First Day Out..

Monday i had my first day out alone in the mall. It wasnt a pre planned trip. While having lunch the idea of Mr K dropping me at the mall on his way to the exam striked me. He wasnt against it as long as one condition was met. i shud get ready in 5 mins which I did and there we took off, Mr. K for the exam and me for a few hours out in mall. It was a welcome change for me as compared to the usual monday afternoons spent with the laptop on the couch.

My intial plan was to spend the time in Borders where i could grab a book and read it while sipping a coffee from the Seattle's best coffee. But i was not in a mood to settle down and read. So i roamed around the mall carefree. I relived my days in London where this kind of lonely outing was a routine. I was open to the people advertising for their eye shadows and manicure kit unlike the other times when Mr.K will be dragging me away from all those. But Mr. K is always ready to accompany me to the malls eventhough he hates to do clothes shopping with me. I guess most of the men are not into shopping. Are men born like this or is this a change that happen to them once they become husbands. Still unclear to me.

After an hours wandering in the mall i went to Borders and sat down with the book "New England Rediscovered" which had more than 100 uniquely captured shots of the New England states consisting of Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachussets, New Hampshire and Vermont. But within a few minutes there came the call from Mr. K that his exam is over..

Movie time..

Mr. K was shouting "Look!!! the movie Vaaranam aayiram has come on videoduniya". That news didnt impress me much. Hey, dont get me wrong here. I am a big fan of Surya and I wanted to watch that movie. But not the "shaking and laterally shifted" version of the movie retaken at some theatre. I had to give in finally when Mr. K came up with a moderate quality print of the film.

The movie is kind of a narration by the main character played by none other than Surya, a narration of his own life much influenced by his father. Other than some scenes, the whole movie was quite dragging and i was waiting for it to be over. I read some where that the movie is inspired from the directors life and 70% of the movie shows what actually happened in his real life. But to me most of the incidents in the movie seemed far too dramatic to happen in somebodys real life. I restrain pinpointing them here since its a new movie and i dont want to spoil for those who havnt watched the movie yet.

Forgot to mention one thing.. Mr. K really enjoyed watching the movie. Yeah..Our tastes do differ sometimes!

Weekend special..

Contrary to the title, there was nothing special about this weekend. Mr. K's exam and the freezing cold thwarted our weekend day out. But saturday i managed to get him out of his pretentious studying a.k.a internet browsing. We decided to have lunch from the otherwise eschewed indian restaurants. We avoid them mainly bcoz of the exorbitant prices and secondly our inclination to try other cuisines. We recently found out that for the same dish, the price in the dinner menu is twice that in the lunch menu. That was the inspiration behind the saturday lunch.

But at the restaurant we were greeted by the ubiquitous expensive dinner menu which had relegated the lunch menu becoz of the vegetarian buffet menu on saturdays and sundays! By the time we understood that we needed to order from the dinner menu, we were all settled down at our table and the only way out of the restaurant seemed quite out of the way.

On the way back, we happened to pass by one of the entrances of Brown University, an Ivy League college, and god knows what instigated us to take a self guided walking tour of the university at minus 7 degree celsius. The sight of the ivy league college might have rekindled our passion to learn. Anyways our tour got over in 20 minutes coz of the heavy wind blowing right into our face which was the only exposed part of our body.

Just like that..

The other day, we went to Walmart to buy some bread. Since I am not much into cart pushing, we thot like we will take the bread last. So we went to the auto area from where Mr. K wanted to buy something. On the way we came across some tubelights. These days its getting dark very early here. The sun sets at around 4.15-4.30. So most of our time is spent in the yellow lights of our drawing room. Mr. K is not a very big fan of the yellow light. He thinks sitting in the yellow light makes him moody. So he wanted to buy that white tubelight. I took this occasion to push him to buy a weighing scale. Why they dont have one scale at our gym!! We went to buy a $2 bread and finally we ended spending $25. After reaching home we realized that we forgot to take the bread for which we went there in the first place. Nothing to worry. Mr. K got his white light and i got my scale.

Yesterday a trip again to Walmart. This time to return Mr.K's favourite tubelight and my weighing scale. That tube didnt had enuf wattage to bring light to our drawing room and the new scale was showing 4 pounds less for both me and kishore! But this time we didnt miss to buy the bread.

License to drive..

Last week was my road test and thank god i came out with flying colors. To be true, this was my second road test. I pathetically failed my first one. But i think i can rationalize my first failure. There was a last minute change of location for my road test and therefore i wasnt familiar with any of the roads and I was a bit tensed. I wasnt as confident as i am now and the instructor asked me to take reverse very fast which i did even after crossing the yellow line ;). Overall outcome: I didnt get the license.

This time it was different. I was beaming with confidence. When the instructor asked me to take the car i started off like a professional which induced a tinge of pride in Mr. K(he was my US driving tutor). I drove carefully following all the signs and rules and within the speed limit. Overall outcome: I got my license.

Back in india i had a license and i used to drive once in a while. My father was my teacher then. We used to go for driving practices early mornings on saturdays and sundays. Most of our trips were to Kovalam. My mom used to accompany us. She was kind of a peacemaker between us, whenever my father got irritated by my driving. Here also Mr. K and I used to go for driving practices during weekends. Initially he was a tad reluctant in giving the car to drive. But after my first failure, he himself forced me to drive the car all the time. Not to mention that he attributes some new born noises in the car to my driving. But i think that is becoz of the normal wear and tear of the car.

Thanks to their support. Now i have got driving license in two countries.

Weather-mania

Today the first site i opened after switching on my lappie was weather.com. Thanks to Mr.K for making me a weather maniac like him! Initially i used to make fun of his obsession for weather. Now it has become more of a daily routine for both of us.

These days our visits to the weather sites are mostly to check when the first snow is gonna hit our place. We both had our share of first snow last year. Mine was in london. It snowed twice while I was there. The first one was kind of a surprise. When i woke up, the whole place was covered with pristine snow. Both the times the snow melted away by the time i came back from work, not giving me enuf time to make my snowman. That pretty much explains my fascination for snow. Mr K's was in chicago and it was a hard one. He used to catch the morning 6:30 AM train to office in the hard cold -20 degree celsius weather. I wonder why snow still excites him! Lets hope he enjoys his first snow shoveling as well.

Some pics of my last years snow posted below. BTW the current temperature here is -3 degree celsius and still waiting for my first snow this year.

Outside our apt in Croydon

My Fav place..

If someone ask me whats my favourite place on earth, i would say Fort William in Scotland. Last year abt the same time i got the opportunity to visit this picturesque place. It was on our trip to explore the highlands of Scotland. It is a town surrounded by lochs and glens. Loch means lake and Glen means valley in Scot. The town of Fort William lies on the shores of Loch Linnhe and is very close to the Ben Nevis which is the highest moutain in the British Isles.

More than its beauty, there was something quite different about this place which attracted me. As a kid, there's one picture which i used to draw always. It had a moutain, a setting sun, a lake, birds flying and boats floating on the lakes. I was so obsessed with this image that i dont know how many times and how many ways i have painted this picture. It never ocurred to me that such an image would actually exist. That may be why i was awed when I had this breathtaking view from the high streets of Fort William. I am not sure of how long I stood there gazing in the freezing cold.

I dont think my camera has done justice to this fantabulous place..

Monday Blues...

After a long break, i made Sambar today,a south indian curry which requires a lot of efforts and perseverance. In the last stage of the curry, i had a discovery that some insects were enjoying a comfortable stay in one of my spices jar. Phew!!! I had used that spice in my curry.

Plan B in action.

The phone was ringing and finally Mr K answered.

Me: Are you ready to have some veg curry with some unharmful insects in it for your lunch??

K: No!!!

Plan B failed. What to do!!! My last resort. Feed the whole curry to the kitchen sink!!! It did work and my sink seems happy.

Reader's Block...

I presume im having a Reader's block. I have a problem with finishing the books i start to read. I was an avid reader once mainly during school and college days. Even after joining work, i used to read once in a while. Now its almost a year and a half since i read a book. During this period i started reading many books but wasnt successful in completing them. On our trip to US(that was almost six months ago), i started reading Jeffrey Archers "The prisoner of birth" and still im on the 80th page! Can I blame my laptop for this? I think i can!! coz most of my time are now spent with my laptop.

As others, i started my reading with the usual mystery series like secret seven, Nancy drew, Hardy boys, Fear street. Then there was the girls stuff like the Sweet Valley high and the Enid blyton's Malory towers. There was a short mushy romantic mills and boons period. But got bored of those soon since the stories were always the same. Then i happened to read "The windmills of God" by Sidney Sheldon. It was a grt experience and so i started reading his novels.. Meanwhile read the Eric Segal's "The class" and Jeffrey Archer's "Kane and abel" which took me to yet another magical world of fiction and suddenly i had so many authors and so many books to get hold of and within a short span of time i finished reading almost all the books of these three authors. My favourites of Eric segals are "The class", "Doctors" and "Acts of Faith" and that of Jeffrey Archers are "Kane and abel", "Not a penny more,not a penny less", "First among equals", "Sons of fortune" and "Shall we tell the president". In between read a lots of books of various authors like Dan Brown, Tagore, Paulo Coelho, Chetan Bhagat, John Grisham, Arundhati Roy and some new writers. Dan brown's "Angels and demons" is my yet another favourite.

Seeing my reading pattern and my favourite authors and favourite books, if you know any book or any author which can bring me back to the world of reading, please scribble that as your comment.

Do i miss work?

Now its almost 6 months since i started my leave. When Kishore got an assignment here, i didnt have any option other than taking an extended leave. I didnt have anything in mind of what i will do at home all day. Moreover the trip came so fast that I didnt get even a second to wander my thoughts in that way.

These days whenever i meet up with or call someone, the usual question to me will be "Dont you get bored? Dont you miss your work?"

Am i getting bored? Sometimes yeah... But there are different ways to fight that. My own ways of fighting boredom are browsing, cooking, reading, watching serials rarely and some ephemeral hobbies like drawing, painting, crafting, aerobics, dancing and ofcourse the recent one - blogging. In the middle of all these do i really miss my work?? Lemme think!!! Definitely I miss going to the office where i can meet people. Nowadays the number of people i meet or talk to daily are less since most of the time i am at home. I miss all those teeny tiny fun and the tensions i used to have at work. I sometimes miss the bday cakes we used to have and i always miss coming back from office with the feeling that "now i can rest after a heavy days work". So i guess i dont miss work as such..but i miss other stuffs that come along with it..

The Right to Read..

Yesterday we decided to spend some good time in the Woonsocket public library. Usually our trips to the library are very short. It will be mostly on our way to the gym. So hardly we spend 10 mins in the library. That too, in the dvd section, me searching for some comedy/drama movies and kishore searching for some action/thriller/oscar movies and finally the argument between us on which movie to take. But ystrday we went on to explore the books section. I was passing through the teens section and there it was - all the series of Fear Street, Sweet valley High neatly stacked in the shelves. There were multiple copies as well. That reminded me of my childhood days when this sight would have been a dream come true moment for me.

I used to read a lot during my school and college days. For me or anyone like me from Kerala(not sure abt other states), the only source of these books were the lending libraries. Even there we didnt have the luxury of multiple copies. I also had joined one, where i had to pay a deposit of 500 bucks to get the membership plus 10% of the book's price for each book i was lending. Once they even charged me with the full price of the book coz the last page of the book was missing. Not to mention that the last page had stuffs like other novels of the writer or other books he/she is planning to write in the future..definitely a must read page!!!

After seeing how readily the books are available here and thinking of how hard it was for me to pursue my hobby of reading, i really feel like as a child i was denied my right to read. I am sure that any child would love to have such a vast collection of books to read. So we should do something so that atleast the future generation of Kerala have free access to these books.. not the e-ones, but the actual hard bind ones.. Let them enjoy their right to read!

Carpe Diem!: What do you like for breakfast?

Carpe Diem!: What do you like for breakfast?

Window Shopping...

Now its almost 6 months since we landed in this small state of Rhode Island. After almost two months stay here, we were running short of places to go on weekends. We had covered almost all the nearby attractions, all the parks and all the malls by then. To top that up, my attitude was "y a visit to malls if you dont have anything to buy". So I turned my nose up when kishore first suggested the idea of window shopping. But ultimately with nothing much to do,we would always end up window shopping most of the time. Intially it was a strenuous task setting my mind to the idea that you are at the shop just to browse and not to buy. But with my better half always by my side, i have become a successful window shopper :D

Nowadays i really enjoy this little hobby of ours and I assume i am now in a position to give some tips for window shopping.

Tips :

1. Ideal places for window shopping are big malls where u have lots of retailers to hop in and hop off.
2. Dont go to those shops where there arent any customers or where the sales person is eagerly waiting to help u. Believe me, u really dont need any help for window shopping.
3. We mostly do window shopping for clothes and they are the best stuff to go window shopping for (in my opinion).
4. Dont do window shopping continuosly for more than 2-2.5hrs. You will get bored. You can take a break in between and continue if you feel so.
5. During your shopping (window), have a good look at the price, design, style and quality of the stuff so that when you actually need to buy something, you know which shop to go. This is actually a great advantage of window shopping.
6. And last but not the least, dont end up buying all the stuffs that you see in the shop.
   

It is highly likely that during your window shopping, you may stumble upon a dress or a design you have been yearning for a long time and in such scenarios theres no harm in turning your window shopping to an actually shopping :)

Modern Art..

I was always curious about Modern art paintings. maybe becoz till recently, i have seen modern arts only in some malayalam movies :D. In those movies modern art is either shown as a mixture of some colors or some imprintation of the hands or some inexplicable combination of these two. So i wasnt sure whether thats the real modern art or were they making fun of that!! So when we went to washington dc, i insisted on visiting the art gallery to see some real modern art paintings. There we saw this painting, five rectangles painted in five different colors..and the name given to this painting was "Tiger"!! I tried to find some description about the painting which relates this to the animal tiger or which inspired the painter to name it as tiger. but unfortunately there wasnt any. I shud have taken the audio tour for the details..

Is this really the modern art..or am I too conventional to enjoy a work of modern art.

A bitter experience - Part One

In my previous blog i have mentioned about my experiences in UK. Reading that, one of my friends suggested to me that i should write in detail about those.. So here is one...a bitter one though.

The story is set in Croydon,UK and the time frame of the story is 2 weeks after i landed.I had great difficulty in getting an acco there..After my frantic searches i got one which i shared with 3 other indian roommates.I started enjoying the place since my acco problems were all sorted out.

After nearly 3 weeks of stay we got a call from our landlord saying he wants us to vaccate the place since he fears that the smell from our kitchen(indian foods smell) will stick to the carpets in the room and will destroy that. Not to mention that our landlord himself is an asian. We were astonished by his behaviour and asked him for one month time to get a new apt.But his reply was kinda of warning which conveyed the message that if we did not leave the apt in 1 week, we would end up paying twice the rent for each day we were staying...

So our next search for the apts began and luckily we were able to get one nearby. We liked the new place even though it was a bit old and more over we were pressed for time. So the moving out date was decided and conveyed to the landlord. We made the apt impeccably clean since we had our intial deposit money entirely under our landlord's mercy and the amount at stake was 1000 GBP.. (1000 * 85 = 85000 Rs)..No wonder I cleaned the apt like i never did before,not even my home..

Missing UK..

As part of my job i was in UK for some 14 months. Initially when i was asked to travel onsite i was very sad.. It was really hard for me to leave my family and friends. And even while i was there i badly wanted to come back home. But now when i think of my days in UK, i think i had a great time there... and i kinda miss those.One thing i miss a lot is the train journeys which i had every morning and evening.Inorder to reach my work i had to take a tram and a train.The train journey was kinda short. some 15 -20 minutes.But it was so peaceful sitting near the window and watching the train pass through the countryside.The other good thing is that the experiences i got from the trip. Thats invaluable - and i think i have become a new person, a new improved one after all that.

Introduction

Today its Nov 4th Tuesday...My first blog born on this day at 11.09 am...I dunno what i had in my mind when i created this blog...I am not even sure whther i will be active in this.. Lets hope i come out of my writers block and do some scribbling....