in Prague

Most of the people I came here with are still upstairs. Haven't heard a peep from the yet. We are planning on meeting for bfast at 9 and then we are going on a bus+walking tour of the city and the prague castle today, in the morning. Then Lunch, hopefully not pizza or pasta, and then no plans till 8pm, when we are going to a Marrionette theatre thingy called the Magic Flute by mozart. Fingers crossed.

Yesterday was great fun. Morning till 10am was an excercise in breakfast hunting. our hotel breakfast wass too expensive - 25 eur per person; so we decded to get to the city centre. only how to get to the city centre? the receptionist said take a tram to the national museum and you'll find lots of food. so we went to the tram station, and then we found out that we had to get tickets before we got on, not after. so we went back to the shopkeeper we passed on the way there and with a lot of gesturing and finger pointing and calculater typing we for 9 adult and 1 child tickets, with 2 going free. yay. we got there with peripa talking about how the place needed to have fruits. and the fiirst three didn't pass muster for the fruit reason or the cost reason or whatever but we finally had breakfast. eggs and toast and honey and muesli and yogurt and fruits and coffee and tea and chocolate. and the we walked.

we walked down to wenceslas square, past beautiful buildings and and many many tourists. we walked some more and reached a great mass of humanity, all standing around andwaiting for the clock to strike 12. and it struck twelve and kept ringing for a while. we all aaahed and oohed and pointed a the girl with blonde hair in the large window next to the clock tower looking much like the princess of legend, locked in a tower, waiting for her prince to rescue her. or waiting for the clock to finishing ringing so she could continue on the tour, i guess.

we went on to the river Vltava after some beer and margarita and tequila and waltermelon juice. the children were fed and we walked around somemore. and we took the metro back to the mall near the hotel where some of us split from the rest of us for sandwiches and icecream and then slept for a couple of hours.

the evening's entertainment was pretty boring - a musical fountain, though the bus ride around the city was nice. we came back to the hotel after another italian meal and crashed.

stuff happened the day before yesterday. mostly we just walked a lot before finding that the restaurant we were going to had closed and had dinner at what would be the first of many many italian restaurants we would grace with our presence in the trip, i'm sure.

i'm going to see if i can scare up some coffee from these people.

On packing

I packed for my trip to Prague & Budapest last night. I will be gone for 10 days and then back home for a couple of days and then I'm off on another family trip to Nanguneri. That one is going to be one for the records. More about that after it happens. I don't have all the details yet. But I do know that about 30 -35 members of the extended family are going to Nanguneri to visit the temple there. I tried to get out of it. But no can do. Something big is happening apparently. Not entirely sure what.

So, back to packing. I am a terrible packer. I always pack more than I need and don't always take everything I need. Like raincoats and spare specs. So this time, I made a list a week ago. Now I can't find that list. So I started making another list - it became less of a list of things to take and more of a list of things to get/do before I left. It sort of goes like this:

Clothes for 10 days
Raincoat
Cap
Medicines - listed
Plane tickets
Hotel confirmation
Train to Budapest - tell the damn agent to BOOK!
Airport pick up!
Tour vouchers - printout - Tell tour operators to pick us up at hotel
Vegetarian restaurants!!
Ready to eat food - check with the aunts
Cash
Spare specs
Shoe
Socks
Phone - intl roaming? Do or do not?
Guide books
Laptop - to take or not?
Chargers - phone, ipod, camera
toothbrush, shampoo et all

I know I am going to end up with a suitcase that weighs as much as me and still find that I didn't take some very basic stuff. Happens every damn time. Joy. What's the worst that could happen? The airline could end up loosing my baggage. Or my bottle of Betadiene could break and spill and make everything smell like medicine. Or, like in my visit to London last month, my trousers could tear (on the side of the leg, not the crotch, thank you god) in a public place and embarrass the hell out of me. I'll let you know.

on stuff

I like kottke.org very much. Where else would I find out about Dinosaurs that were shapeshifters or the typographical mustache?

I'm going on an Eastern European vacation this weekend, for 10 days, with assorted members of the family. 9 adults, 3 children. 4 over 60, 4 in the between 35 and 45 group, me and a 2 yr old, 5 yr old and 6 yr old. I promise pictures. We are going to Prague and Budapest. Somehow, I got volunteered to organise this thing. It is terribly stressful. And of course somebody wants a first class ticket, somebody wants to go to Italy on work, somebody want to go to London after the trip and they all tell me only after the tickets are already done. And we are going to places with names with so many vowels and weird marks over the letters - I have no idea if I have booked a tour to the same place twice. I am going to need a vacation to recover from my vacation. All of this while using a travel agent. Who annoys me. Anyway. Prague & Budapest. This is working out to be a fairly expensive holiday. About Rs.1,20,000 per person, including plane fare - a little less than it could have been as we are getting senior discounts on all our rooms.

Next time I'm take a long vacation, I'm staying at home and sending everybody away. Everybody except the cook and the maid. Just me and some pot boilers and ice cream. A girl can wish.

I'm watching season two of MI-5 currently. I like Mattew Macfayden in this role. He is so much better as Tom Quinn - Lead Spook than he was as The Hon'bl Fitzwilliam Darcy, of Pemberly. His range of wooden expressions goes better with this role. Season 3 and 4 to go. And then I will go back to Hustle, Season 2.

Did they make all of the Adam Dagleish books into TV movies? I saw the one with the murders in a seminary with the guy who comes in Dr.House. In Dr.House, he was supposed to have spent time in a seminary and decided against becoming a priest, I think. Was good. Want more. And the Inspector Lynley series as well. They come on and off on BBC, but I want more. I like watching all of it together, rather than 1 or 2 a week.

I also have the first season of Merlin, which I haven't seen. And the first 3 seasons of Mad Men, also which I haven't seen. So much to see, so little time.

And in this section we shall review my current aches and pains as if I am an old lady and not just 27 years old. Why? Because I said so.

I have a sore throat. I have had it for about 45 days. The first doc prescribed whatever they prescribe for the common cold, because at that time I had a cold as well and he told me to gargle. The second doc, a week ago, made me say aaah, took some blood, said I didn't have an infection, that there was no problem and that I was a little anemic and maybe I was spending a little too much time in air-conditioning, so why don't I have an anti-histamine and some iron. The anti-histamine makes me so sleepy I can hardly get up in the morning. The third doc, who I saw earlier today, said that I had ulcers in my throat and pharynx and I should have vitamin C and a germicidal gargle and eat bland, soothing food for a while. So I went home and the cook promptly gave me molagu rasam. I had it with lots of thair. That's bland right? How the hell did the second doc miss ulcers when I did aaah?

I've been buying so much Strepsils this past month they should gift me some stock. Who knew it came in so many flavours - of regular, orange, lemon & honey, ginger and lemon, my favorite is ginger and lemon. Which is weird, because I don't like ginger otherwise.

Stuff:

According to Google News the craigslist killer is Entertainment.

Susan Boyle sung a seriously sucky song. Supremely soporific.

Fareed Zakaria looks constipated - also apparently America is suddenly almost 50% liberal.

Ahmedinejad (?) sounds fairly rational when he says, "I have posed two questions over the Holocaust. My first question was, if the Holocaust happened, where did it take place? In Europe. Why should they make amends in Palestine? The Palestinian people had no role to play in the Holocaust. They had no role, for that matter, in the Second World War. Racism happened in Europe, but amends are made in Palestine?" - I don't like the Holocaust denying, but I do think that the Palestinians got screwed over by everybody.

A bio-degradable, racing car. If you get hungry, eat the steering wheel. "No gingerbread or jelly beans were harmed in the making of the car."

I don't get why criminal prosecution of the guys who framed the torture memos is a controversial topic. If there is a law against torture, and if that law was broken, then where is the controversy in making sure the people who broke the laws are prosecuted? How is it a left vs. right, Donkey vs. Elephant issue? Especially since there is precedent. Didn't the Americans prosecute the Japs and the Germans for torturing American/Allied POWs during WW2?

In the UK, people who take pictures of the police are reported to the police as potential terrorists? Hello 1984, goodbye 2009.

I have an ache near the base of my palm, where the fleshy part of my palm below my thumb meets the end of my life line. I also have an ache at (in? on? near?) my shoulder and my neck is sprained. All of these are apparently because of bad posture and too much time at the computer. And all of these, on and off, for the past 3 days. It gets better or worse depending on how I slept. Better today.

There is a guy on the other side of the room who blinks a lot. He closes his eyes really tightly every time. Close eyes, clench, release. Repeat. It looks really weird. I keep looking at him, wondering if I'll catch him doing it again and wondering if he'll catch me staring.

In Bruges, really good.

Sleep, also good.

Over excited consultants who don't seem to need sleep, not all that great.

Food. Bye.

Saw Frost/Nixon last week. Tried to see blah blah Benjamin Button. Also saw The Changeling.

F/N was good. The guy who played Nixon was fantastic. Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell were also great. The interplay between actual Watergate era recordings and the movie was also really good.

Benjamin Button was awful. Terrible. Boring. It should come with a self-strangulation warning. Caution: The contents of this DVD may cause you to choke yourself to death. Bleh.

The Changeling met expectations. Not more, not less. In a few scenes, Jolie wore hats whose brims cast shadows over her eyes and all you could see were her lips. Appa was very impressed with her. She acts! Apparently, he was biased by the constant presence of Brad Pitt by her side in all her photographs and everybody knows that Pitt can't act. She plays pretty much the same role she did in the Daniel Pearl movie. Different costumes, much different hair. Jewish wife missing husband in Muslim country in one, Single mom missing bastard child in conservative and crooked country in the other. Pedophile serial killer in one, Islamic terrorists in the other. Supported by Pakistani cop and Wall Street Journal Editor in one and Priest and Cop in the other. The crooked cops and psychotic psychologists were extra in this movie. Anyway, Go Malkovich!

weddings.

3 people I know are getting married on february 15.

2 people I know are getting married on february 6.

1 person I know is getting married on january 23.

There seems to be a rash of weddings.

Definitions of rash on the Web:

• any red eruption of the skin
• imprudently incurring risk; "do something rash that he will forever repent"- George Meredith
• a series of unexpected and unpleasant occurrences; "a rash of bank robberies"; "a blizzard of lawsuits"
• foolhardy: marked by defiant disregard for danger or consequences; "foolhardy enough to try to seize the gun from the hijacker"; "became the fiercest and most reckless of partisans"-Macaulay; "a reckless driver"; "a rash attempt to climb Mount Everest"
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

I don't have a problem with my friends or family tying the knot. But I am not a fan of weddings. Not even because of my dislike for dressing up, my hatred of crowds or the pain associated with awkward conversations with people I'm supposed to know.

These days, much of my disdain for weddings stems from inquiries made by well-meaning but annoying family members whom I barely know as to when I plan on getting married. "Never", "I have no such plans", "Not in this life" and "Are you fucking kidding me?" don't seem to be considered serious answers. They scoff, and then they say, "That is what they all say, but everybody gets married in the end." The End.

I don't want to get married. I don't want to have children. Unfortunately, I am a vadagala iyengar girl, of "good family". This means that at 26 (in less than a month, feb 17, mark your calendars) I am almost on the shelf (if I may borrow a term much used in Regency novels).

My mother has an theory. Marry at 24, have 2 children by 30 and the children will be old enough and financially able to take care of you when you are in your sixties, retired and infirm. Theoretically sound, practically, I DON'T WANT CHILDREN. At which point, the discussion veers off to voodoo science of maternal urges and body clocks. Exit stage left.

Maybe.

348 Posts, last published on Mar 25, 2008

How hard can it be to start again.
What will I write about.
Why now.
Should I first figure out why I stopped writing.
Or should I just stop thinking and start writing.

I have a problem. They say that recognizing that I have a problem is half the solution. I don't know what to write. I am writing for me, and yet there is a mythical you. That, I think, is half the problem. I want to write and be acknowledged, but some people know me, and some people know of me and I an worried about opinions and comments, said and unsaid, and more worried about the unsaid than the said. Shudder. I sound neurotic. I am spending way too much time with my mother.

Other than that, I am on twitter and facebook since a couple of days ago. With my real name. I have not used my real name here and I'm hoping that that will keep the people who don't know about my blog from finding out about my blog.

I don't know why I have decided to become cyber-social suddenly (or whatever it is called when one starts to use all these online social networking sites). Or maybe I do. I don't know many people outside of work in Rpt and this is going to be my post-work entertainment. Yay.

I'll be touch, dear blog. I hope you didn't miss me too much. I won't be gone so long this time.

I am 2 days old in my new job. And aching all over. I don't know if that is because of standing and walking all day or because of my cold and fever. Anyway. It has been an interesting 2 days. And so completely different from what I am used to.

So. What's up?

I'm tired, dirty and hungry at the end of work. Tired and hungry is normal at the end of work, but dirty is new for me. I have a factory job. Much fun. I'm learning chemistry and manufacturing and pretty soon I'm going to come in contact with labour laws, I think. I'm going to have periodic reviews, too soon and too close to each other for comfort.

When I come home and have to bathe and I ache all over, I feel like I have done something. Which is weird. I haven't really done much. I'm toting a notepad and following people, asking questions and eavesdropping on conversations.

Lets see how it goes.