Mundane Musings

Working in an MNC having free lancers as a major workforce, one comes across a lot of interesting observations...oh no not enough to blog regularly about but definitely worth a blog or two. In order to motivate these freelancers or consultants, the company organises a lot of meetings and training sessions on regular basis. These meetings unfortunately are not limited to the managers talking (as if that were not enough) but it also involves successful consultants coming forward and sharing their "success stories" to the bored crowd. Now it must be noted that these consultants are largely homemakers who have stepped out for extra money and in some cases a chance to recapture a dream - of perhaps being a career woman. One cannot expect them to be good public speakers nor can one expect them to wax eloquence in English. But it doesnt apply to the ladies in question who insist on using a smatter of English when they speak. A word that is so subtle yet used a lot is the very ordin...

I have made this my home page. Looking at this page everyday will remind me to blog. Atleast that way I hope to reduce my shame of wasting precious internet space by merely having a page on the www (ok I dont want any smart alecs reminding me that writing blogs wastes internet pages like nobody's business). My favorite guilt factor is not giving importance to something I start with so much enthusiasm, (read, choosing blog templates and ids and whiling away time picking correct color schemes). This year I have the strange feeling that perhaps I apply this kinda attitude to my life too. So this year I am going to put in more blog postings... Would that be a blessing or a curse remains to be seen...

Since music is my passion the thought entered my mind that I wanted to make a neat collection of my favorite songs in english, hindi and tamil; separately. I haven’t come any where near to recording at least quarter of my favorites in one language. Sigh. What a difficult job this is. However this blog is not about music and the lengths I go to ensure I have a steady supply of music to last me a lifetime. This blog is on a song I came upon after a very long time. To say that Abba's Winner takes it all, is a poignant reminder of the harsh game of love, is an understatement. I have been hearing that song time and again over the past couple of weeks and each time I thank my lucky stars that I have not lost a man to another woman...mabbe coz I chickened out of relationships even before they got a chance to prosper. I don’t seem to remember coming across any friend too who has suffered the pain of losing a loved one to someone else. What was one supposed to think through all that pain an...

Last year's Friendship Day fell conveniently on a Sunday... convenient because I had the opportunity to think about the role my friends have played in my life to date. I should be an authority on the subject - "You are what your friends are" and I am proud that I turned out alright. Being a very friendly extrovert I think I had the prerequisites for being the kind of person people hang out with. Right from kindergarten, (oh yes I do remember my head being repeatedly banged against a wall by one very healthy 'friend'. I was terrified of her!) to this date, I have had at least one friend to whom I could tell everything. I am glad I do. Parents do have a hand in infusing good qualities in us and I thank my parents too for giving me the guidance in choosing good friends. In preparatory school I hardly remember having a close friend (I think I could be excused for having greater things to think like; when mum would come and pick me up after a grueling day of learning m...

I had the opportunity to eat at Bella Ciao the roof top Italian restaurant on Nungambakkam road. I have been meaning to visit the place for long but never got around to it, predominantly because of the harsh summer Chennai has been experiencing. Short of getting baked like one of their lovely pizzas there seemed no other option than to visit the place in a more pleasant weather. Two weeks ago my friend S and I were off shopping in Nungambakkam and suddenly hit upon the idea of having dinner at Bella Ciao. We had not booked earlier and were worried that we’d probably encounter a Sunday-Italian-loving-crowd there. But we needn’t have had to bother for; the place was pleasantly filled with an odd couple here and a subdued group of people there. The ambience of the place filled my eyes as soon as I stepped on to the terrace. It had a non fussy décor with non fussy arrangements. The décor was in blue and whites with gauzy maroon curtains. What I really liked about the place was the priva...

The plight of the single girls in our city is sometimes pathetic I think. There are so many out there that the competition in getting attention of any unattached male who neednt necessarily be worthy of all that attention is pathetic to say the least. I wonder if the same is the case for the opposite sex too. Anyways I have had the mis…er…fortune to over hear a conversation between two people in the gym. It is a given with these people around that one doesn’t come to the gym to merely exercise. Gyms have now become one of the coolest places to catch guys having similar interests and vice versa. So what if the only thing one found them doing was strutting from a treadmill to a cycle in designer wear and not really bother about serious exercising? At the cost of sounding like a frumpy 28 something, I must say Orkut has done its work of getting lots of clueless youngsters to mingle and wait for a tingle (er…thanks Karan). So here is a reproduction of the conversation between A (a loud...

For the past few months I have been having lots of discussions with my friends on THE ONE. It started with me having borrowed a book from the local lending library called “Bet Me” written by one Ms Jennifer Crusie. It was a beautifully written book as far as romantic books go. Mixing humour and subtle romance and sometimes the-oh not so subtle intimacy, she weaved a story around a handsome guy and a well endowed un-anorexic gal with an attitude (haven’t we read those a zillion times!), and made a winner out of it too. My friend and I were left wondering how such stories could exist in the world these days where in beauty and money was everything to most people. I was of the opinion that if the girl was not wealthy she should be extremely good looking to catch the prime guy in a match. If she didn’t have looks well she’d at least have money to fall back on. Now it was the in-betweens like me and her who had problems, we decided. The ones who I could call “the averagers”, who had average...