There are several moments when I wish I don’t have to be away from my daughter for the whole day on a daily basis. I spend just about 5-6 hours in the evenings with her on week days before she falls asleep. I really wish I could spend more time with her. How I wish I could find some other part-time work option or something else to do. The dilemma about whether to quit work or to continue is an ongoing one in my mind. I know that this is something which every working mother will go through. Just thought of writing it here…

Looks like I will soon lose track of the number of times I have had to leave early from work to beat the traffic jams/blocks caused because of VIP visits. Being idle in the same place for hours together waiting for a VIP to pass by is no fun. Yet another VIP is visiting the city today and there will be an added traffic jam to the already heavy Friday traffic and once again, I am forced to rush off with all the tasks at work so that I can leave early.

The deadline for the completion of my Masters’ assignments is less than 10 days away and I have a LOOOOOT of things pending! If things go as per my plans, I will put two night-outs this weekend and hopefully complete a major chunk of it. I am always at my most efficient only when the deadline is veryyy near. Wish me luck, folks!

After continuously working for more than 3 months, I took a much-needed vacation in August and went to Singapore with my daughter for ten days. The daughter had totally forgotten all about the time she had spent in Singapore and was seeing her father in person after 3 months and it took her quite a while to warm up to him.

After falling asleep on the overnight flight and suddenly waking up in what was ‘new’ surroundings to her in our Singapore apartment, the vacation started with me having to calm her. The next ten days simply whizzed past us in a blur with me absolutely enjoying spending every moment of the day with my baby after what seemed like ages.

To me, this was a real vacation since the major part of it was just eat-sleep-talk-play routine. My husband had also taken some days off from work and we spent a major part of the time just relaxing at home. I cooked after a long time and on some days, the dishes came out really well and I was happy that my cooking hadn’t become worse.

The best part about Singapore are the play areas having all types of slides and rocking horses which are present in every series of HDB (Housing Development Board) apartments. You can just walk into one in any area and let your child happily play. Sahana used to love it even when she was just 9-10 months old. Back then, it was rocking horses and later it was the slides that she enjoyed. This time, she was rediscovering the play areas as well, having forgotten everything and she loved playing there and what’s more, now that she could talk, though not in full sentences, she kept asking for ‘payyea’ (play area) all the time!

We had already visited most of the places in Singapore and there were only a few left. We covered one more place this time – The Underwater World Aquarium in Sentosa Island. While I did find some of the spectacular colours of the aquatic life stunning, with both my husband and I not being fans of seeing aquatic creatures, we got bored after a while. Sahana too didn’t seem all that interested and fell asleep within minutes after entering it. But all of us did enjoy the Maritime Experiential Museum tracing the early maritime routes and trade. The daughter, however, got scared during the short movie screening in the 360 degree theatre and they refused to open the door and let us out in between. All the effects including the simulation of the ship movement and the artificial rain created in the 360 degree theatre was nice.

More than all these, what my daughter really enjoyed was the fountains in Sentosa Island – those fountains that you find everywhere in Singapore where the children play and get drenched! Fountains with a whole lot of holes and you never know from which hole water is going to come from next and it was this surprise and the joy of running around from one hole to another that had Sahana going crazy over it and me launching on a panic alert on seeing her drenched from top to toe! She loved the shallow waters in Harbour Front/ Vivo City Shopping Mall as well and I had to keep changing dress after dress for her that day!

Apart from Sentosa to which we always prefer and enjoy walking from Harbour Front centre, we just walked around some shopping malls in Marina Bay, went to Sri Thandayuthapani Temple and visited Sri Srinivasa Perumal temple in Little India and the Central Library near Bugis – the last two being places we used to frequently visit.

The kids section in the Central library has been given a makeover and it now houses the World’s 1st eco-friendly children’s library. I just loved it and so did my daughter. That deserves a separate blog post.

I also visited a few day cares to get an idea of how they are in Singapore.

The surprise part of the trip was bumping into blogger Vinitha aka Vini The Pooh. It was nice meeting you, Vinitha 🙂

At the end of the day, no amount of time will prove to be enough when you are with your family and it felt good to be together as a family after a long time. I don’t know when my next trip to Singapore will be, but what I do know is, the next time I go there, it will be going there for good. And the Madras-lover in me sighs thinking about it!

Last Navaratri, Sahana had just graduated from moving around the house by holding onto the furniture to walking on her own by pushing the stools around.

This year, there she is, running all around the house dressed beautifully in a pattu pavadai with flowers adorning her two kudumis & the sounds of her golusu echoing everywhere. She loves getting dressed and going out and she has preferences about every single thing right from which dress to which slippers to even which Pampers (monkey, tweety, Bow bow,… – for the uninitiated, each diaper has a different character printed on it) she wants to wear! And it is she who decides which mode of transport we take! She has preferences on not just what she wants to wear, but even on what others wear. The latest condition is that her father has to wear a white shirt every time we go out!

P.S.: My husband is here in Madras on a vacation. So we go out often and my daughter simply refuses to come back home once we step out of the house!

1. Practice waking up by 5 45-6 am, come what may!
2. Devote an hour in the night everyday, irrespective of when the daughter sleeps, to study. Yes, study. I have joined an online Masters degree course. Finally. It has just started and at the end of more than two weeks now, the progress so far hasn’t been good.
3. Get started on playing the guitar again. It has been a long, long time since I played it. It’s going to be like starting afresh again.
4. Continue the daily walk and exercise routine and try to squeeze in some time for doing Surya namaskaram in the morning.
5. Cut down on sweets and chocolates.

I will tell you how successful I have been in meeting the goals in a few weeks’ time.

Having been something of an introvert all through school, till my class 10, I had only two or three close friends at school and I didn’t talk much with any of the others in class. Even as my friends circle slowly expanded in the years to follow, I would call 2007-2010 as the peak period in my life when I had many good acquaintances and more than a dozen close friends – friends with whom I felt comfortable being myself, friends with whom I could share anything and everything that I wanted to – with whom I was in constant touch.

For no particular reason whatsoever, today am not in regular touch or am completely out of touch with most of them.

It was in 2010/11 that a whole lot of change happened – many of them went onsite or on sabbatical or quit the company or busy with work and even friends outside work got busy with other things. And there were some who simply stopped being in touch suddenly! After the initial phase of regular mails and calls, slowly the number of calls/mails reduced. Even the occasional online chats didn’t go beyond a few minutes.
It has been such a long time since I even mailed/pinged some of them & vice versa, that even when I rarely see them online now, I wonder if I should even start a conversation. Maybe they are thinking the same too?

I do know that many go through this phase and thus is life, but still felt like writing about this today.

This is my entry for the contest by Kitchens of India and Indiblogger. I came to know about the contest from Bhushavali’s blog.

When you have a husband who is a big fan of the ready-to-eat foods available in the market, it is inevitable that you end up tasting the food offered by most of the brands since your kitchen is bound to be full of them. We both liked the Vegetable Biriyani masala by ‘Kitchens of India’ the most and it was reserved for those weekend leisurely meals. My husband and I, both novices as far as cooking is concerned, took quite a bit of time to perfect the chapatthi after several attempts with different brands of atta and different proportions of atta and water. Finally it was rotis from Aashirvaad’s atta which satisfied our taste buds. The husband went on to make tasty phulkas too with it!

So, being fans of ITC’s products, the moment I read about ITC’s contest, I got all excited and told my husband, ‘Hey, see! A contest is being organized by our favourite brand. Why don’t we plan for a party for real since you will anyway want to use at least one of ITC’s products if we were to host a party?’ ‘Why don’t we have a get-together with some cousins of ours at our home?’ was the reply. We discussed and came up with a guest list comprising of a good mix of adults and kids.
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Yes I really do! I have to somehow sacrifice that ‘2-minutes’ of blissful sleep post switching off the alarm in the mornings and try to squeeze in a bit of cooking into my otherwise mundane routine involving just taking bath, having my breakfast and leaving for office.

Back in Singapore, the recent routine was to wake up by 7, see the clock and mutter to self that I should have woken up at least 10 minutes earlier and hurriedly start cutting the vegetables to cook lunch for the husband all the while praying that Sahana shouldn’t wake up in between. But, alas, the always-right Murphy’s law comes into play and exactly on days when I am already way behind schedule, Sahana will wake up crying and my husband will start saying he is already getting late and I, in a state of craziness trying to calm a crying baby and finish off the cooking, will somehow finish the cooking, pack it on time (8 am) or a few minutes behind time and what’s more, even accompany the husband till the end of the road since Sahana’s crying would resume again on seeing her dad leave her and go. That one hour in the morning would be a crazy time. The feeling would be similar to having the deadline of having to catch the bus to office. Oh I miss that feeling too nowadays since I come by car.

Coming back to the topic, I thought I should tell you about my cooking skills, or the lack of it. Before the Singapore stint, I would have hardly cooked for a maximum of 10 days in my entire life! So having to suddenly do full-fledged cooking on my own meant having to eat food that didn’t taste good! But, as the days passed, my cooking slowly improved and I had finally graduated to becoming a decent cook with some dishes even turning out to be really tasty.

But now that I am back in Madras, it has already been two months since I cooked! I don’t know the state in which my cooking skills are now.