amused

a bunch of my cousins are on facebook and everyday i find out somebody or the other is a fan/or has become a member of some community. These are the exact names of the communities on facebook. Check it out:

You shuffle songs but end up hitting next until you find the song you want.

I love it when people interrupt class for an "important anouncement" :P

I daydream randomly and then realise I'm staring at someone by mistake.

I Constantly Check My Phone For No Reason

SHUT UP You Made Me Forget What I Was Going To Say !

I Like it when Students prove Teachers wrong

This looks like you are actually giving a picture about yourself to all your friends without having to talk to them!!

i am pretty annoyed/angry/irritated looking at the status updates today: what started as a stupid spam email which claims to increase breast cancer awareness became a mockery and horrible way of telling your friends/collegaues/relatives what color your bra is. it was shocking to see friends do this.

i think breast cancer awareness has almost reached every nook and corner of the world. and if people can have access to emails and internet i am sure they are aware of breast cancer. so what is the fun about? telling them you own sexy colors or telling them you wear one? i dont understand how this can promote awareness. is this just to keep the men wondering what we are upto? if you are seriously concerned abt BC awareness, donate your hair each time you chop it off, run a mile to raise money, there are so many such things you can do.

maybe i am just paranoid or conservative- whatever - what do you think abt this drama? i still found it ridiculous.:|

To my niece

There are always first times in every person's life.....some more significant than others. The first day in college - excited and scared, the first day in the US all by oneself - dazed and confused, the first pay check - proud and pleasantly surprised. Every one of these is special.....remembered and cherished....have the common denominator - happiness.

To me out of all the happy moments right from winning first prize in a recitation competition in 1st std to getting married probably the happiest moment so far has been the day when i became an aunt (technically -.. cousins excuse me)!!.

I have heard, often, 'kaakaiku than kunju pon kunju' (which translates to the crow mom thinks its little one is worth gold!). So on the same pretext, all mothers and grandmothers, aunts and uncles think their grandchild/niece/nephew are the cutest/chubbiest/cleverest/smartest and all the 'ests's you can think of. There have been times when I have got so bored of hearing them rant about their kids. They go on and on about how it tried to snatch a camera or when it tried to give puppy faced looks.

Now, after 'S' was born, I can't help but talk about how cute she is. I don't care if the person who listens is actually listening or pretending to but you cannot stop me. If somebody asks me how is she doing, there you go - i talk endlessly and fwd pictures .

Baby, S i am so proud of you. I think your are the cutest. And i will spoil you endlessly.

Came across this article on Augmented Reality - to people who are not familiar with this term, it refers to the millions of apps that people create for Iphone and Android, most of which are yet to be released. Out of the top 6 AR apps available, the first one is TwitAround - this lets you find fellow tweeters around you by just flipping your iphone. Sounds really cool. I don't understand -

do you *really* want to know who tweets around you? Maybe if you were a speaker in a conference and you want to know if the audience is listening or err tweeting ' in a conference. very bored'. .

Most of the apps i have seen so far are terribly cool. I mean it makes me go 'Wow' but if you get me an Iphone and ask me to use them, I will not. Primarily, i rarely tell the world what I do. (everyday). I mean, i find it amusing to tell my friends on a daily basis, what i do at the gym or what i had for lunch. Unless it is absolutely necessary to inform people about a certain change in your life/work or sharing a good article or video i find status updates quite silly. On the flip side, it is however addictive - to read what others are upto!! ;).

I have been travelling quite a bit over the last couple of months and each time to my amazement, as soon as the flight hits the runway people switch on their pda's/iphone/blah blah. and guess what - they login to update their status saying ' Flight sucked ' or ' In CA '. Whatever!. I find it pleasurable to travel with nothing but my 30$ you-can-only-make-calls-or-send-sms Nokia and its pitiable charger.

book review

contrary to all the posts and reviews i read about jhumpa lahiri's unaccustomed earth i didn't enjoy it one bit. i was really looking forward to reading it & with high expectations (i must add) cos a) one fine morning i saw facebook feeds showing the number of people who read it and had raved about it. secondly, i found it just like her previous works..(of course i liked Namesake way better.)

Unaccustomed earth was just like reading a chitra banerji's story - bengali women, desis in america, blah blah. After reading the great train robbery and the likes this book was a total mishap. Going through elaborate details on how the table was set for some dinner to what a certain pai or bagichi wore on her first plane trip - i found it crap. And i cannot comprehend anything from a story which is 50-75 pages. wonder she wrote it with the same theme as to how short films are made these days.

On the other hand confessions of a shopaholic was quite a book. I had imagined it to be an all american book ( like howgal ) ..enjoyed the parts on uk designer labels and the shopping scene in london. and of course on how she tried to cook indian food!. the letters from the bank were quite funny. a must read if you need to do some timepass.

I have picked up the case of exploding mangoes and bridget jone's diary for the following week.

On a totally different note, i have been noticing non desis asking how we can stand the smell of indian food :S. the other day i was watching an episode of gilmore girls --when rory says she ordered indian food from sandeep's and her mother says "yumm.have fun and dont forget to burn the house down with the smell" and a few minutes later her friend tells her the same thing!.

a friend of mine once asked me if i ate ginger for lunch..apparently, we don't realize that all our spices stick on to us when we cook/eat/hover around the kitchen and when we walk into a room with non desis they find the smell intoxicating!!

sometimes it really hurts if you are a cleanliness freak. by freak, i mean, any form of untidiness in any corner of the house that makes you irritated, get worked up, or basically gets your ass to work - your's truly is one. i dont dust everyday but i vacuum the vacuum once a fortnight. while i vacuum my eyes work like an eagle and until i am satisfied -that it has removed most of what i consider ought to be taken out from the carpeted floors, i will not let it go off the plug. the shelf below the kitchen sink has scrubbing bubbles ,lysol,pinesol and other things (which btw are all arranged in height order and by color) alas, today i realized the 'all purpose cleaner' was not meant for couches.

so there i was sitting on a microtip pen on the couch and to my horror found three spots. spots - radius 0.5cm. after frantically googling and getting confused ( ' how to remove sofa stains' or 'couch stain remover', 'water on couch stain' , 'wetcloth blots on sofa stain') i realized hairspray works as a stain remover. now, realizing that i didn't have a hair spray i google again and find this dad who happily says 'removed stains before wife came home'. well, he said 'use hand sanitizer/gel on wetcloth and wipe'. this seemed too cool and there i went and applied hand sanitizer in copius amounts. then came the wetcloth. horrors of horror, the three 0.5cm spots eventually became a single circle as big as a football on the couch.

sometimes it is better to leave things the way they are. really. thank god the couch is a dirty marsh green color by itself and not milky white.

brahmin relatives survey

i found this from another blog sometime back. Whatever the guy has written is absolutely true.. there is a chandru, ambi mama and baby perima/chitti in every tam brahm household.

A survey has revealed that ‘Ambi Mama' is the leading relative among Tamil Brahmin families worldwide, with six in ten families having one of their own (a 60% repsesentation. Apparently, Ambi Mama held off stiff competition from Mani Mama (with 55% representation) and Baby Chitti (39%) for a well-deserved win.

“It's a great day for all Ambi Mamas. All the years of hard work – drinking coffee, criticizing the Indian team selection and complaining about blood-pressure – have finally paid off. Yay!”, said Ambi Mama, a spokesman for the Ambi Mamas Association of Dear Old Rascals (AMBASSADOR), a division of the Hardcore Brahmin Organisation (HBO). [Editor's note – The previous sentence has been roundly condemned by the Society for Prevention of Abbreviations that are Needless, Dumb and Execrable (SPANDEX)]

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Mani Mamas all over the world watched in anguish as the final results were announced, plunging them into gloom. “It's no fun being a Mani Mama anymore”, said Mani Mama. “ Maybe if I change my name to ‘Ramesh Anna', I will have a brighter future”, he pondered pointlessly.

The survey also said that a respectable number of families (or a number of respectable families, as the case may be), have a Vaidhi Thatha, Bangalore Anna, and at least one random guy named ‘Chandroo' who is at all functions, but no-one can really place (and may not be related at all).

Predictably, bringing up the rear were non-entities like Driscoll Periappa, Jessica Alba Anni and Darth Vader Mama, which had zero representation. “Brahmins are way too conservative, dude!”, complained Cleveland Shankar, one of the more modern Iyer boys (or boyz, if you prefer. We offer multiple-choice reading. You're welcome.). “When are they going to drop old duds like Venkatakrishnan, Suresh and Balaji, and start using hipper names like Jason, Beyonce and The Human Torch?”, he asked, to wide applause from a group of people watching cricket on a nearby television.

Not all are happy with progress, however. “These youngsters are ruining everything by naming their children Archish, Dhruv and Plaha.”, thundered Badri Athimber. “ Can you imagine how it will sound? Dhruv Mama, Anamika Athai, Archish Chittappa – Ugh! Phooey! That is so not cool!!”, he growled, using expressions of disgust picked up from his states-based co-brother.

When asked for their response, several Brahmins living in Adyar merely arched their eyebrows, pursed their lips, and continued waiting for the December music season.