to-do’s: tags and such

At the rate it’s been raining tags, if I don’t keep track or at least get started on them, am gonna get drowned!

1. Tag1: Vijay’s creative find a picture and slogan to define yourself sorta thingy. I know exactly what I am going to do, trick is to find the visual. Maybe I should get ferrari’s or CC’s support here..
2. Tag2: Zhu’s dinner meme. Am sure even she’s forgotten it, but see, this tag is so fun and I am having a good time just scripting it in my head. It’s like those budget-deprived decent movie scripts that lay fading on a dust-ridden shelf in a decrepit old movie houses. I also feel that it’s akin to the saying “the journey counts more than the destination” OK! I am just sugar-coating my lack of initiative, but one of these days, this script shall play itself out!
3. Tag3: I believe I have Nice matters awards to hand out. Ive been a selfish little (ok, big) thing holding onto it. Lakshmi and mayG graciously conferred it and am supposed to continue the chain. I haven’t. Bad me. Need to do pronto.
4. Tag4: Lekhni’s spill a secret. That needs some thought. Digging secrets that can be revealed. Requires some out of the box thinking.
5. Tag5: Munimma’s favorite character tag. Do-able.

Phew!

Now more of the littler important things:

• Am on vacation starting now! so yay!
• Still have stuff to oversee and check on tomorrow. Sucks.
• A cubicle decorating competition that I so badly want to win, but can’t coz of all the work that needed to be completed by today. Am seriously debating on traipsing over Friday and creating a zing around my already quite fancy looking cube(I have red, white and blue themed shoe pictures hung on one wall!). I expressed it out by mistake and a colleague thought I was nuts. I grinned back. Now she doesn’t understand if I was being serious or just joking. Yay.
• Missing a summer potluck at work. I hope they have lots of steak, chicken and beef. Wouldn’t miss a heartbeat on being 500 miles away
• Driving up on Saturday into New England to meet sister after a year or so. Looking forward (or not!) to meeting her extended family. Should be an interesting few days.
• Basement’s getting done, and the house is so cramped. I am jumping through boxes and sharp dangerous projectiles to get from point A to point B, even if they were across the kitchen table.
• Oh well.

 

good lord

My darling, sweet and wonderful daughter celebrates a birthday, and I officially have become a mother of a teen.

Yikes! Gasp!

Okay Okay, no dramas.

***

Dear daughter,

I have to start by telling you that you make me and your dad look good, with no effort of ours absolutely.

You came into my clueless life as a charming precocious little thing, and I must admit I learn more from you everyday than the other way. Thank you for putting up with my whims and fancies, for being the stable and grounded personality that our family needs. Your dad and I knew from the time we laid our eyes on you at Edith Cavell, that you’d be our beacon, our joy and most definitely our favorite. Just don’t tell that to your brother or sister.

Today is just a formality, an initiation into youth as the world likes to mark it, but elegance has always been you, something which you carry with you as a part of you. When folks affirm to me and dad what we already know but still find it hard to fathom considering you were born to us, it makes us beam, and swell with pride. You bring tears of joy to our eyes, and my throat chokes with the intensity only you can bring in me, when we see you on stage with the flute, dancing, making that 3 point shot, when you fight with great animosity with your brother as you claim your right, even when you argue and stomp off from us.

Thank you for being the responsible daughter, for being a wonderful big sister, a hardworking student and a real trooper. You are as resilient as they come, and may God give you more strength, wisdom and the forethought that comes with intelligence in the years to come by. God knows and we all do too, the next few years would be the most exciting yet the toughest that you will ever face. Creating an identity that you are happy with and accepting it enough to bring you deep sleep at night. I want you to know that we will be there for you through this time, and wish you would let us be your struts as you make it on your own.

I just went up and saw you tucked in your bed and the excitement of turning 13 is palpable in the room. I’d wanted to get you that Tom Brady jersey you wanted but the darn stores didn’t carry them and you know how prepared I am. Sorry.

I remember how at DSW, armed with 4 pairs of shoes (the most you’d ever bought at one shot and what funky ones too!), the grin on your face as you squealed and jumped with joy at the displays, and the number of times you told me “Mom, this place is so cool! ” and “Why didn’t I come here before?” and “please can you bring me here before school starts?” - to see you as a wild unfettered child was pure joy. For most of the time you behave, think and act on the maturity that our head somehow manages to churn. My eyes filled with tears and I beamed with pride when you so responsibly told me “mom, remember the jersey I wanted, it’s okay now, I have these shoes, I don’t want it.”, as we were walking out after having spent triple digits on the shoes by the arm loads. Oh okay, you got 4 pairs and I got 2, but still!

In any case, I swear to you, no 12-13 year old in her right frame of mind would ever say what you did. I know your brother won’t and most definitely not munchkin. She’s such a demanding little princess!

May all the world’s happiness be yours, as you most certainly deserve it.

Love,

Mom.

ps: sorry about your snap and the way your eyes shine. No, I didn’t do it on purpose, it’s the iPhoto’s editing software and yes, you look perfect, and no, am not saying that coz am your mom. Okay, Go have the cake in the refrigerator, yes it’s chocolate with strawberry mousse. You welcome. :-)

 

kissing googlers

To the girl (am pretty sure it’s a girl, why’d a guy search thus. Oh, maybe he would since the girl is not doing so…. hmm.) who fell upon my ‘Munchies’ post on googling

“should a girl kiss the boys upper lip?”

The long answer: Just like we’d share everything with this other person from toothbrushes to secrets to ice cream to bed to passwords to keys, this whole kissing thing is a two way street too. You share. Lips.

Breaking it down:

1. His upper lip, her lower lip

2. His lower lip, her upper lip

For the most part, the girls are left no choice but to work the 1st method.

There’s also the:

no-choice 1: His Upper lip and Her Upper lip and no-choice 2: His Lower lip and Her Lower lip,

which let me tell you, folks have tried with very unsuccessful and messy results!

So leaving the 2nd messy set out of the equation, why are girls left with no choice but have to deal with that upper lip? The reason being invariably the guy’s already thought this over a million times and he has the whole plan waiting to execute. Especially if it’s his first time. Kissing’s under-rated, frankly. There’s a whole procedure to it as I was made to watch in this show (There are parts 1, 2, and so on so check ‘em out, quite amusing! Part 4 has the whole trying out the kiss part.) on Disney or was it Nick (I forget which anyways.. ) last evening. It was quite entertaining in a very informative way. More on how not to kiss than the perfect kiss. Which helps so at least you know there could only be this many ways to mess up, but then again, we are a creative lot. Boundaries of mess-up-ville forever expand with pioneers daily added. Go us!

So yes, going back to the mechanics of kissing, as I have been told in various situations and mediums, the male gender obsesses about everything that has got to do with ’sex’ . Kissing is part of it. More like a ’sriganesh’ - I know, not the perfect metaphor, but I shall use it anyway. As I mentioned earlier, since the boys have already rehearsed the whole process a million times in their rooms and other places - alone, they are pretty much rearing to go once the opportunity presents itself. Opportunity is of course having a willing female participant.

Though it might just seem simple to kiss, there are whole lot of factors involved, the combination of which helps or ruins it all.

The hands (what do you do with those?) the chin, the nose (those aquiline sharp noses folks love: look good only in Mughal movies and portraits, the stubbier the better, I’d imagine), then there’s the angle of approach (geometry helps, if you didn’t ace it in high school, chances are you are going to widen the angles formed by your face at the lips and thereby produce lots of overlapping of skin, and not the kind you want), the tilt or the bending by the participants to achieve contact and ultimately, the quintessential tongue. Let’s not even go there. That’s kissing 202. If one is googling on asking if the upper lip was safe territory, then we talking basics.

Coming back to your question. I am not sure about you, but I’d ask to google one more which is o so relevant to how you’d want to go about this.

As boys start becoming men, their claim to fame is the appearance of facial hair. Some take pride in it, some try as hard to make it look like the juniper hedges lining the lawns, but ultimately look like scraggly seaweed as garnish on an otherwise appetizing main dish. This upper lip with a growth of this hair we speak about on boys or men who want to continue to assert themselves, or think cool, will pose a problem. Never mind the fineness or the lack of it, it simply is in the way. Kissing the upper lip, or whatever else you want to do with it simply involves taking into consideration navigating the bristles. It’s an added challenge. Some women like it too, I am told.

Let’s say you get lucky, and the clean-shaven dude is in your stars, then the choices widen. This is when the lower lip starts to look appealing. It always is, no matter the gender, why else would the guys make a beeline for it? Upper lips are usually thin, unless your name is Angelina Jolie or Goldie Hawn or your capability to get botox shots. So the target is almost always the lower lip. Upper lips just hang in there like roofs, like a side artist providing visual interest, without which the lower lip might look orphaned. I mentioned earlier, that with both parties wanting the lower lip, it creates an annoying, messy and ridiculous situation, where the fight’s always on who has the lower hand (read: lip). No fun there.

Sharing’s good. So share, don’t hog, and work it. Dead fish are no role models. Be alive, and yes, you may nibble and kiss. Bite? Nah, not yet. Whatever you do, do not grab both lips at the same time. That’s just so wrong.

The short answer: Depends. The early bird in this case gets the worm er.. lower lip.

 

rhetoric

To love, intensely and with passion

and yet

not like, the details and the characteristics.

C’est possible?

 

public service announcement

to all folks who live, work or who are fated to be in the vicinity of San Jose, Cupertino area for the next couple of days. The warning is for the below outlined specific denizens:

The non-desis.

Specially the non-desis that are non-telugus.

Specially more so for the non-telugus who don’t care for dancing. Indian dance.

Or any subsets of the above, either by union or intersection. Outliers need to be even more careful.

What’s happening there?

Kuchipudi is happening.

Yeah, as in the Kuchipudi, the dance of Andhra. Tons of kuchipudi dancers are descending on the area.

The organizers searched high and low for a venue. They looked all over from touristy Niagara to misty Seattle, to the picturesque New England to the sunny Florida, they even debated on the Texan ranches to the dry Detroit. It was either too hot, too non-andhra-ish, scarce desi restaurants, and then they did a per sq foot count. Figured why not take the state’s dance to its adopted state outside of India.

California of course!

So, what should you be on the lookout for?

• While you are peacefully cruising along the sunny roads, not only would you see another telugu next to you at the signal as it is wont, but chances of seeing a completely bedecked dancer doing a “thaka diku thomthaka dina” across the crossing is very high.
• You may suddenly also feel the ground shaking below you. Fret not. It is not a tremor. It is the forces of 200 or so dancers stamping their feet to the beats of Jatheeswaram together. A guiness record in the making I hear.
• Consistent jingling for the 3 days. Tinnitus it is not. The bells around the dancers feet would jingle to various beats as various workshops are filled to the brim.
• Sudden increase in female population, dressed to the teeth in silks, stage makeup and paper flowers each having their own accents, texan drawl, the Yankee, the southern accent and more.
• An occasional middle-aged and elderly man in the midst of all these cackling women.
• Yells of “akka” , “mastergaru” , “aunty” filling the air.
• More specifically one may hear in passing dialogs like: “emito, pataakaniki tripatakaniki theda teleedu, veellandaru yakhanga thillanalu chesestunnaru. En chestam mastergaru?” or “aramandi edey, neeku savalaksha saarlu cheppanu, nuvvekkada vintavu, na paruvu teestunnavu kadey” or “emiti, ee pantu ee shirtu vesukuni bayataki velalla? na bonda, suitu bootu, cha, en chandalam idi! Chi chi, America America antoo chankalu guddu kuntoo egabadi ekkesanu flightu, chastunnananuko.” or “inka nayam, aa Udipi vadi punyama antu, rendu idli mukkalu mana mohana padesadu, lekapote, endi poyina bread mukkalu kukkaki padesinattu, mana mohana padesaru ee hotel vaallu” or “Taalam tapputondamma, manasu drishti jathi lo pettu. Aa dikkulanni ee item ayyina taruvata choosuko, aapute, nee meeda vottu” etc etc. (Sorry non-telugus, translating those would just kill it all.)

Jokes apart, there’s a huge Kuchipudi convention happening at the Flint Center off the Stevens Creek Blvd in Cupertino, organized by the Silicon Andhra and it would be an experience of a lifetime. Big names in teh field, reputed dancers, established teachers, performers, my own Mastergaru, the troupe, and various kuchipudi students, teachers and institutions across United States are congregating there since Friday for the weekend. For a dancer, this would be an amazing experience, to see them all together on stage. Thinking about it gives me goosebumps. (Not linking, as I don’t want to get backtracked, but google away if interested)

I physically will be here at home, but my mind would be wandering around the area. Somehow, Cupertino and I are jinxed.

 

a year later

June 28th 2007 I wrote this post.

A year later, June 17th 2008, I ask yet again.

 

ps: Can you tell am bored?