Valentine day Special

It was 13th Feb, 11:30 PM in the night. Half an hour more to go for the mushiest day of the year, and I was (for a change) romancing with my laptop! I had no better thing to do :( and after a lot of farming and buzz-ing I finally started doing some cleanup work on my lappie. Went through all pictures, videos, docs, apps and what not. And then I landed into my "Movies" folder and decided to watch a romantic movie until 14th Feb came along!
The movie I chose to watch "P.S. I love you!" - What a perfect movie to watch! i had no idea about the movie and I was assuming it to be any normal romantic comedy like "Music and Lyrics" or may be "27 dresses". But this one, bloody hell, it got me tears! I have no idea if somebody could love someone so unconditionally! I had tears for the passion and the intensity of the love portrayed in the movie! The movie touched my heart so much that I just could not sleep until dawn! And the question kept arising "Can somebody love someone so much?" - Do I? Can I? Honestly, I don’t know!! I don’t want to know! The movie is a piece of fiction and I don’t really want to start comparing the love a person in the real world has for his/her wife/husband! But yeah, I must say, this movie got me thinking and got me sleepless too! Beautifully made and beautifully executed!  A superb movie to welcome “Valentines day” :-)

Republic day!

It's Republic Day today. Seems like just another Holiday! I didn’t even bother to go for the flag hoisting which happened in my apartment premises - feeling bad about it. However, when the National anthem started playing on TV I left all the work I was doing and stood there in front of the TV and started singing along! Felt so good! There is something in that anthem - Something which makes me happy, or may be proud?  Or maybe just so patriotic!
Well, this is not the way I used to celebrate this day always! During school it was mandatory to join the flag hoisting ceremony, and I never felt lazy to do that :) It was in Dec 1997 when my PT (Physical Trainer) Teacher at school randomly came to me and said "Sakina, would you go for Republic Day Parade?" and I replied "Miss, why now? Republic Day is in January only". She didn’t bother to answer and enrolled me for it.
For the next 1 month I was instructed to be at the Traffic Police headquarters (near Dasprakash, Chennai) at 5:30 am for a 1 hour March-Past Training. Initially, I was like, what have I got myself into? I should just back off! But my parents felt I should go ahead with this and my dad religiously dropped me at the headquarters every morning! As the days went by, the practice sessions became less painful and more fun. I had couple of friends from my school and met many more from other schools too.
As the big day neared, we started having rehearsals at the Marina Beach! The first day they took us there, they made us March from the Light house to Madras University (which is 2-3 KMs in distance). Our hands ached and our legs felt numb. The daily practice would hardly cover 500 meters of distance and this rehearsal really killed us! We had 2 more rehearsals to go before Jan 26th and in the 3rd rehearsal we were experts! We felt the distance to be shorter and the marching didn’t pain at all!
On Jan 26th, the beach was beautifully decorated; the Dias was setup near Gandhi Statue (It is not held there anymore I guess). That day we were at the venue by 4:30 am and kept waiting for the Chief Minister to arrive for the Parade to start. It was 10:30 when we finally saw signs of the Minister and we finished our parade by 12 in the afternoon. I was marching in the row facing the audience and when we turned to salute at the VIP's on the Dias I felt PROUD! Really PROUD! This was my best Republic Day Celebration I have ever had and I ever would have!
See, I told you, I have stories for everything! Btw, Happy Republic day to all in India and abroad!

It's self-daba time!

Its mid-year review time at work!! The time of the year when you are officially asked to spend time on what my friend calls it - “self-dabba”. This opportunity comes twice a year in my work place and all of us put as much hours as possible to make our self dabba look perfect! Well I wish it just ended with just a self-dabba process :( They make us write good and not-so-good things for everybody else on the floor too. If you did not know already, it’s easy to write good things about yourself and much easier to write not-so-good things about others!! :) - It's human nature yaar! But, during this time all of us go against this natural behavior and are asked to write the exact opposite in detail!! Hmph!
So, for the past week, I have been writing a lot about my co-workers. It took me lots of time and effort to actually dig all my mails and come up with "fair" reviews. A lot of us think "kuch bhi likh de yaar, ye thodi na self review hain" – That’s the exact problem!!! Because it's not about me, I cannot take the liberty to just blabber what I believe I did over the past 6 months. The person for whom I am writing is probably much better than me and I would have to kill-my-ego, kill-my-attitude, kill-my-fears, kill-my-straight-forwardness and write a diplomatic, logical, crisp, justifiable, reliable review. What a huge responsibility it is...!!
Well, after finishing my co-worker review, there was another bomb dropped in my mailbox; A request from my manager to give feedback about him. I think it’s a good thing to give "Upward feedback", but it is equally bad too. This is not my first time I am giving the upward feedback but when it was, I thought, "arey wah, yaha pe toh manager ki bhi waat laga sakte hain", then my brains replied saying "yeh toh locha hain re, yeh toh mere big boss ke paas jayega" - I have to kill all those things I mentioned above 3 times more to come up with a small paragraph about my manager! Luckily, I didn’t have to struggle this time, I am pretty new to my new manager and vice-versa, so very less to write and lots more to avoid :)
Phew! Now I can finally sit and do what I love to do the most - self-dabba!! I wish it would come as easily  as blabbering in this space! Wish me luck!! :)