April 3rd, 2008 § § permalink
Yesterday, I visited two websites, thanks to blog posts I read on K3 and the Metrodad‘s pages. One was a super one called Storynory (thanks K-3!) that has the audio recordings (FREE!) of more than one hundred children’s tales like the Ugly Duckling, Three Little Pigs etc. I just played one for P and that net savvy child searched for a few more and sat highly entertained for a whole 30 minutes! Result!
The biggest advantage of Storynory is that we can subscribe to them for free, on iTunes. I have downloaded some of P’s favourites for us to listen to on the next car journey. So can the baby, in utero, I’m told! Not bad at all, I say!
Metrodad, as always, has highlighted a disturbing trend growing – that of mums carting their six-year olds for spa treatments and 8-year-olds for – wait for it! – bikini wax! The article, on Philadelphia magazine, made for some disturbing reading. I remember the first time I saw smoothly waxed legs on my classmates in my new, swanky school at age 16. I was like the proverbial country bumpkin and gawped all day long. I still had to wait till I finished my Class XII hurdle before I went for my first waxing session – I still remember the pain! As my mum trained to be a beautician, she knew heaps of people from her classes who had gone on to actually make money from what they had learnt. As a result, I always went to beauty parlours run by aunties my mum was pally with. This invariably meant that any suggestion of mine to tweak my eyebrows this way or get a facial (give me a break, I was in Ethiraj College, after all!) would get a derisive snort and I would end up with a home made herbal pack plonked on my face, to ‘protect my tender young skin’.
I shudder to think of 8-year-old girls undergoing bikini wax. What the hell is there to wax, anyway?! And why are mums putting their babies through this? Do we all want to end up with children who give Posh Spice a run for her money? Oh please, no!
March 5th, 2008 § § permalink
‘Guess who these women are?’ quizzed the hubby.
I took one look at the taller, blue saree-clad figure and thought it must be some hijra person from North India but was blown why it would make news. The shorter figure twigged something in my brain – albeit after closer, deeper looks.
Imagine my shock horror when I finally figured they were the Williams sisters! Oh my eyes! My eyes!
Everyone, please read this excellent article by Deepa Krishnan on sarees and the whys and why nots. I could not put it better myself.
February 29th, 2008 § § permalink
Image courtesy: AP/ BBC website
Now if that isn’t a miracle, I do not know what is. This baby girl, born two months premature, when her mum squatted over the Indian toilet on a train in Rajasthan, survived the fall, lying in the cold for two hours and the filthy toilet, too!
May you live long, baby girl!
ps: This makes my fears of delivering P in the toilet bowl unknowingly, quite sensible!
October 9th, 2007 § § permalink
A few of my lovely mates have been asking me about my course and its progress. I’ve got to tell you and everyone else, that after Week 3, I am seriously doubting my sanity.
By that, I don’t mean the good folk at the uni are to be avoided and even as I type, are measuring me up for my custom-made strait-jackets. The course content is really interesting and as the weeks go on, increasingly challenging. I would now love to plant myself a well-aimed kick on my backside for carelessly commenting after day 1, session 1: “Ooh, that was a bit too basic, wasn’t it? Not at all like Master’s level!”
The modules are all designed in such a way that they sort of bleed into one another and that is mightly helpful. The different coursework we have been given are going to test my mettle to the full. So why am I sounding like someone who’s rapidly forgetting her lines with 2 seconds to air time?
Remember what I said about day 1, session 1? Well, I scored 5.0 / 10.0 in the quiz for that session. That kind of made me sit up and take notice. Then came the news about the next quiz and how it ain’t no cakewalk. As the topic was something basic as Internet and WWW, one I thought I could ace in drugged stupor, I am now doing a serious re-think. A call to battlestations. Then, to top it all up, I decided to follow session 3 from home yesterday. I went to class today to find everyone discussing the previous day’s stuff in Greek.
This morning’s lab session kind of brought everything to the surface. I hate not being good at anything and *have* to be on top of things. And the one way I know how to is to slowly pick apart a problem, bit by bit, till it unravels in my hands. This was how I learnt HTML, web pages building, content writing, blogging, the whole lot. This morning, though the set task was eminently doable, especially considering the helpful hints sprinkled generously by the lecturer, it still made me sweat. The lab was real warm but that wasn’t the main reason.
After the first read, I had a distinct feeling I had just read a chapter of Valmiki Ramayana. It took a good few reads before the text miraculously altered to become English. Then by my trusted method of trial-and-error, I slowly built the damn thing, bit by bit – a raging sinusitis and PMS didn’t help one bit. Along the way, I learnt some shortcuts and easier ways of doing the same thing. Pleased me no end, I tell you, as it meant I was finally getting this. Hallelujah!
So why am I tap-tapping my life away, a la MM? Cos I am freaking scared, that’s why! I am worried I have bitten off more than I can chew. I am worried that I am slowly going to find myself getting in well over my head and I will be up shit creek without a paddle (sorry to be mixing metaphors!). I am mildly-OCD in this aspect that if things are not in MY control, I get a major dose of the jitters. Added to the fact that I cannot – don’t know how to – ask for help. Well, without sounding like a prat, that is.
So why in hell’s name did I have to rock the boat? Why didn’t I just leave things be? I could have stayed put at my easy job and not worried about the DITAs and betas of the world. Well, my job was all that – easy. A bit too easy. So when I got itchy feet, I decided to take it and the rest of me in the opposite direction – where I can no longer skate through life but would have to do some serious slogging. Which has brought about the jeebies.
Jeez!
