Wednesday, December 30, 2009

New Year Resolutions: Old and New

New Year's Resolutions seem to be very cliched with me. I make and break them each year and somehow the top 3 to-do's on my resolution list seem to be the same, year after year.

I always pledge to lose weight and invariably don't.
I always decide to crib lesser, yet I become more irritable each year.
I always resolve to pick up a new hobby which I forget within January itself.
I always think that this year I will sleep earlier all 365 days, but I keep adding 10 mins later to that month after month.
I also commit to travel a lot, care a damn and have a whole lot of fun each year. This I fulfill partly as the middle part remains buried somewhere.

So why the hell do I make these resolutions all the time? Why do I commit when I cannot make things come true within an year. So this year, I have decided not to make a single yearly resolution. I am giving myself two years to make my commitments come true. I think 700 days(approx, can't sit and count now) is a good time to realise what you pledge. So here goes my commitments for 2010 and 2011.

1. To gain weight...Yipee! Of course, that means to have a baby.
2. To lose the weight I gain with the baby. (we're thinking of two years after all. So having a baby and losing the weight can happen within 24 months, hopefully)
3. To learn Chinese language or any other lingo. This is a branch of the yearly resolution of picking up a hobby.
4. To visit the USA and win a jackpot in Vegas. This is also a sub part of the traveling and having fun resolution. The US is on my 'A' list of travel.
5. To get a marriage certificate. This features in the resolutions because I have been married 3 years now but still don't have a valid legal certificate. Who knows I will have a baby before the legal doc comes?
6. To buy Mohit a Yamaha from my own hard earned money.(This solves two purposes, it means my work is thriving and hubby also stays happy)

I haven't included the sleeping earlier and cribbing lesser part in the two year plan. This is for one sole reason: Mohit. This man cannot sleep on time because all the football in the world happens after midnight. And less sleep is the prime reason why women crib. So there we are: 6 commitments to myself for the next two years. Now I don't need to pick up any resolutions on 31st December 2010. I am not cliched and these five sound realistic enough to happen. So lets touch base on 31st December 2011 to see what I did and didn't do.

This is a nice read about top 10 New Year resolutions. Do click and read it. Your resolutions will be ditto as their top ten.

Happy New Years( to my few readers)

Saturday, December 26, 2009

From home to Race Course Road: Courtesy Google Maps and Rupal

Device: Google Maps on BlackBerry
Navigator: Rupal

This is all that was needed for Mohit to tow his car and his wife to the birthday party of the only triplets he knows. Christmas Eve was the first time I used BB Google Maps and realised it is efficient beyond comparison. Sure, people use google maps all over the world, but I'd never heard of any navigators doing it in apni dilli.

Enter Rupal, the navigator and the journey from Punjabi Bagh to Race course Road, across 15.4 kms of undiscovered territories was covered in 25 mins with no wrong turns and minimum stoppage time. The occasion was the 1st birthday of Mohit's friends triplets(sorry to address, Sanath, Aditya and Akul like this) but for nothing in the world would we have missed it. Leave alone, traffic snarls and no knowledge of the area.

For starters, both of us are amateurs when it comes to the Lutyens Delhi area, ask us to reach even the popular Gymkhana Club on our own and we'll struggle. So the PM house area was surely going to be a tough ask. But as we sat down in the car, a bright idea of following Google maps took shape. If the Europeans can do it, so can Indians.

Knowing my sense of direction, Mohit asked me twice if I was sure I could navigate him. Confident of Google maps but not so confident of myself, we set off with a cool 30 mins to spare( just in case we got lost). But mapper and navigator were bang on target and we reached the venue before one baby and mama did.

Road by road, turn by turn, Google Maps was really smart. I was truely impressed with the intricate details on Google map. I am sure it is updated regularly with heavy Commonwealth Games construction going on in that area. There was one time when I thought we'd lose track when I saw metro construction leading to a diversion, but there we were! A big blue dot on Google Maps telling me we were on track!

Kudos to Google Maps! And thanks in no small measure to Rupal,the tech savvy girl!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Meri Satta!!!!

While there isn't anything great happening in my life, there is something very important happening to the life of Mother India. She now has another child. Rather one of her kids has divided their nucleus into two and hence, there are two of them now. How cool/uncool is that? So from 28 states and seven UT's, there will now be 29 states. But who knows there might be more coming soon!!

One minister sat on a fast and got his Telangana. Do you think if I fast for one week, I'll get BansalPradesh. Well, that doesn't sound so good, na? What if I ask them to club Goa, Mumbai and the surrounding lovely places into one and name it Bansal Pradesh? It's sounding better already, isn't it? Life will be a party, day and night! And if I put my bargaining skills to test, maybe the whole of Goa, Diu, Mumbai and Ahmadabad might be mine.

Given a choice, I would want to annex the full Arabian Sea side coastline of India and name it LOR. Line of Rupal! Where there would be one Queen! Me, of course and there would be many tiny kingdoms, starting with Goa, Diu, Kochi, Mysore, Daman ruled by separate people. But they would all come and report back to their Queen, aka Rupal.

Do you think that is conceivable? Can I sit on a fast for a week and get my LOR/Bansal Pradesh? I am willing to settle for any of them as long as I am the ruler of my territory and they name it after me. Given the present state of things, I just have to pick a time and place for the fast, inform the media of my plans and put up banners asking for LOR/Bansal Pradesh and the state would be mine. Excellent, anticipating the best, I have listed out the various Governors of my small kingdoms. Read on:

Queen of LOR/Bansal Pradesh: Rupal

Governor of Ahmedabad: Mohit Bansal( We all know why)
Governor of Diu : Prateek Khemka( Lovely place for young boys, I've heard)
Governor of Goa : I would want that for myself, but keeping my ill emotions under control, this territory has been allotted to Sameera Agrawal(for obvious reasons)
Governor of Ooty : Apar Bansal(He can be closer to work)
Governor of Mumbai : Kunaal Mittal( He can be closer to home)Home is where the heart is!!! ;)
Governor of Lakshadweep:Ankur Mittal( He can keep honeymooning here)
Governor of Bangalore: Shweta Sood( Synonymous)
Governor of Kochi : Niti Gupta( She can turn the area from a nature town into a shopping arena)
Governor of Kanyakumari: Rupal(Sensibility prevails at the end)

In case you want to apply for the post of ruler of a territory in LOR/Bansal Pradesh, pls email me with complete Biodata and experience. For more openings, keep watching this space.

Till next time,

Queen R