Monday, February 27, 2006

My weekend

What a weekend! We were invited to Milind's birthday party on Saturday and after a grand meal of fish pie, beef cutlets, peas pulao, fresh salad, mutton curry (tons of other stuff) and delicious dessert, we hit the sack, stuffed at midnight. Lisa was a darling through out.
I managed to read Chetan Bhagats "Five point someone" which I must admit is written in a very fun sort of a way, sans all those overtly elaborate words found in Arundhati Roy books! It was a welcome change and a quick read. By the time I was done with the book, Matts and Priya landed with a bottle of Grovers red wine. We debated over how our lives and the lives of our friends have changed over the years and after some loaded conversation we headed off to KFC in ITPL. Avian flu, yeah right!

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Avian flu

Avian flu in India! Wonderful!
Apparently 8 lakh chickens were culled a few days ago in Maharashtra. Many more to go. What a waste! Methinks that bird flu has been in India for a while now, but has gone undetected. How else would one explain what the authorities were doing, when thousands of chickens were dying of the H5N1, at such an appalling rate? But like I've always believed, anything cooked the Indian way can never be harmful (well almost.. :)).

I almost forgot about Dr.Don's engagement to Sonja on the 25th! He gets married sometime in April this year. So that leaves only Thoma, Sachin and Vaidyan who are yet to join the league of married men and women.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Unwind time??

Weekends are supposed to be the "unwind time" isn't it? Not for me atleast. How do I get pulled into the quagmire of work? Here goes- I noticed that a wall in Lisa's room was a little dirty. Well, I started cleaning it and while pulling the bed to one side, noticed that there was a lot of dust accumulated, then I noticed that there was dust under the table too. Slowly but surely I ended up cleaning and dusting the whole house! Isn't there any end to the amount of cleaning one has to do? The fish bowl had to be cleaned, the pots had to be painted, etc. etc. etc plus I had to spend some quality time with Lisa.

Vinod managed to get the other Vinod to put my painting up in our dining area and I must say it looks cool. Like Reema put it "It doesn't look like unprofessional work". What?? Did she think I was unprofessional all along :)
And it was also the weekend when Lisa stepped into the pool for the very first time. She's growing up so fast, that I'm beginning to miss my little baby but again, it's such a pleasure seeing her learn new stuff everyday!

Thursday, February 16, 2006

My sweet Valentine

Vinod did the sweetest thing for Valentines. This time around I wasn't too keen on doing anything much but then sometime in the middle of the night, when I was asleep, he pushed a box of Cookie Man onto my side. So there we were munching cookies at midnight. The story doesn't end there. I found a nicely wrapped red box on my bed when I woke up in the morning. It had the most amazing Lush body cream made of cocoa butter (and all kinds of exotic stuff) and a bar of "Sea Vegetable" soap made of Sea weed and Atlantic sea salts. So needless to say, I feel like the Queen of Sheba.

That's Erika on the right. She's Genevieve's daughter who is the same age as Lisa. Check out her sleeping position. By morning she would've checked out every corner of her crib. Adorable!

Monday, February 13, 2006

What not to do?

If ever you decide to watch a movie, don't ever think about "The Matador". Definitely not one of those debonair roles that Pierce Brosnan is so cut out for, not his milieu for sure!
Lisa on the other hand was having a wonderful time with Priya's piano. It sounded like somebody was walking over the keyboard. She also managed to dig Leah (the other kid who visited Priya and Matts) nose. :)

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Cuckoo

Lisa started the "cuckoo game" with her Dada, probably at the age of one and it's still her favorite. It amazes me how kids can do the same thing OVER and OVER again and not get bored. It defies logic but then again, thats what makes them so adorable. Look at her! Aint she cute!

I've been wanting to watch Rang De Basanti ever since it was released and especially after all the rave reviews I've been hearing on Radio City. Hope it's not one of those overly hyped Hindi movies. I sure was disappointed with Black. What was with that Rani Mukherji's duck walking?? Not to mention the rather long, dramatic and filmy speech at the end of the movie, that was almost like an ugly icing on a fairly well made cake!! "If you quack like a duck and walk like a duck, you ARE probably a duck". Ahh, well, that's not fair is it, considering she's done a better job than the rest of the riff-raff. Kareena did you say!

The one thing that's happening with zeal out here is recruitment. It's the buzz word. Get people, anybody you know. BUT (a big one), where are they going to seat all these people. We already have 2 new colleagues who have no place to sit, except perhaps in the cafetaria. Or maybe the innovative double parking will do the trick! Talking of parking- I had to park on Brunton Road (I promise, I'm never going to utter this word again) and thought I did a fairly good job of neatly tucking my car in a safe corner. Happy indeed, until I opened the car door and realised that this was an erstwhile dumpyard, well atleast it smelt like one. Bleh! Lets not get into the details of what followed.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

The lucky American women!

Oprah's favorite quote "If you are an American woman, you are already lucky". Well I disagree. Why? Simply because being the mother of a bubbly 17 month old fire-cracker, I can't imagine how it would be manage everything else on my own. Feeding, bathing, playing, changing endless numbers of nappies, ensuring that she's not putting her leg, head or hand in some God forbidden place, fitting in quality time, piggy back rides- the list goes on and on, there is NO rest for a mother! Parenting is THE single most gratifying job in the whole world but accept it, sometimes, just sometimes, you want to simply be able to sit down and rest your head against a soft pillow without a care in the world! I now have somebody to mop the house, a nanny(who is a God-send) to take care of Lisa and a cook to take care of the cumbersome Indian cooking. And what do I do? Well, I get back home, spend 2 or 3 hours (which is all I get) with my lovely daughter before she gets to bed. Then offcourse, there are endless odd jobs to do- laundry, dust the shelves/house, keep a track of Lisa's "outgrown clothes", grocery shopping, fret about the fused bulb (in the bathrooms) or the unkept kitchen shelves etc etc etc (why am I even rambling about this)!! So now you know ladies why I say "If you are an Indian woman, you are probably the luckiest". And if you don't fall into this category, take my advise and get the help, atleast till it lasts!
I started the day pretty bad, simply because I refused to wake up on time. End result- No parking space on MG Road at 9am and close to no parking on Brunton Road. I had almost given up after driving to the end of Brunton road, but lo and behold, there was just ONE spot reserved for me! So although, I was exasperated at the lack of parking space, I did find one. The day could've been worse, right? What else did I do- helped my friend buy a lovely dress for her friends 10 month old daughter and also realised that the lingerie section in Central has been "phased out". "Phased out" ! What is that supposed to mean? The Bangalore woman no long cares for the ridiculously expensive sheer lingerie line? Or does the recent survey (which my dear husband announced to me) in UK about the priorities of women hold good here too? Mobile phones to men!

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Multitask

I think there's too many things happening in parallel. Writing 3 manuals, testing 2 products and planning for the testing of another, all at the same time.
My mind is cluttered right now and I guess I don't need more work (for instance creating a new blog) right now but I think it really helps to switch OFF once in a while. IT WORKS!
I cleared up my work space last evening and right now I'm working in a paperless mode! How cool is that? Clutter free work space= clutter free mind. Next on the agenda- reorganising my wardrobe!
Lisa's news
She scraped her knees for the very first time in 17 months and the first thing that came to my mind was "The kids growing!".
She eats pretty well these days, except sometimes when nothing interests her. I was quite surprised to see her eating all that lettuce on Sunday! 3 cheers !

Monday, February 06, 2006

My family

This is my family and my world! My husband Vinod and my adorable 17 month old daughter Lisa Anna Thomas.
This was taken a little after her first birthday at Matthew and Priyas place.

Welcome to me!

Here's the newest blogger in town!
I don't even know if this is going to work, because I think its going to be firewalled by the bloghaters in my company. But here it is anyways!

Welcome to me!