Getting used to Singapore

Took me a long time to get back here!

It’s been over 8 months here in Singapore. Sometimes I wonder why I ever left London, still get the pangs when I think of it. The crisp cold air, the pet dogs, the traditions and heritage, the parks, the cute gardens people maintain (I wasn’t one of them!). I know it was just 4 years there but most of them were spent really trying to understand and explore the place so it carries that much more attachment.

I’m guilty of not having done that so far in Singapore. But I hope that would change soon, starting yesterday! After watching a delightful movie, Cars2; I took the long way around, up Fort Canning park with a lovely canopy of grand old trees, then down past Clarke Quay and the esplanade park ending up at Raffles Hotel for …you guessed it…Singapore slings! One of the rare days where the weather has inspired me to remain outdoors. The slings by the way are slightly too sweet, but well at least it’s one item ticked off the checklist! The nice long girly conversation over the slings was a great way to spend the evening!

I remember another place I liked in Singapore – the MacRitchie Reservoir. Again it was good weather when I went so it’s a nice walk along the waterside. Maybe when I build up my stamina Ill go back for a nice healthy run.
I’m also developing a slow appreciation of the sheer variety of asian cuisines in food courts. I guess travelling to those locations also helps! E.g. I like the Pho’ now – light and healthy. The one I had in Hoi An was much better, of course. That reminds me – the sheer proximity and ease of travelling to neighbouring countries is just so useful! Yup London was much loved for the same reason!

I should feel proud – staying in a luxurious condominium, which can boast not just 1 50 m pool but 2 other 25m pools, a gym, a Jacuzzi, a scenic walk along the marina, and a spacious apartment – I finally have a spare room to dump all my crap! It’s about time to be living comfortably. For who knows how long…depending on how well I do at work!

I got used to the idiot proofing in the UK. Buying an ingredient at the supermarket was easier because it came with an instruction on how to use it! But after a hiatus of 6 months, my cooking instincts are slowly kicking back in! Am no where close to trying the local recipes yet, but who knows, maybe I’ll get there!

Getting home to Mom n Dad should be easier but just haven’t done it so far. Been using up my free time to travel around –short weekend breaks! And those have been so great. Details in another post!

That reminds me – I didn’t do my travelogue for 2010. It was eventful – Mom had finally come to stay with me, so we took my damaged back and her busted ankle off to traipse around Belfast, Bushmills and Londonderry in Northern Ireland for a week. Lovely warm people, beautiful scenery, good food! The Giant’s Causeway was quite fascinating – I wonder how nature could have produced such symmetric blocks! Derry was less idyllic-too many scars; but they’re trying to hard to move on. Another good memory from the trip was the complete giggling fit mom and I had over some stupid toilet brush joke. Between our wheezing coughs and the uncontrollable giggles, it leaves me with a smile every time I think about it! Another time we managed to catch a play at Stratford Upon Avon and luckily Shakespeare’s b’day celebration parade. That was the highlight, because the play was a yawwnnnnn! Took her to Bath as well, easy sightseeing in the open top bus. An unconventional destination of holiday to Jersey later in the year turned out great – cycling, seafood and yea I finally made it to the Gerald Durrell Conservation Park! Lovely island, so tempted to take a non-ambitious job role there and live!
Another item off the London checklist was catching bit of the Wimbledon action, so glad I did that, little knowing Id be leaving end of the year! Leaving London came with its pluses – I took long walks taking photos, visited so many new places and old favourites, buying souvenirs. I promised I would be back to live sometime – I hope I can keep that promise.

Adulthood is complicated....

We all say that it was all so simple when we were children. Was it? Really? I’m sure we had our challenges then. Trying to walk, learning to aim food correctly into our mouths, giving the answer to “what is your name?” to every adult guest. I wish I could recapture that actual feeling of learning something new everyday. Is it that as we grow older we stop learning new things? Or do we just stop noticing them? Or are the new things not interesting enough to even register that we learnt them?! Every day is a new day, new things happen to us everyday – how come it’s just not enough? Very few of us actually are content with where we are, what we are doing and most importantly who we are.

Or just maybe, it’s the problem of too much choice. The consciousness that every single thing we do or say has an impact – small or large. Now I know the limits I imagine upon myself are self imposed. It’s my choice to stay within them or test them. I somehow can’t see myself testing them ALL the time! If that were so, I’d live in a tent in the park one night, ride a horse in Mongolia another day, sing in a rock band the third, spend the fourth en route to Jupiter…you know where this is going. It’s not just my limits now is it?!

I have the choice to live alone, I have the choice to not work where I do, I have the choice to take care of my family, I have the choice to trust somebody, I have the choice to make friends, I choose to cross the road at that particular junction…it goes on and on and on. It’s bloody overwhelming! It’s not as if you are making a choice about important things, its every teensy weensy thing. Yes most of it becomes a routine, so I don’t consciously make a choice anymore. But WHY? Who decided that life should be about growing up, working having a family and then dying? To what end? I’m doing some of this list of things ‘to do’ and I don’t have the remotest feeling that “yes, this is why I am here” or “I’m fulfilling a purpose”. In fact, quite the contrary. Whole purpose of the bloomin’ blogpost!

So what is all this leading to? Afterlife? And all this again? I’m sure as a cockroach or as a chimpanzee I would have similar issues to deal with, no matter what life form I come back as. Finally it’s just me. I’m probably over-thinking this….but AM I? If I am put here to fulfil some purpose would it be simpler to tell me so I can set about doing it already?? Oh no, this may be a test. I’m supposed to embark on a journey in self discovery. Bah! Somehow I don’t think sitting under a tree to figure this all out would really do it.

I know each person is different and thinks differently. Isn’t that strange? If you take a few steps back and ponder - we are all talking to each other without either of us even on one occasion understanding what the other is really saying in exactly the same context. Because everyone’s frame of reference is dependent on THEM! What an exercise in futility! So basically everything you thought had happened really happened differently in someone else’s mind. WOW! So no one has a clue? We are all running in parallel universes without even realizing it! The mind boggles! It would be fun if we could actually figure out how to intersect these parallel universes every once in a while!

So…in the end? It’s still you making all the choices and the decisions that finally affect guess who? Yes, only YOU! This is all nuts. It can’t be all about the journey! Or can it?

The Long overdue 2009 travelog

It’s 6 months into 2010 and now I’m racking my brain to recall my travel in 2009. I spent my 30th birthday in Hyderabad in April with my folks and grandma and relatives. Looks like I’ll be ushering all my birthdays in peacefully. Gone are the wild parties and endless orgies. Sighhh!
There were weekend trips to Wales and Lake District. Too much hassle getting visas processed to go anywhere else! Lake District serves the best lamb shank. I believe I had it everyday! Both places have similar countrysides – sprawling farms dotted with sheep. Wales had lovely seaside scenery while Lake District had…yup you guessed it…lakes! Going to such places always makes you reflect on why you’re living in a tiny apartment going through monotonies of city life year after year. Couldn’t I have just one stupid skill which I could utilize to make me some money to live by and then I could actually go and set up my little café. The charming little café which closes for season breaks so that the owner can go travelling and collect little artefacts from all the interesting places and sells them.

The menu would look something like this:
- South Indian crepes (dosas), with a choice of fillings – spinach and ricotta cheese, spicy lentils, sweet potato, mashed chilli potato, mozzarella cheese and peppers, ham, mushroom and cheese, white cabbage with toasted chopped peanuts. (Sree, you can add your ideas as well!!)
- In season grilled asparagus wrapped in parma ham with shavings of parmesan cheese
- Idlis delicately flavoured with ginger and dotted with mustard seeds and curry leaves served with coconut chutney.
- Potato and pea cakes (veg tikkis) served with watercress salad and dressing
- Roasted chicken wings marinated with lemongrass and bird chilli
- Mixed leaf salad with mango chutney and avocado.
- Wild rice sautéed with pine nuts and sundried tomato chilli paste served with carrot raita.

Slurrrrp, drooool! I’m getting carried away with food as usual! Back to travelog.
Now where was I? Well besides that was a day trip to Dover to see the White limestone cliffs and a faint glimpse of Calais across the distance and another lazy stay a bizarrely decorated BnB with a real fireplace.
Yes finally the long overdue, over planned and under prepared trip to Greece happened with the girls in Sept-Oct. After fights and huffs and shows of cool independence we reached Athens. So much history in every corner, don’t understand how people who visited there previously told us we could not spend more than 2 days. We spent 4 – at least KD and I did and moved on to Olympia on a very long winded bus journey. B & P managed to spend more time in Athens and saw some nearby islands. Olympia is a lovely town and we were lucky to stay at a very hospitable Best Western. Saw the ancient site on a quiet evening, a Bugatti convention and a friendly taxi tour for the day. We returned to Athens by an express bus this time driven by a most cranky driver who didn’t allow anyone to eat, drink, bring luggage put feet up in the bus. Well it was clean at least. We headed on to Mykonos the party island and landed up in a hotel which had gauze for curtains and was run by Punjabis from Jallandar! It had incongruously placed translucent blue rocks around the premises and salty sea water in the pool. I never got to hire my scooter but we had a wild time navigating our way in a car driven by P. (Schumacher)! I got to finally swim in the gorgeous Aegean Sea – cold though it was – a liberating experience, in more ways than one! Santorini came next and by any logic it should feature in anyone’s trip to Greece. We stayed in Oia and could not get enough of the spectacular volcanic crater landscapes. B, P & I did a long hike across the length to the town center and luckily managed to also see the Red beach. The dramatic black and red rockface against the brilliant blue green sea is one of the sights that would stay imprinted. The day cruise to the volcanic centre was a new experience. I don’t think any of the pictures I took did the sight justice. It was a wonderful 2 weeks after all. I think we all had different expectations which probably we couldn’t communicate to each other properly, but I guess we each left with so many great memories of time spent, myriad sights seen, reflections on history and culture and people and tastes.
Well that’s about it for now folks.

Found it...oh no...lost it again...

So many thoughts whirling around my mind all day, yet when it comes putting some of them down, I’m drawing a complete blank. How do people tweet or constantly update their status on facebook? And why?? Are we so starved of attention that we want everyone to know what we’re doing or thinking? Or is it that we feel compelled to be just heard all the time whenever we can?

Maybe it’s true, so many ways to be connected now that we hardly have the time to connect anymore. And I’m not just talking about connected with other people. I’ve recently started attending yoga classes at my gym. I’ve attended 3 in the last week. In each I realized how difficult it is to tap into my inner self. What the heck is my inner self? How do I recognize it if I tap into it? I concentrate so hard trying to focus that I wind up with all my facial muscles all scrunched up by the end of the session. Is it so difficult to be true to myself? Or maybe we just build up that whole self actualization thing out of proportion and its right under our noses all the time!

I’ve hit 30. And a month. On my birthday, while I ushered it in very uneventfully and quietly, I did feel a slight thrill of liberation. I’m writing it here so that every time I get plagued with insecurities I can recall that feeling. That feeling of having moved beyond the past. That feeling of not having to prove myself along the lines that I had thought I had to. I was already the individual I was meant to be. I didn’t have to define it for anybody. I could certainly improve upon it…a lot… but yeah I was there. It’s a good feeling. Maybe that’s the eureka moment I’m looking for during yoga workouts.

remembering

Just finished watching “Ghajini”. The intensity Aamit Khan brings into each of his roles gets to me every time.

I enjoy reading the Metro and the London Paper in the tube. Especially the articles where people get to comment or rather “express their views”. I’m rather impressed with the human capacity to crib. No, I’m not excluding myself from this category…unfortunately having a lifetime membership. In another 10-20 years, I aspire to be a constant on the show Grumpy Old Women, if it’s still on air. In a month or so, I could audition for Grumpy Middle Aged Women for sure!
Very rarely do I summon up my good friend’s philosophies of remembering special moments of the day, which brought happiness, or amusement. The other day however I was having one of those nostalgic phases. Maybe it was because I had booked my tickets for a holiday to go home and visit the folks. Or maybe it was reading Madhur Jaffrey’s book about her childhood that raked up those memories.
I remember vividly the scent and sight of sweetpeas growing up on the bamboo stick supports alongside our driveway. Spring in North India used to bring hoopoes, myenas, bulbuls and sparrows in the garden. Orange bar cartons in the freezer, the tiffin sharing/swapping during recess in school, ma always being there to welcome me back home after an exam, wrestling and playing with Cherie, our family holidays in the Himalayas and the lush greenery, the smell of wet mud while watering the lawn, the lazy winter mornings spent in the sunshine, rain storms and feeling the warm drops of the season’s first shower, the sound of sabziwalas and other vendors throughout the day, the sheer pleasure of stepping into an air-conditioned room after a hot dusty trip outdoors. Yep, life’s simple routine pleasures.
It may be a good idea to recall some good moments from within the last decade before Im too old and grey to!

Travelogue 2008

Reaching the end of yet another year. Yup eventful it has been.

Easter saw me go for my first solo holiday to Cornwall. Stayed 1.5miles away from the town of Tintagel – scenic walk in the day and extremely spooky the one time I walked it after nightfall. The journey to Tintagel was a long (unnecessarily in hindsight) one by train and some bus changes, which added to that whole spirit of adventure bit. Did a considerable amount of walking around, on cliff tops (which is what one is to do in Cornwall!!), saw the rocky slopes, visited the historic castle, lazed around reading a book and taking self pictures with the mobile phone. Warmed up to the idea of clambering over farm fences for hitchhiking to reach the fairy waterfall despite the thumping heart everytime I spotted cattle. And lots and lots of Cornish cream teas!
Yorkshire was the destination for another bank holiday weekend. Stayed in Pickering, saw the Pickering castle…which was quite a hoot. The moors weren’t exactly what I would have hoped, since there was none of the mysterious purple heather covered plains, but bright sunshine. Sigh. But the BnB was delightful with the self-help bar and so were the town and the steam train ride.
Home to Hyderabad in July. Not very relaxing considering the numerous trips to eye doctor, homeopathic doctors, tailor, etc etc, but its just so good to be home and just vegetate around the house and being part of the regular routine. A two day trip to delhi turned out the way I needed it to – meeting people, eating dilli chaat and khana.
Edinburgh came next with a very memorable train journey (both ways!) crouching on the floor with another 15 people due to overcrowding. Fried sausages and fried mars bars were delicious, no matter what the calorie count was. A place called Revolution served the most innovative vodka shot flavors – was tempted to go there for breakfast. Of course saw the castle here and the museum. Oh the scotch whiskey experience was insightful.
An official trip to Barcelona helped me get my visa in place in September! This time I ensured I went to the beach and spent a lot of time exploring quaint shops. Not that there was much business that came out of the trip.
Did the Sea2Sea08 as well in October – can’t say I completed it successfully as I skipped the second day! It was fun again, some of the old gang was there, the views were spectacular but the excruciating exertion was there again, and the lack of novelty didn’t help! Nope, Im not doing it again. Maybe some other wild sport instead next year.
The visa being issued from German embassy helped me decide my destination for the year’s European holiday. Credit crunch be damned! Cologne, Heidelberg and Munich was decided with great difficulty to spend the 9 days in. Sausages and beer. Struggle for the journey from the airport, wild hunt for the hotel, Chocolate museum, Dom, high street shopping in Cologne, and the pan fried potatoes. Heidelberg was simply such a lovely town- Walnut brandy locally produced, the views from the castle, the walking tour- rare old books, marks on the wall, Austrian food and an excellently located hotel. Scenic train journey to Konstanz, glimpses of the gorgeous Black Forest, revolving Lady Imperia, beautiful facades to the shops and houses in the town, melted bitter hot chocolate. Munich brought more interesting beer varieties, a lousy beer walking tour, Dachau concentration camp memorial, a lively Viktualikenmarkt with the yummy sausages, meat shops handing put free samples, the much required body warming spiked orange punch, finally some shopping and souvenirs, eye-popping valuables at the Residenz, Deutsches Museum, croissant breakfasts. A very satisfying holiday indeed.
I guess with all that’s happening around – my shifting to a new apartment, purse strings tightening, there wont be any more holidays this year. Though the thought of checking myself into a spa for xmas/new year is so tempting.

Never Again

Never again

I read that on a plaque at the Dachau concentration camp memorial site 2 weeks ago. That stuck in my mind.
I’ve been recalling that same phrase all morning while following the news on the war like situation in Mumbai. The endless discussions that ensue in office and with everyone else on the situation is getting on my nerves, especially since no one knows any better and it is just so easy to blame the government/security agencies/etc etc. I guess the real anger stems from the realization of how helpless we are in counteracting these terrorist attacks. I rage inwardly about not having any useful contribution to figure out how to systematically and constructively put an end to such attacks. Hence I don’t feel like even discussing the disturbing news with anyone. The least we can do as ordinary citizens is be vigilant. And this time stay away from the blame game. Pray that this ends soon.

Race for time!

We seem to be rushing into everything too early. Even mid life crisis! That’s a depressing thought considering life expectancies are increasing. Which means that we shall have multiple mid life crises? Ugh! Part of the reason could be that so much of what used to be bracketed into black or white is merging into an ugly shade of grey. You see things, hear things, and do things and finally rationalization makes everything wryly acceptable or tolerable. You are supposed to become clearer about what you want out of life as the years go past. Not happening. Is it just me?