The Jungle Book

I figured I'll post this to wish Happy Birthday to my awesomely talented, driven, loving, generous and pretty sister in the best language I speak.

Sadly, we are miles apart with oceans and mountains between us, but she's been a pillar of strength for all of my life (and counting) playing various roles of sibling, subordinate mother, friend, guardian, advisor, partner-in-crime and an ally. Of the most notable, she refined me from a "Mowgli" to a (cleverly disguised) respectable looking citizen with essential social skills, she has pushed me to be bold and daring and she has always been supportive of my tough decisions.

(Left) Shu's sister and (Right) Shu. Aren't I adorable?? Well, not really. The family still testifies that I was a holy terror at that age. Then one day somewhere during adolescence, I was abducted by aliens I think, and later returned to my thankful parents as a good child. Nobody knows what triggered the shift in temperament.

I got the sweet end of the deal, coming in 9 years after her  (and no one else between us!) with guaranteed showers of extra attention, love, gifts, free rentals and hand-me-downs. When it came to me, she spent her meagre savings generously so I can have the best of everything she could afford - roasted chicken drumsticks from John Keells and pineapple gateaux from Devon's (a big deal back then), clothes, shoes, visits to the salon and allowances to spend. We even had many animal rescue operations and projects together.

Although I have grown older to about 1.5 times her size in dimensions, she still looks to me like one of her own children and who can complain?! It is really surprising considering I have mass murdered and decapitated most of her dolls, destroyed her story books with scribbles and such, smashed her toys, shattered her social image with public tantrums and even beaten her up, to name some of the gruesome things that Shu junior-the-terror was better known for.

Happy Birthday, Akki and it goes without saying that you are immensely loved!

Speaking of sisters, my parents announced that we have a new baby sister (scroll to the next image). They keep adopting stray animals and children, possibly to fill the void we have left. She is adorable and my parents can't stop talking about her whenever I call them.

Pini Junior suffers from ADHD and has managed to destroy a lot of furniture during the few weeks she has been there

Settling In

When we were born, all we had in our possession were a few jigsaw puzzle pieces and the board it came in. As we get older, we find the missing pieces here and there in places where life takes us and this puzzle slowly takes shape. Travelling sort of helps with this project. Experiencing something new or realising something new or noticing a new change in you after you've travelled is the equivalent of having found a yet another piece of the puzzle that you are meant to complete. This might also be why there are Westerners travelling far (physically or intellectually) to the East of the globe to find missing pieces to their puzzles and the Easterners go to the West to find some of theirs.

Who's in the mood for puzzles?

It is not often that we (the quieter people) talk to random strangers. If you think about it, the start of a conversation with a stranger has the potential to change the course of your life (for good or bad)! On a less extreme scale, my unplanned chat with a stranger in a taxi stand yesterday saved me $5, reduced our would-be carbon footprint by about half, got me to my destination fast and very comfortably too.

A few months ago, I was collecting a couple of winter clothes for my trip (my friends from cold places laugh at me when I say I find 18 degrees Celcius unbearable. Give me 30 degrees and I'll be more than happy) when I saw a promotional advertisement from National Geographic. They were giving away a free fleece jacket with a new magazine subscription! I was sold within seconds, mostly owing to my unhealthy dependency on fleece blankets which make me feel warm and safe....from what could only be deduced as Yetis. I found someone else to dump the magazines on because I was not too keen on them. I just wanted my fleece.

Then the folks at Natgeo got mixed up with addresses (to my relief, my jacket came to my mailbox just 2 days before flying off!). In addition to where it was intended to go, I ended up getting an extra copy of the magazine. On asking for reasons why this happened, I got the following reply:

The reason why you also received a copy of the magazine was because previously the account was registered with your mailing address. We changed the mailing address later but by then a copy of the magazine had already been dispatched to your address and it couldn’t be intercepted.

Please rest assured that the situation is resolved right now. [Assured? Are you kidding me? I got a free copy! And I was not complaining.. Hahaha and Thank You for that!] If we can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us quoting the above membership number. 

Anyway, on reading this free copy that got offloaded on me by chance, I learnt that reading it was a lot of fun and informative (unlike how I felt about the same thing over 10 years ago). I was so amused by an article called Big Bird by Olivia Judson on cassowaries that I forgot I was in the train today and actually started to miss the zoo.

I found this awesome track playing on radio this morning. It's such a feel-good song, by Sara Bareilles with her powerhouse of a voice.

I'm really awake, September!

Greetings, fellow blog fans and stalkers.

It is 2:24am and I can't seem to roll back to sleep. It's been day 4 since got back from a short but surreal trip in France and I am still suffering from the adverse effects of jet lag and mild hallucinations. I decided not to wait till I have blogged about that trip. I frankly miss blogging on mundane things and I am a little disappointed that lately, I have been going at an average rate of two posts a month (not for lack of trying, though). So I'll save that post for later when I have the leisure of completing the herculean task of rounding up ALL the thoughts and memories and photos of that week.

My musical tastes this week have shifted to Opera. I can't seem to get tired of Casta Diva.

Hopefully, this post will trigger more posts this month.

Long live bloggers!