Mom's 60th Birthday

It was last week sometime when my sister pinged me and said "Machi what are you planning for Mom's 60th Birthday?" Honestly, I had no clue it was her 60th birthday, but now that i knew, I could not stay away from planning something special.
So Maryam and I went on a research mode trying to search gifting options, what to buy her, how to make her day special (especially when her birthday was falling on a week day - Jan 13th). Putting up a surprise? Well I had already done: Calling at 12 in the midnight, Making all my friends sms her the entire day, Arranging a surprise dinner; so what else??? While we were thinking of how to surprise her, we were lost in what gift to buy her. Dresses? - Naah Boring. Spectacles? - She has too many. Jewelry? - Expensive :(. Mobile Phone - she has one! (That was her last birthday gift). So here we were, lost and deprived of ideas :| and that's when thunder struck (ok, filmy!). Mom had recently broken her Motor Sewing Machine and we thought a replacement will be the perfect gift! Bingo!
Now that the gift part was sorted out, we were still thinking on the surprise. My sister was very confident on me that I will put up a good show and I had to keep up to her expectations :) (lol). So on Jan 12th I called up my dad and instructed him not to lock the main gate and leave the house keys in a secret place (known to me and secret to mom!). I wanted to make sure I don’t jump walls and get bit by the very alert street dogs! Vishnu and I got off early from work, bought a basket of flowers from our all-time favorite "Royal florist" (in Adyar) and picked up cake from Hot Breads. By now you must have figured out that we were planning to surprise her by just showing up! :)
My mom is an extremely inquisitive and alert person, one hint and she will figure out everything! So, I made sure not to call up at midnight and wake her up, that way she will lose sleep and hear us get inside the house. My sister luckily spoke to her earlier in the night and my mom didn’t bother to stay awake until midnight either. This means, the surprise will actually be fun! hehe
Vishnu and I landed up at her house by around 1 in the night, opened the main gate. The creaking sound of the gate was so loud that I thought mom woke up! We managed to open the house door and got inside. We got the cake out, lit the candles, arranged the flowers and then headed to mom's room. I quietly opened her door, patted her on her cheeks and said "Happy Birthday Mommy". She opened her eyes in Shock! the first thing she uttered was "How did you get inside? Did I sleep with the house open?". "Wow so many questions", I thought. I asked her to calm down and come outside to the dining area, she was pleasantly surprised! We did the cake cutting ceremony and got to the eating part as soon as we could ;) She kept repeating the same questions again and again until we told her that dad helped us get in! She finally showed signs of relief and started enjoying the surprise :) We handed over the cash needed for the sewing machine and promised to take her shopping soon! We took some zombie looking photos and was strictly instructed not to post them ;) hehehe. Finally, Mom's birthday surprise did turn out to be fun.

Happy 60th Birthday Mommy! :) Mwaaaah :*

Hair cut - Again!?!

It was back in November when suddenly I got my almost-waist-long hair cut into a "Bob". To me, this drastic change is not new and this is surely not the first time I got my hair chopped. My first big hair cut was back in school when I had very long hair (little below my waist) and the next day I walked into the class room with a boy-cut! The hair dresser was in tears when she cut them. Well, I had to do that cos of the never ending "lice" in my hair. I am sure all of us in school have had those dreadful black color creatures running on the scalp (yuck!! :-(..) Since then, I completely lost patience of growing and maintaining long hair and cultivated a liking of chopping my hair when it is least expected :)

The longest I have resisted and kept my hair growing was from Sept 2008 to Nov 2009. My hair grew pretty long and I kept longing for a haircut. Every time I stood before the mirror, I would ask myself - "Should I get a haircut?" and my mind would say, "Do whatever your heart says" and my heart would reply, "Do whatever your mind says". I ditched both of them and asked hubby, he simbly said "Cut it if you want, I wouldn’t mind either ways" - hmph! “Neutral answer” I thought. Then went to the Mom-in-law and hinted that I badly wanted to cut my hair. She said "Your wish dear, I like it both ways"; again the same kind of answer. One fine day, I finally made up my mind and got over my long hair avatar!!! Yippeee :).. and this is how I looked ;)

Trust me, I was so glad and excited about the new look! Almost everybody at home liked it (May be they were just nice to me). But when I returned to work, I got surprised looks and funny comments. People saw me in shock and moaned for my loss of hair. In a few days I felt bad that I actually cut so much of my hair and all my excitement of the new fringe and bob had drained down :(
It is 6 months since that happened and guess what - my mind is already thinking about a hair cut! (I told ya!!)....so I went to my favorite parlor, sat before the mirror and ordered - "Cut it!" - She asked me a zillion questions on what cut do I want?? How short? How small? How straight? How "U"? How "V"??...phew! After 15 mins - I came out with a new hair ishtyle...Tadaaaaaa! :)

This is so called "Layer cut" - Not so long, not so short. Takes advantage of my wavy hair and makes it look like a step cut :)..Now waiting for the world to react ;)

Pleasant Surprise

My day has not been one of the best ones today. I have been a little low on mood and gloomy as the outside weather for almost 24 hours now and don't know what else to do to cheer up. Loud music, browsing old photos, Facebook-ing, playing TT or having numerous teas - none of them have helped. And suddenly, I get a pleasant surprise from Mr.Krishnan :)
Krishnan and I know each other for more than 6 yrs and have had a similar career so far. We joined iNautix together and never looked back. I am not really close to him and we have treated each other as acquaintances and the only time i would see his emails in my inbox is either when there is a Sev-1 ticket on me or it's my birthday :)
But today, for a change, he sent me this email which brought a big smile on my face (imagine my grin from left to right ear). It was the least expected email but the timing was just so good. I am telling you, this guy is gonna be a big blogger someday ;) (I have been paid for advertising about him, don’t get carried away ;)..) Jokes apart, I really loved this email and with his permission I take the pleasure of pasting it below:

Subject: Revelations from a gtalk status bar msg..
Message:
A hectic day at work... thanks to the benevolent folks at the Electricity Board, for switching off power in the middle of the night and giving the mosquitoes an opportunity to sing me a lullaby... dozed off at around close to 3 AM in the morning, after battling with the test environments and doing deployments and configurations and even designing a pet rocket to be launched into space on the day of 2012 (lol.. just kidding...), woke up to the distant voices of mum.. who yelled.. "Kannaaaaaa time's 8... get up.."... dad timidly walked into my room just to re-iterate the fact that i was running late... finally after playing the waiting game for the Rain Goddess to be kind enough to cease "fire" (if you can call it that way, that is...) walked into work at 11 in the morning... then the work starts.. you bother developers.. developers bug you... help people with scripting.. clear doubts.. take unofficial project requests from people and get their work done as well... decided to take a break... (nope the smoke breaks werent helping either)...
logged into gmail, to check out what the spammers had to say to me today.. (they are the only ones who very caringly mail me everyday....) saw a link in your status message.. which said... "http://sak365.tumblr.com/" decided to check it out...
I must admit.. am impressed.. from an ordinary spilled over tea cup, to a fruit being voraciously gobbled up by a friend.. to a match box (yup the dil matchbox).. to the sign boards on your apartment entrance. .which said... "Stop complaining, someone stole the complaint register..".. lol (I found that really amusing).. you seem to have captured it all.. almost all of the funny moments of life.. which go so unnoticed thanks to the so called busy hectic work schedule... you seem to be getting better at it by the day sakina !!
Now that's made to start thinking as well.. have you just now switched on the "Eureka Eureka" bulbs and showed me a new hobby... lol.. will ponder over that for a couple of days, before i eventually bore myself out of the contemplation and decide to either take it or ditch it... hehehe..

Kudos !! That was a nice relaxing 30 mins of album walk.. if I could say so, that is...

Thanks & Regards
Krishnan Mahadevan

Thanks Krishnan, am flattered and honored and what not...You made my gloomy day bright! :-)