Yeh kya ho raha hain?

Well, I know you will call this coincidence! In fact when I told some of my friends, they said I look at the watch too often. But today it happened to me 3 times! So whats this magic you may ask. Well, whenever I have to look at my watch or cell phone or the any digital time display, I see doubles. 10:10 or 11:11! Not magic? Does it happen to you too?

Here's the deal! I happened to get up in the middle of the night, rather early morning. I pick my cell and look at the time. It shows 4:44! Later today, I had to catch a 12:30 shuttle and I had to get ready. I look at the time on the stove, it shows 11:11! It could have shown 11 or 11:03 may be. And now, I was reading a book and just realised Navin is still not home. I look at the time on my cell and it shows 23:11... I am like OK.... and turn my head towards the stove. It shows 11:11!!! This is no coincidence. Now somebody tell me this is not magic.
AND NOW! You will not believe this. I edited this post for spell check and save it and the time shows 12:12 on my computer!

Loooooong weekend

Yes! The weekend just seemed too long. With just no plans whatsoever, we rented a car for the long weekend. We will put together something before Friday, we told ourselves. It was Friday night and we did not have any plans but just a destination in mind. Napa! The wine city!

Navin and I have a reputation to maintain. We never, by never I mean just never ever PLAN for any trips. Not that we don't try. We spend hours and hours browsing the Internet and looking for 'things to do lists' and end up with 'blank' on our lists. We are super duper happy when friends join in because that means we can have some fun activities on the trip. So here we were, just nothing on mind, except that we were going to Napa.

Some of our friends who had been to Napa told us about the hot air balloon rides. OKAY! We knew something we could do! We looked up for some balloon rides and decided on one near Sanoma county. Then booked some room near by hotel. As usual we started later afternoon to reach the hotel in the evening. Went to Chevy's for a late lunch or umm early dinner. Stayed in the room so that we don't stay up too late feeling tired to get up early for the balloon ride. For those who don't know, the balloon rides are usually at 5 or 6 in the mornings! I know... that's too early... but this time we had made hotel reservations and driving plans and also decision to stay indoors so that we reach on time for the balloon ride at least.

BTW, America got Talent so not so bad an option for a Saturday night! (#FML) Seriously!

We got up at 4:30 am to be right in time for the ride. But looks like the weekend was supposed to be a quite one, no adventure added. The ride was called off because of windy conditions. What? NOOOOO! Did I hear you right Mr. Balloon Owners? You guys don't know how much effort it was for us to make it this far! But it was for real! The ride had been called off. What did that mean? It meant we head back to the hotel and sleep for some more time. And that is what we did.
That same evening we headed back home... stopped at a couple of wineries on the way. Went to a Premium Outlet mall in Napa :) On the way back we needed just that little more for a fun filled vacation. So we decided to drive to Fremont for a Hindi movie called 'I hate love stories'. Bad choice, we knew AFTER we watched it! Here are some pictures from our not so planned trip.

After the ride (which never happened)

Outside Mondavi Wineyards

Tasted some bests of Mondavi's wines

Drove to a State Park and walked in the woods... was good fun and tiring

On the Streets of the Sanoma downtown

I hate 'I hate Love Stories'

We drove all the way from Napa to Fremont for this movie... new release that weekend, fresh looking promos, cute Imran Khan... seemed a decent piece of attraction for the long drive? Well, a movie needs a story doesn't it? This one has... a lame and dumb one. Why do movie producers and directors spend their time and energy to make such movies?
Anyways! We sneaked out of the theater during the interval and went straight to the dosa corner outside :) So a good ending to a pretty much going off the drain evening.

Those of you who have not watched the movie and plan to do so, please save the money you are going to spend to promote this crap and enjoy a dosa instead :) It will be a guaranteed satisfaction and enjoyment, I bet.

Happy Birthday Didi...

Today is my sis's birthday... for more than 20 years we celebrated our birthdays together. Our birthdays fall one week apart. Mom and Dad always hosted a birthday party for all our cousins, neighbors and friends one a weekend that fell between the two dates! every year! until I think we started going to higher secondary when it felt a bit awkward... and we wanted to spend time with our own friends... and we did not want birthdays at home lol!
Since Purwa's bday was after mine, most of the times the celebrations were close to her birth date and at times right on her bday! I hated that... but what the heck... we both got gifts on the day :) BTW, (a small secret) we also used to wear ditto pattern dresses! You can see that in the pic below as well!

Wish you a very happy birthday and happy life sista!

Another small secret... after a little while... i stopped calling her 'Didi' :P felt awkward somehow (I am now a big gal feeling I guess)... but I never called her by name either lol! (Indian sentiments for elders I guess)

With love....

Why did God have to take you away from us like this? My heart aches to realize that I will not be able to listen to your voice, to see you again. But I feel your presence, your strong and graceful spirit. I just know you will always be around looking at us and taking care of us.
I think of you everyday... how I wish I could say my final good bye. I wonder what the moment would have been when you knew you have to go.

Who knew when you packed your bags to go to the hospital that day, you would never come back. Next time I ring the door bells, I will never get to see your warm smile. Everything is just the same but only you not home.

You will not read this... But I want you to know how proud I am of you. You have been a fighter till the very end. Your attractive and loving personality will always be in every body's hearts. I feel lucky that our paths crossed and I got a chance to make you part of my life. Never in our past meetings or conversations you made me aware of the tough times you and your close relatives have been through. I wish we had got more time together to share your past too.

Who can disagree... Cancer is life changing...

Rest in peace Seema Aunty.

Until me meet again in the other world... Goodbye... still learning to live knowing you not with us!

I Miss You a lot

Love you Seema Aunty! Missing you...

Stillness

Close your eyes, what do you feel? Well, do you even feel anything? Or are you busy chasing your thoughts? I do it all the time, even with eyes open :)

See the grass in this video? It is pushed by the winds in all possible directions. At times the winds are so strong that it can almost pull the grass out or destroy the fragile texture. When the winds die down, the grass just relaxes back as though enjoying the beauty around, all prepared to face any strong breeze that come their way.

Our lives just the same, don't you think? Many problems waiting to blow on your face, to push us in all directions. But we have always lived through the bad times, no matter how grave they have been. Some situations left impressions on us, some came and left even before we made any attempt to react where as others just made us stronger. But every time there was a solution, there was a way out, there was help available. Isn't it?

What matters is did you loose your ground when the problem blew on your face? Or were you relaxed enough to face the situation. How did your mind play with you?

You know, last year around the same time I was in Chicago working at Sears and Navin was at Gap in SF. The economy was bad and there were hardly any new projects coming up in either accounts where we both could be accommodated. We managed to console each other most of the times but there were times when the wind blew right at our face to uproot us from our grounds. We labelled ourselves to be the unlucky ones. We only looked at the bad things in life. We never trusted that our managers took any effort to find us projects together. We hated if people showed sympathy. Small small problems seemed grave. Small things started becoming or appearing to us as big problems.
After few months I was able to find an assignment at Gap in SF. But only for 2-3 months and that meant we could not move our stuff from Chicago to SF. I requested a manager at Gap to extend the assignment by few days so that I could be eligible to move the stuff. But he said that he was already doing a big favor by finding the project and now I was asking for more.

At that time even a small comment like this made me feel bad. But today when I am at ease, I laugh at how the manager had reacted. I feel that it was immature on his part to say something like that. Or may be he was having his own pressure or problems which made him react that way.
But I could have comforted myself even at that time isn't it? But I did not, I was too busy feeling sorry for myself and getting dragged by the problem as it swayed me in all directions. Then or now, I am still the same me. If only I could close my eyes to find that calmness in me.

If you are lucky enough to find the calmness within you, you don't want to loose it again.