Guilty as 'charged'

I am not a shopaholic. I don't shop at will or when I don't have enough money to last the month or when I am in a store helping someone else shop.

I shop when in need. 

The process of shopping is strenuously very psychological. I hate paying for things that I do not intend on using. So, when I am attracted to something,  I imagine myself in them. This mental calculation has two outcomes and the one that convinces me that the product is worth the price, wins. I do not splurge on clothes that are over priced, not always. Sometimes, very rarely, I fall in love. Blindly, I lust a pair of shoes or a dress or a skirt. I can count the number of times this has happened in my entire life.

1. The royal blue salwar khameez from Kumaran Silks that I bought for my cousin's wedding. Trust me, a thousand rupees used to be a lot of money.

2. The silk saree from Varadaram's that I bought for my mom and me.

3. The Banaras saree bought for my brother's wedding from Kalaniketan.

4. The Mokshaa saree bought for my college symposium.

I can assure you that I will keep them all safely forever and ever.

The last two consecutive weekends saw me spending 400 bucks totally. I am feeling happy and guilty at the same time and this post is my idea of keeping things on check. I swore not to buy anything for the next three months and I hope to stick to the oath.

Wish me luck!. Because, window shopping is fun and in my case it almost always leads to the door.

Tamizh kazhagam

A thought that inspires you to great deeds needs to be cherished and kept alive. As a result of a friend's whatsapp text that contained a link to a Barathiyar song, we founded a three member club for Tamizh.

We discussed Barathiyar at length on Friday, August 15th and eventually ended up watching the video below.

Yaar Barathiyar

We hope to meet more often. I don't want to rave about the club but I'm quite pleased with ourselves.

Selfies of the good kind

Games

Have you ever observed yourself while playing a game that you are good at? You are at your subconscious best. You multitask, beat your own high scores and remain quite oblivious to the thrill of winning.

Have you observed yourself while you, for the lack of a better word, 'stink' in a game? Your conscious effort to get better at it is met with a stronger force called the opponent. I recently found a number game called the 2048. Quite popular one, that game. Every time I fail, I start the next trial with the belief that I will conquer it. But in the end.. ah well, I started this sentence with a 'Every time I fail'. So you see, I have convinced myself of never being able to solve it and yet I get back to it. The games at which I stink are the games I feel very alive in. Counts as a reason to not fair well in the silliest of games right? Right.

Bye. 

Mid week crisis

I have been laying off some real tedious work for almost two weeks now and I picked it up today, on a Wednesday!. I hate documentation work and I cannot frame a sentence without hitting the back space on it at least five times. To think in sentences that make sense to everyone who reads it is the world's toughest task. I'm glad no one reads these posts and that's why it pours.

Good day, bye.

Food shopping

Stocked up the kitchen again. Bought 3Ls of milk absolutely aware that  it will vanish in under a week. Murukku, Mixture, Veggies, curd and wheat - we have everything now. Don't you love such a kitchen?. I do!

My mom never likes to run out of kitchen utlities and I feel exactly the same. I panic! Ok. bye. I feel fat already.

Snacks

I love snacks and I never say no to them.

As much as I would to maintain a healthy diet, I cannot stop thinking of tiny packets of murukku and biscuits when the lunch effect starts wearing off. It's not the hunger that triggers the craving, I have observed, but the discipline that demands to be followed.

I try and eat a variety of snacks because.. not everything needs to have a reason, I like variety and that's it. Too much to taste and such little time.

I had 50-50, Good day Choconut, Chakri and coffee. That's how you alleviate a pain caused by a Monday.

Hate my post today. It does not justify my love for snacks.

Food tasting

Vaai Moodi Pesavum. Do you get lost in movies that you carry a part of it with you even after it is over? A little bit of insanity and vulnerability is required to experience this. I didn't want to talk the entire evening after the movie was over. A must watch it is.

My Sunday was about my silly experiments with finding what caused the acute stomach aches I sometimes suffer from. I recalled a couple of incidents and found that Blueberries were the common factor in all those occurrences. What would sensible people do after arriving at such a conclusion? Stay away from it. What do you think people like me would do? Prove it. But of course, one cannot test it on the room mate, can they? Anyway, I was right. I ended up with stomach cramps, one of the worst I have ever experienced. I tried sleeping through it but looks like my stomach and my brain share some nerves and I was writhing the entire afternoon.

I'm fine now. Thanks for asking. 

Movies and food

Saturday of this weekend was planned and executed well.

We made sure we saw ourselves out at 1 PM for a lunch buffet at a place called Istanbul Grill. We have been there for some Hookah time but never really tasted their Middle-Eastern cuisine. No, not everything needs to be had with Hummus. Two of my friends hail from strict Muslim families and we opt for restaurants that serve Halal meat. I managed to offend the waitress there by asking if there were any Pork meat dishes on the buffet spread and I was responded with a vehement 'No'. Good to know. 'But you do serve Beef right?, point me to them' I said and I stayed away from it. Of course,  pepper and salt had to be generously sprinkled to arrive at a definite taste. Needlessly to say, I loved the meal. 

Next stop was a mall to return some stuff.

Godzilla and Million Dollar Arm are the two movies that released this weekend and we couldn't choose one over another. After watching Godzilla at 4:30 PM, we watched Million Dollar Arm at 7:00 PM. Loved both the movies. 

Godzilla has all the elements I wish to see in any Hollywood movie - Monsters, trains and trucks being chewed, buildings being demolished and cities on fire. Watch it if you grew up thinking America really had a Jurassic Park with Dinosaurs in it and you hoped to visit it someday.

Millon Dollar Arm taught me that Americans sweat on will. When the situation is tense, they do and they are fresh otherwise. So it is not the country, it's them. Complicated, I know. 

Dinner at a Thai place called Lime Leaf because one of friends thought home cooked dinner would down the excitement of a splendid day and I didn't complain - who wants to chop onions anyway?!

Reeling in Sunday laziness. Bye.

Weekend, anyone?

Another week passed by.

The fridays are tricky, especially in the mornings. In fact I hate Friday mornings more than Monday mornings and I owe it to my impatience. Why can it not be the evening already?!

I despise the 'What plans for the weekend?' question because I don't have an answer to it because I am not supposed to have an answer to it because isn't that what weekends are supposed to be? Unplanned, unpredictable, uneventful and yet exciting. If I had a schedule chalked out, how different is it from my weekdays?

This week had been a little tough on me, professionally and personally because I could not prioritize and I couldn't keep my mouth shut(respectively and all that). When I cannot impress, I annoy. When I cannot annoy, I try.

That's it for today. I wish I could write longer blog posts like I used to years ago. Damn you, Twitter.

Two sentences

Two sentences is all you get today. I give up.

Crime beat

Intuitiveness is a responsibility. You know the inevitable and you await it.

I was too young to know I possessed it.

The children's park that my house overlooks now, was a barren ground back then. In the far right corner of the ground was a house which didn't look big enough for a family of four people, a couple and two daughters. Opposite to that house was a factory which was nothing more than a hole in the wall. The factory made industrial glue and had employed two people - an old guy and another who could afford the money to buy a Suzuki Samurai bike and the time to sit outside the factory doing nothing.

At such a young age, anything queer would mean danger. I didn't think twice before concluding that the Suzuki guy was pure evil. He sat outside the factory all day trying to make friendly conversations with passers by, teasing little kids, ogling at women and basically living up to his image. He has spoken to me twice. He wanted to know if I needed a lift from my house to the school bus stop the first time and later again he said 'Hi' when he had come home to talk to my dad about managing money. I ignored him both the times.

That morning when I woke up, the parents were outside talking animatedly with the neighbors pointing at the house at the far end of the ground. There was crowd, an ambulance, a police vehicle and a couple of policemen. I heard the words 'suicide', 'mother of the two daughters', 'Factory guy' and 'long term affair'.

Nobody was found guilty and nobody was arrested. But the glue factory was shut down. The dad and the two daughters of the house relocated. I no longer saw the Suzuki guy in the colony and nobody spoke about it after that.

I am not saying this was a murder and I am not Miss Marple to be able to solve this mystery. I am not even saying that the Suzuki guy is guilty. But at least I trusted my intuition and stayed away from evil. Right?

Books 1 - Miss Marple

Picked a book from the local library so I have a reason to leave the lights on when I fall asleep reading. The kind of books I love picking up range from 'Depends on my mood' to 'Depends on my mood'. But I have noticed that I pick books that scream - Detectives and Hindu Mythology. But it's books. No one can judge me for that. 

I picked up a Agatha Christie - Miss Marple collection of short stories recently and finished before I had to renew it. So yay!.

This is Miss Marple. The book is on unsolved mysteries and I started wondering if there is any such story that I know of. Wait for my post tomorrow.

Day 3

Of course,  I skipped a blogpost yesterday. I'm working on it, remember?

Mondays are tough. And so are Tuesdays till Fridays. I don't see the difference.

Every Monday I wake up thinking about how soon the weekend passed by and I see just 'a flash'.

Tough day, and I'm glad it's over.

Weekend corner set up

The weekend has been very relaxing. I actually finished a book which I had put away for a month now. What the librarian doesn't know, can't hurt him. Right?.

My room has been empty ever since I moved in October 2013. A comforter, a couple of pillows and a quilt are all I look for when I really need to crash. So, that's all I had to make myself a weekend corner and so I did. 

Yes, I did end up sleeping most of the time. 

Hey again!

'I'll blog a post one for everyday' 

This became by resolution in 2012 and here I am, two years later, wondering why I could not stick to it. 

This isn't new. I have never really had a habit. If followed persistently for 21 days, any activity becomes a habit. But the challenge is the first 21 days, isn't it? 

This is day 1. Let's see. 

After 21 days, I would blog with a purpose which would border on life, fashion and food.