The blogging communion

I just spent the better part of an hour reading blogs ... what strikes me is the futility of it all!
I read someone who said .. havent we all dreamt of being an author someday, heaven forbid there are millions of bloggers (read me)! out there writing away without much thought on what they pen ... using the blog as a universal scrap pad (me! me! me!)! If these are the people who dreamt of being authors, I can only thank heaven that none made it!! :)
Thats enough morose-ness for a day I think...
I spend far too much time on the internet as it is, without reading what absolute strangers are doing with their lives !! And now I have begun to do that too.. thats food for thought!

The universal jack!!

The saying goes "Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one" .... in my case it was master of none - period!
I have always been the one to try her hand at anything and everything! What I lack for in perseverence I make up for with my enthusiasm ofcourse!
I tried to sing and dance as a kid. Learnt classical music and dance forms.. for many years... the less said about my singing the better, for my husband does read these blogs and heaven knows he might decide to pen a comment and embarass me further!
Then there was the arts world, drawing, painting, sewing, pottery, I have tried it all... and though I have an eye for art, I discovered I dont have the hand for it!! Well we cant do it all can we?
So was I a geek? heaven's no... I only hit the books when I absolutely had to and only read enough to clear my exams with as decent a percentage as would satisfy my mother...
I was good in the literary world for a while, taking part in every debate, extempore, oratory competion in the city and winning most of it. I later realised that my competitors were probably too busy studying to painstakingly prepare for these literary sojourns! Where as I scoured every newspaper, magazine to ... oh no not to read the news, but to find material for the future debates....
Anyway I realised this sometime in college and decided that it was not worth all the effort, so there went the only thing I ever excelled at...
I forgot to mention my trysts with cooking, good grooming classes, public speaking classes (ofcourse!), karate, the school band, the school choir (hey I was part of the choir for a while!!!), and yeah sports... I was never much of an athlete, I would run in relays where you just run one tiny stretch and then pass on the baton to another member of the team and your work is done...
I tried volley ball, badminton, baseball, and for the heck of it hockey and table tennis both for all of 2 days! For a short while it looked like I had some promise in badminton and then my right hand would swell up after every game, bringing an end to that!!
Once I started working, I found that I had a passion and aptitude for my work - IT like half the world population... but here again I quit in 6 yrs and I dont know if my career will ever take off again...
Now the most dreaded part.. my role as a home - maker (ew, I hate that word) - i stink at cooking, I hate cleaning, I am an impatient mom and well I have never read the book on being a "dutiful" wife...
So there... the perfect example for the jack of all trades... atleast I have a claim to every conceivable thing " been there...done that!!! ..( and we will leave out the failed miserably part"!! :)
Now I am beginning to sound morose... for all this I am a happy go lucky person and I have no regrets whatso-ever... maybe it was just the case of "Too many pies, too little fingers... " - now thats another topic in the making!!

The Star Teacher!

My son started preschool a couple of months ago. He has been mommy's boy for the past year and a half, with mommy figuring in his every waking minute ... so he had a rough start at school. His school days typically began with "NO... Its not morning yet!!" and "Its Leave today!!!!!"... he whined his way through getting ready for school. I am usually not very patient, but I calmly dealt with these morning tantrums much to my own surprise. I quietly but firmly manage to get him ready for school. I had started to dread these mornings. Then he would go to school and hug me and refuse to let me go... through the day he would yell and scream and torment his teachers.
He once refused to sit down for story time and insisted that he needed to go on the bus! I think he figured if mommy doesnt pick him up he would take a bus home? Now this was all heart rending!!
Then there came the star teacher. When he cried for the bus, she took him to the school bus and let him play at the driver seat! When he had a rough time she hugged him and pampered him and coddled him. Now my son loves school. He looks forward to meeting his teacher every day and is raving about his teacher all the time after school.. She is his new best friend!
Also he is well behaved in school and helps out, helping her put all the chairs back in place, helping in clean up etc. I pick him up during nap time, so after the kids go for their nap he sits with his teacher and chats with her and is "funny"!! His teacher is always in raptures about how good he is!! Can I take that boy home I want to ask!! No not this boy who turns into the little imp once he is home!!!!!
Lately he has started wanting to go to school on weekends and in the afternoons . He goes to school only alternate days, so you can imagine how I dread the days he doesnt go to school now. He has started crying to be taken to school , especially when I try to punish him. A friend recently said, "your son is being spoilt rotten at school" I am really glad school is such a positive experience for him:)
Kudos to the star teacher!!!

On the dog fighting fiasco....

In India, cock fights are a sport! In Spain its Bull Fights, in gladiator days it was lions! and the list goes on... and now the latest and greatest... dog fights!!! :) There has always been talk of animal cruelty in the other cases, but suddenly Mike Vick is subjected to badbad publicity and condemned!
I hate animal brutality, hell I hate any brutality including the WWF war zones! But whoever decided that dogs are better than cows or goats or turkey or chicken? Dont those other animals have rights too... can we close down the slaughter houses all over the world and stop animal cruelty, killing in its true sense? No?? I guess dog meat doesnt taste all that good eh? So we will just pretend that they have more rights than the other dozens of animals we kill in millions every day!
http://www.tylerbosmeny.com/paraguay/Cow.htm

The Indian Abroad

The Indian Abroad is part of a confused clan. At every oppurtunity he thinks of going back home to india... He misses his parents and family.. But something keeps him here, and he keeps postponing that return! Be it the quality of work, quality of life (except maybe for the roads/ polluiton this is a very questionable point. I had a better quality of life in India I think!!) or money - thats a big factor I guess. We keep thinking that in the next couple of years we will head back, once we have a green card we will head back, once we have a citizenship we will head back - keeping your options always open to run back to the US at any time. Why? Weren't people happy staying in India all their lives? But no now that I am here I need an option to be able to run back here when I please. But by the time I get this option, my son will be old enough to resist going back to India!!
Despite this, the guys and girls who pass out of colleges and join the various IT organizations across India are always yearning for an oppurtunity to get here!! Whew, vicious circle!
I ofcourse am part of this confused clan... I was very particular that I will stay with an Indian company and marry a guy with an Indian company so that my ties to India are always there. I came to the US for the first time 5 yrs ago when I got married, I loved the US ofcourse but missed my family. I rushed back to India in a year wih an intention to stay put. I even built a house in India to this interest. But then the lure appealed to me yet again and I am back. Now I have joined the clan of the confused Indian abroad!!! I keep thinking that I do want to go back one day, but that day moves further and further.... and my son goes to school here already...

Intro?

My little sister writes blogs.... and so do most of my friends... I have time on my hands and am online for so long and I do have a case of incessant musings.. so I thought why not?
I am the typical indian girl (more on that a little later), cosetted by parents... stayed at home all of my student life... then went to work and actually managed to stay alone for a year and a half when my mom called me day and night and supervised me over the phone..
Then I got married to a guy chosen by my parents! 2 years after marriage, oh yeah we decide to multiply and had a kid!! A year after that I quit my job to take care of my naughty and already spoilt little brat!! And the past year we have been moving all over the US in my husband's climb up the corporate ladder... or so we think!!
Now my son goes to school and my husband ofcourse goes to work to bring home the bread (I suppose!!) and I am going out of my mind with no one to control during the day... :) hence this experiment with blogging.
I used to be quite literary a long time ago.. writing diaries and poetry!!!, reading books, winning every speech competition in the city (yay!!!) ... though I have always wondered if I was any good! Looking back I dont think so...I just knew how to dress my speeches and impress the judges!!
Anyway even presuming that I had some literary talent back in those days, I sure have lost it now! But then were do we have time for the written word these days? We used to write snail mail to friends when I was back in school, then we started writing emails but now no we dont even have time for that we write scraps!!!!!! with an abbreviation for every conceivable english word! I have forgotten how to write anything at all....
With this note, I dive into the world of blogging...