Category Archives: Life

2105 Week 44 Update

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Surprisingly this week went by faster than I thought it would. Work-wise, it’s still the same. I don’t have enough work to fill the eight hours at work. The day I have something to occupy my time for atleast half the day, I am happy! I’ve realized it’s far more difficult to pretend to be busy and do work than to actually do something….

Tomorrow is Diwali, the festival of lights and probably the most important festival in the Hindu calendar for the year. I’ve been busy preparing sweets and savories and have over-extended myself this year. Hopefully by the end of the day, I actually finish making all that I have planned for…

Beofre the festival, people clean and if possible, renovate and decorate their homes. The festival is celebrated slightly differently in North and South India. What’s common is the creation of beautiful rangolis or patterns made from coloured flour outside homes and decorated with lamps. The lamps are kept lit throughout the night so as to invite Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth into your home. People also wear new clothes across the country on Diwali and burst fire crackers outside.

In South India, Diwali is celebrated as the day Lord Krishna defeated the evil demon Nakasura and is called Naraka Chaturthi. Here, traditionally, especially in Tamil Brahmin homes, if the festival falls on a new moon, everyone wakes up super early and the lady of the house first takes a bath and lights the lamp. Then one by one, family members come and sit in front of the lamp where the lady of the house will put some gingelly oil which has been prepared the previous evening on them. They then have a bath and come and prostate before the Lord, after which they get their new clothes. Before they start the feating which is typical of the festival, they are also given a medicinal legiyam which sort of helps digest all the fried food and sweets which you eat throughout the day.

In North India, the festival is celebrated as the day Lord Rama, from the epic, Ramayana was welcomed back home to Ayodhya in present day Uttar Pradesh along with his wife Goddess Sita and brother Lord Lakshmana after a 14 year exile. Lamps are lit to welcome the trio. Prayers are also said to Goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth in the evening of Diwali.

Certain communities also welcome their new year on the last day of the celebrations.

Here’s wishing all of you a very Happy Diwali! May the festival of lights light up your lives and bring you happiness and abundant prosperity….

2015 Week 43 Update

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My usual boring week at work….

I’m trying real hard to remain positive, but there are days when I want to scream….or to hit someone 😦

Diwali preparations have started in earnest at home. Last week we went to Little India and brought the things needed for the sweets and savories. This year I am being most ambitious in all the years, so I hope all goes well. If it does look and taste good, I will definitely post the recipes here. Some are traditional recipes and some new ones.

We have a parenting talk in the children’s school about the transition to secondary school as well as some schools will be having booths which I wanted to check out.

Off to work now, but have a wonderful week everyone!

My Name is My Own

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“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” – William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet

Once upon a time…..actually this start has nothing to do with my post today, but since this is something I’ve thought over a long time, I decided to use it!

I’ve been a feminist for a long time, even before I knew what the word meant. I guess, growing up without any brothers meant that my sister and I were given a more liberal upbringing than most girls we knew. That might have been the starting of my innate feminism I guess!

Growing up, I always wondered why a woman should change her name to reflect that of her husband when she got married. I didn’t really do anything about this because this was the norm in India when I was growing up and I didn’t see anyone bucking this. However, this changed when I started working. One of my first supervisors, a wonderful woman, got married when we were working together and didn’t change her name. However, HR assumed she would do so and I remember the first day she came back after her honeymoon, she got a note and in the envelope was her married name: Mrs. XXX

She was furious and sent out a note to HR letting them know that unless she officially sent them intimation about her name change, they could not arbitrarily change her name without her permission. I witnessed the whole drama and asked her why. She replied that she is a person in her own right and is not an extension of her husband and so is not planning to change her name, now or ever. This got me thinking and I also started looking at the possibility of not changing my name when I got married.

When I got married later in life, there was not much time to do anything except get to Singapore after the wedding. In this hustle and bustle, the whole process of changing names just got left over. My passport was in my maiden name and changing names (Indian bureaucracy is to be seen to be believed) would mean I could not fly to Singapore with S. In fact, if I remember correctly, this topic didn’t appear in anyone’s consciousness and I flew to Singapore in my maiden name.

Then I decided, I will not change me name. My whole life, prior to my wedding, was as important to me as my life after it, and so a name change will probably mean starting a new life from zero. Also all school and work records are in my maiden name, so this will mean a big explanation each time I show these records to potential employers. I also thought that since my parents raised me to be the person I am today, it is only right I honour them by continuing to keep my maiden name.

S was cool about this since most women do not change names after marriage in Singapore. This is because they get their National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) at the age of 15, when no-one is married and so girls continue with this name through their lives.

I sometimes wonder if this would have been a bigger issue if I lived elsewhere than Singapore, but c’st la vie!

Isn’t it unfair that guys don’t have to do anything like this? What do you think?

2015 Week 42 Update

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The week was mostly spent in Penang on holiday! We left last Sunday and returned back on Wednesday afternoon. Since Thursday was Dusshera, I decided not to go to work and only went back on Friday!

Penang was fun and deserves multiple blog posts which I will do in the coming weeks!

Since I was at work only one day, it was manageable, but there is still a lot of angst and anger in me here. I need to keep reminding myself to be positive, and sometimes that is very hard! I’ve also started writing my positivity journal, so that should help I guess!

We spent the weekend cleaning the house and getting it ready for Diwali. Most Indian homes will do a major clean-up at this time, and we are also the same. I threw away a lot of unwanted things and it felt good doing that. After that, promptly went shopping to buy more!!

I have also started planning what sweets and savouries to make for Diwali, will probably post recipes too of those…

Off to work now, need to channel loads of positivity and get through the week without getting angry and pissing myself off!

Travel: The only thing you buy which makes you richer!

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“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine

We’re leaving Penang in a few hours now and I am already having ‘Holiday Blues’. I love taking holidays and love the whole process – right from researching locations and hotels to tracking airfares, planning the itineraries and looking for great places to eat…. I am a planner by nature and so this job automatically falls to me. I can even spend time reading on the best way to pack!

I want to see the whole world and experience not onluy different cultures, but also unique experiences in each of the places we visit. We’ve not done a lot of travel till now, preferring to visit places in the region, rather than travelling afar, but now that BB & GG are all grown up, it’ll be fun to visit newer and more adventurous places without having anxious thoughts on nap and meal times!

One place I really want to visit is Europe. I love reading historical fiction and loads of these are set in Europe. I want to experience the Pantheon, the Tower of London, the castles of England, Scotland and Ireland, the Louvre and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Oh and the art in all the galleries!! All those places I have only read about, I want to see and breathe in the air.

I have always believed that travel gives you that edge of sophistication that nothing else does and it is for this reason that I want GG & BB to see as much of the world as we can afford before they are thrust upon the world. Travel is an education that no school can provide you, it teaches you to go out of your comfort zone and learn to get along with people from diverse cultures. Children grow up to be well rounded individuals with a global perspective which will stand them in good stead through their lives and in anything they choose to do in life. How better to learn about the beauty of this planet we call home than by travelling….

Gosh! All this talk of travel is making me itchy to go somewhere else. We do have our trip to India to look forward to in December, but now I really need to save up and go somewhere else….

I need to get going now or we’ll miss our flight back home, but once I am back home and have sorted the hundreds of photos we took, I’ll do a couple of posts on Penang.