Frost At Midnite

This one is for all those who know my love for my shoes and think I am insane.

Ok! So I have this compulsion of buying shoes that call out to me from the shopping rack. Who doesn’t? – may be some people don’t, but I really don’t care.

When it comes to shoes, you got to put your best foot forward. (As per the circumstance of course. The circumstance decides the shoe, and the angle of your foot/knee. )

High heels are always a favorite – everyone has one, has worn one or is really looking forward to one. Even men love high heels; it’s imbibed some lessons since boyhood in them.. think it was Marilyn Monroe, so to say. It is a pretty simple creation of man kind, with a casing to hold the foot, and a metal rod to increase the height. Sometimes you would think its wood, but it would easily break under the weight of one normal person. That’s just the basics of what I know. Now my favorite part – the variety. All the designers that you can think of when it comes to high heels or for that matter shoes, get their shoes made in… Italy! The shoe capital of the world! Apparently those guys have some special technique. Anyway all that aside, with an average American woman having about 30 pairs of shoes at any given time, its bound to have quite a market and generate a huge amount of money.

That’s scope for even better things. If you find a Gucci for around 100$, think again. Just cause there is a “G” on the product does not mean it’s a Gucci. It takes a lot more than common sense and shopping experience to make out that difference. And while you find the cheap bargain, you have also effectively contributed to international crime. Yes, that’s one of the ways these guys make money.

It’s extremely disappointing to know it but most of the pirated stuff, cds, books, etc, and counterfeited products – perfumes, electronics, Shoes, they contribute to the world of crime and anti social activities. And by endorsing them we contribute too, only to become victims later. It’s no point in making a ruckus in the after math of an act of terror or crime once we encourage them.

But yes, for those of you who would like to own a pair of Manolo Blahnik look-alikes, do shop for a bargain at a shop which you know is genuine and gives you a reduction rather than a counterfeit, cos if that heel breaks once, it’s going to break your heart too.

For the love of shoes…..Sigh!!!

PS.. for the ones who want to know more about shoes, Manolo Blahnik is God, Jimmy Choo is Goddess! But every shoe is to be considered equally as a piece of art.

Its been a while now and since the last time things have gotten better and worse. Better mostly since my sister is now a lot freer since her college closed for the summer and she can run around and do some work for me. Worse in the context of my health; its pretty amazing how most sensible people agree on things – my doctor, parents, grand mother, uncles and most people holding a control over my life seem to agree that I need to give time to recovery and let it do its work. Apparently it took me more than 12 months to start treatment and damage done over all this time will take atleast half that time to get undone… and worse yet, I definitely do not like the examples they quote – a fracture, u get it in a fraction of a second, but it takes weeks and months to heal!!! I cant wait to dig into a nice plate of my favorite chicken biriyani and the most outrageously priced yet the worlds best potato wedges and then my mom’s amazing fish fry! You can imagine a desperate me drooling! But I am relatively happy for the food I am allowed - a bowl of plain rice, three times a day (you may include a piece of boiled beetroot/carrot/beans occasionally!)

What could you ask for from life when you have a nice sister??? That’s our, my sister’s and my, philosophy in life. If she needs something in life, she asks me, and vice versa. Now that I am denied food, I take the liberty of throwing tantrums around and demanding that all people living, visiting this house abide to my orders. So my sister, as sweet as she can get, totters down to the library and gets me a load of books to keep me occupied for the next few days. One of them a Jeffrey Archer - Shall we tell the President? I, for sure know that I have read this before, but must have been sometime in school, almost a decade ago atleast. But a book always deserves to be read. And then, co-incidentally there was an interview by the author on an Indian news channel last night about his new book, a prisoner of birth. he spoke of confidence and the normal things that most people, not necessarily authors speak about on television shows. But then what was interesting was that he wrote for 2 hours at a stretch and then took a two hour break.. and this cycle would continue from 630AMto 9 PM everyday till he got his draft ready. Now making a book isn’t an easy deal. You probably should try writing about the recent BJP conquest of the Kannada state and then you will realize what it feels like to write almost 800 pages of detail oriented plots. And this has to repeat itself.

A book, can be correlated to some peoples’ emails. You know it when you see it. The person would have drafted it and then redrafted and then again and again and yet again for ever so long. Yet you feel it could have been better. In this case it probably is not the need for perfection but then its just an absolute lack of good grammar and vocabulary and more importantly confidence. And so there was this humble man, dressed in casuals, who said his book went through 17 drafts! I cant possibly juxtapose this to any thing and therefore fail to draw an analogy. But I couldn’t stop thinking of it.

I am sure we all love to make money and have “jobs” to help us in this context. But not many of us have “Careers”. I am sure we all do not feel like going to work once in a while, but like some wise man with a tongue to match(you know who) said, if you feel the same way most often, its time you moved on. Imagine having to write for a living, most of us blogging junta do it for kicks or for making money through online advertising, but then that’s not the real thing. You can read online, have rss subscriptions, but its not like a good book on a Sunday with a cuppa… and it weighs much lighter than the laptop!(not if its an encyclopedia.) My dad always told me that the best way to judge a book is to see if you can get it for 25rupees on the street, incidentally all best sellers have a good deal of piracy going on(it’s a big market and the process is extremely interesting).

Think of waking up and writing, writing so much that you never get bored of it, writing and then improvising. It must take its toll on the mind and brain. But getting over all that must be what it takes to create a career for yourself and not just a job. Some people say that they love their jobs, but I cant quite relate to that. Jobs are something like a project, it has a lifetime, or a deadline, and its not something that is constant. More elaborately stated plumbing is a career and fixing a tap is a job. Now you get the point. It is understanding this concept that can help a lot of people in the third world economies. Recently having watched a remarkably boring show on millionaires on some life style channel, I couldn’t help but notice the trend that all of them were out there making money because they made a career out of what they knew they liked and were made for. For example, this millionaire from Ireland, started out selling fruits at a market, and made more money than other fruit vendors there. He also loved cars, and so he made a living selling cars, franchises and dealerships for automobiles. Making sure he told people what they wanted to hear, making a new contact everyday, and being amidst all those amazing creations of metal and sheer horse power. It was his dream since he ever knew.

How many of us today do something like that? I work for a big corporate and frankly I do not relate to a lot of things that happen in everyday office life, I go I do my job and return back. Nothing else. And therefore I have a job. A career at this point of time seems like a distant dream. And a dream is always meant to be chased…

Happy dreaming only don’t do it when u are on the job.

There are a lot of places where we read about butterflies in the stomach, feeling faint, weak in the knees, heart beating faster or slower, gasping for breath… feels like someone is stealing away your breadth…, and then there is the eternal… you cant stop thinking about it thing, nightmares or sweet dreams taking away your sleep, you wait for that one thing desperately, that searching look, the physical ache…, all written in respect to describing the symptoms of love.

Come to think of it, I have the same odd feelings. Butterflies fluttering in my stomach, that odd feeling in my abdomen, thinking makes me week kneed, an inability to think of something other than this, everything seemingly annoying, a varying heart beat, wanting to breathe but then an obvious lack of oxygen on earth makes it difficult, a serious lack of appetite and an even more lack of sleep, the pain and yearning… Arghhhh!!!!!!

Just the thought of all this makes me sick in the stomach. Any one with a mushy heart and feather brain would confirm it to be love, but in my case its just a complicated illness!

Out of sheer disinterest in tablets and tonics and saturated with bearing pain, I do so hope that it would be love… probably a sheer case of the grass is always greener on the other side.

It has been a really long time! Almost a month since I fell sick and my fourth week away from work. All this while sitting at home and just about doing everything to crib and cringe.

And then dad decides to take me out during the day. When I say that it means an outing to office/bank/some place official! This time it was to the bank. The trip was as usual. I do not like meeting people who deal with money… especially my money.

As much as I love Chennai, I never realized it has changed a lot… over the past year and a half! I never realized Chennai was green! Or even noticed how music academy was shaped. This time around when I went out, I noticed there were no hoardings… none at all. I remember when a friend, Mary, had come visiting from the UK. She was in love with India and Indian men. That was the time when John Abraham was on every other hoarding. Take the T-Nagar route or Mt. Road, all you get to see on either side were hoardings… of movies, watches, bikes, papers, saris, etc. and they were incredibly beautiful. Imagine almost 35 feet wide hoardings of Jothika, in three different saris for RMKV, just opposite to Valuvar kottam. You will be at the signal anywhere between 30 sec to three minutes and I remember seeing Jothika to the left and a Tanishq ad to the right. This time around, it was just space… blue sky, white puffy clouds and a dash of green! Clean up Chennai was taken to the literal sense! Mount road is almost barren… the exit curve from Anna flyover leading to Nungambakkam is open… and you can see the new horticultural gardens coming up! (This place housed the famous Drive-in, which the govt. shutdown… I not like the move! I‘ve known the place since I was in Chennai as a kid. They even had a children’s park with a white horse… a real one which you could ride! Infact, a lot of my friends talk about how drive-in played an important role in sculpting our personality!)

If I felt weird with just no hoardings around… there are a lot of flyovers everywhere! And I don’t know my routes now. I knew how to get to one place from another and all the gullies and lanes but now I am lost! I mean, Chennai is not really the best planned city, but there are a lot of small lanes which you can take to not go through the painful one-ways. I can’t really complain about Chennai’s traffic either after living in Hyderabad for almost two years. But the flyovers are crazy. There are many types of them I was told. You enter one, and decide which way you need to go… and ten minutes later, you exit the flyover to your destination. While it would have taken some 25 minutes otherwise! And there are expressways for the buses! Chennai is getting posher by the day!(think after the one in T-nagar is complete, I enter flyover from near my house, and I can land up on the main road, ten feet from Lachu’s house!) I remember moving to Hyderabad in dec’06 and there was a bridge under construction. I happen to travel through the same area again, and its still under construction. But here… I never knew that there was such a thing happening and it feels like it popped up from the earth… And I happen to visit Chennai every month! My love for this city has nothing but increased!

i couldn help but be amazed!

http://illseed.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/man-rapes-woman-over-the-phone/

Defies all laws of science  I know of.. interestingly dumb!

Its been two months since Jammy tagged me on this.. and here goes…

Eight things I am passionate about
I Love Thinking, reading, photography, football, my family and friends, music, traveling, writing.
Eight things that attracts me to my best friends
Ahem ahem… considering that I have a tiny bunch of “friends till death” I think it should be:

Fun, intelligence, passion, grounded, sensible, loyal, talkative, and a patient listener. A lot can become with these characteristics.

Otherwise.. think one common characteristic is that we are all rich spoilt brats!

Eight books I’ve read recently

I don’t remember them… currently reading RK Narayan and PG wodehouse.
Eight things I say often
I say a lot of things very often.. primarily.. :), hmmmm, its not like that, damn it,.. hmmmm… ok, hmmmmm, *raise my eyebrows*… basically I am not a person good with my words.
Eight things I want to do before I die (In no particular order)

I would like to die rich.. give away a lot to a lot of people. Send my parents away on a worlds tour, give my sister whatever she asks for ( I normally do.. but I think she has a lot more wishes to come true!), read up all the books I want to read, publish my books.. I have a lot here.. and it gets depressing writing all of them here for the world to see.

Eight songs I could listen to, over and over

Hahaha.. there cant just be 8.. if it were I would kill myself.

Eight people I think should do this tag (I have seven)

*I think*… hmmmm.. that’s a clause there..and right now I don’t think anyone should…

Last movie seen in a theatre?

Its been so long that I really can’t remember!

What book are you reading?

Currently RK Narayan’s collection of short stories and a PG wodehouse.

Favourite board game(s)?

Scrabble , Monopoly and chess.

Favourite magazine?

The Economist, Reader’s Digest, Competition success.

Favourite smells?

Coffee, The smell of wet earth after the rains, the smell of my grandma’s home… The smell of water.. fresh water in God’s own country.

Favourite sound?

Water.. inspiring stuff.. bubbles, boils, ripples, downpours.. you can spend hours lost in transition with it.

Worst feeling in the world?

Currently sick, and having gone through a lot of weird illness, I think the worst is when you are sick and you have to experience it.. unlike when u have a fever and u sleep.. or are unconscious.

What Is The First Thing You Think Of When You Wake?

What time is it!

Favorite fast food place?

Hotel Safari… not really fast food.. but they really serve food fast. Best biriyani and butter chicken… I like!

Future child’s name?

I am not a “Child” person.. don’t really like the tiny people.. and therefore have not thought about things that concern me and them.

Finish this statement. “If I Had A Lot Of Money I’d…”

Travel, indulge with my camera.. a new lens and a screen, Contribute to conservation efforts.. If there is enough left for my parents, I’d give it to them and ask them to retire and have fun!

Do you drive fast?

Yes.. and therefore I am not allowed to drive!

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?

NO!

Storms - cool or scary?

Cool… Again the sound of water.. the rhythm.. the thunder.. a lot can be thought about during storms.. over a hot cuppa!

Do you eat the stems on Broccoli?

Yes.

If you could dye your hair any color, what would be your choice?

I did once.. and it was called something in the brochures, I can only express the color as burgundy with copper reflect.

Name all the different cities/towns you’ve lived in?

Chennai, Hyderabad, Cochin, Coimbatore, Kannur (Chirakkal, Thalassery)

Favourite sports to watch?

Football!!!!

One nice thing about the person who sent this to you -

Bharath… extremely grounded, and a nice photographer, can be inspiring to the beginners..

What’s under your bed?

Gift Wrappers.. I collect them and find my sheet holders full. The bed however keeps them crisp and stiff unlike the holder where I have to roll them up.

Would you like to be born as yourself again?

Definitely!

Morning person or night owl?

Night owl!

Over easy or sunny side up?

Sunny side up.

Favourite place to relax?

Home!

Favourite pie?

Not a pie person.

Favourite ice-cream flavour?

No ice cream for me!

You pass this tag to – Tealspace, Ivar and Prits Dreams

Of all the people you tagged this too, who’ll respond first?

Dunno!