Monday, September 14, 2009

I’m twenty – bloody – five years old. And it shows in my lifestyle. Somewhere along the years, I’ve slowly but surely shed my student persona and become a fully grown adult. While some habits and attitudes I’ve developed are about growing older, some are plainly about being old fashioned. Here are some clear signs of both:

  • The first and clearest warning is my complete aversion to SMS lingo. I simply cannot stand it. Even when I am texting, I painstakingly type out most words in full, with capitals and punctuations in place (which explains why I am not into texting at all). I’m trying to break out of this habit, and I’ve learnt to accept the ‘i tol d bss im sik bt m actlly wtchng d mtch bt dnt tll nebdy tht n gt ppcrn n ppsi n cum ovr aftr wrk’ as my lot in life. But when I get emails and chat messages from people in this new language, I have to force myself to take deep breaths, count to 10,000 and then prepare to read the mail/ message.
  • My reluctance to embrace social networking the way most of my friends do is the clearest indicator that I’m old fashioned. Sure, I’m on Orkut and Facebook. But I visit them about once in 2 weeks. I usually look upon these visits as a boring chore, where I try and respond to the messages in my inbox/scrapbook/ wall, return ‘visits’ from friends, leave the occasional comment on photos and status updates and get the hell outta there. As for twitter, I signed up a long time ago and have mercifully forgotten all about it. Yeah, I’m going to be one of those old fogeys who doesn’t tweet. Seriously, I’m amazed at how people find the time!
  • This new found desire to spend my Sundays doing absolutely nothing but roll about in bed with a book all day, watch endless reruns of friends, sleep like a bear in hibernation, and get my lazy ass off the bed only in the evening for a shower, and an hour or so at the Barista/CCD on MG Road before I head home to hit the sack – this is an alarmingly clearly sign of my growing old. Sure, Saturdays are hectic – I reserve my Saturdays for shopping, watching plays, catching up on friends and partying – but earlier, Sundays were an extension of my Saturdays – now they are my day of rest and recuperation.
  • I talk about working out and ‘being fit’. Now don’t be silly, I don’t actually work out. But I do talk about joining aerobics class and working out. Everyday I walk into office with my gym outfit and trainers and cool sippy-type sports water bottle, all determined to join the aerobics class thisveryday, but inevitably find urgent high-priority work to finish at 6pm, sadly forcing me to miss the class. My student persona never even talked about working out, leave alone carrying out this whole farce for delusional self-gratification.
  • My adult persona has a hidden cleanliness freak inside! Who would’ve though? She is not, let us be clear on this, any where close to Monica like behaviour. We are talking about cleanliness freak by my standards – its all relative! So now I actually keep the clothes in my cupboard neatly pressed and folded (instead of a haphazard mess from which I pick u whatever fall out first to wear as the outfit of the day), I mostly put things back in their place, and my living room and bedroom are largely neat and tidy on any given day!
    Now that I have proved I am grown up, have exposed myself for being quaintly old fashioned, I feel the urge to stand up for my student persona, to claim that she hasn’t completely given up one me either. But then, that’s another post for another day!

Friday, September 11, 2009

Hallo blog

Dear blog,

I’m sorry I have neglected you completely for the last two months. It’s not that I don’t care about you anymore. I do! Truly, I do.

The reason for creating you was to keep a record of my life – the places I go to, the people I meet, the things I do, the experiences I have, and so on. So when I’m 50 and I have ungrateful bloody children, who dismiss me as a whiny, prudish old bore, I can come to this space and relive my twenties and think of what an awesome life I had, how much fun I was and what my life was like before the ungrateful bloody children took it over. Of course, I could also simply not have children at all, and spare myself all the insecurity.

So that’s the reason you were created - to keep track of my life. Unfortunately, I’m usually so busy living the life that I don’t have the time to keep a written record of it. I’m not gloating, really I’m not! Now coming back to the point, I’ve just been too busy most of the time to write. And when I find the time to write, my mind goes blank. Like a clean slate. Which explains why I haven’t visited you in the last two months. But now stop sulking, and listen to all the things I’ve been upto in the last two months:

Went on a weekend trip to Hampi and fell in love the place. Seriously, why didn’t I take up history in my undergraduate course and become and archeologist? I could spend days and days looking around ruins, and not get bored. Anyway, the weather in Hampi was perfect, cool and breezy, the sun was barely there but it didn’t rain either. And since it was monsoon season, there were barely any tourists and everything was quite cheap. It was a perfect break.

Samee and I went to Eastern Europe for a 9 day trip. We flew to Budapest, spend two days in Budapest, then spent a day in the Tatras mountains in Slovakia, then went on to Prague for two days. We returned to Budapest from Prague, spent another day in Budapest, and the next day in Szentendre and Visegrad. It was a great trip, and we had a very exciting time. We also fought and sulked, and were very tired by the end of it, but it was an awesome trip.

I got engaged. Yes! I wasn’t too excited about it in the beginning, with ‘ohmigod, my single days are over’ being the prevailing sentiment, but then I slowly got into the groove of things, so I did enjoy myself. Actually, all the attention, the compliments and the flattery, generally being treated like a queen, having people buy you expensive gifts – what’s not to like? Bring on the wedding I say! But I now wear my engagement ring on the right hand because – (1) I’m used to wearing a ring on my right hand so I just removed the old one and replaced it with the new one (2) Since most people wear their wedding/engagement rings on their left hand, wearing it on my right hand means people wont just have to look at my hand to figure out my marital status. :p

I’ve also been partying like there’s no tomorrow. I’ve been watching lots of movies. And I have unfortunately discovered television.

So that, dear blog, is what I have been upto in the last two months! It’s been a busy couple of months, what with all the travelling, and missing flights in between and shopping for the engagement, and partying on Saturday nights, and recovering from Saturday nights on Sundays.