On sabbatical...

So I'm taking a few weeks off to go discover myself. Figure out a new life etc... Or maybe I lie ;) maybe I'm just goofing off for a bit. Anyone's guess!


But seriously... Lots going on. Atleast its the kinds of things that will make for good stories in the future.


Be back at the end of June folks, with loads more.


Till then, dare I say 'enjoy the summer'? No of course not, we live in the desert, that would mean nothing right? Keep your head down, enjoy the malls and try not to buy too much.


Laterssss.

Bad planning…

You know how some people manage to get everything they set out to get done, done? Those people who manage to look like they’re doing nothing but having fun but still stay right at the very bloody top of everything? All. The. Bloody. Time. The kind that make us normal folk look hopelessly inadequate?

Yeah those. My mum is one of those.

I'm  guessing as someone in the know, you know that American Idol is kinda top of discussions right now with most people.  Well, I’ve noticed mum knows an insane amount about the goings on with those kids. It figures. The papers here are full of all manner of detail right down to the colour of their socks .

So I say to her after a few conversations about them (as well as how Guiliana is having a surrogate, and, in case you think she’s a frivolous airhead, what was in the latest of Sheikh Mo’s plans)… ‘Mum… you’re clearly not doing enough babysitting.  Because if you were, how on earth do you have the time to read so much. I’ve had the same issue of ‘Aquarius’ on my bedside table for a couple of months and barely got past page 3.’ And we all know that thats the ultimate in intellectual reading and takes time! *rolling eyes*

‘Its all in the planning’, she said smugly, ‘I read the papers when baby has her first nap.’ Hmmmmm... maybe... she manages to spend a lot of time with baby, do loads for her, cook for her and the rest of us fab food, AND read all about that boy with the same name twice and how his father owns some kind of store.

I’m pretty sure she’s lying! I’m going to stalk her the next few days and find out how she’s adding hours to the day.

Because as someone who’s given up planning when she’s given up her job, I’m on a quest to figure this out. There’s got to be a way to have it all? Hasn’t there? I mean Supermum has been doing it for years :)!

Focusing hard…

Ever noticed how getting someone’s attention in full is practically an impossibility? There was a time, not so long ago, when you had to make intelligent conversation for the most part (not withstanding the occasional drunken ramble – and aren’t those awesome? I’ve been told about everything from the sizes of people underclothes to clandestine affair details to secret religious beliefs over the years. Deliciously juicy… but I’m rambling ;)). Because, back then, people listened to you. And judged you wholeheartedly if you were a. boring b. stupid or god forbid c. a windbag. Oh the tags were endless if you look back and recall a little.

Today though, thanks to the modern miracle of technology, we’ve been set free haven’t we? We’re always got half an eye on a screen and most of a ear out for a beguiling ‘ping’ telling us someone out there loves us more that the people we’re with. Gosh, what if I miss that inane comment someone made about someone else on still someone else’s status update. Or worse still, missed actual direct contact with my fourteenth cousin eight times removed on my mum’s side as she sends me an IM saying she’s rolled out of bed and plans to brush her teeth in a few minutes. I mean what would I do without that info?

People can actually live quite happily without talking to anyone today. Whole decision making convos are typed out in something vaguely resembling English. Where letters god never intended to be put next to each other are forced to coexist in harmony. And are so excited about it, they pull out industrial quantities of punctuation to accompany them!!! I mean I even saw a chick miss The Hulk manhandle a lesser god, while she checked out a text which probably told her about how she’d win a bar of peanut brittle if she was the thirty second gazzilionth person to walk into XYZ uber-fashion on the third Sunday after World-lets-all-own-a-smart-phone-day.

Sarcasm aside, I think its super liberating. Now we get to be as unfocussed as we like on things. The commitment to commitment can die a peaceful death and we can just flit around being the masters of halfhearted multitasking. Awesome!!

Thumbs up…

Nostalgia comes in many forms I’ve discovered. And the latest ‘avatar’ of my nostalgia is a fizzy, brown beverage!

Last week, I was doing a grocery run. Only this time, it was a social occasion because I had gone with - in addition to buggy, baby et al – my folks as well, who are visiting. Once we’d plodded through the aisles making things more of an event than anything else really! Stopping every so often to discuss the merits and demerits of a biscuit or a jellybean (we went with gourmet berry BTW, which I’d recommend). And getting some scary stares from efficient looking lunch time shoppers because we were verging on blocking the aisles during some particularly intense huddles… Overall, we got done without major incident and got to check out. In front of us was an Indian couple with the Indian Cola – Thums Up!

I shamelessly accosted the lady and asked her where she found it. The question, of course created an immediate bonding situation. She beamed at high voltage and pointed me surreptitiously to the place she found it. I ran towards it with arms outstretched and fetched not one but two six-packs. *sigh* so good! And you don’t easily find it in Dubai

Now to understand the fuss, I think you need to be brown or a strong brown-o-phile. A friend of mine who’s not brown said he suspects the manufacturers add ‘masala’ (that’s curry powder to the rest of you) to the mix and that’s why quite so many of us buzz around it like bees :P.

No clue what they put in it… all I know is that to me it tastes of home. And days when you didn’t get to have a ‘soft-drink’ that often and when you did it was usually a celebration, small or big. When you had to buy one, pay a deposit almost as much as the drink for the bottle, and then return it to get your money back. Memories of school canteens where if you had hit jackpot on the day for some reason, you could traipse up to the seller and ask for either a Thums Up or a Gold Spot (that’s the orange drink). They would get it for you from the refrigerator in the back and open the cap before handing it over. None of this twist to open stuff from self-serve coolers on those special days!

A couple of months ago, I’d gone home and on one of the smaller streets, we saw a tiny little grocer. We pulled over and asked for a Gold Spot. He just looked at us really oddly and gave us a Mirinda. Clearly no one sent us the memo on the fact that they’d stopped production years ago! Is it the same? Nope! I remember the ad for Gold Spot – it had a baseline ‘the zing thing’.  Now I don’t know whether its because I’m in the field or not, but I trust ads. When someone tells me something is ‘the zing thing’, I believe them! And now apparently ‘the zing thing’ is dead.

So, before the death of more nostalgia-drivers, I’m hitting the Thums Up. And remembering the taste of home. Because though I keep going further and further from home, you can never take the ‘brown’ out of the girl. No sir!