Labelled?

It all begins when your in school trying to find, fit and acquaint yourself to a new ambience. The very place that they all say defines who you are, at times becomes a place where you travel with a name that is tagged. I was the tall quiet one who belongs to the back bench.  Was that my true personality or I chose to remain under that title. College is always about reinvention, where your true self might be embraced yet it comes with a label.. Mine was Tomboy. The real world tends to take a materialistic stand,  branding becomes a social stigma, simplicity is considered poor and we all agreed to Surf  the complex wave not knowing if once slipped we end up drowning ourselves. Is there an end to this labelling madness? Are we reaching the epitome of social pressure?

Bucket list unleashed and still in counting...

This is sort of like my Bucket List if I live through 2010 conspiracy theory. And of course I had to editorialize…

1. Watch a meteor shower
2. Watch a lightning storm at sea
3. Grow your own vegetables – It’s a challenge cos am no good at it
4. See the Mona Lisa in France
5. Hitch hike
6. Build a snow fort - at the least a snow man
7. Run a Marathon
8. Ride in a gondola in Venice – tried at vegas but nothing can be Venice.
9. See a total eclipse
10. Go on a cruise trip.
11. Teach yourself a new language
12. Had enough money to be truly satisfied …a gallon of milk, a full tank of gas, and I’m happy.
13. Sing a karoke in a bar
14. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant …bought a strange meal at a restaurant. Does that count? :P
15. Get all the pages in my passport stamped
16. Walked on a beach by moonlight. Easy one
17. Had your portrait painted
18. Go deep sea fishing …did crabbing
19. Go scuba diving or snorkeling … Snorkeling done ..scuba am guessing it would be more of spluttering and choking .
20. Be in a movie …
21. Start a business
22. Go whale watching - Done
23. See Russia from Little Diomede, Alaska
24. Go flowers for no reason …

25. Donate blood, platelets or plasma
26. Visit Nazi Concentration Camp.
27. Go skinny dipping
28. Fly n a helicopter - Done
29. Visit the taj mahal - I know it’s a shame
30. Pieced a quilt …made pieces for a quilt
31. Stood in Times Square … that can get you arrested these days ;-)
32.Tour the Everglades
33.See the Changing of the Guards in London
34.Be on a speeding motorcycle
35.See the Grand Canyon in person
36.Publish a book
37.Visit the Vatican
38.Walk in Jerusalem
39.Had your picture in the newspaper - Quite close for the wrong reasons
40. Read the entire Bible and bagavad Gita
41.Visited the White House
42.Save someone’s life
43.Sit in a jury
44.Meet someone famous …
45.Float In Dead Sea
46.Read an entire book in one day

A Final Dream

Countless nights of unrecalled dreams and turbulent sleep will end its journey invaded by a sulky silence. When all will be been consigned to a cloud of forgetting,the mind still battles down the memory lane. Untying the mortal knot, the gentle soul will breathe a contented sigh of relief and slumbers. While she sleeps, the light continues to build in a world where we live a final dream.

When 4 worlds meet

A kind of awkwardness when I first had a conversation 8 months ago that failed to happen during my high school life. A question of acceptance and a curiosity of compatibility is what brought me to SFO after ten years and here I am having one of the best times of my life with this elite group. The oddity blended into a perfect niche to relive those 12 years in 48 hours. Too short but yet can be spoken for the next decade. It was giggles of the past, gossips, night outs and sharing of all those fun and geeky moments. The rendezvous was more close to my heart as I met my BFF after 5 years. Time has played its part and we have taken over it by splurging every minute I am so glad we broke our barriers of the past and took an effort to make it to this reunion. Hope we keep doing this often.

Packing....

I awake this morning with thoughts not born of my mind as much as of my heart. Tender affections rooted up over and over again, packing brought promise or annulment, packing brought hope that maybe this time…, packing heralded the twins of fear and relief and of the saying that would take me nearly another decade to even begin to understand: the more things change the more they stay the same. We would pack and move, with assorted feelings but connections remains stronger when miles never matter. Good Luck sissy and be good.

What is wrong with my world?

A bolt to my door is all I need
To shut this world that I have seen
A fragment of thought to empathize
Became a dagger of hurt that feels like ice
The race to reach the life’s mountain top
The pace that will bring this all to a final stop
I want to hide myself from this weirdness crying out loud
And kill the norm which stays as my cloud
A piece of advice that I turn to a few
Blend in and survive is all I hear in lieu.

Message in the Mirror

Your Immemorial gesture stays captive on the other side

Your unspoken words remain deceptive and interpretive

I acquaint your faint presence but you turn me alien to my mind

I seek for fathomless peace but you challenge my egoity

Yet I turn to you again for your message is a true cure for my bleed

My Caffeine Buzz

It all started with the new coffee club at work place which crumbled my tamed 4 months of no coffee for life. The little love affair that I had with Royal Kona Hawaiian coffee made me fall a prey straight into the electric arms of espresso. The fresh smell of brewed coffee in the morning was my every day battle. It was a desperate moment, poignant and typical for most addicts who are hit with epiphany. It was my only hope to recuperate from my early morn sloth gene. Unfortunately the damage is all done and now I am a caffeine addict YET AGAIN. After all who can resist the warm steaming demon of coffee addiction.

Random ....

Myth is my world beaded with multitude of variety. A Pandora which opens the door to my saga, a fairy tale reality. Cloud 9 moments, awkward

encounters, winsome surprises and forlorn silence. Chronic itch for perfection, yet not practiced and unscathed paths under discovery. Filled with penultimate moments for every decade I live to cherish. All is Poignant yet richly amalgamated. A sane deal of finely assorted episodes that creates this well fabricated masterpiece with an ending unwritten.

Go Green !!!

21 years of celebrating festive of lights and harvest, I stepped into this strange cult where color green had a cardinal significance driving few parts of the world to indulge in a profound way of inebriation, wearing green hats/clothes studded with shamrocks and I was one among them that night. Legal yet perplexed, a fervid moment and I had to make a quick choice. The choice that will question my social gore imbrued with regulations. Though my lackluster and pallor days required sustenance in a different country, I was still contemplating my years of instilled ethics over social drinking. 6 years have scurried through and here I am on the very same occasion St.Patty’s day, rejoicing the folklores of Irish and relishing what once was a distaste. Do I feel guilty? Yes. Do I regret the choice I made? No. Embracing different cultures is not an enduring sin after all. So here it is Cheers to my 6th year celebrating this event and Beannacht Lá Fhéile Pádraig to all.

Cube Debacle

This wasn’t my idea of a new home at workplace. I was hyped by the hopes that were given to me for the past 2 months. So here I am self pitying myself and arranging my new cube which looks like an abode to a stock exchange place. No more quiet mornings anymore which happened to be my preferred part of a day where I get myself to do few chores in peace. Not to mention a few of my annoyance list
1. Constant usage of speaker phones when needless.
2. Turns into an oven by the end of the day which makes me worry more when summer hits ,
3. Privacy has lost its meaning. I had to change my wallpaper twice (had a picture of D and me) as that turned into a distraction for passerby’s.
What can I say, its bad karma tagging along.
After all these aggravations I am just glad I still have a smile on my face at the end of the day. Kudos to Go Team! attitude and their spur of the moment humour.

1 week of summer at the dawn of spring

And then there was light!!! Oh no don’t get me wrong for a preacher writing bible in my blog. These were my golden words when I got out of my apartment. Portland being infamous for its wet weather, the anticipation of seeing sunlight and feeling its warmth has become dormant. I shouldn’t be complaining about it, as once I used to be a native of the white lands and have battled through gazillion snow storms for the past five years. Yet the incessant dreary weather has taken a toll over me.
A week of bliss with subtle chill and radiance all over. It was as though the city was soaked in sun. A perfect week for flip flops, long walks in the streets filled with cherry blossom trees like pink candy's and no sweatshirts yay! . I was all keyed up like meeting my long lost friend whose stay is unpredictable. Though at the back of my mind I dread that this is going to be momentary, I was content that I crossed out many in my preliminary list and will stash the remaining for this summer.

10 seconds

Today I realized how seconds make a difference in a one’s life. Those 10 seconds that stopped me at the light. Between those 10 seconds the 1st car made a wrong judgment and got hit by a truck. Those 10 seconds the second car never thought he could make it but narrowly escaped when the truck and the 1 st car curled up like twins behind his car. Those 10 seconds where the 3rd car thought he was safe but experienced close to death. The only common thing between all of us was that we were colleagues at work. Hope all get better soon from injuries and after shock

A Letter to Destiny

Dear Destiny,
I abstain myself from calling you Fate, as It makes me feel like a dead end with no hope. I fascinate your mode of tenure in my life, with such radical and casual turns before the essence of any event is savored. My burdened soul with infirmities at times seeks for some spirit stirring recollections that you created for me which could do towards a little lightening. Or even borrow the heap of joy from the future that’s waiting to help through my present grief. Even when I fade away in my own mundane life I feel the thin string holding me tight. Inveterately tough is the world I face that even a fight would sometimes make no impression and yet you made it a smooth sail. You made me meet my friends I love, foes I hope I never meet, and the love of my life, embarked each memory like an ornate detail of artistry which defies codes of art of all the worlds. I will hold my expression of gratitude until I leave my last breathe.

Sincerely
A. Jay

Resolution

Though I have 2 resolutions for this year in addendum, the blog is not about my resolutions. One question I asked myself, if resolution is the beginning for a change why always tagged to a new year’s day, why not Christmas or even July 4th?. That changed it all. I agree keeping up with a Resolution is a solid game, but certain aspects of it bring it down throughout this game. It’s about how this word is a jump starter when we lack the impetus to attain what we want or to control the overdone. The word that turns 30% into a new leaf every New Year, 30 % to fall back and end up never taking it again and 40 % adding it to their bucket list if left unfulfilled. I believe I fit just right into the 40 % with ten thousand on my count list. Except for this year, I trashed it all. I believe I will see to that my Focus is not pared and the purpose of it never dies even if day’s flies into years. Welcoming this year not making Resolution a fundamental deceit of time.

The Corporate War

It has always been a fist fight between managers and engineers. Prolonged denial of projects by management has become the tradition in corporate world. $$ decides whether prioritizing or dismissal of it. In spite of having folks who have inhabited years in my position put me in the hot spot to drag it to completion. All that was on my mind when I entered into the dimmed conference hall with the big heads seated, was not whether I can or cannot, but it was how and when. Optimistically I started off, with a good note and I found the response very approachable. Now it makes me wonder what made them approve. Is it a fresh face to the flock, a female or is it my individual approach. Well at this point just felt like I deserved a pat for myself .

Hate to say this but " Good bye to all and will miss all of you !!!"

With a Blink of my eye,
I stand here empty and hollow,
Hearing the echoes of mirth,
With different faces from past three years

Merciless time truly is a master
Turns my present to past
Cascaded emotions spread the warmth
Of my tear of farewell on my skin.

Good bye Friends, Good bye Syracuse
May the future awaits and destiny bind us again

Plans for my 1 week notice @ Work

1. Blog

2. Tweet sec by sec

3. Browse through high heel confidential ( to catch up on Indi fashion)

4. Pick my bubble where my boss cant spot me ( that should be laks cube )

5. Long lunches and breaks

6. Clean up my office for the next lucky #%@%


And last but not the least hugs and muah muah
A Final goodbye to the East
And a Big Yello to the West!! :

One liners about my friends

I dint wana tag my friends to the common traits fwded around and hence I created my own below
Anu - Pervasive Tyro
Divi – Blithe and carefree spirit
B- A mellow faced virile
Laks – Salient Lioness
Prassana – Dormant Influencer
Kiran – Candid debater
Yuvi - Ardent admirer
Anoop – Convincing arbitrator
Santa – Poignant scholar
Archu – Unprejudiced adviser

Last road trip along East Coast

Unsullied fall wind, meandering roads, roasted and butter dipped leaves camouflaging among the green mountains is a portrait that will never fade away from my memory. It is fascinating how nature is guileless and expressive through seasonal changes which decipher my ambiguity on creation. In retrospect, my thoughts vacillates back and forth through time with incessant and myriad of road trips that I have taken on this same route for the past 5 years. With a huge sigh this trip adds an end note to it. The faint silence I experienced during this trip was filled with mixed emotions, the love I had for the east and the animosity to let go few acquaintances. But as always, good times are remembered and hopefully welcome the better ones in future.

Thank u FG’s for making this trip special