Now time for some action

I was tagged by Reflections many moons ago to do the gender tag. You gotta spill 10 facts about you which do not fit the stereotype of your gender. And I read some posts executing the tag..and boy o boy some girls simply kick a**!! Phuh! Some had climbed trees, others were gadget freaks, and many many more. I always prided myself in you know being a little 'non girly' (maybe Kajol's rendition of "ayeee mujhe ladki mat bolna haan" in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai glamorised the idea so much more that I tended to believe more in it. Sadly KJo made her ultimately become very "ladki" type before she could charm SRK back :( Damnnn stereotypes :(  )
But now as I sit to do this tag, and I had been thinking about it for quite a while, and I am still fumbling to find mere 10 facts about myself which would not fit the gender stereotype :(. Here is a me who loves house work, simply adores cooking, wont step out without a dab of lipstick and eye liner, splashes perfumes like egyptian mummies (a college mate wrote that about me in the slam book, still aint sure whether to take it as a comment or a compliment :S) andddddd I am rotten when it comes to numbers :( (Maths is just so not my cup of tea) . So much so, I am shaped like a pear, that I even look better in the "feminine" Indian attires and skirts than in trousers and the like.
Well, with this sad story as the background, let me start my feeble attempt at making through this tag.

1. Ahem, I am logical.
Long time ago, I had heard in a session back in school, that "As men have reason women have intuition". I would not champion the veracity of the statement, but if that is some general wisdom, then I would have erred against my gender. Cos I buy nothing but logic and reason. You can even make me take 3 steps back after seeing a black cat, but give me one solid, logical reason. Emotional hulabaloo, religious sentimentality, superstitious mores - nothing, none of them can make me do something I am not convinced to do. You gotta convince me with reasoning only. Thats why I prefer Hercule Poirot so much more than Miss Marple :)
2.I am the one who goes to the fridge to fetch the tomato and then spends a good 10 minutes wondering at the open coldness thinking what did I come to get there in the first place.
3.I cannot gossip. Talking about someone is more of information per se. So and so got married to so and so - cool. That person changed a job - awesome. That aunty did that - too bad. It kinda just ends there. Between my friends and family, its more like whats happening in our lives, analysing stuff and discussing some major events. Swapping in laws stories and husband idiosynchrasies and backbiting colleagues or school mates just does not come naturally. There was one time I spoke some 30 minutes with my friend about project management and my mom once took 15 minutes to explain hawala to me. Go figure.
4.I love the color blue! Black comes a very close second,nearly tied neck to neck with red.
5.I can drive and 'park' the car with dexterity :)
6.I do not understand flowers. As in, I love seeing someone holding a bunch of flowers for me and even like holding the same for sometime. But then I dont know what to do. They seem like such a waste. I feel they should be left to adorn the plants they are supposed to :(.
7. In the same vein,I hate teddy bears and other stuffed toys. The only thing that strikes me when I see any stuffed toy is the humungous amounts of dust they can trap and the lovely sneeze sessions they can give! (A teddy once made me sneeze so much, I was nearly paralyzed huh!)
8.Fascinated by the yellow metal - thats so not me. "Mujhe sone ke kangan chahiye" is something K will never ever hear from me. The love affair women have with gold completely beats me.

Two more to go,I am inching towards the finishing line :D
9.I am a D.I.Y person. I would not wait for K to reach for stuff in the highest shelves but would prefer putting a chair and elevating myself to reach the thing I want. Same goes for stuff gone kaput be it a telephone chord or the ipod.
10. I HATE(underline hate, make the font real big,scream  it out from the roof tops) Love stories. Yessssssssssss......is this a winner or what. Reading/viewing love stories gives me an uneasy feeling in the stomach and at the end of the exercise I am so tired, I dont even get sleep. So please keep away from the DDLJs(I like it just cos its an SRK movie), the You have got mails and Sleepless in Seattles. What makes me feel good? Liberating movies like Ab tak Chappan, Black, Kill Bill (Oh how I love that movie!) and even something as slapstick as American Pie would also do. I have read 3 Mills and Boons and they are some waste of time. Long long time back, I migrated to more realistic stuff.

I did itttttttttttttttttttt. Now I would like to tag Renu, Ashu,Satish, Shylu and Abhishek (Bahut time ho gaya tumhe tag kiye hue *evil* )

The last lap

When I was back in Chennai,the last week with my parents and sister were one of the most fulfilling and fun filled ones. It was going to be a long time before we would be together again, so we decided to make the fullest of it.

My mom comes to Chennai and I don't take her to T Nagar for shopping is just not done. So we had the customary trip to T Nagar which resulted in quite some heavy shopping. I tend to loose my patience with such stuff but then anything for mommy dear. Along with this we also had the trips to make to K's office which was far far away from humanity. I had to make 4 trips to the office to get all the travel related stuff done,and boy I did notch some kms in my car!Again, it was going to be quite a while before I drove the beauty again, so I was not AT ALL complaining about the time spent with her. Now also even though I have the most ravishing cars serenading on the streets, my heart longs for the Red Beauty parked in our apartment back in Chennai. :(

By the grace of God, my mother in law and mom get along like a house on fire. (Touchwood) Ironically there are times when the ladies gang  up against me! This time too was no different, with both of them pampering me when I got tired of running here and there, helping me a lot with the packing, suggesting what to take and what to skip and equally reprimanding me if I lost patience. It was also heartening to see, both of them cook side by side. Mil making the south Indian delicacies and mom cooking for her finicky husband :). They also did chores together, mil putting the washing machine,mom drying the clothes and folding them, cleaning up some of the mess the packing used to create and all the other pesky work that creeps up. I really miss the two moms I have :(

My dad was way too busy those days. There was the Soccer World Cup, Wimbledon, Twenty Twenty between England and Australia if I am not mistaken and some other series. So while the whole house zip zapped and zoomed, my dad was the stationary figure, completely glued to the TV. The one time he moved muscles was during the morning walks. And I was not the one to miss the walks with him. All the while, I used to walk all alone and with the ipod plugged in. This time it was going to be with my dad. It brought back old memories of when I was in school and dad, sis and I used to go on long walks. Suprisingly, my sister, not one to wake up before 0800 also jumped in to the prospect of walking even though it entailed getting up a 0600! Three of us had some enjoyable walks around Besant Nagar and I will always cherish those mornings.

The gang of girls went out for a dinner one night which will always remain one of my favourite outings. We went to a place called "Once upon a Pirate" near the Besant Nagar beach and had a splendid evening there. We gorged on some delicious food and took all the time in the world chatting about this and that. Dad decided to put up at home itself since,he did not want to budge an inch from the TV front.

Mom,sis and I also spent a lot of time walking in the evenings to the nearby stores. We used to spend the evening running small small errands, someday for the rolling pin, for safety pins some other day,some evening it was a trip to the parlor for some pampering while some other time it was a temple visit to thank chubby God.We just needed an excuse to step out of the house and do things together. Towards the fag end of my days in Chennai, the times became more action packed. There was purchase of new luggage, some clothes for K and other some other knick knacks. The list that was made was big, but it was awesome fun, checking off things which had already been purchased, striking out stuffs which we felt were not necessary, weighing the suitcases and then again rearranging the stuff all over again. There were some things which I wanted my sister to take back since she would be able to use them atleast. There was fervent packing of those items as well. Now as I reminisce, there are so many many instances I can think, when we rolled over laughing over some silly joke, got all hyper on some instance, raised voices over some difference. But one common thread that ran through all the 5 days the 5 of us were there, we were in it "together". Everyone was thinking in the same direction. I thank God for making me pass through the difficult times that were and in the end showing me how much my entire family rallied for me and K. Touchwood. And Thank God!