Thoughts for the year - 2011

I finally bring back my blog to life , with this one last post for the year ;) Yes , I have done very little here this year , hope to do much more in 2012.

So this is about the year 2011 and my life in 2011 ;) Yes it has been a great year for me , and the days have passed so fast that I feel I have done nothing much in this year :D Just a few highlights of this year :

• Biggest for me : Well my first steps into the next phase of my life started this year . We are expecting our first child early next year :) So most of 2011 has been taking care of myself and the little life within me :)
• My sis finished her graduation and is a working professional now . That is why I say time flies fast :D For me she is still the little kiddo , but now she is grown up, self sufficient and smart lady , proud of you girl!
• Second year of our marriage this year , and while I am writing this we are almost close to third :D It's been a great journey with Sandeep so far and with an addition to our family in few days , I am sure it will just get better :)
• All my friends are still very much in touch and we are having a great time :) Though its true that , this year we are scattered in different places and couldn't meetup much , but still speaking to them often and just knowing that they are there as my great friends makes life much more beautiful :) Thank you friends :)
• Div's Ananya came into this world :) ,Prabha's wedding (couldn't attend) , Krish's engagement , Pavan moving to Singapore , Sneha also expecting almost at the same time as mine - just to note down few things happening with friends :D

Well , not much has happened since it was mostly filled with ups and downs of being pregnant ,visits to doctor , worrying about how the baby might be doing inside , and I know most of next year will be filled with "we and our baby" phase :D But I hope I will be able to do little more in the coming year ;)

Adios 2011 , and welcome 2012 :) Hope you bring lot of happiness and peace with you :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all who happen to stop by my blog :)

Come back yesterday

Why is that I always look back and hope that I could go back in time and live some of the days again?What makes the past so endearing,even when the present is going good?

Many a times I think about the times in Mysore and want to re-live my those days again.How nice it would be if I can get just one day of those times again..Few days back,when I was in Mysore and was staying at our house.It was around 7 in the evening and we (Myself and Deepu) were on the terrace of the house.I went and sat for sometime in the same spot where I used to when we were actually living there.I felt like I was back in time , and if I go down into the house now , there will be amma cooking in the kitchen , and will call me for dinner :) But then , my thoughts were stopped when Deepu said we will go down.

So , I come back to present , and think that my life has changed so much now.Even if I go down into the house now , I won't find my parents and Yashu there..It's a different aspect that they are there in Bangalore now , and I we keep meeting very often , but still it's not the same..

So , I just wonder , why is that , I always have this feeling that I would want things to be as they were in past , though I am happy and content with my present?The past always has its own charm which makes me re-visit those memories now and then.After some days , I might be yearning for one day of my today's life ;) 

How did/do you know that he is the one?

This is a question to all married ladies out there ;) I am only talking about arranged marriage here , since the process and thoughts might be totally different in case of a love marriage.

So, when a girl meets a guy , how does she know  whether he is the right person or not? During my pre-marriage days , I was discussing this with Pavan , and we had concluded that when we meet the right person , a bell will ring inside our head/heart ( we were kind of confused as to where exactly it will ring :D) .

So did the bells ring for me when I met Deepu? At least for me , they partially rang even before I met him ;) .I was impressed with the fact that he wanted to speak to me on phone before coming to my place or meeting my parents.And I was double impressed when he said on phone that he wanted to meet me so that we could exchange our thoughts , before he or his parents would come to my place.I really liked that he was not adhering to this stupid process of coming to a girl's place with parents to "see" the girl , where neither the girl nor the guy would get enough time and space to speak to each other.

And when I met him , we got enough time to speak about our expectations and we were comfortable in each other's company.May be it was also pretty comfortable because our parents were not around ;) .

So that was the case with me.But was I sure of of my choice once I said yes? Hm , well up to an extent yes.But , there was this fear that something might go wrong and I might not have made the right decision.I guess all girls will have a little fear in this phase :) .But , after an year and more of married life , I can happily say that I made the right decision :)

But is it as easy as that in all cases? What is the right formula for choosing the right guy? I really do not know even now. Some people prepare a set of questions to ask the guy when they meet him.My ex-roommate had forwarded one such set to me long back. Though I didn't use them when I met Deepu , I did ask him all those questions later :D

General questions

• Are you ready for marriage?
• How would you describe yourself? How do you like to spend your free time?
• How do you feel about smoking and/or drinking?
• What are you looking for in a spouse?
• How much time do you need to decide?
• What are your preferences, in terms of food?
• What are your pet peeves?
• How do you act when you get upset?
• How do you feel about pets?
• What is your family like?

 Professional queries

• What career path do you plan on taking?
• How ambitious are you?
• How much time do you spend at work?
• How do you plan to balance work and family life?

 General questions that could be asked once you get familiar:

• What are your likes and dislikes?
• How do you act when you get upset?
• How often will we visit our extended family (if staying apart from them)?
• Do you believe in sharing housework?

Appropriate questions on the profession front:

• What are your future career plans?
• How much time do you spend at work?
• Are you looking for a working wife, housewife, or is it immaterial to you?
• What would we do in the situation that I get transferred?

 :D Such a big list right? I am not sure if this would help , but it will surely help you know a little more about the person :)

Well , if any of you know more about the right formula for this , do let it know in your comments :D And I wish all the best ( and some luck too ? ;) ) to all those girls who are in this confusing phase of life :)

Death - the ultimate truth?

I was randomly reading some blogs this Saturday evening and came across this blog :
http://indianhomemaker.wordpress.com/. Reading first few posts , I realized that a very sad thing has happened in the life of the author - her 19 year old daughter's death due to Dengue. I was just trying to imagine what this mother must be going through and felt really sad :( Hope god gives her and her family enough strength to cope up with this .. Easier said than facing the real situation.

 And then , in the same blog , I found the link to to her daughter's blog : http://blabberblah.wordpress.com/ . Just went through some of her posts , and my sadness just increased.She was a girl so much full of life. I could not and cannot associate death with such a girl .. Such maturity ,confidence and such a beautiful smile. I just felt that I should have met her and known her when she was alive.Hope I had seen her blog when she was alive , and had exchanged few words with her.

Have been thinking of the same girl from the time I visited her blog. Just not able to take her out of my mind.Why should life be so unfair that a girl who had so many ambitions and who wanted to live her life to full extent had to face death all of a sudden? What is the meaning of all this? Finding no answer to these questions about the mystery called death..

From the posts I see that the Indian home maker is strongly trying to move ahead and overcome her grief. I really appreciate this effort of hers and all my heartfelt wishes with her.

Thoughts for the day

The days seem to be just flying. Feels like yesterday that we went to Mayya's , struggled with the stairs and lift there to get to top floor and after reaching there , found that we will get our turn only after 1 our or so :P Yes , this was last weekend and already weekend is here again :D As I was saying, its like the weeks , the months are just flying and I don’t know if I must feel good or bad about it. Good because , this feeling ( time flying fast ) means that I am keeping myself engaged and busy in work and at home, and not just lazing around and waiting for the time to pass :D Bad cos , the days are just passing and I will be one more year older soon :D But , I am never much bothered about my age and 25 is not much of an age to bother about I guess :D So , nothing much bad about this after all.

I have seen an increase in the number of beggars near signals these days. And I am really in a dilemma whether to give money to them or not. I don’t think much if it is an old person. But I really don’t know what to do when some child , or some lady with a baby in hand , etc come asking for money. I really feel sad and want to give money , but other side of me says that it is not good to encourage this kind of a thing by giving money.

All my friends seem to be doing the vanishing act these days. Many of them have gone on-site , and few are in unavailable state ;) So , there has been less meet ups , very less or no trips nowadays . Good thing is Ashu is coming back this month end :) Hope things fall back into place soon :)

Deepu keeps asking me now and then as to what my goal in life is. I have really thought hard and have decided that my goal is to travel as much as possible and visit as many places in this world as possible before I die :D . Deepu says , this is not such a proper goal , and I should have some professional goal as well . My traveling goal falls into personal category I guess :D Well as far as my professional life is concerned , I still have to figure out that "BIG" goal :D

My wardrobe is one big mess right now :( ( Its all Yashu's fault , not mine :P :D ) .Everyday I think that I will arrange it in the coming weekend , but I get lazy during weekends to do that . I really admire people who keep all their things properly in place . Also girls who take so much care about having right set of clothes for all occasions  and also matching accessories for all those sets .May be I should make a resolution right now that I will keep my things properly from now and spend some more time and put some more effort on the way I look every time I step out of my house :P ;) This weekend , I will be in Davangere , so once I am back from there , I will start working on these things :D ( Hopefully ;) )

New recipes tried out : Only one . Tried out gojjavalakki , and it turned out pretty ok :) Need to try out more recipes. I myself have got bored with things I am preparing and there is a need to add some new and exciting items to my menu :D

OK! That's it as of now .More thoughts in future posts :D

RUN ka FUN ;)

Well! So many things to write about , but I have become so lazy nowadays :P But this one event , I have to put it down here :) I am talking about the SUN FEAST 10 K which was there on 23rd MAY , Sunday . I had registered for this event more than a month before the event day . I usually run for 5K  . "Usually" doesn’t mean that I have run many times , but only twice :D SUN FEAST 5K last year and 5K run in IISC arranged event . IISC was a nice experience because of the superb campus :)

Well as I was saying , I registered for 10K thinking that since there is more than a month's time to practice , I would be ready for the run by 23rd may . But the practice never materialized due to my laziness :P Till the last moment I was not sure about my participation. 

On the D-Day , I did a stupid mistake. I wore new pair of shoes and my feet got scratches and boils due to that before even I could start running. But when the run started , I forgot about all this :) Loud music , thousands of cheering and excited runners around me , and I started running :) 

But I couldn’t run for long , big time problems with my shoes . Once or twice I even thought that I will remove my shoes and run bare feet :D I didn’t do that though ;) So I walked the whole way . 

There was one person who was running , though he had only one leg . Another was wooden . But he almost finished with me :) He was so active and excited about all this :) He was saying that he was going for 15,000 feet trekking in Himalayas . Hats off to him :) . And one thing which was a little embarrassing for me is the volunteers all along the way who were cheering the runners . I was way behind all the runners , and wherever these people were there , they were shouting at me to RUN :D At one place , somebody started shouting into the mike " Run Rashmi Run " and so on . Guess they got my name from the running number that I was wearing . I felt like shouting at them saying " I don’t need any cheering , let me run( rather walk ;) ) at my own pace " :D.

So somehow I walked and reached the finish line , though my timing was really bad ( over 2 hrs ) . But my goal this time was to finish the run and I did that :) . 

But , there are some lessons learnt 

1.Don’t run with new shoes :D , guess if I had consulted any of experienced runners , they would have already told me this ;)
2.practice at least for a week if you are planning to go to any event like this , daily practice would be even better :D

I guess if I follow 2 with new shoes , then 1 will be followed automatically :D

We reached back home fully tired , then slept for the rest of the day :) Hope to have lot of such great days in future too ;)

"The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start."
-John Bingham, running speaker and writer

Well I guess I can say that the above saying goes well in my case ;) And here's my certificate for finishing the run :)

Yes , its a NO!

YES! It is difficult to say "NO" . At least that is the case with me , or shall I say , that was the case with me.

I always found it very difficult to say no when anyone asked me to do anything. I thought saying no would be rude. I really don’t know why it was so difficult for me ,for so many years ,because now I can easily do it ;) .If anyone asks me anything , willing or not willing , with a smile I would say yes and then put myself into difficulty.I guess lot of people might face the same problem.

But gradually , I have realized that it is better and more practical to say no when the thing asked is out of our scope , or when we are not at all willing to do that favor, help  or any commitment that is asked of us. Guess this is one of the many lessons that I have learnt out of my experiences in life ;) . It is not that I have totally overcome this weakness of not saying no. I still find it difficult with my family and close friends. But to an extent , I have improved. I am much much better than what I was few years back :)

Now , in any situation , when anything is asked of me , I think twice before saying yes to it. I have realized that it is good for me and the other person as well. Saying yes , and then struggling to do whatever is asked of , and then the end results might not be as expected. So , in first case itself if we had said no , other person would plan something else and results might be much better. One more hazard of saying yes always is , others' expectations from us is always high . They get so used to getting an yes from us that , sometimes they don’t even bother to ask us ;)

So , I will conclude saying that whenever anyone asks anything from us , lets think practically and not emotionally before saying yes or no.

This will surely make things much clearer on either side and avoid any future complications ;)