Chinese-wainese

Food is usually never a choice for topic on my blog. For the simple reason: I'm not much of a foodie. Although I like good food, I really don't have very strong taste buds and do not eat for the love of food. It is probably one of the reasons why cooking too is not my preferred activity. The husband is a complete opposite. I meant the eating part, not the cooking ;-)

However this month of marathon blogging will see a lot of exceptions to the rule :-)

We had the husband's nephew come over for a couple of days. So, yesterday afternoon, we decided to lunch out. With the husband and the nephew being lovers of the Chinese cuisine, we headed out to the newly opened branch of Mainland China.

We ordered Tofu in Hunan style for starters, exotic veggies in basil flavoured gravy for the main course along with some fried rice and hot wok Hakka noodles to go with it. We finished it off with an unusual choice (for us) for desert- ice cream spring rolls (spring rolls filled with vanilla ice-cream!)
I only remembered to click the pictures of the main course :-)

 Loved the interiors, pretty much similar to the one we had been to in Hyderabad.

 At the entrance:

 The food was quite good, a little expensive though. Chinese is one of the cuisines that kind of grows on you as you explore more of it- it has been so for me, at least. From a total non-lover of this cuisine, I have begun to like it more than I thought I would.

Happy Wednesday. people! It's also a special day -12/12/12, apparently. Anything special happening in your lives?

My post for day 12 in the marathon blogging..

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Do you believe in ghosts?

The night is calm.  Tired souls are in deep slumber and there is not even a rat that is awake. The silence is so clear that you can hear your heart beating. Suddenly, you hear a clear noise from the house above you. It feels as though some one dropped a nail or a marble on the  floor, making a "cling" sound. Just a little worry here, who'd drop a nail or such like substance in the dead of the night?? And, then at times, I've heard the creaking sound of a swing in motion from the floors above at absurd times. 

Eerie, right? But it does happen, no? We may not believe in ghosts per se. It seems too juvenile to believe in something that belies rational thought. Yet, we cannot shrug off experiences that may not have exactly brought you face to face with a lady in white (or maybe even a gent for that matter) but has made you ponder over unexplained noises and happenings. Ever wondered why it is always a lady in white and not a man in white? Anyway, I digress.

It's been long since I've overcome the fear of dark, probable ghosts and of being alone in a house. But,then, any incident that does not fall in the line of usual occurrence does ruffle me.  Now, this incident happened last year when we had been to Ooty for a short break. We stayed in a heritage villa-the ones that retain their quaint, royal look and feel to the place.

The villa was named after a famous detective character of the fiction world and the rooms had pictures from the famous mystery stories- nothing super natural, though. I was pretty pleased to stay at such a place that brought back memories of my favourite ficition series.  

We stayed there for just one night. We retired to bed early after a lovely day spent lounging in the sun-soaked green lawns and having sumptuous warm meals. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, the mobile started to give out low beeps as it would if there is a low charge or signal. This continued throughout the night. R also did not sleep well that night. We put that down to a new place. The phone vibration/beep couldn't really be explained since there was complete battery power and there was no signal for it to vibrate. Though this did not bother us then, when we recounted this incident to our friends much later they planted this tiny seed of "eerie doubt".

My friend commented, "oh, its natural for unusual happenings in such heritage villa, y'know?" 

Well, I'm only glad that this doubt never arose to our minds when we were there!

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All in the game

It's not often that I can boast about being good at a game for I'm a complete non-sports person: always short of expertise and stamina for outdoor games. Even with indoor games, I can just about save my face. With the exception of one particular game. It's called Boggle. Have you ever heard of it? It looks like this:

Yes, you guessed it right. It's a word game where you need to make as many words as possible-rules apply-within a stipulated time. There are points assigned vis-a-vis the number of letters in a word. Bigger the word, higher the points. The player with the maximum points emerges winner. A minimum of two players can play; there is no upper limit, though if there are too many then the fun is lost since common words get cancelled out. 

The grid holds the letter cubes and the box needs to be shuffled and placed with all the cubes falling into the grid. The timer is then set and the players need to write out as many correct words as possible.

I've always like word games but this game is my favourite with scrabble coming a close second, not because I've a knack for it (pardon the immodesty, please) but because in my opinion, scrabble is also about chance. You need to be lucky to get favourable set of letters. However in this game, there is equal opportunity present to all. It is a game of quick thinking, attention and concentration.

Over years, the game was introduced and played with a host of friends, cousins, aunts and uncles- a wonderful way to pass time and bond. There are lots of good memories associated with this game. The silly fights and arguments over the validity of a particular word-we'd even sit with dictionaries to prove our point and in the process stealthily look for possible words that can be made, override the timer to scribble in the last few words,  fight over points, oh, the small joys!


Alas! being a good player comes with its share of disadvantages. What's that, you ask? Well, no one likes to lose you see and worse is to have the same person win almost all the time. The winner being, ahem.. yours truly. These people have even boycotted me from playing the game. Jealous people!

So, friends, that's the story of this lovely game, Boggle.  It's been ages that I've even looked at this. Maybe someday, I'll play this again. R might be my new game partner. 
I took this out specially to click pictures of it. Things that I've to resort to, to keep this marathon going!

Have a happy week!

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A day linked to the past

The night is quiet, the brat off to sleep (unusually early) and the husband not in town. I can finally sit down to write something. With the husband travelling, the day seemed to stretch like an elastic. I had official work to do but was in no mood to write. The creative juices seemed to be on some strike too. Talk about ironies in life. The brat also seemed very bored and kept popping (the same) questions every 5 minutes in the time I decided to write something. 

Loved this!!! courtesy:pinterest.com

Since nothing better was being churned out in front of the computer, I decided to do the next best thing- tick off some long pending house work. I cleaned R's closet and mine. Oh! the satisfaction. Before you pass me off as someone with OCD, let me tell you this was totally unlike me many years ago. Each time, I clean up the cupboards, my past (it really feels like another lifetime) flashes by where I can almost hear my mother yelling her head off at me for being so clumsy, untidy, disorganized and lazy. 

Yes, I was the black sheep of the family. We had a shelf or two allocated for each of us in the clothes cupboard and mine would be messiest. You open the door and an avalanche of assorted things would be at your feet. Ditto with the books cabinet. I would rummage the shelves-like a dog would a garbage bin to find food-to search for my lost tie, sock, scarf, books, even the precious journal that would have to be submitted the next day.

I think my mother had almost given up on me. She'd finally set upon herself to organize the shelves and cabinet when I never yielded to any of her pleading, cajoling, and finally threats. I was also super thick-skinned then. I started to organize my things myself when I was older but never got around maintaining the shelves in the same manner. 

However, cut to the present- I cannot tolerate messy and unorganized surroundings. Things need to put away as soon as possible (there has to be a sense of order at least on the surface ;-)). I may not be able to maintain the orderliness of the closets but I get a sense of urgency the minute they are in a mess and get to organizing them soon after. Contrary to what my folks or even I, for that matter, thought about my housekeeping skills, I have surprised myself (and them, I think)  into not having a household that has a caved-in look. I may still not be the most organized person, yet I have as sense of discipline. 

Is it some dormant gene that decided to make an appearance late in life? Perhaps it has also to do with the fact that now I know that if I don't do it, nobody will and I have realized that I do prefer a tidy environment.

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An unforgettable trip

As a part of the theme post for this week, we have to come up with a photo from the past and the memories associated with this. There was a host of photos to choose from. Finally I decided to go with one taken at a trip to Nagarjuna Sagar dam.

This is a view of the river Krishna from the hotel Vijay Vihar at Nagarjuna Sagar, Hyderabad.




This trip done way back in August 2007 holds bitter-sweet memories for me. It was amongst the first trips, aside from the honeymoon, of course, that the husband and I undertook as a newly-wed couple. We were three families on this road trip from Hyderabad: Us, V-K, also newly-weds and U-N, an older couple with a 3 year old toddler. All six of us squeezing into a tiny Alto car was an experience in itself!

Most of the particulars about the trip are a blur for me now, except our return journey. N was driving the car and the rest of us were singing and chattering away when we saw a small boy with a stick in his hand crossing the road dangerously, even as we came speeding along. Although, N had slowed the car sufficiently in anticipation, we were brought to an abrupt halt with a loud THUD! I closed my eyes tightly, heart beating rapidly. I thought the boy was killed. The men got out. Thankfully, the boy was alive and only injured. The loud noise was of the stick breaking. We wanted to take the boy to a nearby doctor but what we didn't realize was how much difficult this was going to be.

We were soon surrounded by a crowd of villagers and relatives of the boy, screaming and shaking their fists at us. Some women crying out loudly as though the boy had died. No amount of pacifying could have them even listen to us. We were sorry and aghast at what had happened but the fact remained that the boy was crossing dangerously without adult supervision and above all was injured and needed to be taken to the hospital pronto. There was needless chaos created with people concerned and not concerned talking and screaming  in a regional language that only U and N could understand and speak. That, we were accepting responsibility to take the boy to a nearby hospital, see to it that he was attended to and also pay for the medical expenses, was simply lost to the milling crowd that seemed to get out of control. We even asked them to call the police to sort the situation out but they weren't too keen on the police too.

It then dawned on us that the people out there were only ganging up against us in a bid to extract as much money as they could, the condition of the victim notwithstanding. By cornering us and attacking us thus, they were trying to intimidate us with their sheer number. It was then N decided to take things into control. He is an influential business man with a strong social network. Being a business man also meant, he was equipped to handle people and adverse situations in more ways than one. Even in that far-flung remote area, he managed to find a known guy who also happened to be a doctor. It was agreed that the boy would be taken to that doctor in a local autorickshaw with one of us accompanying the villagers. We also thought it necessary to file a police complaint. The husband decided to accompany N and the villagers to the local doctor while the rest of us were to file an FIR and proceed home.

The silence during the rest of the journey is still fresh in my mind. That, I was shaken is to put it mildly. Amongst all thoughts that were running in my mind was that my husband of 6 months was still in the company of those roughians, albeit with the resourceful N and help at hand. V, who drove us back home, tried his best to lighten up the mood and kept reassuring me and the rest of us. U, a strong personality herself, seemed fairly in control, either because she was sure of N's mettle in such situations or because she saw it as her responsibility to keep calm. However, I breathed easily only in the wee hours of morning when N and the husband returned home safely.  

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Barb(eric) tales

R had a hair-cut yesterday. We have come a long way from having screaming sessions at the barber shop with R sitting on the husband's lap and the husband holding R's hands, feet and head from shaking violently and the barber wiping a sweat or two from his brow after the 2 minute ordeal of having the machine run over the little guy's tiny head to R now sitting still on his own without flinching a bit even as the razor comes close to his ears. Yes, now the barber can safely use the scissors without having panic attacks :-)

When the appa asked R who cut his hair, he promptly replied "Barber shop". The husband corrected him accordingly, so when they entered the house, he reported to me, "amma, the barber cut my hair, not barber shop, Ok?"

After coming back from school, R  demanded for his pair of scissors and promptly took out his toy horse. When I asked him what he was going to do, he said that he's going to give the horse a hair-cut!


So, that's our little barber with the poor horse getting a hair-cut.

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Take a break........have a Kit-Kat..

No, I'm not taking a break (much as I'd love to!) here, I'm talking about the Ad-world. As I was wondering about the topic for today's post, I came across an ad on youtube. And, bingo! came the idea for the post. Advertisements used to be such a cherished affair in the days of Doordarshan when the breaks were far and between unlike times like these when you could easily mistake the actual show to be a filler in between the array of ads!

Love them or hate them, Ads are here to stay. In fact, there are quite a few that are really creative and good on content. Lets forget about the irritating ones (you know which ones) for the moment and concentrate on the ones that have made a place in your heart. Ones that make you smile and feel warm in the heart.

So, here are some of my favourite ads.

Dhara Oil: Wonder, why it is not aired anymore :-( The little guy is so cute..

The cadburys ads are generally good, but I like this one a lot:

Good day Biscuit: such a cute little story..leaves you feeling so good..

Met life insurance aaja aaja ad: really innovative and funny!

And, finally this Tanishq ad is fairly new. Really like the guy (of the English Vinglish fame)..

There may be more but these were the top most that came to my mind first. Do you like these too? What were/are you favourite ones? Do share.

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