74. SAWADIKA! -The Bangkok Trip

The City:  The city seemed to be quite developed. Roads and public toilets were relatively clean and maintained.  A few beggars could be seen near the MRT stations. 7-11 seemed to be the national shop of Thailand as you can find one or two after every kilometer. The general architectural style of the city seemed to be that of the temple one – most of the buildings, houses and even bridges have roofs with ornamented gabled-ends.  The entangled mess of overhead electric lines would have baffled Mr. Kirchhoff himself :P

Traffic: One word for it –Horrible! The worst experience was that of the 1-hour bus journey for a 2 km distance. So taking MRT wouldn't be a bad idea, for traveling to MRT accessible places during peak hours. 

Public transport: MRT and sky train systems are so poorly integrated, and have poor connectivity to places.  They are not cheap either. Sharing a cab by 3 or 4 would be cheaper and advisable for traveling during off peak hours. Patience bears a metered taxi. Wait for it.  We never tried the public bus. 

Food: Again, one word for it –Awesome! I guess Thai is one of the few cuisines that suites Western, Indian and South-East-Asian taste buds alike. Also it has a lot of options for vegetarians as well.

Weather: it's better to always carry a rain guard with you. Weather is similar to Singapore and Kerala.

Safety: If you take care of yourself and travel in groups and go around at the right places, it's decently safe.

Thai vocab: Sawadika - hello (for females); Kab koon - thank you (for females)

My takeaway: The trip was quite nice and educative. It made me realize that I really really need to travel more. Travelling can really modify your perspective and make you grow. Being in a group, the members of which I wasn't really close with, I learnt that different people have different preferences, concerns and skills. There are foodies, shoppers, explorers, photographers and aimless people. Timely and good food is important to some. Enough rest for others. Leisurely pace for the others. I can't chop chop everyone every time. Planning beforehand saves a lot of time, effort and money. Raincoat makes walking around in rain more comfortable. Shelling out a few bucks for a local sim-card with data is not a bad idea. Travel adaptors are a must. Don't hesitate to speak up your ideas and wants and needs. And don't get disappointed if they are not heeded to. Helping others always helps you. 

Kab Koon! :)

69. Different people, and their totally different eating styles -Observations

The same kind of food; the same kind of mouth; the same kind of hands -but gosh! there are a hundred and one different ways of making the food reach the mouth!

This is one of the observations that I have made during the past few months in S'pore. Many gadgets have been discovered over the centuries to aid people in this 'laborious task' of making the food reach its destination. With varying latitudes and longitudes, the  permutation&combinations of different tools used varies -fork&spoon, knife&fork, fork,knife&spoon, chop-sticks&spoon and so on. However, from what I have observed, whatever be the kind of food they are dealing with, people generally prefer to eat it the way they have been taught at home by their mom, during their 'table manners' course. So that means, be it rice, noodles, yong tau foo, the Chinese can tackle anything that comes across their way with the help of two puny sticks. Likewise, the Europeans equip themselves with fork&knife. Singaporeans -fork and spoon and occasionally a pair of chopsticks too. And we Indians...well we don't usually require any eating aids. Why bother when God has given us awesome hands!! (But still most of the people, all over the world are taught that eating with bare hands is ill-mannered!! [sigh])

Rice and curry, I can eat with a pair of spoon and fork; noodles and the like, I can manage with a pair of chopsticks(my latest achievement :D ) but when it comes to chicken and other such dead animals which have bones, I need my hands desperately.

I realized this truth when I was lunching with some of my European and  Singaporean friends.
It was the Dutch guy's birthday, and the birthday co-ordinator selected this fancy Indonesian restaurant to celebrate his b'day. Browsing throug the menu card made me 'gulp'. The starting price for the main-course was10S$. I ordered roasted chicken rice for myself since it was the only comprehensible item in the menu that suited my budget. (My brain was calculating: 10S$ = Rs 400. I recollected those days in my UG college when one month's canteen fee was around Rs. 1200 = 30S$ . I gulped again.)

Our food arrived in no time,and all of us geared ourselves with fork and spoon to attack the food. 
'Uh Oh'... The chicken had bones, unlike the usual chicken rice. I so totally don't know how to tear the flesh out from the bones using fork and spoon. The Dutch guy was complaining too -he wanted a knife instead of the fork. I sat there wondering what in the world to do with the two metal pieces in my hand. My hands longed to reach out to the morsel.

Nevertheless, I dug in. With all my might and skill, I managed to finish off the first piece fairly decently. Hmmm...Unlike most of the other times when the chicken was half cooked that made me gag, this one was especially tasty. Yumm...I was into my second piece trying to do the flesh-bone-separating act, when, the spoon slipped and the chicken and the fork went flying away in opposite directions. I sat there stupefied, while the others burst into laughter. Needless to say, I was embarassed to the core:| And I was sad, and guilty too -sad for the chicken who sacrificed its life for nothing, and guilty for wasting money...that chicken piece would have cost atleast 2 S$. Sigh!

My so polite friends(Europeans are always nice) bent down to take the spoon for me, and I deftly used the time to grab the next chicken piece and have a bite ;)
..
..

Weeks later, I was lunching again with my international friends. This time, I played safe by sticking to  vegetarian food.

Our random conversations reached the Indian boundaries, and the Singaporean friend suddenly remarked: "The way Indians eat their food is so cool. They have special skills to eat their food. They not only eat rice with hands but can even tear dosa and pratas with one hand easily. The way they maneuver their fingers dexterously to take food and push it inside the mouth is amazing."

Well what can I say? I beamed at my 'awesome dexterous skillful hands' and ever since I have a special regard for my hand whenever they 'maneuver their way to get food into my mouth'. ;)

64. Hurt

People can hurt you only if (and only as long as) they matter to you!

-Blah

62. The purse

Last year she refused to let me borrow the purse because it was gifted to her by him......
..... today she gave me the purse, insisting that I keep it for myself because it was a gift from him.

56. I wanna grow up once again...

Give me some sunshine,

Give me some rain,

Give me another chance,

I wanna grow up once again...

Haven’t you ever felt like rewinding your whole life (atleast some part of it), travel back in time, and do it all over once again? Haven’t you ever wondered what would have happened if you had taken the other road? Haven't you wondered what if that sperm had lost its way and hadn't reached that egg? Haven’t you wished that you could have said the right thing at the right time? Haven’t you ever been curious to find out what would have happened if you gave a NO instead of a YES? Haven’t you wished if life had ‘Undo’ options and ‘Backspace’ keys? Haven’t you longed for second chances?........

PS: Yea I watched 3 idiots –all by myself- with no subtitles or a human/google translator![I know I’m growing up! :P]

A must watch for every Indian parents, teachers and students especially, who have been ensnared by this rotten education system, which steals many from a life, which could have been driven by their own dreams and passions, but instead have been snubbed by the stereotype doctor-engineer fawning society!

50. SIGH!

The sun sets down on yet another sem....a semester marked with so many defining moments, so many first-timers, so many eventful events...yet as I stand at the fag end of it, and look back, it seems so bleak –nothing tangible was achieved out of the semester...Just a sigh!

Like a deep sigh –involving so many complex co-ordinated actions of the diaphragm muscle, the intercoastal muscles, the rib cage and the lungs –yet seen as nothing more than a simple sigh...a longing for something...a desperate grasping at the invisible air...

PS: Btw...this is my 50th post.Sigh!

48. The Chicken?...or The Egg?...

This infinite-loop question was brought once again to the surface by Bro during one of our casual chit-chatters.(Well…Umm…er…not a casual talk exactly –Bro was actually trying to ‘train’ me for GD(group discussion), which I’ll be inevitably facing in the very near future…as hopefully companies might soon start plying the campus).

That got me into thinking…(yea I do think at times)… and imagining…and googling…

I wonder if the chickens would be as interested in tracing their family trees as we humans are! :P

If you are a staunch believer of the Bible, then you can easily conclude that chickens came first –It was on the Fifth Day of Creation Week that He created every winged creature (Genesis 1:21) complete with the DNA to reproduce that kind. Then He blessed them, saying,” Be fruitful, and multiply" (using that DNA). For the chickens, this meant lay chicken eggs. Problem solved! :)

However big shots like Stephen Hawking and Christopher Langan along with Darwin argue that the egg came before the chicken.

While ol’ Aristotle seemed to be unable to come up with a definite solution and played it safe. He was quite puzzled by the idea that there could be a first bird or egg and concluded that both the bird and egg must have always existed.

Another popular theory holds that genetic material does not alter during an animal's life. It does however change in the egg. Therefore the first bird that evolved into what we would call a chicken, probably in the era when dinosaurs roamed around at large, must have first existed as an embryo inside an egg. Confused??? To put it in simple terms, two non-chickens mated, they may have been the same species of another bird, but some mutation happens. It mutates in the cells that created the egg. Thus, the egg hatches the first chicken.Voila! :D

In this light, both the egg and the chicken evolved simultaneously from birds who weren't chickens and didn't lay chicken eggs but gradually became more and more like chickens over time. Hmmm…..

But if the dinosaurs came first, who laid the dinosaur egg?... And again, it is no easy path from dinosaur to bird either, as legs must become wings, scales must become feathers, solid bones should turn hollow, cold-blooded should heat up to warm-blooded. :O

"The origin of birds is still up in the air.";)

So the question now becomes: Is a "chicken egg" an egg laid by chicken or an egg that will hatch into a chicken? Any "eggsperts" out there who can explain??

Wiki says, an equivalent situation arise in engineering and science known as circular reference, in which a parameter is required to calculate that parameter itself(van der Walls equation, Colebrook equation). To fella civil engineers, another example is calculation of thickness of roof of a tank or structure. To calculate the thickness requirement, we need to know the self weight of the roof, which is possible only by already knowing the thickness. This situation is solved by initailly assuming the parameter and by repeated iterations converging towards finer values…Alright that’s too much of tech!!!

I come up excitedly with all these facts and findings and blabber them to Bro, only to hear from him, “Whichever was ordered first, came first” .…(Argh! Talk about IIT level PJs! :)

Disclaimer: the post contains a lot of stuff from the web and a lot of my bullshitting too. So if anyone feels like suing me, go ahead :P

40. CHICKEN POX- for a STRESSED SOUL!

Red itchy rashes of fluid filled blisters, high fever, unbearable body aches, nausea, loss of appetite, flu-like symptoms…all these loom large in the mind, by the very mention of the term chicken pox(CP)…don’t they?

So when the possibility of a chicken pox first struck me, these fears crept in,and I was scared shit, dreading the days ahead… Little did I know what was in store for me though! As soon as I was positively diagnosed CP, the scardy cats in the hostel didn’t allow me to stay there a moment longer, and hence I was soon expatriated from the hostel. And…..

……And well, nothing happened! Oh yea! I did suffer for the first two days…I had this extremely bad body ache+ joint ache+ head ache which can be described as just excruciating. But other than that none of the afore-mentioned fears were actually realized. A few small harmless spots appeared here and there(thankfully none on my face and hands!), which scaled off after around a week. No itch; no pain; and no yucky fluid-filled blisters….Nothing really happened, and this even made some of my friends ask me to double check if it really is CP!

Therefore I came to the conclusion that God allowed this CP just to give a break to this ‘stressed’ soul. Now, I really am having a good time at home –having gladly missed the interim exams, and being pampered by my parents and grand-parents, and of course friends too who despite of their busy acads, find time to check often whether I’m doing alright,!! Thanks a looot guys

Nevertheless, I have my rants too…. I have been robbed off my rights to take a proper bath for the past 1 week. Imagine having to resort to taking hot-water sponge bath in this sweltering heat!! And I still am subjected to isolation of sorts, and am not allowed to roam around the house( my parents haven’t had CP yet!). Hmph!.....maybe it’s time I get back to normal and head back to college.
Sheesh! I hate to think of the loads of work awaiting me there!!

36. A prayer for 2009

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Dear God, thank you for the year 2008 you gave us,

Wherein we had moments of joy n laughter amidst sorrow n fear.

Thank you for all the good and the seemingly bad

That had transpired during the past one year.

Let the new year be one that will dispel

All feelings of hatred among humanity;

So that, there will be no more attacks

Against the Hindu, Muslim or Christian community.

Let the new year be one which will witness

People rising above petty divisions,

Based on caste, creed and class so that,

There won’t be any more Gujjar agitations.

Let the new year be one in which the political parties

Do for the nation, something utile;

Rather than engage themselves

In petty fights and strikes futile.

Let the new year be such that there won’t be

Any suicide attacks on the Indian embassies;

Or any terrorist-strikes at the Indian heritage hotels,

Which aggravates man’s agonies.

Let the new year be one in which the countries

Cease to fight over a piece of land,

Which leads to nothing but,

Shattering man’s peace of mind.

Let the new year be one in which the players

Stop hitting and slapping each other,

Instead focus more on hitting the ball,

Sending it to a four or a sixer.

Let the new year be one that will bring

Happy tidings to the world economy.

So that people won’t find themselves

Thrown out of their jobs, abruptly.

Instead Lord, give mankind

A new vision and a mission,

That will enable us to broaden our horizon

And use our potential to send more space missions.

Let the year bring forth more Adigas

To enrich our casket of literature,

And more Bindras and Parvathys

On the world stage to venture.

Let the new year behold India –

An emerging super power;

Whom the US takes pride in calling its ‘staunchest ally’,

And the EU states her, its ‘strategic partner.’

Above all dear Lord, help us to stand

Together as one –both men and women;

And enable us to see your glory,

Each moment of the year! Amen.

Author’s note: I wanted to write a new-year post(well that was one week before)…and I started writing a post(prose), however it ended as a 'poem'. This is my second attempt at writing a poem. (Must be inspired by reading too much of CRAZY poems!!!for some reason or the other she never publishes her poems in her blog.sad!)

35. 30 years down the lane….

Yay! vacation again after a long sem! But that also implies 3 weeks of utter joblessness!! As usual, hardly had the holidays started, when boredom started settling in. With no jobless sibling or friends to hang out with, I was once again confronted with nothing but boring, uninteresting days to look forward to(sigh!)

Therefore I wasn’t surprised when dad announced one dull morning that the next day he had his 30th reunion of his civil ’78 batch.(yaawwn…) Dad assured us that we would have an awesome experience, and to top it all he said that there would be a Gazzal concert. Go(yaaaawn…)sh Noooo! And now I should go there and listen to those old songs composed ages before I was born?And what am I going to do there among the dozens of 50+ old people?

Having exhausted my reserves of excuses for not going out along with my parents, I was forced to tag along for the reunion. The food at the 5-star hotel being the only thing to look forward to…

I deliberately delayed my folks so that we would have to spend only less time there. But on reaching there, we found that people had just started flocking in. I was elated to see one of my college-mates there. Apparently my dad and her mom were classmates, now working in the same firm. But soon I realized that even 2 college-girls can run out of topics to speak.

We had the intro session first –one by one, each alumnus had to introduce themselves and their spouse and children, starting with my dad! Half way through the session, it was heartening to learn that all of them were in respectable positions and were well placed in their life. However I was surprised to note that more than 95% of them had their children in the same field (UG, PG, or employed in some software/core firms). Only a few of them had children who pursued medical field, and there were 2 law students as well. That’s all!! Does this country produce only engineers and doctors? Are people oblivious of the scores of other opportunities around? Has the outlook of both the parent and the child been narrowed down to this extent? …or do the children by nature inherit their parents’ taste? (I know, that includes me as well…and I frankly admit that, I still am not sure whether engineering is really my thing!)

The session was however punctuated with slap-stick humour, which they cracked at each other every now and then. The ‘gen gap’ dint prevent us ‘new age folks’ from roaring with laughter along with the people of the 70’s. I never really thought I could laugh at the jokes of my dad’s gen. Damn! I wish my mom had studied in the same college too…could have heard some of their classified stories

The concert wasn’t all that boring either… Gradually my mind drifted to my 30 yrs down the lane…How would it be like? This reunion started by paying homage to 2 of their batch mates who were taken from this world in a span of 30 years.…We’ll definitely have that part, because hardly 3 yrs into the course, and we’ve already lost 2 of our batch mates……..Coming to the brighter side…How many of the ‘college-couples’ will remain couples for life? Will our old pranks which we played on each other be remembered then? Will our children too, have the narrow vision which confines them to the engg/med field?…Wont we let them venture and explore the world of fashion, literature, art and philosophy? Will our children say the same thing about us as we do? Will our current hip songs which we consider with high regards be dumped and labeled as ‘BORING’ by the next gen? Little surprise in that, even if they do…cos that’s how it has been, that’s how it is now, that’s how it will be.

Or wham! Will nothing sort of this ever happen? Will we be too busy with our own selfish lives and be shrouded from the outside world, that we wouldn’t even be able to chip in enough time for such reunions?

To all 3rd yrs…....Four years of fun and joyful college life comes to an end next year. There after no silly jokes in the middle of classes, no stupid fights, no sleeping in the class, no roaming about in the campus …so friends, forget the little fights and misunderstandings and enjoy the next 3 sems! We came with the fear of not knowing anybody …but we will go with tears after knowing everybody…that’s college life

PS:This post was written a few weeks back when vacations started. Now at the fag end of the holidays, I quite regret what I had said about the vacations, for soon I will be longing for those blissful boring days once the sem starts