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".