Acknowledgements!

Thanks to all those who expressed (minute amounts of) distress at my moving outta here. You guys are nice souls and I like you. Those of you who visited my new space or tried to, you are all sweethearts, I like you very much. For those meanies who feigned sadness and then forgot about my move, I'm presuming your jealous and hene glad competition has moved, but it's ok - I'm a nice girl and I like you too. BUT, I'm still here and I've still got a comp at home and so this space isn't gone, ok???

Oh I also wanted to mention, all of you who miss my commenting (ahem), Idling has come up with a way for me to comment without it being directed to blogger.com. He says,

"I think I have a solution to your commenting problem on blogger. “Blogger In Draft” allows people to embed the comment form in the post itself so that the URL won’t change to http://www.blogger.com when you try and comment. Try it on my page, and if it works, may be you can get your other blogmates to embed commenting in their posts as well."

And I did try and it did work. So, if anyone is interested, you could try making that change. I mean like atleast TRY! Hmmpph!

P.S: Yes, nasty mood!

Farewell

I can't believe the time has come for me to say Goodbye to my first blog page.Well, I guess I still will come back and use it whenever I can.But thanks to Blogger being censored at my work place, I've got no choice but to move to keep my writing skills intact.I know I can blog from home, but a 9 yr old PC is definitely not blog-friendly. Infact, it isn't 'anything' friendly...Besides, I write to combat work-induced boredom, and so if I don't get to blog from work, I probably never would. I considered quitting my job and moving to another place, but right now this seemed better...*sniff*

Cheer up people, I'm not gonna stop writing, you can now get to read my stuff at www.beetlejuice357.wordpress.com. Just some shmall minor changes. See ya there.

One Tag, Many Questions

Tagged by Satti. I see 2 ways to do this tag. Considering that it contains a set of highly profound questions that warrant some very thought-provoking answers, one way to do it would be the heart-felt way. But that isn't me (atleast not now) The other way is 'my' way. Any guesses which way this is gonna be done?

I am: Preeti

I am not: Dolly (my sis. A lotta people get our names interchanged. I can never get why!)

I think: Actually I don't

I know: that I'm hungry now

I want: Pepperoni pizza

I have: no money

I wish: I had money

I hate: Arrogance and not being understood

I miss: being a kid

I fear: the boogey-monster in the dark

I feel: hungry! (should explain the Pepperoni)

I hear: Some guy here saying, "Ramakrishna is our team-member" on the phone.

I crave: A couple tequila shots right here, right now :( :(

I search: My bag for my comb

I wonder: What I'd wear on my Birthday this year

I regret: Not being able to go to aerobics for the past month and a half

I love: Chilli chicken and honey roasted peanuts (Yea it's all about food!I'm hungry!)

I ache: When I fall down the stairs every-single-time

I care: A little more than necessary

I always: Have my phone around me

I believe: In God

I dance: All the time. People say I dance when I'm normally talking itself (I shake my head and move my hands a lot)

I sing: because I like to sing.

I cry: Pretty easy actually

I don’t always: like company. I need to be alone at times.

I fight: silly!

I write: hardly anything. I type is more like it.

I win: if I'm lucky

I lose: when I'm unlucky

I never: wanna be unloved

I confuse: myself - all the fuckin' time!

I listen: to music I like (obviously)

I can usually be found: talking. No, I can always be found talking.

I am scared: of the dark! Isn't it the same as I fear...Wait a min now, is this some kinda psychometry test?!?

I need: to turn the AC off here before I freeze!

I am happy about: the fact that my Birthday is coming up in just 15 days :D

Q: One religious work from a non-familiar tradition you’ll read:
A: I like reading about Ancient Egyptian Mythology. You know, Ra, Amun Ra and the likes. I don't know if any 'religious works' exist, but just information from google is interesting enough! Blame it on Nefertiti and Tutenkhamun if u wish :)

Q: One music video–that you like–from your “least likely to listen to’ genre:
A: Weird question. One of 'em songs by Bond Girls. I'm not really the instrumental kind.

Q: Somewhere you’d never thought to go on holiday/vacation, and why it might be fun to go there?
A: If I haven't thought of going somewhere, why would I think it would be fun to go there...!?

Q: A sport or game you really hate, or haven’t tried yet, but are willing to give one more go.
A: Bowling. Because I end up falling every time!

Q: A style of dance you probably won’t try..
A: Ballet. Balancing my body on my toes - OUCH!

Q: A career job you don’t feel you’re suited for, and why:
A: Anything to do with software or finance. How much ever I try, I can just never understand writing a program or the stock market!

Q: An item that’s “thinking out of the box’ for you
A: Ahem ahem, cough cough, wink wink! Go figure! :P

Q: If there’s one thing in life you wanted to do, and will do, what will it be?
A: At any given point, there are close to exactly 1 million things I'd wanna do, but what I would do is certainly a mystery, even to me. And so, if I'm asked to confine my doing-desires to just one, it is a task close to impossible!

I tag all ye guys I've linked up on my side bar - too many for this lazy one to type out :) [Excepting 'The One Who Doesn't Wish To Be Tagged'. Hahahaha!]

P.S: 1. Satti, seriyana potti?? Hahahahahahaha!
2. Others: Don't bother figuring out P.S.1!
3. Some kind soul just turned the AC off :) :) :)

Trippin' Pics!

Part of the 'wild-life' at Thekkady



Those goddamn trees that kept us awake. There were million more of these around!



A Waterfall somewhere up-hill to Munnar



Smiling Harsh atop Sankarankutty (we were behind)



There's baby Kannan with his mommy.



View from our room at Munnar.



Stopped the car somewhere in between to get this.



The World Acclaimed Wild Goat. Beware!



The Wild Bison - Thekkady



Our House-boat - Manikandan! (Yea, he had a name)

City City Bang Bang!*

Finally, it's out! Pardon the delay, I was just not in the right mood to write. This one is gonna be long, so, pardon that too!Anyway, let's start off with the basics trip details:

Locations: Ernakulam -> Munnar -> Thekkady -> Kumarakom
Total distance to be covered: Close to 600 kms
Time available: 5 days to be exact.
Mode of transport: Chennai -> Ernakulam => Train, To everywhere else => Qualis
Company: 2 couples and 1 stag. Total fun material.

After a 12-hour train journey to Ernakulam (11 hours of which we slept) our white Qualis met us, along with Raju- our guide cum driver. I, keeping up with tradition, was the back-seater. Which in this case was so not cool. Which meant having American Tourister trolleys for company and being the official supply cabin of the vehicle. Which also meant that it really didn't matter if I had motion sickness, I just had to hand over whatever was required whenever required. More fun material!

Destination I: Munnar
Temperature: For a Chennaiite, just the right temperature to be turned into a human popsicle.
Ok, embarassment time. I have to confess my ignorance. I don't know why or how, I always thought Munnar was one of those beachy places with an abundance of sunshine. Somehow 'Munnar' just doesn't have a hill-station-ish ring to it, like say, Kodaikanal or Ooty. Thankfully, when I was just about packing my bags, Pp 'reminded' me to carry warm clothing. And the closest to 'warm clothing' I carried along was a couple of shrugs (For those uninitiated into women's-clothing, these are those small jacket-ish things that are meant not to cover anything but just be worn anyway. And oh, both of mine had holes all over).

The trip, though, helped me to discover another of my hidden facets - getting up a mountain makes me as sick as, uhm, someone sick (I should stop trying to use similies). I've heard a lotta people tell me earlier that they tend to feel nauseous when going up and blah, but I always thought I was that 'steel-body' kinds and nothing could affect me. And so through the entire trip, the only position I could be found in, in the car, would be curled- hugging the seat with my eyes tightly shut and that weirdly pukey, groggy expression on my face. But I guess the rest of the world in that car were oblivious to my discomfort. Every now and then I would hear someone go, "Preeti? What are you doing? Why so silent? And oh yea, pass me the water". And I would mumble something incoherently and they would go, "Always sleeping. Wonder why you came for the trip!" They should be thanking their stars I wasn't well enough right then.

To top it all, our 'resort' was located somewhere close to the tip of the mountain and the only other thing we could hear at night other than our own echoes, was the slow but constant zzzhhhhhhhh of the wind through the trees. And it was LOUD! Like each tree had it's own amplifier and 3-D surround speakers or whatever. I slept in between my parents (Fine, I'm a killjoy, but in my defense, those noises were pretty eerie!) Dad fell sick and Dolz was puking through the night. So much for a 'relaxing' vacation.

We did do our share of 'sight-seeing' and 'photo-taking'. We even climbed some real high peak to spot a couple of 'wild-goats'! C'mon, they are goats!!! Incidentally, when I was passing on this 'just goats up there' information to the rest of the family, one of the officials out there happened to eavesdrop on our conversation and he immediately burst out, "It is naat justa goatsa madam! These goatsa are seen wonly here! Nowhere else in the entaayree warld you will see this, ok???So don't say 'just goats' ok??? Too bad for him I was just recuperating from the journey uphill. (My motion sickness seems to have been a blessing in disguise for a lotta people, huh?)

The rest was the usual valley, waterfall, echo point thing. I mean, what else could a mountain offer!? Yea, yea it was beautiful, picteresque and all that. Yea, every crappy picture of mine looked frame-worthy because the place was just so-damn-beautiful, but even excessive beauty could cause sore eyes! We were really glad when 2 nights after, it was time to head to Destination 2. I must say, you see one mountain, you've seen 'em all!

Destination 2: Thekkady
Temperature: Uhm, sunny but cold. Not too bad
We found Thekkady a lot better than Munnar. We reached around 12.30 pm, had lunch and wanted to check-in. But we were told by our driver that once we check in, we couldn't get out after 6 pm. We were intrigued and assumed it was because wild animals would be on their rampage or something equally exciting, but he confirmed it was nothing of the sort and had to do with political crap.

We were in a 'Tiger Reserve' with supposedly 45 tigers inside and we spotted anything but. Infact, I think all we saw (apart from killer insects) were 'Wild' Domestic animals. Like wild pig, wild buffalo, wild goats etc etc.

Me and Dolz were certain we spotted quite a large no. of UFIs here -Unidentified Flying Insects. And by large no., I mean LARGE. If in Munnar it was the noise that kept me awake, here it was the lack of it and the fear of waking up to an insect-infested body! (inspite of sleeping in between my parents!) Thankfully, we spent just one night and a couple of hours before that here.

Other stuff we did there was: Go on an early morning boat-ride (we saw a lone elephant somewhere in the distance, or so I think), watch a Kalaripayattu show (which was AWESOME really. Will try and post the videos), go to a wax museum (which had wax dolls of Mohanlal and Mammooty, which we got to know from the sign-post below. They also had aquariums and really ugly paintings on display), do a bit of shopping (for nothing really) AND do an elephant ride. This was good. Me, Dolz and Harsh atop Sankarankutty (who was anything but kutti, ie, small). A 30-minute ass-fracturing ride. But who am I to complain when I'm not the one with 200 kilos on top huh? Oh, there was also this absolutely adorableeeee 1-year old ele baby named Kannan. He was just soooooooo cute and naughty! He even caught my mum's saree with his trunk and almost did a mini Draupadi-sequence there, if not for his care-taker's rebuke. It left my mum giggling and blushing while my Dad was FURIOUS! Time now for Destination 3.

Destination 3: Kumarakom
Temperature: Hot, humid, sweaty
This is the Kerala I thought I knew. And also what I wanted to see. Coconut trees et al! We stayed on one of 'em house-boats (corrected thanks to xh). Pretty good actually. Even the food. We were really in for a surprise when the boys on the deck turned out to be really good cooks! And they made alllllll of our favorite mallu food - puttu and kadalai, pazham pori, Pomfret fry for Daddy - all of it.

I know I sound like I really liked it. I did, but not for more than a day. (Part of my liking was because I was thankful as ever to be on levelled roads and no hair-pin bends!) The initial ride across the back-waters was really nice. It even rained. But how long can you stare at a huge expanse of water!?? After a point, I was just yearningly looking at the land across. It was the thought that there was just another day to go that kept me going. But I must say, the best food and sleep that we had through the entire trip was here. (Ignoring the million mosquitoes and lizards)

Finally, it was time to get back. We pit-stopped at 2 beautiful temples - Chottanikara and Vaikom Sivan temple on the way to Ernakulam. There we met up with a couple of our realllyyyy close family friends from Bahrain and it was time for a lotta nostaligia. That done, we were all set for Chennai.

I realized that I'm a total city person. None of this wildlife, greenery stuff for me. It's all fine to a limit, but not more. I just love the noise and bustle of a city, the fast-life, the luxury- everything! I need to see people move around, not just still-life. I can get my dose of the nature stuff from Discovery& NatGeo, paintings and google and I'm totally fine with that! I'll put up photos shortly. Left them at home and didn't wanna put off posting this because of that. And oh, thank you for your patient reading. You asked for it!

Update! P.S: 1. *- The title IS a popular show on Radio City (as Scribblers Inc. pointed out) It isn't a coincidence, I used the name to express my love for the 'city' but I guess I should've included this attribution before :P
2. I've also come to the conclusion that most of you thought I had a good time. Well, I had an O.K time which definitely is not the same as good. This post was meant to be sarcastic but I guess a lot of it wasn't received. Anyway, maybe I should accept that (it sounds like) I had a good time!

Happy Birthday!

Before I put out my trip-log, I just have to post this wish for one of my BESTEST friends- Janie Wanie! There are like a million names that I've called her through our 7-year friendship (Can you believe it has been 7 whole fucking years..!??) Janie, Johnny Bravo, Panni etc etc, basically anything but her real name Jane!

Through 4 years of engineering and another 2 years of MBA, we've been through every-single-shit of ours together. There were some crazy times when we stopped talking to each other for totally pointless reasons but I always knew deep down that together we were meant to be! Ok, being senti is sooo not us, so I'm cutting this down totally :D

Whether or not I express it (it just wouldn't come out right, however I try), I know for sure that you know what you mean to me. The both of us somehow have that weird connection - we just know it, accept it and don't care to express it. And to me, that's what keeps us going. Love you always and forever - so, so very much di. You truly mean the world to me. And we're gonna make it through tough times ahead together :) Here's wishing you a super Happy Birthday and an awesomely, absofuckinglutely (quoting you!) kick-ass life ahead. Muahhhh!!!

P.S: This post hasn't done even 1% justice to what you mean to me, Jane. There are way too many things to mention if details are to be given. I could go on (pretty much) forever on this!

I'm BACK!!!

Buhahahahahaha!

I've just GOT to tell you all about my tour. I'm like brimming with enthusiasm (!) to let it all out. But I just haven't gotten around to writing it out today. So I'm gonna let that be done tomorrow. BUT I just couldn't resist coming here and telling y'all that I'm BACK! And boy! Am I happy to be back or WHAT?!*
*Did that give away how my trip went???

P.S: I 'almost' kissed the Chennai Central floor today morning. But, uhm, decided against it as the 'suveet shmell' hit my nose :D
2. I will clear all the back-logs in replies to the comments in the previous post tomorrow as well! I'm HAPPY!!!