bay of Bengal, last month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V5rZuUq7CM

Bruno is one of the most avid fans of road trips, and that's what we did. We took him to Mandarmoni by car. He loved the trip (in his own excited way of barking continuously at everything in sight) and he loved the ocean even more. We love you Bruno and will always miss you. You became so much a part of our lives that we dread how life will be without you and dread the gap that your going away will create.

Bruno and I parted proximity when I boarded my flight back here, but he is still fighting out his last few days back home. The malignancy has attacked his lungs and is manifesting as respiratory distress. I don't know how many days he has left ... but I pray that the ones he has left are to some extent painless.

Diwali from the skies , home, Bruno and more

I had the misfortune of having to leave home on diwali. Even after a decade, I wasn't able to burst crackers on the festival of lights. However I did get to light red, gold and green sparklers or 'fhul-jhuris' the day before, and also try my hand at lighting flower pots better known as 'tubris'.... only the 'tubris' true to careless workmanship, ended up bursting at times at the end of the shower of golden light (that's the closest I can get to being technical about fireworks.)

On the other hand, I am sure few have had the fortune of viewing Indian cities from the sky when they are alit and celebrating diwali. Believe me, Kolkata was glowing with the light from small diyas arranged on balconies of flats and houses, buildings with electric lights and rockets bursting into red and blue glitters and garlands above them. Delhi had five times the fireworks and beautiful silhouettes of parliament buildings. I couldn't help but feel lucky that I knew how it felt to set one of these alight myself, instead of sitting on the bank of a water-body and watching the display of fireworks stranded on a barge.

To be contd..

A short "continued"

I haven't written in so long a time , that I was almost on the brink of forgetting this part of my existence. But hopefully I am back in time to save me. It won't be a long one this time around, but I am sure they will get longer, as I get into my habit of rambling.
I was missing my mom immensely and more than that was missing her simply fussing over me... about the oh so little things that only mothers can make a huge deal about. I guess its another bout of homesickness, but I wish I was back home right now, to be in that cocoon of mom' s protection, to share with my brother the joys of starting out on his own, to help my little old dog of 12 years battle cancer and still live like he so much likes to, maybe just be back in Jamshedpur for a spell of vacation with baba, maa and Tukan..... something that would bring those faded kodak photos back to life again. Sigh ..... I wish ....