Today was not okay

Like the title goes, today was a pretty nasty day over all. Work was a bummer, got to know something out of the blue that had me amused for a while until reality sunk in a few hours later and made me feel like an absolute idiot and then some. Trying to get past that revelation had me seeking refuge in entertaining banter elsewhere with some friends until a comment made got my already shorted circuit come crashing down all over again. So…. went about with a dark thundery cloud over my head.

Then I remembered that I got ‘looked at appreciatively’ by a really hot guy today and the thunder went out of the cloud, but it remained dark nonetheless. So yeah… one of em’ days. I’m pretty much coining the mood swings pre-dominantly to the unpleasant revelation.

Note – Not much in terms of post-worthy content, guess I’ve run dry for the moment.

Till next time.

I dislike..

• Hot sunny days – give me rain and gloom anyday!
• Traffic jams – Unless I’m being driven and have really good company
• Arrogant Pretentious people
• String hoppers & Thosai
• Muddy carpets in a car
• Fluorescent lights
• Liver – in any culinary form! *shudder*
• Fast driving – Unless I’m behind the wheel
• Weddings in the morning and functions in the afternoon
• Being woken abruptly from my sleep –which isn’t much anyway!
• Rain and Sun both together – Stop being oxymoron-like. I don’t buy the “Awway wassay nariyage magulay” adage (Rain and Sun means a fox is getting married!? An old Singhalese saying)
• Being told “It’s for your own good” “Time will heal” & “That’s life” Even though I know it IS true and DOES make sense.
• People who take pride in saying they “just don’t know to speak Singhalese/Tamil” – If you don’t know, don’t make a public statement of it. If you are Sri Lankan, make an effort to learn.
• Getting my feet wet in the rain

Mind over Matter

What do you do when you know something is bad for you, but you just can’t (or don’t want to) fight temptation? Yeah, I got stumped somewhere around there too.

Temptation, in any form is great. It’s an urge that is borne within us that we pretty much have difficulty controlling. Perhaps it’s because we’re in the know that we could have it if we really wanted to, but are saddled with the knowledge that it’s not the best decision to make or course of action available.

What is it then that stops us from making wrong choices? and what makes us choose to do wrong? Is it our conscience? values? the knowledge to segregate ‘wrong’ from ‘right’? or is it will power? For the latter, is it selfishness? Lack of the above mentioned criteria or a bout of ‘Live for the moment – Die another day’ ?

What happens when you know all implications of your actions and still choose to do otherwise? Like a moth being drawn to a flame, why is it that us humans are faced with decisions that will make the most stalwart of hearts falter even for a minuscule of a second? Generally more.

Perhaps sometimes fingers are meant to be burnt and hearts are meant to be bruised. We’ll invariably whine and grumble when things go wrong and say “I shouldn’t have gone there” but we’d have learnt. Mind over matter they say. Sometimes it takes a whole lot more.

Of squishy eggs and multi-coloured giraffes…

Taking a look at my desk in office (and a few others for comparison sake) it struck me how each of our personalities are depicted by what we have on our desks. I for one have the following;

ahem..

• A Pen holder with…erm pens? and pencils
• My stack of files
• Hot pink and Luminous Yellow post it pads
• The straightforward tear-off note pad
• Telephone and PC
• A multi-couloured soft toy giraffe sitting on top of the PC
• A team pic
• A bright Yellow Coffee mug
• 2 Water bottles – One plastic and One Absolut Ruby Red
• My stash of Tic-Tac, Green Tea, Hand Lotion and Chewing gum – tucked away in my drawer

The guy next to me has a pic of his family on his desk, along with a bottle of JD! For holding water ofcourse

Two stations away another lady has absolutely nothing but her PC and one single pen. Everything else she borrows from us!

 One station away from ‘Miss nothing on my desk- Let me borrow from you’ sits a mother of three… No I don’t keep tabs on people’s off-spring! but it’s kinda obvious when you’ve got a large framed pic of your sons in all their glory!

My boss has drawings done by his little one plastered all over his cubicle. Guaranteed a new one makes it’s way to the boards every month or so.

Right at the corner (and which I personally think is the best seat in the entire office) sits a guy, in his mid 20s with the coolest desk. A digital pic frame with a medley of really cool pics.. his folks, some arty stuff and some crazy poses! A Thermal mug that can be plugged in and hence he’s ALWAYS got nice hot coffee! and a squishy rubber egg! Lol!

Work time musings.

St John’s

A twist of events recently had me visiting the St John’s Fish market in Fort with a bunch of colleagues. For those of you not familiar with the place, St John’s  is the largest wholesale fish market in Sri Lanka where fish mongers bargain and sell massive amounts of fish, straight off the catch to smaller vendors, retail outlets and the few customers who dare to brave the odour, the crack of dawn timing and the possibility of being whacked by a large ‘thora’ fish just getting by. It was a completely new experience to say the least. This place starts up at 4am  and is a raging, loud and boisterous jungle of activity till 11am. Male of Female, regardless, you will get dunked by fish-remnant laced water and/or have fish gut land on you if you happen to have the misfortune of getting in the way when the vendors are going about their business.

It’s all work for these guys, those short 7 hours. Mostly men, decked in shorts, shirt sleeves rolled up to elbows, thick rubber gum-boots to shield them from the worst of the muck. We meet Jude, one of these vendors, he was hurriedly loading fish from an ice filled styro-foam box to a large marble slab on the floor. Topping up mid-day.

“Saahena weda wagey neyda? – Looks like you’re busy, lot of work eh?”

“Ow mahaththaya. Keeyak hari hoyaganna epay – Yes Sir, I have to find a living”

“Kochchrak withara hambukaranawada – How much do you earn”

“Eka ithin dawasa yana vidihata thamai. Dawasakata hariyanna athi – Well, that depends on the sales per day, enough to put food on the table for a day”

We meander off. Information in tact. Walking towards the side of the market we see similar men like Jude walking in an out of tiny tea shops or ‘petti-kades’ as it is colloquially known in Sinhalese. These shops are where everyone comes for breakfast, tea and cigarette breaks.We walk into one of these and it’s already occupied by about 4 people, seating capacity is just one. Blue wooden panels, one single fluorescent bulb at the center of the low hanging roof, a glass counter displaying the limited breakfast options and 3 candy jars holding tin foil wrapped toffees. Delta toffee was all I recognized. On the side is a large boiler with tea sugar and a few ceramic mugs with broken handles.

“Mudalai, Seeni sambola pang kaalay, Tea ekai, Gold Leaf ekai. Menna rupiyal 50 -  Seeni Sambol and quarter pound of bread, one cup of tea and a cigarette please, here’s 50 bucks”

Said a man eyeing us with an odd look. One of the many we got that day.

He had his bread, drank his cauldron of tea (I find no other way of expressing the size of that cup) lit up his cigi and was on his way. Sauntering back to the fish market. The owner of the little tea shop told us that they come an average of 3 times a day – Early morning tea, break fast and a mid morning cigarette and tea break before heading home.

It’s a hard life they lead. One that involves intense physical labour and mammoth amounts of endurance. So there we go, another facet of Sri Lankan life.

Cloaked

I’ve always been a person who felt very strongly about women and their contribution to society. The roles they play in people’s lives as mothers’ sisters, a lover and friend.  I’ve seen and been appalled at the prejudice that women have to overcome in the corporate world, not so much right now but it does raise its ugly head once in a while. This post is not another one of those tirades about women, equal rights etc. But something a little beyond the norms of society that we’re exposed to.

I was reading a book recently – A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini. A must read. It’s one of the most moving books I’ve read in a long time. It goes on to tell us the story of women behind the veil. The burqa. The book revolves around Afghanistan and the many uprising that Kabul went through. The Soviets, the Mujahideens, the wars waged between factions and finally the Taliban who enforced a rather primal way of living on both men and women. The burqa was mandatory for all women stepping out of the house and with the exception of a few pockets of villages that saw no difference to this new enforcement, many of the ladies in Kabul did find it stifling. Particularly a Kabul that had seen women teaching, working for a living, attending University and so on.

It’s only a handful of women that we see here clad in the burqa, a long, flowwy, billowy outer garment complete with head and face veil that is worn over normal day to day clothes. I’ve found myself feeling sad and at times annoyed that these women have to go through so much trouble to cover up. We in light cotton clothes find it difficult to sit still as it is given the heat and humidity. Nevertheless, my opinion differed after reading this book. The burqa is embraced by these women as a sort of shield from the prying eyes of the outside world. No one judges them, no one can see the faults they hide, the fear, confusion, the unfamiliarity. It’s like a one-way film that only they can see through, watch, observe, learn and not be judged.

To us it may seem strange, but come to think of it, don’t we at times want to be left alone too? Don’t we want people to stop questioning us? Stop judging and stop analyzing us? It’s just that when we want that privacy we have the liberty of silently or not so silently slinking away to our rooms and moping in silence, trying to gather our thoughts. For them, this is probably their means of escape, amongst the many other reasons that it is worn. The point of view of the woman in question in this book has no negative feelings towards the burqa but none overtly positive either. At most she takes to it for a few hours’ relief and comfort. One could possibly say that it were a temporary escapism, the cloaked world. No one knows what lies beneath.

Note – This post is merely an opinion based on the book I read and does not pass judgement on race, religion and/or culture.

Once upon a tree

One of my all time favourites.

Gym Socks

Should be White! Like this.

Black and any/all other dark colours are such a turn off :S

Stripes are pretty cool too. Horizontal stripe/s at the top.

Gym sock fetish, I bet that’s a first.

“A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”

Was watching some cookery show on ‘Travel & Living’ the other day and you know how you get all those colourful impressive ‘Do-it-yourself’ looking dishes that are shown on practically ALL the shows? The type that they say is so easy to make that you could do it with your eyes closed and none of your guests (or family ) will be the wiser? Yeah well, I watch them occassionally. Ambitious if I could ever think of conjuring up a dish that looked straight out of a chinese recipe book with a garnish that will put Nigella Lawson to shame!

 

Anyhow, a voiceover on one of these shows said the above (Read the heading!) and I thought that this was a gross underestimation of a man’s intelligence?! Yes, so goes the old adage that man is a primal animal (homosapien) *smirk* and that food and what’s on the table goes along way in keeping him content etc etc.

 

It doesn’t help that it were men themselves who made this proclamation!

 

The shortest road to men’s hearts is down their throats.
[1814 J. Adams Letter 15 Apr. in Works (1851) VI. 505]

The way to many an honest heart lies through the belly.
[1845 R. Ford Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain i. i.]

 

Perhaps so in the stone age, but surely, atleast I’m illusioned (delusioned )  to believe that men in fact look beyond the medieval thinking that a woman is “The woman” if she can cook a decent meal and a ‘Godess’ if she blows him away by a stellar one. I doubt very much that this holds true anymore, even in the most backward of cultures/societies.

 

You do have to give the boys due credit that they (most of them atleast) do look beyond the surface and delve deeper to appreciating a woman for who she is and how she adds value to life in general rather than checking off superficial criteria…which is why I was quite surprised to hear this statement made on global television. You can’t really carbon them all off can you just coz there was one rotten apple in the cart? What say you?

 

Ah well. Take a bow boys, this one’s for you.

Mind, Body & Soul

I found myself you-tubing ‘Relaxation music’ today.

Go figure.

Of all the vids that I look up online, I never thought I’d find myself doing this. Looked up Buddha Bar and liked only ‘Flute Fantasy’ Pretty cool. Every trip to the  Salon and even whilst strolling around ODEL, the music they play has always been so relaxed and soothing. You quite literally find yourself drifting to that place of contentment even though it’s short lived. I love going up to the books and music section where you can browse for ages without being hassled. The music there is always good!

If anyone knows of any good relaxation music I can download, pls let me know. Much appreciated