10 books that left an impression on me

Tags

books, just me, reading

This is going around as a tag in FB and atleast two people have tagged me on this. And I can avoid any tags but I usually don’t avoid the book tags 🙂 But when I sat down to type this in my FB status, I felt that it probably I want to store this information somewhere. Somewhere I can go back to it later. Thought of a FB note but then it stuck me my why not the blog

So here it is 10 books that left an impression on me

1. Little Women by Lousia May Alcott : Jo March I love her she is passionate, she is outspoken what is about her that one doesn’t love. I first read this book when I was in college and I think I have read it 10 times after that. Its one of the books I hate to part with even if someone wants to borrow it for a couple of days
2. Pallace of illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni : The fact that the story of the great mahabharta has been told from the point of view of the most important woman of that tale, And I feel the book is deep and moving. There are many layers and a lot of grasp in the book. Also it really was the starting of,my love affair with Hindu mythology reading
3. The Room by Emma Donoghue : It made me sleepless for days, Jack lingered in my mind for months and I think it told me a lot about being a mom. Read my review here
4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak : I cried, I laughed and the book made me think. It made me think and it stayed with me for long after
5. We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver : I still shudder when I think of this book. If you haven’t read it, do it now
6. Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie : Its one of my favorite books of all time. My quest to know more about partition, more about my folks who have suffered through it
7. Hitchhickers Guide to Galaxy by Douglas Adams : The answer to life’s most important question and a towel 
8. One Cuckoo flew over the nest by Ken Kesey : Read it first way back in school, I don’t think I understood much of it but it still left an impact. I have read it many times post that and I think have learnt many a life lessons from it 
9. Any Rand (Atlas Shrugged, FountainHead) : I was in college, I worshipped those books at that time
10. Swami and his friends by R.K. Narayan : There is certain warmth and happiness around those books.

There are many many more books which have left an impression on me but here I chose the first 10 that came to my mind

So I tag anyone and everyone who reads this post and reads books 😉

Do a blog post or leave in comments what are the books that left an impression on you

 

 

The New Boss : A guest post

So last week I was having a discussion with a friend who said she has a new boss and she is so frustrated that she wants to vent out. I suggested writing and sending to me as a guest post. 

So here I hand it over to a dear friend who will talk to you about her new boss 🙂 

——————————

After 4 years of working with a boss who is located at a remote location, one tends to get very efficient,you know. You learn to multi task between writing reports, slogging over excel sheets, reading blogs, commenting all over, reading the news, even operating twitter once in a while. Midst all this, you learn to take out time to even answer official emails from official email id. Gmail, of course is on all day. I mean, both mails are equally important eh?

Midst talks of having a local manager which have been going on for 3 years, you just tend to take the latest guy coming over to join as manager a bit lightly. I mean he comes to meet the ‘team’ and you are sure he will be like the others and wont join anyways. Until one morning, you get a THAT mail that he is indeed joining next week.

And then…

1. The guy comes and shows off his seniority. Joined yesterday and today tells you are over- utilising hours without knowing the head or tail of the project you are working on!

2. Or he tells you that the report you have been churning out foe years now with a decent readership lacks depth and is inattractive. You wonder if he even read that report!!! And inattractive? Errrr…okay…whatever!

3. Or has this horrible habit of sneaking behind you (mind you, he wears shoes which make No sound at all) and peering into the desktop screen of yours, ugh!

4. Or keeps taunting about the fact that you are the ‘oldest in the system’ and will know everything!!!

5. Or takes up a portion of your work, works on 1/5th of the portion and tells you to just ‘wrap it up quickly’

6.or asks you to gather information on something but then tells you NOT to share it with the lead office but just send it to him!

7. Or expects you to be his admin assistant plus do your usual work!

Its irritating, bugging and frustrating. And surprisingly after a couple of weeks of ‘constantly only working’ you realise that your productivity has actually dropped!!! If you worked on 10 reports a week in addition to surfing through the virtual world, you are able to do only 7 reports now.

Not done I tell ya! I am wondering whats a good way to tell the folks on other side of the sea, that I would prefer working without a local boss…especially a character who is as fake as they come!!!

10 on Tuesday written on a Friday

Tags

blogging, life in general, parenting, personal, tattoo, ten on tuesday, This and that

Yes you may laugh at the title. But you know everyday I think I should write something here and everyday I come open the new post window and everyday I sit and think, what should I write. Its not that I don’t have topics to write about. I do I do infact many of them. The problem right now with me is of plenty. I have been away from this blog for soo long that I have a lot to write about and I don’t know where to start.

So I think a bullet point post, mentioning 10 things that have been on my mind and in my life would be a good way, before you see more of me here hopefully regularly enough.

So here is my  10 on Tuesday written on a Friday

1. Life has been full of travel the past couple of months. From 7 months of no travel to the last 3 months full of travel, its hectic but its happy hectic. So in the next few days expect a lot of travelogues namely Kolavara Heritage in Shimoga, Raju Guest House in Tirthan, Ride Inn at Manali, Country Club trip to Kandaghat and then finally Goa. Have also done a lot of work travel to Hyderabad in between that has helped me explore the food scene there. More about that too on the food blog
2. Ojas has joined a new school after a break of about 4 months and seems to be pretty happy with it. And while he was on the school vacation, he went off to my mum’s house in Delhi for about a month followed by my SIL’s house for about 2 weeks. So all in all we had some couple time to ourselves after about 6 years and I can’t tell you how different it felt. Good yes and empty yes too but all in very different and weird. I realised that I am always thinking in terms of three now, always thinking as a mom and to actually think as a couple I have to make an effort but I also found it very refreshing. Had forgotten what uninterrupted conversations felt like and what a delight it is to have them. Also what I learnt was that it really is difficult to adjust back to being a mum now 😉 but I am trying I am trying 😀
3. Also like I mentioned in the earlier post, we moved back to the old new house. And one of the highlight for me moving back has been the studio in the house. Baking Studio, a working space for me. It has a desk corner, an island cooking corner, couple of racks for ovens etc. It is not a HUGE space but big enough to be called an office. I have already have had about three workshops there and they all felt nice and cosy. So excited to bake, teach and make videos out of the studio. One by One
4. One of N’s closest cousins P, actually if you ask me they are more like brothers and he is one of the closest people to N, is getting married end of this month. He went and proposed to his girl in full Bollywood style and decided to get married 6 weeks from the date of the Bollywood proposal. As a result we all running around as headless chickens, trying to arrange everything and enjoying every bit of it. The madness, the shopping, designing the card, dresses to stitch, jewellery to match. So much fun. I missed part of this for my own sister’s wedding in October, one because I was so far and two because they pretty much did a very simple wedding. I am making up for that with this one 🙂
5. Robin Williams passed away, leaving each one of us shocked and sad. Sad because there wasn’t anyone like him. We all loved him, We all loved to love him. Shocked because none of us imagined the person behind those laughs was suffering from depression and could commit suicide. I actually wanted to write a whole post on him but then somehow never got around doing it. Let me tell you this, most people who suffer from clinical depression try hard to hide that from the world and we are experts in doing that. I say we because yes I am one of them. I suffer from clinical depression, have been and will be on medications for a long time. And I bet people who read my blog or know me  can’t guess that till I tell them. So be sensitive to people around you. Read up on depression and mental health and please stop using sad and depressed in the same way. One day, one day may be I will be brave enough to share the whole story here. Till such time, I will do with hugs
6. I set myself a 100 book reading challenge for this year. I have read about 36 till now. I know I am behind but the good thing which has happened this year is that most of the books that I have read have been really good. Will list my favorite ones soon. Till then tell me which are the books you have been reading? Which ones did you like? And which ones you hated?
7. The child is growing up fast, he has already joined 1st standard and each time I think of it I wonder wasn’t the day of his birth just yesterday? With him are growing his questions, arguments and logics. This is a strange stage of parenting, I am enjoying it the most but it’s also bringing out the worst in me. Testing my limits, specially the limits of patience. I am loving watching him develop a personality of his own but I am getting scared of the fact that the personality is sometimes looking like a mirror image of me. I love seeing him becoming the independent big boy but each time he does something on his own without even looking at us once, the heart skips a beat and I wonder if the empty nest is not so far away after all. I love his witty answers but hate them when the same are used as smart A&^ replies. Such a strange and lovely stage of parenting this and I am absorbing it all as it comes.
8. I have decided to give this blog a breath, a last hope of survival with the 30 days letter challenge, I saw it first when a friend shared it with me and then I saw Shail doing it and it’s something that excited me after so long. I am itching to write some of the letters, I just don’t want to write some of them. I know some will be intense and will evoke memories, but I have decided to it. Thought long and hard actually and realised some demons needed to be dealt with, some thoughts needed to be written. Hopefully some of them will be funny too 😀 So from Sep 1 for 30 days, hopefully you will have a letter each day to read here. A letter which holds a tiny part of my heart somewhere
9. Some pictures you take make you happy. Make you so happy that you share them everywhere. They might not be the best of the pictures but you like them and they make you happy. The cat stories is one such set for me. I found those cats so so so irresistably adorable that I can’t tell and I am not even a cat person. Go see for yourself
10. And I saved the best for the last, my tattoo 😀 Yes finally after years of planning and thinking and wondering I got a tattoo done. I got an excellent person who heard me out, designed my tattoo and inked it on my patiently. Check out her page here and I strongly reco her if you are in Bangalore. And here is what it looks like