More ways to laze.......

Meet my new baby!

P.S. Items that I own and love are known as my babies and they are usually crazy, as in they work in fits and spasms and on moods... but this, ahhhh, this baby is my favourite baby!!

I wished for an empty field with green grass, blue skies, no traffic, pollution or staring people... I got this instead! A hammock for three hundred bucks on my very own balcony! Glorious.

Saturday Mornin' Music

I'm listening to this song called Eileen's Song that Ajay sent me yesterday - I like it. I don't know what it is, but you know there are some songs that give you a good feeling. Its not really the lyrics, but the music in this song, there's something almost hopeful about it. Another song that does it is "You'll be in my heart" by Phil Collins from the Tarzan Soundtrack and also the music in "Afterglow" by INXS. I think I'm killing it by trying to explain it! Does anyone understand me??
Later,

Light headed me.

Its exactly five to midnight. I wonder if I can write a post in five minutes.... I like competing with myself, makes things more fun. Especially the monotonous things like doing the laundry or washing the dishes. I once raced against the microwave while washing the dishes. You're wondering how does one race against a microwave... Well you set it to do a job like cook rice in ten minutes and see if you can wash the dishes faster than it can cook rice. Oh my goodness, I'm such a weirdo! Okay, nevermind that.
Its now 1 minute to midnight. So I guess it takes more than five to write a post.
American Idol was great today. Its the greatest they've ever done. It was called American Idol gives back and they dedicated this whole two hour program plus the last two days' episodes to raising money for kids under the poverty line in Africa and the US. It was fantastic, I was really impressed. They should really do that more often. There's so much money in the world, if people just make a little effort to channel even a fraction of that to people who really need it, we would be seeing so much less of the dire conditions of poverty around the world. Its amazing how little it takes and yet, how little is being done sometimes.
Anyway, now it is four minutes past midnight and I think I should go to bed...
Catch you later,
'Night!

Pee Machine

I love my life.

I want a Kit Kat and its all Niru's fault. Cause her Google status says, "Have a break, have a KitKat" and everytime I see it, I feel like having a Kit Kat and not the Indian kind, which is even worse!
I'm tired. I need to watch some FRIENDS today but then there are also dishes to wash and clothes to dry and forms to fill and essays to write. I wish this part of my life would just fast forward. Actually no, I take that back, no matter how difficult or unsettling or frustrating or uncertain or lonely a certain part of life may be, its never ever worth skipping it.
"God is with you all the time, no place is any closer to God than the place where you are right now." - Purpose Driven Life
Gail was here on Saturday! She's been on a bit of an extended ten day holiday and had flown into Bangalore so we got to meet up and man alive, I haven't laughed so much in a VERY long time. Put Rishi and Gail in a room and you've got a live comedy show! We used to have sooo much fun in the dorm, with Rishi and Gail "fighting" like a married couple! Once Gail got locked out of the room and had to sing to Rishi to be allowed back in! All to our amusement of course! Meg, we really missed you! It would have been a proper "Neighbours Re-union" with you as well... :( Ah well, some other day I guess.
There's lots more to tell, but I can't be bothered to type now and FRIENDS is on in fifteen minutes so...
Toodles!

More Hebronites!

Will write later,
Gotta get to church!

Mayo Hall

I discovered Mayo Hall today... Its this old and big building that stands in the middle of MG road and I'm not sure what the whole thing is used for but I know that that's where you go when you need your certificates attested cause there's a bunch of notaries who sit there and if you don't know how the system works, they rip you off. I don't know how the system works so... I got charged five rupees per signature this man put on each sheet of paper (there were 60) And that's still half of what he demanded at first! I know he ripped me off because I saw another man paying another notary and it was definitely not THAT much, as in, it was just like some lose change he took out of his pocket and its not like he had to do ALL that much work either, this other guy stands on the side and stamps it and he just has to sign. I probably could have bargained some more but I didn't really feel like it. Atleast the job is done.
So I'm almost ready to send off an application. Oh Poo, I just remembered I have to write an essay!! GAH! hmm, I'll just have to cut and paste from some old ones!
Thanks to Smeegs, I now know, how A's and B's and other Cambridge grades convert into Indian percentages which is a great help! Thanks a ton, Smeegs!
In other news, I bought myself a pencil-case today! Its green and it has a bear on it and its quite cute! Ha Ha. I'm such a teenager! AND I also bought myself a matching mechanical pencil, cause I lost my old one, I have a bad habit of losing those things! I was going to buy this nifty Staedler pencil case which had like a pencil, eraser, three pens and some other stuff in it but after debating in my head for a while I figured it was too expensive and not as pretty as the green one! I LOVE buying stationery!
Anyways,
That's it for now, I think I might try and make some Hungarian paprika potatoes... hmmm if I can be bothered.
Later,

It RAINED!!!

It RAINED!! It RAINED!! And as a consequence the electricity went out and the phones died (ha ha, that's India for you!)... It was FANTASTIC cause the point is, It RAINED yesterday evening!! hee hee I actually used to hate rain before but now I realise what an absolutely blessed thing it is. The soil smells fresh and there's nice cool wind and everything gets washed and everything looks new.... ahhhhhhhhha RAIN... I was literally clapping my hands and jumping about like a little child, that's how excited I was! What a relief. It was probably just like a one off thing but I'm just so thankful that we had that one untimely downpour to relieve us atleast momentarily from this crazy summer...

Here are some lyrics from a Delirious song...

Looks like tonight, the sky is heavy
Feels like the winds are gonna change
Beneath my feet, the earth is ready
I know its time for heaven's rain
It's gonna rain

Cos it's living water we desire
To flood our hearts with holy fire

Rain down all around the world we're singing
Rain down can you here the earth is singing
Rain down my heart is dry but still
I'm singing
Rain down rain it down on me.

And here's a photo from a Korean BBQ I went to with Grace the evening she left...

Preparing you for the world...

That's the caption on my newest t-shirt! Its the Student council t-shirt and I LOVE IT! There's a black one as well and apparently those sold faster but I think the white one is much cooler...

REunions all around...

Last week, we were blessed by two REunions! This is the advantage of living in India, cause people come back... This is like base ground. Anyway, so we met Alisha last Wednesday and then Jonny was also in town on Thursday and nicely enough Jonny also happened to be travelling on the same train as me the next day! We had some good fun! We took Alisha to watch the 'Namesake' which I didn't really enjoy because the book is just soooo much better and we ate pizza that didn't really fill our stomachs and we had a pajama "party" at Grace's place... And then with Joney, we had a good time playing air hockey (Jonny against Grace and I and we STILL lost!!) and basketball and we won ourselves three rather weird pink pencils and we thought it would be funny to take a picture of us and our pink pencils in our noses! :)

Merry Christmas!

Am back home from my trip to Salem and Yercaud... I had a good time and took lots of photos, some of which you can see on the other blog...
It was a good trip with lots of Biriyani and dosas and I was also rather bombarded with a lot of Tamil!! I think its actually the easiest south indian language to understand... so I picked up a few words which was interesting... Salem was HOT! But fortunately Yercaud was nice and cool. Its a small hillstation about an hour's drive from Salem and we spent Friday night and most of Saturday there... We visited some of the tourist spots (some great views from up there... ) and then spent time at a Children's home run by a family friend of Doris's where we took part in this project called 'Operation Christmas Child' There is an NGO in the US called Samaritan's purse that every Christmas time encourages young children to put together a box full of gifts and labelling it either BOY or GIRL with a specific age-range that then get sent to other less privileged children in developing nations by ship. Obviously by the time it gets to the destination, Christmas is long gone but nevertheless the kids REALLY loved it!! It was so much fun seeing the children tearing open their boxes and looking at all the treasures inside. It was even more fascinating cause all the stuff is American and they would never find it here so some of them had no clue about what they got!! I think its such a great project! Especially encouraging richer children to give something of what they have to others! It was really nice to see how they all stuffed their boxes with sweets and toys and some of them also wrote little letters...
My journey to Salem was great. It was supposed to be my first time travelling on a train alone in India because Doris was already in Salem but nicely enough Jonny who was in Bangalore visiting for a day happened to be going on the same train to Coimbatore where he would meet his parents and they would go on together to Kovalam. He was in S1 and I was in S5 and we got on at different stations but anyhow after the TT came by and checked our tickets we found a place to sit together and just talked the whole way. It was nice to catch up and just have some company. Travelling by train really is the best but then again this was only a four hour journey... :)
Anyway, Wishing you all a HAPPY EASTER!!
P.S. The title refers to the Operation Christmas Child thingy... I haven't lost my brains!

Dr. Chonu and Dr. Ponu

Hey y'all!
Those are our new nicknames; Chonu and Ponu! Ha ha. Given to us by the most adorably hilarious girl I've ever met called Harshu. She's a friend of Renu's who we went to visit over the weekend in Manipal... We had a fantabulous time (ignoring the heat, of course! the heat was terrible, I dare not complain about Bangalore anymore, cause I know how much worse it can get!) We met Renu's super cool friends, ate at some great restaurants, got grossed out looking at specimens of carcinofied (that's not a word, but I don't know the word, but you know what I mean) lungs and toes and fingers and other things in the pathology and anatomy museums... It was... hmmmmm.... well.... interesting to start off with and then we were just like, "Okay, I can't take any more of this!!" It was kinda weird being surrounded with all these people who would someday become a doctor, although not all of them would get that title because there are like millions of different fields and all that but still it was amusing hearing people talking in biological terms and applying their pschological knowledge to explain things etc, etc... Really fascinating. And it was a really good experience of what college life will sort of look like and I am SO looking forward to it now!! YAY college!

Anyway here are some pics...

This was in the classroom block...

Us playing doctor! hee hee, we LOOK the part right!?!?