Exam? what exam?...

It sure is a busy week at my house. I'm super hyper, like i'm on a taut string and a little touch will send me spiralling into the air. Exams always does this to me. The 11 yrold on the other hand is as cool as a frozen ice lolly. As far as he's concerned, its just another thing cooked up to make sure he has a rotten week. He's still reading his storybooks and decorating an arsenal timetable like he's arsenal's manager. For the uninitiated it's not weaponry but soccer...yeah...I've added the much hyped soccer-mum hat to the various other hats i wear...

Coming back to exams, I remember this history teacher in school. She was BORING!!!! and unfortunately believed that quantity is directly proportional to quality. Which meant that the longer the answers, the more the marks. So once i figured that out, it was pretty easy. The 11 yrold on the other hand is a master at brevity. He can condense a page into 5 lines. His speed-reading skills came to light when he read 5 chapters in 15 minutes. Algebra is scoffed at...the whole idea of x and y being in equations is silly...steps are skipped because 'i know it, she knows it, why the hell should i write it down"?

and yes, we have the conveniently censored expletive, "What The!!!!" going on right now....

I sympathise with him thoroughly when he complains ...Luckily for him, he's intelligent and has been getting good grades solely on what he remembers from the classes...which will not last him long. Maths needs practice and he's not too convinced about it. Besides, what is he going to do with 100%?!!!!(yes, we never fall short on confidence)

We've told him that we really don't mind the grades...what matters is that he works hard and shows some discipline in coming up with a time table and not keeping everything till the last minute....Right now, he's as receptive as the wall except when he tells me to chill!!! Still i live on eternal hope :)

The younger one on the other hand never lets me down, as far as learning goes. He has just learned about the middle finger...and the myriad expressions it brings on....He saw an 8yrold showing it, and other kids going gaga over it ' ... he patiently folds his four fingers and proceeds to show me the middle finger!

sigh...Ahhh! well, when you can't fight them, join them..i showed him how to use those fingers to make a camera....Hopefully he's going to be better occupied in school today...


and now biting my fingers...errr nails... wondering when this tune will hit my house soon?

Ain't that loverly?

You know the times when nostalgia grips you and threatens to throttle you and you end up replaying the "those were the good old days" record? You don't? then you are too young...you must be old enough to get a nostalgia attack...like me...

you do? good...let's get started. So i had an attack of the good old movies syndrome and i reminsced about the good old movies that we used to watch. The days of "Gods must be crazy", shammi kapoor's twists and the musicals, Sound of music and "My fair lady'...


so coming back to the movie, a well meaning friend had presented my boys with this dvd and the not-so-well meaning boy had pushed it way out of sight. The other day when i was digging into their dvd pile, i found Sound of Music buried under the harry potter, jurassic park, King Kong and chocolate factory movies.



So there it was, unopened and ignored. Memories of childhood came surging through...I mean, who has not heard "Do re mi' and sung "these are a few of my fav things' in school. My kids have been taught this in school as well. So I invited the boys to watch it with me...after all this was an experience to be cherished right?

After 5 minutes: the 11 yr-old said.."can i read a book? If you want i'll read it here (BIG favor!!!!) one wicket down...

the soon-to-be 6 yrold decided to give me a chance...

After Song #1 the boy asked me if Mr. superhero makes his apeearance now...

Song #2 passed by with him demanding some magic at least...

A still beaming (and gritting my teeth on the inside) me explained why maria now has to go work for a captain with 7 children...and the third song started...where she is singing on her way to the captain's house...it does have songs...its a musical!!!

2 lines into the song, the little voice puts in his two dollars worth " you know, i think she should stop singing and go , she's going to get late if she's always singing"

a smirk from the hubby completed the experience...

for the record i still watched it, songs and all...and the l'il one gave me comnpay, never mind if he fell asleep 20 minutes into the movie...

bah! What do these kids know about movies, other than special effects and spandex clad superheroes...!!and so much for my instilling some movie sense into them...hmpppf!! they want magic? i plan to unleash Mary Poppins on them ...

i need solidarity here...does anyone else like these movies?

and on a funny note...someone sent this to me...allegedly sung by Julie Andrews on her 69th birthday..i use the word allegedly, 'cos i cannot find any concrete evidence of her singing this..neverthless its funny...

Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in string,
These are a few of my favorite things.


Cadillacs and cataracts and hearing aids and glasses,
Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses,
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings,
These are a few of my favorite things.


When the pipes leak,
When the bones creak,
When the knees go bad,
I simply remember my favorite things,

And then I don’t feel so bad.
Hot tea and crumpets and corn pads for bunions,
No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions,
Bathrobes and heating pads and hot meals they bring,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Back pains, confused brains, and no fear of sinnin’,
Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin’,
And we won’t mention our short shrunken frames,
When we remember our favorite things.


When the joints ache,
When the hips break,
When the eyes grow dim,
Then I remember the great life I’ve had,
And then I don’t feel so bad.

ta-da!!!Now go sing "The rain in spain"

'BOOK'ed?

I definitely used to read more when i was in school and college...Now of course, i do more of reading text books and my 6yr-old's library books...and err...blogs

-xh tagged me light years ago on this...so here it is...

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you really love (and strikethrough the ones you hate!).(this i don't know how to do...so i'm not..)
4) Reprint this list in your own blog.

so here's the list someone else has so patiently compiled...(half of what i have read is missing from this list :P)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible -parts of it
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (most of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (saw the movie)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Currently reading "the japanese wife"

of the lot above, would want to try reading hitchhiker's guide and time traveller's wife..any other recommendations? I have so many that i've not yet read :(

I had covered most of the above, when i was in school...Some i've hidden in between my study books and read... Quite a few, i wish i had waited and read later to fully appreciate the writing....

Is there a proper age and time to read certain books to interpret it in the right way? What do you think?


and..and... i tag joy, gazal,and prats...and anyone else who wants to take this up...

Its raining 'friends',

pic grabbed from preethi's blog



What's life without friends, right? Right!!!


I've sat on this for almost a week, formulating things in my mind about how I wanted to say this...but then i realised a heartfelt 'Thank You' is what i want to say right now. There have been many times when you all have been instrumental in bringing the smile back on my face. Thank you for that too.




The honest, transparent and pretty, young bloggers, Keshi and Rayshma gave me this gold card to pass on...




a card which says "Blogging friends forever"...an acknowledgement of virtual palship and i'm happy to have found friends in you too.

And would i be too demanding if i give this to

each and everyone of you who make it a point to come here, read, and leave those lovely comments. Do pass it on

(sorry guys, its not a badge but a gold card...blame it on excitement? thanks ~nm)


Another 'OMG' moment

This is what they've been recorded saying about me:

Preethi : "...Her blogs are dipped in reality and humor. ..."

Neera: '... It shows that she is one cool mom her kids are lucky to have."

Mama-Mia: "I WISH I could be that sensible and level headed..."

It's not everyday that someone calls me cool, sensible,etc. so i'm going to make the most of it :D

and this is what i would love to say about them

Preethi's totally in her element right now ( Midlife crisis?!!!, cheeky's attitude and the laughing Gods notwithstanding)...her blog is just like her, full of life, and a treat to read

I love Neera's attitude, her kids, her honest posts, her kid updates and her template. Her blog makes my day...

Mama mia's famous for her radiant 1000 watt smile, and her cubby who takes after her. esp in the beam and cuteness factor. Her optimism is contagious and i love the feel-good factor of her blog.

And these extremely sane and beautiful mothers of equally adorable kids, have decided to pass on this diamond of brilliance to moi...


glitter-graphics.com
Merci beaucoup, Preethi, Neera and Abha...It means a lot to me. It is a great feeling when people identify with your ravings and musings. It is also a great feeling to be read and appreciated. Its not a great feeling though when i fall short of words to express how i feel...




In the tradition of this tag, i pass this on to

Prats: Of emotional ecology: A year back, I chanced on Prats' blog and i was hooked!! and thus came into being aalochane...

Tys: He makes you smile, he makes you think. And he writes awfully well too :D. I do wish he would compile his posts into a book one day. and ...did i tell you? his story blog is a must-read.

Ps: She practises what she says...and her blog is one of the reasons she's looking forward to a huge moment in her life - her first book "34 bubblegums and candies'' (click on the pic in the side bar to learn more).

Keith: One of my favorite bloggers. Poems, short stories, visuals, musings - you will find them all here.

Madhumita: a petite superwoman who manages to squeeze 36 hours into her day, what with her babies and her work and her social service...:D

Ziah:: laughter unlimited...need i say more!!! yes!! She's also beauty with brains :D

manuscrypts: A man of 55 words and more, and my, does he get his points across!!!



psst..To the nosy lady who lives 3 blocks away, and who finds it difficult to believe that i cannot spare time for her kitty party, i also blog among the other inconsequential things i do!!!