The Maid Madness

A lot of us here use the services of a house maid in order to cope up with household activities. Maids are these days an inevitable part of our lives. Most of the households have job-going family members and rely on the maid to take care of the household work.Throughout my life, I have always seen one maid or the other at home. During my childhood, mom taught me to call the maid with respect as "khala" (Khala in Urdu means aunt). I have never had problems calling them that, as they were extremely caring and loving. I had my favorite "Mahboob khala" who took care of me for God-knows-how-many-years. She was/is my favorite khala till date. I have never seen such a loving maid ever in my life. I do not remember why she ever left our house, but yeah, she still keeps in touch with us.
Gone are the days when you actually emotionally bonded with a maid, that is a long gone era. Now times have changed..Maids hardly turn up to work, and if they do, they disappear within no time!They demand money as if the money plant in the house has grown in kilometers! They have charges based on the locality you live in, if you are unfortunately staying in an "IT" area - you are dead! The maids there not only ask for a fortune, they have a very low retention too! The worst part! We making them a priority and "adjusting" our priorities and work based on their availability, see how:
- You try to be caring and make tea for her - she will come to work during lunch time!
- You Wanna go for movie? - Only after 3, the maid comes late and leaves only by 1.
- You Wanna take your mom to the doc? - OK, send her alone, somebody needs to be at home to welcome the maid!
- You Wanna go grocery shopping? - let's do it in the weekends! (the maid can help out in some vegetable cleaning)
- You Wanna go out of town? - give the keys to the neighbour and make sure the maid comes!

If all of this is not enough, there are more irritating things about them; it is their creativity with excuses! If you have dealt with a maid before, you would have heard of any/most of these:

- You are unwell and desperately want your maid to come - she wont turn up, and the excuse next day - Both my kids were at home and wanted to spend time with me!
- You have guests coming home and specifically request your maid to come early - she wont come! why? Cos her husband was at home and didn't let her come (what!?!)
- You call the maid's cellphone (Thanks to Ambani, every tom, dick and harry has a phone) - she doesn't answer, why? she forgot to recharge her phone balance!
- You are ready to fire her cos she has not come for a week - she comes back with the excuse that she went to kovil cos her husband was extremely unwell. (For a week??)

Bottom line, I am just too frustrated with my "beloved" maid and I had to vent it out here! My weekends would have been lot more peaceful and simple to manage if not for her! God bless her, her kids, her husband, her sister, her neighbour, her whatever for making my life so challenging!!!

365 days of Awesomeness

It was back in July 2009 when a good friend of mine came about the idea of Blogging a photo a day - a 365 Picture blog; A blog which would capture all the funny, lovely, witty, classy, touchy and unforgettable moments all through the year. It’s been a year now since that idea, and little did I know that I would actually successfully capture 365 beautiful days in my blog!

Today my 365 blog celebrates a year and I have absolutely no words to express how happy and satisfied i feel! This blog had promised the world that it will live for a year and live to the fullest! And it has kept the promise! :)

On this emotional moment (nautanki sak!), I would like to take up few lines on this post to thank all the lovely people, animals and objects who made an appearance in my life and my blog! If not for all of you, my 365 days would have been just another year passing by.

Thank you dear friends, colleagues, family members, acquaintances for the sweetest smile and patience to pose for the snaps: Vasumathi, Subash, Jathin, Rashi, Mohit, Mummy, Daddy, Vishnu, Amma, Appa, Teeks, Ramya, Arun R, Deepa, Abirami, Naag, Senthil, Mariya, Kalyan bro, Ramya (ex-colleague), Preethi, Bajji and Shyama, Aji, Pavi, Mani, Arun (from Amazon.com), Ankit, Krish, Ravi Shankar, Mani, Gajendra, Shoaib, Yunus Uncle, Razia Aunty, Kindle QA Team, Digital QA team, Belin Giles, Gayathri, Rekha, Sudha, Karthiga, Praveen, Amitesh, Pranav (kid), Kiruthika, Anuj, Lata Aunty, Anirudha, Chandana, Nagaraj, Deepa and Pradeep, Bakul and Poorni, Vishnu's College Friends, Hyundai Sales Person, Shwetha Ramesh, Sunita

Thank you to all the non-living objects, the materialistic stuff which appeared on my blog:

- The selective cars: Vicky's car, Hyundai i20 (and all the scratches), Honda Civic, Subash's Car, Praveen's car.

- The "in" gadgets and the "Smart" phones in town: Benq HD Monitor, Kindle, my iPhone, my Blackberry.

- The yummy food and beverages served by the loved ones: Basundi, Pepsi, Sprite, Chocolates and their wrappers, HSB tea, Brownies, Choco bar, Mango Pudding, Pickles, Kulfi, Mysore Paak, Gulab Jamun, Pasta,

- The awesome India discovery: Kabini, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Pondicherry, Bangalore

- The movies from Bollywood, Kollywood and Hollywood which kept me entertained: Jab we met, 3 Idiots, P.S I love you, Chance Pe Dance, Paa, Karthik Calling Karthik, Ek Vivah Aisa bhi, Harry Potter, Love Aaj Kal, How to Lose a guy in 10 days, VTV, Ice Age 3, Monsters vs. Aliens, Wake up Sid, There's Something about Mary, Rajneeti, Raavanan.

- The various "hang outs" which I visited numerous times and spent some great time: CCD, McD, KFC, Fruit shop @ Greams road, Mocha, Don Pepe, Parfait 3, Gangotree, Pizza Hut, Little Italy, Donuts inc, Bela Ciao.

 Last but not the least - To myself - for appearing in the most number of posts on the blog: D

 P.S - The blog is still alive and kicking, but just catching up on age ;)

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 ;)