Palying cards

Happy Diwali friends!

Vajan badjayega agar khaoge mitai gheewali
Lekin kya farakh padtha hai, roz, roz todi aati hai Diwali

Khao piyo aish karo said Sallu Bhai on Bigg Boss 6. I have already had sweets overload. My friend Anu, had made a Tresleche cake for Shekar and I for our 20th anniversary. Enjoyed it with a few friends on Sat. She is such a fab baker! I am the luckiest person, who can taste so many different cakes from her.

 Tres Leche Cake



 A yummy slice!

I bought some fresh sweets from a restaurant called "Hot breads" which has newly opened here. I feel so nice, when I shop there. So many Indians come here to eat all kinds of delicacies. It feels like I am in India. Love this time of the year. There is a festive ring in the air, and everybody seems busy. Had a busy weekend again! I am participating in yet another skit folks. This is for a friend's 50th B'day this Saturday. I am aslo taking part in a dance, for the same event. So all through the weekend, I was busy with the practice. Feel guilty that I cannot spend enough time with the kids. I will make it up in Decmeber. On BB6 Sidhu paajis exit was sad, but the show needs more spice, so it might actually work out. Can't wait to see what the Big key has in store. Bollywood is getting ready for a HUGE day tomorrow. Jab tak hai SRK! I hope all goes well for him. It is very rare that a movie is opening on a weekday. Song of the day is from JTHJ.

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Unlike my North Indian friends, for me Diwali is not associated with playing cards. But today, as my friends are looking forward to a good time of some competitive card game, I am reminiscing my college days with my family back in India. My Grandma and Grandpa had 12 children of their own. Every night after dinner, they used to unwind with a game of cards when their children were well fed and in bed. Their favorite game was "Bridge". To think that my uneducated Grandma could actually put up a strong fight with Grandpa on an intelligent game. Wow! she was indeed an amazing woman! She just did not have the opportunities to prove herself. Unfortunately for her, my Grandpa died early and she had to stay with her children. She would distribute her time evenly among all her kids. I think she liked coming to our house (my Dad is her 2nd son). One of the reasons being, we all liked to play cards. Two of my cousins went to the local engineering college and would visit us, when Grandma was with us. So we had a big team of card lovers. My Mom, would not play, but would cook some delicious food for dinner along with the domestic help, who was so kind. Man! I miss those days. Our favorite game to play was '28'. I was always on Grandma's team. The cousins formed another team and my Dad and my brother made the third team. We would play for hours together. Our decibel levels were so high, our neighbors must have been cursing us. After college , the first time I played cards was a couple of months ago with few of our friends here. I am trying to understand the game of poker. It's not rocket science I know, but the sequences are so confusing to me. Lets hope I pick it up quickly before my love for cards starts to disappear. I am not sure, if it was my Grandmas enthusiasm, or being with family or the anticipation of yummy food after the card game, that I am mesmerised by, at this point, but I sure miss those times. Shub ratri my friends!

Fakebook - Live!

Kem cho friends? Another fantastic weekend later, back to the 8-5 grind. Finally performed our skit "Fakebook" on stage LIVE! for a very supportive audience of 400 + people this past Saturday. It was well received. There is a first time for everything correct? I now have a new appreciation for actors.  I have posted the video below. Check us on You Tube. Don't forget to comment.

For the people who have seen the YouTube video from my previous posts, in the version below, we have added 2 more characters and some more dialogues. See if you can recognize them. Today is election day here in the US. All people were busy casting their vote to their favorite candidate all day. I did too this morning! Had to wait in a loooong line for a hour and a half, just to get to the booth. Because it is the 21st century, I picked the electronic booth as my choice to enter my vote. After standing in another line for what seemed like 30 minutes, I noticed that there was only one electronic booth. All the others were paper booths. Really? I used the paper ballot in the end as I had to be at work. Some students used the long lines to collect money for a wounded warriors. Good idea. Anything for a good cause. Now, the whole nation is glued to the TV for the results. May the best candidate win! Haven't watched BB6 for a couple of days now. Got to catch up soon! Read that Starbucks India has an item called Konkani Twist on their menu. The article said “Konkani Twist” (90 rupees) looks like a cheese puff, but longer. It’s basically flaky croissant pastry filled with spicy mutton and twisted. Definitely trying it next time I am in India!  Got to go now folks! Not in the mood to research a new topic. Will write again soon.

Leaving all my dear friends with this beautiful song from the movie Izzat from 1968. Kya feelings express kiya hai! Shub ratri folks!

Good advice, Bad advice

Hi friends. Happy Karva Chauth to all my North Indian friends! Hopefully the moon came out on time and all of you could break your fast. First of all, I am sorry, I spoke too soon regarding Karishma from BB6. I was sad to learn that her Dad passed away and she had to leave the house. No wonder, she seemed a little disconnected on the show. May she find strength in dealing with her loss. Looking forward to the grand entry of BIG mouth Dolly Bindra, pretty Shweta Tiwari and sexy Mink. "Ab aayega maza". Oh, oh and today is the Badshah's B'day. Wishing SRK a very happy B'day and a lot of success for "Jab tak hai jaan". Also, did you all think that Ash deserved the second highest French Civilian award "Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters" for her contribution to cinema and promoting Indo-French cooperation? What contribution? There were so many more deserving actors like, Tabu, Rani Mukerjee, maybe even Priyanka Chopra (although I don't like her that much). Anyways, with a name like Aishwarya meaning wealth, born as a Scorpio, success is just a formality for her. Song of the day is this intense song from my favorite SRK movie, Veer Zaara.  SRK looks so handsome in this movie. He makes us believe that true love does exit. He makes you want to be in love. Uffffff!

  

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Advice is like opinions. Everyone’s got one. Over years I’ve gotten some good advice and some bad advice, advice I wish I’d taken and advice I wish I’d never heard, advice that made no sense at the time and advice that was like one of Oprah’s light bulb moments.

Best advise to me – The best advice is advice that makes a difference in our lives. Many times the advice we receive, and find useful, even life-changing, is full of words of wisdom that can be of benefit to others as well. The best advice that I received was from my gynaecologist when I was pregnant with my second son. I used to be paranoid that I am going to miscarry my baby. I would call the doctor every second day. One day, when I was in the final trimester of my pregnancy, I remember that I could not fall asleep, as I was sure, my baby's heart beat had stopped and I felt that the baby was not moving. I made an appointment with the doctor the next morning. The patient doctor sat me down and told me "don’t worry about the things that are beyond your control. You are not going to achieve anything". That night I slept like a baby. I went on to deliver a beauty baby boy who is 11 yrs old today. To this day, I try to follow what that doctor told me. That reminds me, I haven't seen him for more than 2 years now. I should make an appointment. For general women's health of course.

Worst advice to me  – Have you ever taken someones advice and it backfired? Well, I have. But it did not exactly backfire, it did not make sense when I tried it. Someone told me, "let babies sleep in the crib and not in between parents right from day one of their birth". I tried it as an experiment with my second born.Yes, even after I went through so much during the pregnancy. What was I thinking? Poor child kept on crying the whole night. My heart was ripping apart everytime I heard his cry, but I did not want to give up as that person had told me that it was normal for a child to behave like that. If I give up now, then he will sleeping with us for a long time. I tried this for 3 days in a row. Did not work for me. Neither he nor I slept well. So, I decided to bring him back between us. And it worked so well. I had the satisfaction of bonding with the baby. We transferred him to his elder brothers bedroom when he was 2 and  to his own when he was 4. All is well that ends well now. There was no need to rush the process, in my opinion.