Someone Like You

I just had this uncontrollable urge to write about the special someone in my life. Not that anyone would be interested, seeing as this blog here had two hits last month, one when I checked to see if it had undergone disuse atrophy, and another when my niece hit the keyboard when I was not looking. OK, back to the topic. This post is about the nicest human being I know, the person I love the most in this world, myself*.

1. I cannot stand black umbrellas. In fact, I find all single colour umbrellas unappealing, but black is particularly disliked.



2. My umbrella features a skinny girl with long braided hair and a messenger bag slung across her body cycling to Marseilles.

3. This often leads to speculation that the girl on my umbrella is me. It is not. My hair is much longer, mine is an excursion bag, I have never been to France (although I would love to someday) and I cannot ride.

4. Yes, I cannot ride a bicycle. Or any other two-wheeler, for that matter.

5. Speaking of bags, I am not much of a handbag person.

6. I love rice.

7. I hate the great big ball of fire in the sky.

8. I think geckos are kinda cute.

9. Despite being a Hindu, I relish the cooked flesh of dead cows.

10. I cannot pose for a picture properly.


11. I often cannot recall what I have said just seconds earlier.

12. I am sorely tempted to poke people who say 'OMG, don't you eat anything at all?' in the eye with a 16 gauge needle. No, I just stand outside and inhale the scents during mealtimes. Retards.

13. I am not entirely sure if I am superstitious about the rahukaalam. But I strongly believe in putting off everything that can be put off for as long as possible.

14. My least favourite dress style is the one that I am forced to wear most often.

15. I read an abridged comic book version of Dracula when I was eleven, and I still have nightmares about the Count. And now I really wish I hadn't performed a Google image search for 'Dracula'.

16. In general, I don't care for clothes or jewellery much. When my friends talk about 'that blue dress with tiny yellow flowers' they wore 'that day' with 'the silver and blue earrings', I will smile and nod, but I will have no idea what they are talking about.


17. Shoes are my Achilles heel.

18. Either there is something significantly wrong with me, or I am a hypochondriac.

19. I am a borderline misanthrope.

20. I have never seen Sholay.

21. I don't like the colour pink.

22. I don't own any nail polish, but there is always a bottle of nail polish remover on my dresser.

23. There is a mole on my left forearm that was not there last year.

24. I am the proverbial 'will not hurt a fly' kind of person, and will go to a lot of trouble to save an ant from a watery grave in the sink, but I can dig up no compassion for mosquitoes.

25. I love to play with words and numbers in my head.

*Not quite who you were expecting, eh?

In A Pail, Obviously

My niece turns two in a few weeks' time. Here she is, doing one of her favourite things, posing for a picture.


She also loves to tell stories. Here is one of her masterpieces.

Me: Vava, oru katha parayu. (Vava, tell me a story.)
Her: Jack veenu. Jill-um veenu. (Jack fell. Jill also fell.)
Me: Ayyo engane? (*expression of shock* How?)
Her: Vellam ekkan poyappo. (When they went to fetch water).
Me: Oh.
Her: Vava guggirl! Clap!
Me: OK, Vava good girl. *claps*

Other favourite things do include raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, which is magically useful in keeping her still for a while.

Hakuna Matata!

I realise I have not posted anything on this blog, even though I promised I would after my exams ended. It's been over a month since that wonderful event, and my promise has not been kept. So unlike me to not post, don't you think? Don't believe me? Look at the archives.

I have been watching lots of movies on DVD, sleeping, reading, sleeping, eating, sleeping, lazing around, and in my free time, I sleep. This problem-free life made think of two of my favourite people, and look, here they are!


I saw this picture, and all I could think was, the guy in the car is standing downwind.

Time Travel

Only a week and a half before I die. Apologies in advance for not posting in the next few weeks.

Wedding Invite

I seem to have run out of topics to write about.

All right, I lied. I have not run out of topics, but that sounds better than whining about how I have so much to study that I have no time to breathe. It's old. So I stole this, I know not from whom. It's been around for a while. Apologies to non-medicos.

We, Mrs and Mr Aorta-Brachiocephalic Arch

Cordially invite your esteemed presence and blessings

with family on the occasion of the marriage of our son

Sublclavian Artery

With

Internal Jugular Vein

(Daughter of Mrs Inferior Petrosal Sinus and Mr Sigmoid Sinus)

At Posterior Triangular Hall, lateral to Sternocleidomastoid Plaza,

Prevertebral Block

Cervical Highway 7

And for the reception thereafter at their residence at

Apartment C6

Fascia Colli Buildings

Neck Nagar

Head

PIN Code: C567

Kindly avoid presents

Anatomical accuracy be damned.

My Best Friend Was An Elephant Even After He Lost Weight

Three months. Three whole months during which all the readers of this blog sat around like someone died. Mope no more, my (imaginary) readers, I have returned. And this time, it's no Friday Five or meme, it's flashback time!

When I was seven, we lived in this place that was next to a huge building owned by a temple. During festival season, the temple authorities would tether their elephants there, and I just had to look out my window to see them (the elephants, not the temple authorities) eat their palm leaves and pee like a waterfall.

One of these elephants, I called him Ramu, was my best friend. I would stand at the window and talk to my him, and he would nod his head in agreement. (I learnt later that he would nod his head even when he disagreed, and also when he was asleep. What can I say? I was stupid.) We would talk for hours, and in the evening, my Dad and I would go visit him, and I would take gifts for him. Like maybe half a peanut or so. (Hey, I may have been stupid, but I knew my priorities.) Ramu's paapaan (mahout) would hold it out to him, and Ramu would reach out with his trunk and put in his mouth. And then he would smile and wink at me. (I also possessed a hyperactive imagination. Still do, to be honest, which is why I cannot sleep without a night light. Well, that and nyctophobia.)

He would leave at the end of the festival season, and it always seemed to me that he too was crying. My mom bought me a lot of books to console me, and when I read that the Indian elephant is the closest surviving relative of the woolly mammoth, I cried all the harder. I missed my only friend. So I improvised.

Thus it came to be, that my Mom came home from work one day to find me sitting on top of the wall, talking to Ramu. Only Ramu had left a few days ago. Curious, she leaned over the wall, and nearly fell over laughing.


Like I said, I wasn't too bright those days.

Picture Perfect

I seem to do nothing but Friday Fives and tags on this blog. I swear, it's not that I can't find things to write about, it's because I am lazy. Anyway, no one reads this blog, so it's not like anyone gives a damn.

I found this tag here, and it looked interesting.

How to and what to :
1. You are given a set of questions.
2. Google the image which best suits the answer and post a picture from first page of image search with minimal explanation.
3. After you finish tag 6 other blogger friends and let them know.

Now that we are clear on that, let's start.

1. Your age on your next birthday


He looks an awful lot like Pintsize. Now that birthdays are all about growing another year older, I am going to swear like Pintsize at anyone who dares to wish me "Happy Birthday". I meant Yelling Bird, not Pintsize.


2. A place you’d like to travel to


Corfu, Greece.

3. Your favourite place


Shillong, Meghalaya.

4. Your favourite food/drink


My favourite food changes all the time, but my favourite drink doesn't.

5. Your favourite pet


6. Your favourite colour combination


7. Your favourite piece of clothing


It's not clothing, technically speaking, but you can see pictures of cute shirts any day, whereas Chloe is rarer, don't you agree? No? OK, then, here are some shirts.

I could kill for the one on the right.

8. Your all time favourite song


God, I LOVE this song. I just melt when Justin Hayward starts singing. Which is probably not the most appropriate thing to say on the Internet, but it's not like people are reading this.

9. Your favourite TV show


10. Full name of your significant other

Not applicable.
:(

11. The town in which you live


I spend more time here than I do at home.

12. Your screen name/nickname


That is one of the most disturbing images I have ever seen.

13. Your first job

You are required to travel at least 8 months in the future for this to be true.

14. Your Dream Job


15. Bad Habit you have


16. Your worst fear


I am nyctophobic. Very much so.

17. The one thing you would like to do before you die

The Metropolitan Opera House, New York.

18. The first thing you’ll buy if you get $1,000,000


19. Your favourite credo in life

I am not tagging anyone. You can take it up if you want to.

The Friday Five: Totally Wasted

After stuffing myself to the gills during Christmas, I went back to college and promptly resumed doing nothing. As always, nothing happens, and this is why you, beloved reader, are being treated to a monologue on how I waste my time, courtesy Friday Five. You can thank me later. And read carefully, I will ask questions at the end. (This is how our teachers start a class.)

1. What is your biggest waste of time in your home?

My textbooks*. I hit the books the minute I get home, and keep at it until I take a shower. I get back to the books before my hair dries, and stay with them until dinnertime. I check my email (you have no new messages), and return to wrestling with the textbooks, until I need toothpicks to keep my eyes open. The trouble with this is, the bigger ones hit me back, and all of them weigh more than I do. And yesterday I found out I was actually supposed to open them and read, not keep bashing them. Ah, woe is me!

2. When at work, what is the activity that you find wastes the most time?

Classes. They just want to protect the lecture halls from becoming termite food, and we provide the perfect solution.

3. When getting busy with a date or significant other, what ritual could you do without?

The 'date' or the 'significant other' not showing up. Never have either of them presented themselves before me. *sigh*

4. What is the biggest waste of time on the Internet?

The Internet is not a waste of time. And StumbleUpon is not addictive.


5. What do you do at a restaurant to waste time when waiting for your meal?
That is what cell phones are for, if friends are unavailable. At the college canteen (eating there is the easiest way to poison yourself), a commentary about the varying expressions of pain on the other patrons' faces is called for, until our meal arrives and we make our own faces. If we are at some swanky place (at the expense of some individual unlucky enough to be born, and thus, have a birthday) and we don't get a table, a graphic description of the vaginal hysterectomy we saw that day (or many years previously) in a loud voice does the trick. After we have ordered our meal (an hour long process, involving much name calling and arguing), we consider it our duty to remind the sponsor about the complex process known as ageing, and the diseases associated with it. It is soon followed by someone (there is always somebody who does this) remarking that if we went around to the back, we would see our waiter energetically pursuing a chicken, which is the prompt for the others to make similar imbecile comments about the waiter venturing out to sea with a fishing line or sacrificing goats. We continue in this line, until the smells from the next table reach us, and all of us practise breathing exercises. Pictures of the 'Birthday Grandpa/Grandma' and their 'friends' in different crazy poses are snapped, and then, having nothing else to do, we start telling jokes, with punchlines like, 'he wanted to see the butter fly'. In the ensuing uproar, the rest of the patrons walk out giving us dirty looks, and the waiters ask us to leave the premises. We refuse to leave on empty stomachs, and we are served our food in record time.

Ooh, Arch has a birthday in a couple of weeks. Yay! On second thoughts, I think we may have run out of restaurants where we don't have a lifetime ban.

Those of you who did not die of sleep apnoea, answer this: Why did the boy throw his toast out the window?

God, I am SO funny.

*Lucky for me my Mom does not read my blog. Neither does the rest of the world, but that is beside the point.