This is Life!

Today I signed and gave away the biggest cheque of my life.
Though this will not be the most expensive material possession, but the house finance cheque was signed by the home loans company - so it didn't pinch like this one did.
But finally after a long long wait of nearly 5 months my precious will now arrive in 3 more days.

Anyone wants a test ride :-)

P.S Sanjay thanks for helping me decide which car to buy. You can have it all for yourself when you will be in Pune in Jan ;-)
And - help on your blog comments addition and links - will do it today - definitely!!

Thanksgiving long weekend in the US was a blessing in disguise for me. Less emails and no work interruptions. I took an official working holiday as they call it. Went for an early evening movie, a group lunch, a coffee with a friend. Best is nobody has a problem with that due to all the extra time that goes in on other days catching up with the guys in the other time zone.
Waiting for Christmas now :-)

Whats up with the blog world otherwise? It seems to be getting a bit slow - With WM on a sabbatical literally, Priya also seems to be in a dormant phase, LD also refuses to write and no amount of convincing is budging him. C'mon folks - I started my blog as an example from yours! Don't ruin the fun and please don't go.

Looking forward to the next 5 days of happenings :-) Sangeet night, a wedding and just regular dinner parties! Cool isn't it?!

This morning Ashna got up crying "Naani chahiye Naanu chahiye". I packed her off and send her for 2 days. Isn't that cool too?!

They are celebrating Children's day in Ashna's school today and it's a non-uniform wearing day or "coloured dress" as they call it. She was so excited about this fact yesterday - Can you believe this 4 year old took 20 minutes to decide what she would be wearing to school today!

God Bless me as well as her cos I wonder how much this will increase as she grows and what it would be like when she's in her teens!

"A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one."
--Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

All I am doing today is filling up appraisal forms. 1 more other than my own to go and I'm already running out of strong positive adjectives and gentle "improvement" adjectives. I think by the time I fill my own I'll be at loss of words.

And this would be followed by meetings to discuss the same! Doing this twice a year is really becoming an exercise that I do not enjoy much! But rozi roti ka sawaal hai - gotto do it :-)

Out of my house in the morning I take a rick and no words spoken about my destination, I'm dropped right in front of my office. This is what happens when one gets too lazy to drive to work!

"The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it." - Germaine De Stael

I have muffled mine so many times now for my own selfish reasons - i wonder what justice I'll get when I die!

Before leaving for Wellington, I visited Ashna's school to meet the teacher. Donno if it was the Diwali holidays effect or what but she told me to just relax now and not worry about anything, since she's seeing a huge turnaround and Ashna's behaviour now seems perfectly normal to her!

I think the break we took also did wonders. Some changes that I see - She's doing the much wanted by all "Good Morning" wish to everyone at home when she gets up :-) She's getting too naughty now - she can shout on top of her voice anywhere and everywhere. Most parents would in this case try to discipline the child - but since our's is a reverse effort - we let her shout and be as naughty as possible! After I came back home my in-laws also say that they are seeing the changes.

I always thought everything was normal - but now the world agrees and that makes me happier :-)

* Nilgiris is a plastic free environment friendly zone and you find bins all over the place to help maintain cleanliness. I wish such drives spread all over India

* Shopkeepers in Tamil Nadu are unaware of bargaining - and look utterly surprised if you try to do it!

* I clicked hundreds of pictures and recorded a lot of sweet nothings. I'll put up some good ones after downloading.

* Journey etc: > 30 hour train journey is not very good - unless you have interesting companions!

* Food etc: had lunch once in a proper southie restaurant in Coimbatore on banana leaf etc.. Was really yum! Also had filter coffee so many times - started liking it finally! Got a bag full of tea leaves from Nilgiris to distribute!

* Family etc: Felt closer than before to my brothers wife even tho I've known her for so much time now - but we never had any real time together so far. And yes - she makes the best chocolate souffle I've ever had!

* All the 9 days that I was there I didn't miss a single person or thing from Pune - Was very sad that my vacation had to end and I had to return back from the dream world into reality!

* Coming back to 1200 emails and 3 high priority issues is a rude shock!

This place is breathtakingly beautiful! It's remote, serene, misty and raining most of theday - no hill station commercialization as is there in most of them. Went to Ooty for a day and that felt like that's a city with all crowd - nothing great about it.

I'm relaxing and spending all my time either with Ashna & Meesha, or reading and sleeping :-)

More updates later...

Bye Folks, I'm off to the mountains. Happy Diwali. I think my bro does have a basic net connection and I'll squeeze in posts. May also introduce him to blogging ;-)

My vacation is at risk - due to some work related issues!

Ok! One big hump down at work! Looking forward to this week going back quickly.

My vacation starts from Thursday afternoon! Ashna and me are going to my brother's place, Wellington - a small little place in the Nilgiri mountains where he's doing the staff college course. I'm going to be relaxing while Ashna will stay busy with her cousin (I hope). I have no sight-seeing intentions - just plan to have a nice and lazy week. It's ages since I did nothing!