Daffoldil days are back again!

The main purpose of my trip has come to pass! It's so nice to get out of the darkness of the mines, away from the coals to do our fancy coal miners summit at the beautiful Bondi Iceberg at of course, the stunning Bondi beach.
Bondi Iceberg - pretty isn't it! (In my rustic, poverty-stricken Indian mind, I see Australians as quite spoiled! They have all these blessings, Bondi beach would be a good example. This beautiful beach with such clear, sparkling water, plus two gigantic swimming pools right on the water itself! While back home, in most places we are deprived even of a plastic kiddy pool. But it's something to thank God for that we aren't deprived of happy hearts too. All goes to show, swimming pools and pretty beaches aren't directly proportional to a cheerful heart!)
The happy miners :)

Also took some time out to spend a day at the fabulous Katoomba falls (and frolic with dreamy leprechauns! I know dreamy and leprechauns don't usually go together but I was lucky this day!)And also took the time to spend some time exploring a small town, and wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high...o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw...a host of golden daffodils....:)

***Sigh*** That certainly awakened the sleeping Wordsworth in my heart! It made me miss several people, people that are dear to me and to whom Wordsworth and his daffodils are dear. Is it that we simply don't have daffodils in India or we do but I just have never seen them anywhere? Daffodils would definitely help in taking the whole happiness thing to a higher level! That's it! I am coming back with daffodil seeds/bulbs. As many as I can carry with me.

I'm doing this Australian thing properly this time. No more hotels, I'm leaving the Oaks tomorrow to go and stay with an Australian family for the rest of my stay! :P Kidding! I'm leaving for Melbourne tomorrow to spend the weekend with my friend and his family. Quite exciting!

Busy Days

I've been meaning to blog every day since I got here, but it's just been impossible. As you can see, I've been hard at work...
Even now, I have to run. It's after 8:00pm and I am starving and late for dinner. I shall update soon.

And oh, I want to add - I LOVE Sydney because I have been having lovely Mondays - one after the other. And back home, I always, inevitably abhor Mondays! :)

And another quick one - I have to say your prayers must have been very weak because they went unanswered. I sat next to an old business man and a Sardar on my flight to here. So no, I didn't get my Gerard Butler look-alike. (But I found him somewhere else :P)

Back to Aussie Land

Finally got my visa and I'm leaving tonight! I'm going to Sydney for some client meetings and to attend a summit for Account Managers for all Australia and New Zealand. (Yeah, I'm bragging :)) I will be back after a month.

I'm very excited, but at the same time, I'm not very fond of the idea of traveling all by myself. As someone who can never sleep during flights and therefore needs conversation to kill the time, it's going to be a pretty long journey for me. For want of anything better to do, I'll sink into deep thoughts about the littlest things like I always do and eventually end up thinking nonsensical, useless, often morbid thoughts all the way from here to Australia. By the time I land, it might be with the conviction that a giant asteroid will hit Earth and kill us all in the near future! But not a big deal, I will lose that fear after a good meal and a good night's sleep.

I'm excited that I'm going via Bangkok this time. I was not initially because for some reason, I thought I'd been to Bangkok before! I even believed that I once forgot my favorite sweater at the Bangkok airport, but my friends told me that I left the sweater in Hong Kong and not Bangkok :) So I've never actually been to Bangkok at all despite my initial belief. So there you have it, another new place to see along the way!

Wish me a safe trip, wish me God speed, send me your prayers, and also keep your fingers crossed that this time, I get seated next to a Gerard Butler look-alike who is witty, funny, smart, charming and can give killer conversations! :)

Is he really worth lying for?

Shirley was telling us about a guy she liked. I wasn't around when Shirley and Sohna met the guy, so I was just a passive listener as Shirley raved about this guy's hotness. Sohna didn't say much either, she only had one point to contribute - "He's balding."

Shirley's response? "He's not balding!! He just has a nice forehead."

In the end, we were forcibly made to accept that the guy indeed just possesses a nice forehead, where the forehead's owner's wisdom was prominent in the prominence of his forehead :P

This conversation kickstarted a train of thought about how we women. even the ones who are otherwise smart, never stop being stupid about our men. And the lies we tell others and ourselves to defend their honour. Which is quite sad because men will never do the same. If his buddies tell him that his wife is getting old/boring/fat, his first response will be to agree. I'm lying. They may say 'No, my wife is still sexy' but the seed of doubt will be very firmly planted in his mind anyway.

Unlike us stupid ladies, who when we say 'He's got a nice forehead' proceed to immediately believe that he is not balding and that he really does have a nice forehead. Even if he's really balding and that's evident to everyone else on the planet except you.

If he's smart, you tell your friends that you've always dreamt of someone smart, intellectually stimulating and not just a hot bod. If he's just a hot bod, you tell your friends you love the relationship because you don't feel intimidated and never feel like you're under pressure to come up with smart, witty conversations.

If he earns more than you, you admire the man and look up to him and love him better for it. If he earns less than you, your motherly instincts kick in and you want to protect him, help him, you understand the struggle and you love him better for it.

If he's much older than you, you love the warmth and comfort and security he provides and you love him better for it. If he's younger, he drives you to madness with his energy :P and his enthusiasm and you love him better for it.

But most of the time, when we say all nice and glowy things about our men, it's usually half truth and half lie. The only time a woman's ever really truthful about a guy if after he's left her and there's no hope of him returning and she knows it.

Well, I'm exaggerating in all of these points. It's not that extreme. But we women can be really stupid. And this. bugs. me. no. end!

When things get too crappy

These past couple of days have been like something out of a bad dream. Everything's out of sync, work is never ending, and all electronic things die at my touch, and I AM tired. Some nights I even fall asleep with my work clothes on.

What is a woman supposed to do when her laptop's died, her iPod's died, and her phone company just wrongly charged her an extra thousand rupees, and she's got a flight booked for Monday but her visa's only coming on Tuesday, and when it's she herself who has to run around to fix and pay for all of these - all in 2 days?

And on top of all these, people expect her to fix their problems too, or take some part in their problems, and they throw questions at her all day long, wanting to know when to feed the dog, wanting you to talk with someone because they can't stand them, wanting you to take responsibility for something because no one else will, wanting to know why she didn't call, why she missed Church this Sunday, wanting her to talk to the landlord to fix the leaky shower....


At times like these, she will sit back, relax, close her eyes, and listen to this song and she'll feel all better again :)