the electronic garden of eden

It’s finally here. It’s black, it’s sleek and it’s beautiful. It’s my new prized possession.

My iPod.

Assembled in China, it traveled on a long and perilous journey across the seas to the Artic and then on it’s way to North America, where it stopped in at California before finally making it to my sister’s doorstep in Connecticut.
I know this because my elder sister, who actually bought me the iPod (bless her heart), tracked the FedEx package.

It was ordered from the Apple store and it came with a touching personalized engraving and a card from my sister. These Apple guys go all out to make receiving your pod an extremely joyous occasion.

I have dreamed about this. I have spent time thinking about where I would use it, how I would flick it out at work, so all my iPod-less friends can silently ogle. I have thought about the pictures I am going to put on it, the videos, and the songs- 7,500 of them to be exact. Oh the joy. Oh the beauty. My life is suddenly filled with music. I feel elevated. Floating on a light cloud of my favourite tunes. Light.

I now know why they call the store ‘Apple’ – it goes back to the beginning of time when Adam and Eve walked the garden of Eden and happened upon a juicy red apple – yes the fruit that cause the fall of man – temptation, lust, desire, empowerment – everything I feel when I hold this shining black beauty in the palm of my hand.

My brother-in-law tried to tell me that there were other mp3 players that were equally good, if not better than the pod. But I wouldn’t have it. What’s an Mp3 player if it is not an iPod? If it doesn’t have the little circular dial? The white earphones? Ahhh… those snow white earphones.

So despite his words – I got it. And I think I made the right decision.

I think. Therefore, iPod.

sisterhood of the...sniff...sputter...weep...

The movie is about these four girls who grow up together, after their mom’s meet at a birthing class. They grow in to totally different individuals but are still as thick as honey.

The one summer, when they are sixteen, they don’t spend together is what the movie is essentially about. Their only contact is letters and a pair of jeans that they buy from a thrift store. The jeans travel through their hometown to Greece and Mexico. Each girl learns some sort of life-lesson and passes on the jeans and the knowledge to the next.

Why do I like this movie? It’s sweet, it’s teeny and it’s not quite me at all. More importantly why did I cry? I actually have some thoughts on that.

First, they get to travel to places that I can only dream of going to with the money I earn. Greece for example. It is just so beautiful and she gets to just go there for a summer? Is that fair?

Reason number two - The girl who goes to Greece meets this incredibly hot Greek student called Kostas. He saves her when she accidentally falls into the sea from the pier.
Note to self – must fall in sea when visiting Greece so as to be saved by hot fisher-boy.

Three, the girl who goes to Mexico is insanely hot. She is tall, athletic and has perfect hair. And on top of that, she plays a forward in a girl’s soccer team. Something, again, I can only dream of doing. A good reason to cry, yes?

Fourthly, those damn jeans fit all of them so frikking perfectly that it would take me half a life time and a lot of trial rooms to find any pants that fit me so incredibly well. And they happen to find one at a thrift store? Meaning someone actually had the stupidity to give away a pair of perfectly fitted pants? What the bloody hell is wrong with them… pass on a couple of hot pants here why don’t you…

Number five, the movie is actually quite poignant. They grow through divorce, death of parents and friends, love, parting, family feuds and a whole lot of stuff – that could make anyone cry. Really.

Six, I have never had a friendship so strong, that it lasts for sixteen years, maybe even more (if the movie had a sequel)
Sure, I have had good friends and people I have known since school. But have I grown up with someone, changed with them, spent every day with them and told them everything about me. No.
My first best friend was in the second grade. She left school in the 5th and I have never heard from her again. I had an amazing group of friends in college – we were ‘the five of us’ – but that soon changed when people moved away and others started not caring anymore about anyone except them selves. I have had good friends at work too, but moving agencies doesn’t help keep a friendship alive. So...I guess I also cried ‘cause I never had a sisterhood of friends.

Which makes me think that there is something wrong with me – not having a childhood friend? Doesn’t that qualify as serial-killer behavior?

Hmmm….Did Hannibal have a best friend?

Yes, I’m sure he had his. (we serial killers are a riot.)

Sniff.

Anyone want to watch the trailer again?

i, softy...

I have become a complete softy. I have been getting teary-eyed at the drop of a hat. It’s not comforting because I hate being all wussy, choked and mumbly – which is how I get when I cry.

I cried when my parents left Atlanta. Which does not really qualify as a good reason to cry because, I am going to meet my parents when I go back to India. But I cried nonetheless.

I was talking to my sister on the phone and she was telling me that she gave my mom and dad going away presents and wrote little notes to them from my baby niece. And my brother-in-law gave my mom an envelope with some money and a letter – thanking them for making the first few months of his daughters’ life so special, and that the money was a contribution to their tickets, so they could come again as soon as possible.
When my sister told me that, I got all teary-eyed and choked up again and promptly told her I had to pee so I had to go.

Whenever I think of not seeing my niece or sisters for another couple of year’s maybe – it happens again. I cry like a bumbling idiot on a bad soap opera. It is just annoying.

I wasn't always like this. I remember when my eldest sister left India for good, six years ago, everyone cried as they hugged her, except me. Soon after, my second sister left, again everyone cried, except me. I was sad – but I wasn’t soft.

So now I am soft. And I know it. It annoys me.

Like yesterday I was watching a movie called ‘Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants’ – as the name probably suggests it is one of those teeny-chick flicks that no man would be caught dead watching. I cried again. (Dammit, even this trailer makes me a little cranky. Arrrrrrggghhhh.)

Will tell you why in my next blog.

Because there are quite a few reasons and I don’t want my blogs to be too long so people just skim through them and don’t really read.


Don’t shake your head – I know you do that.

gasp. sniff. snort.

I have just been enlightened with some catastrophic information that has the capability of ruining my ever-shrinking prospects of finding myself a suitable partner.


I snore.

I am devastated.

I never thought I would be the one who snored at night. I always thought I would be the sufferer of someone who snores – because I despise any noise when I sleep unless it’s music playing in the background.

What’s even worse is that I don’t merely snore apparently. I bellow.

How very warthog-esque of me.

There is even a Museum of Snoring where snorers used to be treated worse than criminals. Snoring soldiers would have canon balls stitched to the inner side of their uniform so they could not turn over to their backs and disturb the others.

Another anti-snoring torture tool was the mask – a leather mask that straps the chin so the mouth remains closed – this is probably what it felt like to be Hannibal.

Yet another ancient remedy – “Pins”– they stretch the nostrils to a point when the sleeper gets more oxygen. Well he may have more oxygen – but will he get any sleep with pins in his nose?

Should I take comfort in the fact that many famous greats snored their heart out?

The likes of Winston Churchill, Brahms, Albert Einstein, even the mighty Greek God of wine, Dionysus.

Of course not. Because clearly only fat, old, fanatical men with bad-hair lifetimes snore.

As Anthony Burgess once wrote,
“Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone.”

I’m devastated.




I snore!

the nubileus hottitus

I have less than a month left for my fabulous holiday to end and I have to go back and work. Life can be drab like that. But so far I have thoroughly enjoyed my self – to the point of actually thinking of coming here for good.
As previously mentioned I am in Georgia’s small town of Athens. It’s beautiful, a perfect blend of country and city. Rolling, green hills and behind one of them you’ll find a Wal-Mart or a salon and spa.

It’s mainly a college town, seeing as the University of Georgia is the center of downtown Athens. This brings me to my first point. School begins in about five days and downtown is brimming with life – the tall, blonde, leggy sort of life.

Wherever you turn, whatever street you are on, you will find, at the least, three nubile, pubescent (god forbid, pre-pubescent) women. She will be manicured, spa-ed and salon-ed to perfection. Four just four, strands of hair will wispily fall across her face as she glides across the street in her three inch wedge heels and a summer dress.

That’s another favorite, the Summer Dress. They are so incredibly feminine and flowy. They shape the leg as one walks. They blow where the wind blows. They look like what the girl on the cover of a lascivious romantic she-will-drive-him-to-the-edge-of-desire kind of novel.
Dammit. And there I sit in my jeans and T. They aren’t flowy. And no woman on the cover of a romance novel will be caught dead in jeans, whilst in the throes of a passionate embrace with a hunky stable boy.

This brings me to my second point. Athens is a candy store for men, as one of the men who actually live here so eloquently put it. It’s not fair. Why don’t women have a candy store? Why can’t we drive around a town where every second man is a topless hunk doing push up’s or, I don’t know, drilling? It’s not fair.

We were at 283, a pub in downtown Athens and yes, the ‘nubileus hottitus’ swarmed there too. But while we sat there in deep discussion a guy walks up to our table. He interrupts the conversation, looks at me pointedly and says, “Excuse me for interrupting, but I just have to say that you are the most beautiful woman I have seen since I got back from Iraq”

Sufficiently flattered, I secretly thought, hell this guy hasn’t seen a woman in a while so he can’t be counted as a reliable informant. Which brings me to my next two points. I do not take compliments really well. And thankfully there is one living male in Athens who thinks that a girl who is not in a cookie-cutter, floral dress-wearing, wedge-heeled woman, is still attractive.

This is a good thing. It’s a yayayay moment. It lifted my sprits and gave me faith.





Although deep down I am thinking that maybe one returned solider is not good enough and maybe I should get me one of them damn cookie cutter flowery dresses. Let me at ‘em.

Dammit.

very very very

It was my birthday on the 31st of July and thanks to some good planning and timing I was with my whole family after about 6 years celebrating my 25th
My sister who stays in Georgia (where I am now) organized a sort of a dinner party for me and called some of her friends. Very fun.

The next day we drove up to Cleveland in Georgia, the home of the Cabbage Patch Doll. We visited the Babyland General Hospital which is a museum of these incredible dolls. About every half hour or so, a new little baby cabbage patch is born – I saw two deliveries. They do it so cutely saying things like “Mother cabbage is dilated ten leaves but she needs a shot of TLC”. Very cute.

We then went to Helen and walked up to the Anna Ruby Falls. My little niece was fascinated with all the water, she was cooing at the trees and the gushing water. Everything was so green and beautiful. Very lush.

My eldest sister her friend, Henrick and took us to downtown Athens to a bar called 283. I had two large Cosmopolitans. They were also having a Ms Pacman contest. We then moved to Allgood lounge where we had two more Cosmopolitans. I also miraculously beat Henrick at pool. And he didn’t even suck… he was actually good. But I beat him anyway. I’m so proud. Very happy.

Today we went to Stone Mountain National Park for a laser show they do on the mountain to some pop music. But as we reached there (it was one and a half hour away) a storm began in a big way. So it was cancelled. Waste of a long journey but I guess it was good that we saw the giant rock mountain. Very cool.

It’s now about midnight and I have just finished my corn dog dinner. Very tired.

Good night