The Voice of Truth

Oh, what I would do to have the kind of faith it takes
To climb out of this boat I'm in
Onto the crashing waves
To step out of my comfort zone
Into the realm of the unknown
Where Jesus is
And he's holding out his hand

But the waves are calling out my name
And they laugh at me
Reminding me of all the times
I've tried before and failed
The waves they keep on telling me
Time and time again
"Girl, you'll never win,
you'll never win."

But the voice of truth tells me a different story
The voice of truth says "Do not be afraid!"
And the voice of truth says "This is for my glory"
Out of all the voices calling out to me
I will choose to listen and believe the voice of truth
'Causes Jesus you are the voice of truth
And I will listen to you.


Voice of truth - Casting Crowns

Don't have much to say, I miss God and me. Like the song says...what I would do to have the kind of faith it takes to climb out of this boat I'm in! I wish the voice of truth was louder.

Sydney Week 2

My entire week was spent working so I really haven't had the time to really see the city. And my head's been swimming with ideas - work ideas, not fun ideas so I don't really have anything blog worthy. So I guess I'll just have to stick to pictures.

I've shown off pictures of my place, now time for general Sydney pictures. I took this picture from the park yesterday. The tall building to the left of the blue glass thing is where I work..
Finally got a couple of free days, went cruising along the Sydney Harbour. I was freezing, and my Australian friends think it's too warm to move. Years of living in mainland India has diminished my tolerance to low temperature. The harbour - with the Australian Lotus Temple (:P) (as my sister calls it) in the background.
Andddddd.....I've met quite a few interesting fellas, like this one! :D
Sorry no kangaroo pictures yet. I'm planning a trip to the zoo very soon. Till then, this picture of a wallaby will have to suffice. In fact, I like wallabies better than I like kangaroos, they're way cuter.

Sydney & loving it!

I'm loving Sydney etc etc and more etcs. I already got some pictures, bad ones but I have lots of time to take more pictures later...I have a really cool apartment - all fancy shmancy, way up on the 68th floor! View is amazing, needless to say.
And the view from my bed with the curtains drawn -
I took that from my bed with my head on my pillow :)

But it gets a little lonely - all the way up here when everything's over and you're sitting in your room with the city spread out in front of you. And it's just me and Mr. Mistofelees, so I go around taking pictures of us...
Close up of Mr. Mistofelees -
He's travelled a lot, first all the way from Sydney to Hyderabad, and now all the way from Hyderabad back to Sydney. He's not really great company but I couldn't leave him there since there were wolves prowling around trying to steal him all the time.

It's after 1 AM, the wind is howling outside. I'm dying for a smoke, however, this is also a non smoking apartment :( Guess I have no choice but to come home with cleaner lungs...

I'm still jetlagged, and currently bored.

Okay, heading off to bed for another fun and exciting night with Mr. Mistofelees.

[Thanks for staying to talk Scott]

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Suitcases & airports again

Leaving for Sydney tomorrow. Am not very excited about it right now, and there was a time when I hated Hyderabad so much that I'd grab every chance I could to get out of it - trips to Delhi, regular, impulsive weekend trips to Bangalore, I'd do anything. And it's kind of ironic that now that I really love the place and the people, I have to leave, albeit for a short while. But then, c'est la vie. I hope to have fun in Sydney, Sohna says the streets are crawling with hot men :-)

Will be blogging regularly with nice pictures I hope. And in the meantime, I'll post this picture because I really like it, it's the cutest thing ever. The guys checking out an UFO :-) Drinking tea after church, I looked up and saw a stationary shiny, silver ball in the sky, which looked almost like a star. I pointed it out to the guys, and they were looking at it, trying to figure out what it was, long after I lost interest in it.
I wonder what it really was though...

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Avian Invasion

The last week was a week of extreme emotions and mental stress and strain, but there was only one happening of note.

I got a big cooler on my balcony, which means the corner behind the cooler remains relatively untouched. I decided to clean it one day and look what I found!

Pigeon eggs! And on the floor too.

They're cute and all that but the mother and I don't get along very well. I respect her space and I expect her to do the same but nothing of the sort. It starts cooing from daybreak, and I'm a light sleeper. And I thought pregnant humans were the worst, but you should see this pigeon. She's jumpy. Plus she thinks she owns my balcony. And it's not like it's a big balcony, but still, I thought there's ample space for the two of us to cohabitate peacefully.

However, she's already given me several minor heart attacks. When I say she's jumpy, I mean she's easily startled and she also startles people. For example, it's morning, the sun's coming up, and I wake up feeling great and I want to step outside and breathe in that early morning cool, fresh air. I open my door and inadvertently startles her. And she jumps! Out at me with a loud flutter and flapping of wings and feather all over my face! Or I've had a relaxing night staying home reading, nice and warm and happy in my bed. I get up to close my window and again - sudden loud flapping jumping at you from the dark. Believe me, it's not a pleasant experience particularly when you've just finished reading 'The Classic Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories.'

But the last straw was when she decided to 'cross over'. I'd gotten home late, and I was just out of the shower - feeling all fresh and daisy-like. It was around 1:30 AM, and I was not sleepy so I decided to sit out on the balcony and write a bit. I opened the door and again, she apparated out of the dark with her usual clamor and after making me jump out of my skin, proceeded to invade my territory by blithely flying into my room.

Talk about 'avian flew'!

I, naturally, chased it. It flew around, perched on my my desk, my chair, even jumped on to my bed and dawdled around on my clean linen. I was afraid it would get hurt so I turned off the ceiling fan (I know, I know. I'm such a saint :P) Thinking back, I wonder why I bothered because I don't think I would have minded very much if it had died. The fat bird headed towards the window and hung on to my flimsy curtains with its sharp claws. That made me involuntarily scream "Don't!"

After 2 AM and I still had the pigeon in my room. I was sweating and messy. The bird shat mid-flight several times - out of fright, I suppose. I had cleaned up bird poo off my floor several times already. And the bird was now hiding under my bed, and I was tired, and distressed, and felt like a failure. ''What kind of a woman am I that I can't even catch a pigeon?! I'm hopeless". Too late to wake watchman up. However, Amrita, my roomie, woke up in the commotion and came in to help.

She said 'pigeons can't see in the dark, so maybe if we turn off all the lights, it would fly out on its own' (??? Go figure). It didn't make sense but I was willing to try anything. So we turned off all the lights and waited. It didn't budge. Not a peep.

Seeing it was not helping, she again suggested we turn on the lights in the dining and living room, and leave it dark in my room, and leave the door to the living room open, so that light from the other rooms would flood into my room and kind of like 'wash or flood out' the intruder. So we ran about switching on dining room and living room lights. And waited. Still no peep.

I resorted to having light in my room. Clapping a bit. Stamping on the floor. That roused rogue pigeon yet again. It came out from its corner under the bed and panicked and flew around and fell and then flew again like a beast possessed. At last, it landed on my dressing table. Creams and lotions went flying and clattering and crashing to the floor. I was so tired by then I just stood and screamed "Stop, stop, not there!"

(I felt stupid about that part later but at the time it made perfect sense to tell a pigeon to stop doing something.)

I will also admit that I was not completely 'unscared.' It would perch somewhere where I couldn't reach it and look at me. And I swear I could see 'emotions' - human-like emotions reflecting in those beady eyes. It kept on giving me long, meaningful, reproachful glances. Making me feel like a female Judas. I didn't know pigeons were capable of such meaningful looks. I also saw it was frightened. Its chests were heaving. But damn, I was scared too. Her chests were not the only ones heaving for pete's sake. Why was I feeling guilty?!

And then, in the midst of all these glances and warring with eyes, it headed towards the dressing table yet again, thrashing around and knocking things over and down to the floor again. Then in the midst of the havoc, I saw my new Elizabeth Arden perfume fall to the floor. As if in a trance. I LOVE that perfume, and it's expensive! That was it. Enough was enough.

I marched out, re-entered with a broom and an old jacket and started chasing it with renewed vigour. It ran for dear life (note: Ran. Not flew. Guess it was too tired to fly). Scampered. Scurried. But it was not so adept at running like it was at flying. It ran straight into a corner. Cornered, it turned back to face me meekly. I felt so powerful at that moment. It was meek and mild and it had surrendered. To me. And I loomed over it with my weapons - old jacket and broom in hand. Yes, I loomed. Like a true victor.

(Even though I was the vanquisher and not the vanquishee, I had to take a shower again and change my sheets before I could retire peacefully to bed - not terribly becoming things to do for a surviving warrior. I am not sure but I believe pigeons could easily be bearers of a whole sort of deadly fleas and diseases.)

I mercilessly threw the jacket over it like a net, preventing it from creating any further chaos. I picked it up and discarded it outside, hastily locking the door after it. I made it a point to leave it on the kitchen balcony, hinting to it that I did not want it to return to my side of the house.

I saw it hovering near the eggs the next day. I checked several times last night, but the eggs were alone. Besides being dumb, it's also a bad mother.

Now I'm stuck with two pigeon eggs. I'm thinking of putting them up for auction, maybe even adoption on the net. eBay maybe. If anyone's interested, let me know. Price on request.

-

Tasty Bear Recipe

..is not here, it's here. Only a day old but you'll still find fun stuff like bear recipe of the month and sage sayings to light your way in this dark maze we call life :-)

Now on to more serious stuff - messy, serious stuff but I will not make any attempt to sort, sift, organize or anything of the sort. I'll be mean and dark and vindictive - full of negative energy today. I will focus only on the dark forces.

* Darky 1: I hate the TV people - for treating us like morons by subjecting us to ridiculous commercials and parading siliconed-botoxed-collagened-restylaned females as your average girl-next-door and making the rest of us real girls-next-door look like circus clowns.

I have never been fond of the idiot box. I spend maybe roughly an hour or two sitting in front on it in an entire week, and yet I always find a million reasons to hate it more each time. The fact that they actually believe that subjecting us to dumbass jingles like 'Sip the coffee, lick the cream' (Worse than Kindergarten nursery rhymes!) would *actually* con us into buying their stuff is beyond me.

I do admit some are witty and entertaining, even persuasive and coaxing. But it's a sad fact there are more crappy ones than fun ones. In fact, I think I'll make a list of the ones I really hate, all over the place and unprofessional but heartfelt:

1. Sip the coffee, lick the cream. Tra-la-la. Coffee cream gets on the tips of their noses and they lap it all up. Would've been better if they'd shown people licking it off each other's noses instead of their own. (Get up and make self tea.)

2. Nivea whitening cream/lotion (?) for men. (Change to channel 5 and watch National Geographic in Hindi.)

3. All Hritik Roshan commercials. That look, the amused half-smile in the corners of his mouth, the suavity... Overdone, and he's not steak is the problem. I like my steak overdone but it about stops there. From the looks of it, I believe he thinks he's too sexy for his shirt, his cat, or whatever. Can NOT watch anything with the guy in it. (Switch to channel 7 and watch a Telegu religious program. Or close eyes.)

4. The really bad Shampoo ad of Bipasha Basu & John Abraham. That was so bad it was almost amusing. 'It's hot' 'It's not' 'You're hot' 'I'm not' - something along those lines. (Admire hair in mirror during this commercial.)

5. All Airtel commercials. (Make phone call.)

Hutch used to be fun. I'm wary about the new Hutch-is-now-Vodafone ones though. Haven't seen anything interesting so far.

* Darky 2: Yahoo's acquisition of MyBlogLog. I couldn't change my profile pic for a while after Yahoo engineers tampered with it. Any disruption is always unwelcome.

* Darky 3: The Wisconsin shooting. It's sad and all that, and there's no way anyone can justify what the killer did. But as bad as this may sound, I wonder how good it must've felt to shoot someone who just called you a worthless pig.

* Darky 4: Misual is getting boring. It used to be a hot spot for lively, heated, and even once in a while, intelligent discussions. Now it's become a place where someone can't speak his mind or say what he thinks without a whole sinister bunch ganging up against him and shutting him up with a sharp reprimand about how he should not think/talk/theorize/make unchristian-like judgments about other people et al. Very SSS-like. Not at all conversation-inducive. Well, it's true that people don't necessarily cower and curl up in the corner and die after such a rebuke. They still talk. But it's boring to read through a discussion where 8 out of every 10 comments are over-conventional, self-righteous, precaution-packed, and too politically-correct...

A word a day -

For one weird reason or the other, we all have this thing about words. There are some that you’re just really fond of, and some you’d want to be shot first for before using it or having to hear it being uttered. And yes, weird, weird reasons.

Like for example, I suddenly asked Shirley one day what her most favorite word was. ‘Possum’, she said without hesitation. I asked her why. She hemmed and hawed a while before admitting that she doesn’t have a clue why. ‘Maybe it’s the two S’s’ she said. Seems she likes words that have a letter appearing twice back to back, like pee, poo, loo, moo, coo, etcetera.

Usually, I’m not that technical about words. For me, it’s more to do with what the word makes me think of. And some words make me think of the darndest things. Some examples of words that I like and dislike and the thoughts they invoke in me:

1. P’s

+ Percussion – Music. Peace. Hot guys. Handsome, long-haired, guitar-strumming guys with beautiful, slender fingers, to be precise.

- Peruse – Drab government offices with lots of paper, smoke, dirty teacups. Bad English.

2. J’s

+ Jangle – Christmas. Santa & Rudolph. Dancing.

- Jocund; jocular – Merry and all that, but yech! Chubby. Stout. Busty. Lard. Round. Me.

3. V’s

+ Venison – Why does this word make me think of Genevieve? She’s some heroine from some play I saw when I was a kid. I believe it was pretty popular, but I don’t remember a thing from it, except that she suffered a lot.

- Victual – Dry, tasteless meat. Dry, bad wine. Dry, mostly.

4. I’s

+ Indomitable – Some part of me :-). The Abominable Snowman.

- Increment – Excrement.

5. S’s

+ Swoon – ‘Home they brought her warrior dead’

- Spouse – Unhappy marriage. Unhappy couples.

6. H’s

+ Hither – Graceful little steps I’ve never been capable of, like a Ballerina’s. Shirley ('Come hither, young one' she likes to say.)

- Husbandry – Mud. Dung. Soggy. Foul odors.

That’s all I can think of for now. I could probably come up with a way bigger list if I give it more thought. Some of those words and the related thoughts are obvious, some have no link whatsoever. You can play Freud and try to decipher them. [Guessing you’ll all come up with crap though :-)]

Also check out the desktop picture on my laptop. I have exactly four monitors in use, including this - maybe a little obsessive behavior but all adorned with pictures of the same man – a perfect example of what ‘Percussion’ makes me think of!

He's so hot. I'm not ashamed to admit that I, the humble, modest, nondescript & forgettable one, am stalking him. Yoko Ono is a great inspiration at this time. Who knows, I may get lucky by some bizarre force of nature like she did. And I would even go so far as to admit that I even think that I, as plain and charmless as I may be, am still prettier than she is.