Mumbai - with love

Made another really short(weekend - 2days), surprisingly fun trip to mumbai for my cousin's sister weddin reception come sept 1st week!!

After a hectic 10 ramadan days of shuttlin between home, nursery(before 1pm) & work, me & my kiddy left to mumbai wit a family friend, Keith!! He took us to the Pearl Lounge at the airport ere, which I didnt even know existed. He was so tolerant of my kiddy, who he totally suspected was high on the sugar he was eatin!!

We were picked up by my dad at mumbai, who himself was visitin the place after some 17yrs. Went to Bandra(John Abraham's neighbourin apt) to freshen up, then me & mom set out to paint the town red!!

Took the Bandra-Worli sealink to Colaba, picked up my 2 brothers at the hotel adjacent to Taj. Funny how 7months can calm u down & help u enjoy the place witout too much lookin over your shoulder!!

 Shopped at the causeway, lunched at LEOPOLD cafe, went bak to bandra & back to colaba for the reception!! Met all the relatives & all the teens took turns chasin my kiddy away from the pool, from the flowers, exits, overall trouble!!

Next day(being my last day there), I refused to go for a party at Khandala & instead went shoppin, visited relatives in worli - ate really tasty fish tikka!!
U think john abraham would've come home to c his parents to celebrate the parsi new year? well, havin spent the night near the peep hole, i finally came to conclusion - the guy aint in town!!

  Met my brothers at the airport, bid them farewell for their domestic flight & slept thruout the flight bak home!!

Came back to office & made this wit the file thingys!!

Dry August

Had house guests - a bengali aunt & her daughter - uncle passed away in jan - so they came to clear his things up - stayed wit us for 2 weeks - taught my kid bengali, they ate kerala food, v ate bengali food -but i forgot to ask how to wear the saree bengali style :( Finally got my Isthimara after 3 attempts. Isthimara is the learner's license - only v dont need to give any sort of test. Only have the correct papers & qualifications, which vary accordin to the officials mood!! I applied as housewife with child, cause thats a seperate & easy category.

Started drivin classes in july with a private school - the guy's name was my best friend's psycho ex boy friend's name - knew i was doomed from the beginin!! 6-8am daily for a week !!

Went to india for 10 days, came back - went for the test & flunked royally!! the norm is that they flunk u atleast 3 times - my 1st time was a sitter for them!! couldnt figure out how to park with their barriers. Met the cutest top cop - a sheikh - twice - to change my test dates!!

These are a few international flags that were presented at a food festival in sidney.

Back & fourth once again!!

Jet airwayed again back to cochin to pick my baby, mom and to celebrate MIL's 60th bday.

After carefully choosin the flight carrier, they still didnt have individual TVs on this flight and NO baileys once again!!
But since it was wit my hubby, I got Baileys at the duty free in cochin.

Landed amidst heavy & continuous downpour at cochin & promptly left for tvm, reachin there about 6hrs later at night & was reunited with my baby after almost 2 months. But couldnt meet up with Anju who waited for extra 2 hrs for me to show up.

Went to the dentist within 2 days for extraction of 2 wisdom teeth , but the trainee doc says " U need extraction on the left & root canal on the right & follows it by a mind numbingly horrible injection into my mouth-my baby still imitates my scream!! Only for the doc to say that it requires only fillin & careful brushin - I now wish he had either extracted or done the root canal.
Along with the irregular antibiotics, my faithful & quickly emptyin bailey's kept the pain down - after which mom says its dangerous to mix the 2!!so, I stopped the anti-biotics!!

Went to cochin & did the dutiful daughter in law stuff there, all the while keepin my baby at about 10 yards distance from his 4yr cousin brother who couldnt avoid gettin hit from my kid!!

Wrenched my weddin ring off my swollen(from pregnancy) finger after almost 2yrs & now its too big to fit in!!

Airborne - Short, Sweet & Thrillin

Had to make another trip to India to drop my mom in law back in cochin and leave my baby with my mom as she was hell bent on takin a month long break to catch up wit her doc appointments!! (how she was goin to do runnin behind a 1-1/2 yr old was upto anybody's imagination).

So, makin my 3rd short trip for the year, I left on June 4th - thursday night with MIL & baby by JetAirways. Landed in Cochin by 9am, said goodbye to the IN-LAWs by 11am and boarded the domestic airline to chennai. By then, I was exhausted as my baby refused to get off me, even while sleepin & all those steps at the airport AND all those forms for swine flu to b filled!!

couldnt buy BAILEYS there too!!

June 5th - chennai

Went to MCC college, spencers, lost my nephew for about 15minutes, mainland china where they didnt have chopsticks that day.

Went very late for dinner @ sparky's with Anju & Kavitha.

Saw, rather smelt the biryani house next to kavitha's home, which got destroyed within months soon after...hmmm...

Went out wit all to City centre where v had nachos and surprisinly nice garlic bread.

Adwaith got himself & kavitha locked up inside a trial room - thats wat he does when he wants to go the loo!!

7th June - rushin to the airport at 12pm to make it for the 2:10pm domestic connectin flight to mumbai. The flight takes off just as v reach the airport - luckily for me - the agents gave me wrong timin - so they reschedule my whole trip. Instead of chennai - mumbai - kwi, they tele check me in chennai - cochin - kwi.

Only they didnt let me inside the cochin intnl airport for an hr as I didnt have a ticket.

They didnt have individual tv on the carrier & no bailey's here toooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!

Finally back home on June 8th by 1am... my shortest trip ever(weekend + 1day)!!
Caught up on all the movies, tv series and everythin else thruout june- july, with 1000 thanx to anju, kavitha, arjun & karan.

Ps- clicked these snaps from my mobile while airborne - somwhere on the arabian gulf - awesome aint it!!

Madyday Madday May

mY inlaws came over as my parents went for their vacation. Dad in law stayed for 10days and MIL for more than a month - durin which she cooked solely for her son's very spicy palate!!(:P)

Took these pix with my LG 990KU mobile - am impressed!!
@ the Avenues Mall


@ scientific centre-Aquarium

All in all it went peaceful !!

aPril's Foolishness

Have always loved quizzes, right from Bournvita quiz, ESPN school quiz to mastermind and so forth. But there's a huge difference between participatin and being an audience - So, I was understandably in denial even after takin stage for the Quiz show.

Firstly, I didn’t even attend the selection round. So they(whoever put my name in) rang me up, since i was the only other female candidate to volunteer & gave both me & my hubby tele quiz & I through some cheatin, top scored with 8/30 :D

The TRISHNA quiz was held by my dad's engineering Alumni & the quizmaster Mr. Ochintya Sharma (CLICK click))was a newcomer to us, but his questions were tricky, smart and right at the tip of your tongue.

I was in the Family round, with Daniel, an All in all guy - man of the match, series of name it & he's that person and a 10th std kid - Rohit - who's quick to jump the gun. Needless to say, this is the round which determines who gets the rolling trophy which we never got to close to in the past.

Here are some excerpts from the quiz show :




Q1 - Because of my lens & screen placed at a good distance, I mistook it for a parrot - so Daniel wrote - PINJAR - which i knew was wrong anyway!!




Q2:

Q3:

Q4: (check the shape of the street lights) - V got this one!!

somethin in common - Buzzer Round

Q5: Daniel - Queen Elizabeth & ME - Prince William’s girlfriend - Kate Middleton!! Minus 5

Q6:

Q7 - Whose daughter is this first time actress from BLACK?

Round 5 - Theme based round - set of questions, guess the theme - points from max for the 1st hint & so forth.

Q8 - Guess who is this?

I wrote down the theme on seein the pix & underlined it twice - highlighted - what not!!

Q9 - Our direct - missed

Q10 - Identify the group



Q11 - Again our direct - Got it

As soon as Rohit said the answer, I jumped up, almost grabbin the mike to scream out the answer & the quizmaster hurried up sayin, press the buzzer & write down the theme.
But I was shoutin it out
APPLE

WOOOOhooooooooo - it was so damn exhilaratin!!
WE were in the lead with that

Round 6 - Buzzer with the answer from a word formin a sentence
Q12 - Starting with T, which place in Kerala is well known for its tourism with artificial lake & periyar National Park?
Q13- H
Q14- A
Q15- N
Q16- K
Q17- Y - Voted the best song of 20th century and record for highest no of cover versions, which song is this of Beatles?
Q18- O
Q19- U
WINNERS - US - wowowow - it was unbelievable & I was called the APPLE girl for long afterwards!!
Answers are as below :

Ans 1 - Ellipathayam (mallu movie)
Ans 2 - Arundhati Roy
Ans 3 - National Geographic Channel
Ans 4 - Hershey's Street(check the shape of the street lights) - V got it!!
Ans 5 - Queen Elizabeth & Queen Rania :D
Ans 6 - Amitabh Bachan
Ans 7 - Amartya Sen
Ans 8 - Gwenyth paltrow's daughter's name - APPLE
Ans 9 - Newyork - Big APPLE
Ans 10 - The Beatles - APPLE Records
Ans 11 - Isaac newton
Ans 12- Thekady - We got it
Ans 13 - ME - YESTERDAY

Went Sober, Royally Messed up, Returned Dead Sober!!

mY swan dance with the Bailey's on the run!!

Irish Coffee is the perfect breakfast because it contains all four adult food groups: fat, sugar, caffeine and alcohol.

I had to face one of my worst fears/terrors when I had to go to mumbai to attend my couisn brother's weddin in feb '09!! not just anywhere - colaba - right next door to taj!!

oh wow - it was like visitin the Jalianwala Bagh or the Concentration camp!! the Taj, the Leopold cafe & the Nariman house - - to relive those intense moments of despair, hoplessness - which I seemed to obsses over for over 6 months.

So with all these emotional baggages - I really really needed my drink!!

There IT was - in all its glory at the Doha airport - duty free, waiting for me to claim it as mine with qatar riyals, proper dinars or visa/master card, neither of which I had!! I spent the next 6 hrs with a new obsession!



IT then wasnt available on my flight to mumbai, although the steward tried to make up by givin me 2 types of red wine - which kinda backfired on both of us!! He (or his twin??) ended up bringin me 3 glasses of water.


Mumbai, after 13 yrs, was a slow chaos of traffic, signals, what not!!

I went to my very 1st disco club after being promised the Olive Club, a crowd of celebs & lots of baileys!! All I got was a teeeny glass with less than 1/4 pint of IT(cant find the pic) - that was the last straw !!

With 1 day remainin, my cousin sys found me a bottle of Bailey's syster -some amrulate...a heady fruity mix, at the reception venue(as seen in pic). I had my uncles & their daughters IT under the table!!

Next day, v travelled from Colaba to Bandra, bandra to worli & back to Bandra where v just narrowly missed John Abraham, who spent the whole night holed up in his parent's apt right next door to where v were stayin!!
Alas!! 2 more sips, a sinkin heart, I bid farewell to my 3/4th full bottle & left mumbai(hopefully for the last time)Its truly awesome - the place is so alive, glorious, enthusiastic and a damn brave survivor !!
But somebody please make headway on their traffic problem!!