The sneak who crept in

This weekend we had a visitor. An unwelcome one too.

Hiding behind the drapes, the creepy sneak or should i say the sneaky creep?

What do I do?

(I'm well known for not moving a muscle when it comes to those tiny things but with the power to freeze me on the spot. Lizards, flying cockroaches, mice... I'm petrified of them. I'm known to have screeched in terror mistakenly thinking that the hair which fell on my neck suddenly, was a mouse's tail.

I've spent 3 hours staring at the progress of a lizard on the ceiling and afraid to close my eyes because I was afraid that it may decide to fall into my gaping mouth..Ewwww...When the visions started getting more hideous, I had to get up and finally wake up my father (i was on a holiday in Bangalore) who chased it away.

Sigh! Fathers are the BEST! )

So this time, I had to call the only knight available, who used a broom as his sword. G is great at driving away pests. Most of them. I'm not going anywhere though.

So after much drama in the room with two kids being told to look at the lizard and not me, they managed to chase the creepy visitor out.

Me? i was as far away from the scene as possible.

Yesterday, when i entered the kitchen, what do i see? Another lizard right in the middle. Blinking at me. Perhaps wondering where its cousin had gone to?

What did i do? G wouldn't get up, so much for the knight halo. So I bravely tried to chase it away with much tapping and dancing, and it, perhaps bored with all the early morning drama, went straight into the laundry room.

We now look forward to a week of unwashed clothes, because no way am i entering that room now. Come to think of it, perhaps the smell of unwashed socks will make the thing slither out...*brightens

And then the six yr-old consoled me saying that when he gets a bat as a pet, he'll make sure that the bat keeps the lizards away!

bats? pet? WhatWhenEeksdeepbreathNOway!!!!!

Now I'm sure something scares you. Make me feel better, and tell me?

Puzzling effects...

What's this?

It is a picture of two adorable kittens with a yarn of wool. It is also a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle being puzzled over by a six yr-old and his mother...

Yes! We are very smart, thank you very much! Much to the amazement of the resident snorter who thought we couldn't do it...(*i think he was just jealous)

Little S has always been fascinated by puzzles since he was almost 2 years old. He's spent many a rainy day with Kaleidoscope, the puzzle made up of colored little squares, which i love too. But jigsaws are his favorite. It's addictive and a great stress buster. Solving it teaches one about perspectives, about tenacity and is good exercise for the mind. This was the first time, though, that he tried his hand at a 1000 piece puzzle.

It is a fascinating thing to sit down with these odd shaped pieces and coax them into forming the complete picture. At first they are just meaningless shapes, and it's difficult to make sense of the mayhem. But we figured it out, me and my little helper. We started with the border, because the border pieces have one flat edge, thereby making it easier for us to start. It was not very easy because the fur looked almost the same. Sometimes, I would hold the piece the wrong way, and then lil S would slap his forehead and put it…right there where it belonged.

Every time S returned from school, he would wash up and bounce into the room, first to check how much i got done without him and then to try and beat me at it...

Sometimes it just wouldn't move forward. And then miraculously, when we tackled it after some time or the next day, we seemed to instantly find that missing piece. And everything would fall into place for a while. So much like life, isn't it?

Little by little, piece by piece, we finished it. And the look of satisfaction on his face when he fitted in that last piece was worth recording. He didn't know I had completed it hours before but had messed it up a bit, just so that he could have the satisfaction of finishing his very own "big people' puzzle.

And as usual because i just can't help it, i think of associations.

Of Scrabble boards. Of incredibly lazy evenings, of worry free minds and easy laughter, of a family bonding over a scrabble game, which my sister would invariably win.

I hope that my kids too would weave happy associations around certain things. I'm sure they could never look at a football without thinking of G, of all those evenings spent kicking the dratted ball or watching the games together. Maybe the 11 yrold would look at books and remember the books devoured together by him and me?

And perhaps, jigsaw puzzles would do the same for my 6 yrold. Sometimes, i look beyond and see a young man buying a puzzle for his child, and telling him "See this? i used to do that with my mom". sigh!

*a happy Sigh!

There you go again, my wistful heart...why peer into a whimsical future when you have such a beautiful present....?

So tell me, since i'm a curious cat sometimes....are there certain things which bring back an instant happy recollection for you?

A sigh of the times

Sigh....A weird state of mind to be in.

I had so many things to be written and the next morning, my mind couldn't trace it. I would like to call it 'blogger's amnesia' - sounds more mature than plain growing old...

To add to the vanishing act, my yahoo inbox myteriously emptied itself .

So then i do the next best thing...

I heave a deep sigh...

I look at food blogs and sigh at the great photography....

I look at my Google reader and wonder why noone is posting faster than i can read!

Then i look at my blog and sigh " -------" very deeply...

never mind me, folks, i'm just smsing...sorry pmsing...

sigh....can't even get my words right... must still be the shock of turning 37...

I also believe that my sister's 4 yrold twins are practising for my 40th b'day video! Cute as they are, I wish someone would tell them that 3 years is a long time, right? Right!

Gong Xi Fa Cai !!!

We've been seeing red, the past few weeks ! ! Everywhere you go, there are beautiful red lanterns dancing in the wind and red banners put up. It's the Chinese New Year and our apartment complex and most of Singapore, has been bathed in red, the lucky color for the chinese.

symbolic firecrackers hung outside our apartment lobby....to scare away Nian, a beast who comes out of hiding, once every year on Chinese new year to attack people, especially children. The Nian is sensitive to loud noises and afraid of the color red. I could send my children to every house for the decibel factor but then the locals already have the LION dance. Two people dressed as the lion perform the dance in each house, ushering in prosperity for that year and scaring away the evil. The dance is a treat to watch for the energy the dancers display. People hang a fruit with a red envelope containing money, and the lion is supposed to display its acrobatic skill in reaching the money and spitting out the fruit/lettuce.

These mandarin oranges, a symbol of prosperity, have been placed outside each apartment block lobby.

So as they say here, wishing you guys, Gong Xi Fa Cai, or Happy New Year and as its literal translation says, "wish you enlarge your wealth" !

people waiting in China town to usher in their new year...and its the year of the ox, this time.

And just so that you don't miss out, i give you a red back ground and pictures....how nice can i be, right?

republic day!

We are supposedly celebrating democratic India! may we realise the meaning in its true sense.

Look what we found here...

For those who don't take care of your butts, read on



Found by one delighted 11 yrold on a bus stop in Sydney

Wassup, mate!

I'm speechless! I have to be because them vocal cords have finally rebelled and decided to enlighten me as to the weird sounds i am capable of making. I can now do hoarse, guttural, squawk and possibly a mean rani mukherjee voice. Elder son never had it so good, considering its exam time. Of course i can do THE glare but the person has to be seeing you to get scorched by it....

sigh....

and my family will never win at dumb charades!

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So we welcomed the new year at the Sydney harbor bridge watching the fireworks, never mind being squished by a hundred, no make that million, other like-minded people. That reminded me why we rarely get out of our cozy home on new year's eve. But the euphoria of screaming out happy new year and the firework display was worth being squished for!!

It was a holiday well spent at Melbourne and Sydney,where each one got to do his thing. We did a LOT of walking, petting (the animals), jaw dropping (at the beautiful scenery and clear waters) and kicked balls (er..lets make that football) on the soft sand. We even visited the MCG...

At a petting zoo in Melbourne, where we fed and touched koalas, turtles, emus, wallabies.

An emu says "hi, wanna get spooked?"

One excited male, doing what he does best, preening for the ladies


Father and son completed an exhilarating climb upto the top of the Sydney harbor bridge ...f you look closely, the spots in blue on the arch near the flag are the climbers....

while mother and son (the bridge climb was for 10yrs and above - I qualified but the 6 yrold didn't ) walked across the bridge, looking down into the waters below, taking in the views from the lookout tower and going camera crazy.


Having got back home after 12 days, it seems like its been a long time and everyone's all geared up to get back to the comforting chaos of our daily life.

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Since being speechless is the mood of the moment, this seems like a right time to react to this....WIAN from Random thoughts and Preethi from Incessant musings believe i am friendship-material...all i can say is that they are intelligent women with good taste...:).

And here's a virtual hug to you both....for the award...and the sentiments attached to it.

[This award is given to a blog that invests and believes in PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.]

Thanks to them, i now know a new word - self-aggrandizement.

And i pass it on to all those kind people who read here regularly...I meant the award, not the word...