Coping

The cake came out alright after all and Anu in fact likes it more than the oven one. But my mind is playing all sorts of tricks with me now. Like I want to make pizza and bread now, the things I've rarely made at home when the oven was working! How sadistic!

Eating the Humble Cake

The last thing you would wish even for your enemy is to set the cake batter only to see that the OTG has stopped heating. That too at 10:30 in the night when you are hopeful of turning in early. And you've never tried baking the cake in the cooker before, having dismissed the thing as only for people without an oven. And you don't know what you'll end up eating once it's all finally done. What I would give for a predictable life right now!

At it Again

I'm obsessed with British Crime serials. Marcella being the latest. Now it's done and what next?

Unwelcome

Yesterday's lesson, which I was too irritated to write about yesterday - when someone says 'thank you', don't reply 'mention not!' unless you know that that person understands what you mean. Otherwise, there is every chance that you'll spend your precious time explaining its meaning, feeling stupid, frustrated and depressed. And in the end, it will be you who'll say 'thank you' and the other person will say 'welcome', possibly not having understood what you meant at all.

But tell me, is it so bad as that? I mean, suppose, suppose that mention and not are really so difficult to be understood together but I thought this whole welcome thing came into vogue only some fifteen years or so and I'm talking about 30-35 year olds here! And quite a few of that kind too. Anyway, it discourages me a little from helping them next time because I hate saying welcome when they thank me. May be I'll leave a smiley or say ok or something.

Science test question : What happens if animals stop reproducing?
Anu : If animals stop reproducing, their popularity reduces.

Walks of Life

My first visit to Gandhi Bazaar and some more things...was it on expected lines? I can't say. A long walk and a soda, which was also a first in 25-30 years. I'm still not a fan of it, I figured. SA makes me feel inadequate in some ways, I guess especially in the way she seems to have got her priorities and life in general sorted out. I guess she overwhelms some of others too. I somehow still missed Cubbon Park. Like if we had a bench to sit on, M might have spoken more.

Rode the Metro at such a late hour for the first time too. It didn't really seem unsafe despite very low number of women. Nevertheless some butterflies.

Hungry now.

Hopeful

There has been a new lease of life to our team, in fact three lifelines, out of the blue. Yesterday I helped a guy set up his case and after three hours of hard work he thanked me and said his boss had told him the only hope to get it closed was to get me to help them. He said "I wish she was right about it, thanks a lot!". For a second I thought what the hell but then I could make out he was not English and I took it as "I know she was right" and made myself happy.

There are many around me who use 'hope' for 'guess/think' and it got me a while to get the actual meaning out of it.  Like in the below conversation, -

A-  "Do you know if C is in the office today?"
B - "I hope he has left for home just now"

Among the new generation of actors, I like Rajkumar Rao and Vicky Kaushal. The vulnerability that they bring to their characters is endearing and most welcome.

Notional Losses

The club's roofs are coming down and I realise I'm seeing the inside for the first time now. This 'tomorrow is another day' thing that has become my staple is so damn detrimental to today's potential while it serves up all excuses of tomorrow's possibilities...

Anu was humming a semi-prose poetry and I asked her where she had learnt it. It seems she wrote it herself and it's all about how growing up means giving up all pleasures of life. I don't think I'm being a good example.

Breaking Up!

We had our team lunch today and it may be the first and the last time many of us met. The process of breaking up the team has begun already and it is unsettling for some, of course. I guess one thing anybody will surely miss is our boss.

Our club next door is breaking up too, having shut the shop for all other activities like swimming, badminton, drawing classes etc. It's double the agony for us, having to bear with the loss of convenience as well as the terrible noise of demolition and new construction.

There is a little girl I see in Anu's school, who looks so much like my teammate N. I want to tell N about it but I also know that she is struggling to conceive right now and I can read her feelings when her good friends around talk about their baby or pregnancy. She's one of the people I admire personally and I want to see her happy.

Unholy Games

Corporate red tape is one of the worst. It's like you may get away with murder but not with helping another person who belongs to a different org within your own company. I silently listen to my boss who seems as exasperated as a parent with a naughty child bent upon breaking the rules. But his are the best ears I can get.

Sacred Games to me is also about the way the two guys deal with their losses - different kind of losses, in their own different ways. But binge-watching it also gives you a crash course in expletives.

Hitting the Trough

Feeling unwell, again. One of these undefined illnesses(I do hope it is undefined!!) which I kind of expect because of the way I operate on most other days - irregular food, work like a madwoman in the day and watch movie late into the night. Actually now I've begun to understand why the drunkards say they drink to drown their sorrows. My excuses must be sounding similar. The thing is I'm tired of having to catch up with a laundry list everyday, every single day! I have a feeling that one day my brain will just give up and become a mess. Anyway, I'm trying to get out of this movie addiction and concentrate instead on Machine Learning and the fact that I've finished most of what I wanted to watch on Netflix is helping me a bit.

I love going out with the kids. When we three go out we talk all sorts of things, we stroll, we go to our favourite places, we eat, we shop, we discuss what we should do next week(which most times don't happen anyway but that's okay) and it feels that we are in that perfect harmony and life is good. We do have difference of opinion on some things but then we accommodate each other and I don't remember a single time we've returned grumpily. I hope we maintain it for as long as we can.

I want to go somewhere. I want to see the sea. It's been a long long time. The point is, don't wait for others. They may not care for it as much as you do.

After two weeks of no outside snacks, I gave in today. The binge is over. But it did reduce a lot of plastic, surely. 

Yaaru Jeevave...

In love with Kannada Bhavageete, all over again.

The club is all set to go. Today is the last day for Anu's drawing classes there and any new place will be inconvenient compared to the club, for sure. And I never went swimming there. I don't know if I ever will, anywhere. The fault lies entirely with me.

Machine Learning now.