Lockdown life

Okay, so I have received many many (okay, four) emails from fans of this blog checking on me and questioning the lack of posts. It was high time I got back into it.

On Feb 21, I wrote a post about Covid-19 in Singapore and the naive me was like, "OMG we have 86 cases."

Ha. Who'd have thought I'd be shaking my head at my own naivety a few months later.

Watch this and relate.

It's been about 4 months since then, and as of today, the total number of Covid-19 cases in Singapore is 44,122. Every day, we have a few hundred new cases, which, given Singapore's small size, is not exactly negligible. Things seem to be under control though. There is a steady stream of people (in the hundreds) being discharged daily and we have moved on to 'phase 2' of our lockdown (what we call "circuit breaker"), with schools and some public places opening up. Masks are mandatory, of course, and you can get arrested for not wearing one. Except when you're doing strenuous exercise, of course. So if you forget your mask and you spot an enforcement office, run at top speed. Not away, but towards him/her.

Viv and I have been working from home for months now. I worked from home as a freelancer for years after Xena was born, but this is so different. The good -- no waking up at 5:30 am YAY! The bad -- there is no "end of work day" anymore. Everything has fused into everything else. Xena had school holidays for a month, and as we still don't give her any alone screen time, I took leave to sit down and write a full month's 'what to do you're stuck indoors' plan for her. I incorporated all subjects, reading, art, household chores and even workouts, so that she would have stuff to do during our working hours. I have to say that she took it very well and was very disciplined. Every day, she'd carry out her tasks and check them off. (Maa par gayi hai bilkul.)

So Xena's birthday came and went and my birthday came and went and it looks like Viv's birthday is also gonna come and go like this. I had told him (way before Covid-19 hit us) that I wanted a quiet, private birthday this year. Yeh kuchh zyada hi quiet and private nahin ho gaya? Damn.

I don't really miss the office all that much (except my team; I miss hanging out and joking around with them) but I do miss skating a lot and I do somewhat miss the gym. Luckily, Viv found Hasfit on YouTube, which has been an absolute blessing for both of us. Viv, missing his heavy gym weights, came up with the very creative solution of using Xena as his 20-kg weight for stuff like goblet squats. After not doing much on the workout front for most of April and May, I ordered a pair of dumbbells online, and I have been working out using the Hasfit videos at least 5 times a week. Now that Xena's school has opened, I walk with her to school and the return journey is about 2.5 km. All this is great because then I can have less guilt over all the potato chips I have been downing over Netflix every night. To make matters worse splendid, Ruffles has come up with a jalapeno-flavoured pack of chips! Why, why, why would you do this to me, Ruffles? (Well done, by the way.)

Speaking of Netflix, we have discovered a whole bunch of new stuff to watch. We have finished Fauda (awesome), Pataal Lok (great) and Criminal Justice (quite good). When things get too violent/crime-y, we switch to Brooklyn 99 for a break. Two night ago, we started watching Aarya on someone's recommendation, but I found the writing, screenplay and acting really bad so I couldn't carry on after the first episode. I found a Quora thread on "Best shows to watch during lockdown" and Mirzapur seems to be quite a hot favourite, so we might try that out next. Any other recos?

Viv and Xena have been playing tons of games, including indoor cricket (using a yoga mat as the pitch!) and 'dog and the bone' and what not. I was trying hard to pull Xena away from her 389753208750th reading of the Harry Potter books, but she simply wouldn't yield. So I started reading one of my childhood favourites (Enid Blyton's Five Find-Outers) to her over meals, and now she (and Viv too) loves it! It has now become a family tradition to take turns to read a couple of chapters of this series each day.

One of the amazing things that seems to have happened everywhere is that people have started reconnecting over Zoom. Both Viv and I had our respective 'cousins on Zoom' calls (and I'm still pondering over why his was so civilised and mine was dangal-in-jungle level). My sister who lives in the US has started a weekly call between her kids and Xena, and it's heartwarming to see cousins who have only seen one another thrice, interacting and showing off their artwork and what not.

We also have a Friday call with some of our friends from university, and it's nice to have that to look forward to at the end of the work week. The girls in the group have now decided to dress up a bit for these calls because our nice clothes, jewellery and make-up are rotting away. I haven't put on contact lenses or make-up in months. In fact, on Monday, I had to go submit some documents for a tender. I had no contact with anyone, it was just the tender box and me, and YET, I put on eyeliner. (There was no point in putting on lipstick I felt, because we have all been reduced to masked bandits). I came back and reported my eyeliner badassery to some friends and was showered with their hearty congratulations.

So that is what has been happening here. And how have you been?

Cheers,
Sayesha
PS: Half the year is over, guys. Half the year is over. 

Annual report - 2019

Happy new year, bewdas! Hope 2020 has gotten off to a fantastic start.

2019 was quite an interesting year for me. It started off with me deciding quite suddenly to go back to the office full-time after 8 years of working from home. And it has been a roller-coaster ride. Things are so insanely crazy all the time, and though a part of me thrives on that sort of thing, I have had some trouble trying to do ALL the things that I want to do in my life. I hope to do better this year and have a better work-life balance.

The sense of having become so much older from the last time I worked at this company (I'd worked here years ago as a clueless fresh grad) never gets old. I have babies interns coming and going, and every time I look at one of their resumes, it hits me hard -- when I was in university, these guys were in... um... diapers. When/how did we all get so old?

2019 was also significant because both Xena and I passed inline skating level 5. It had been a loooong time since I'd had an 'exam' so I was really nervous that I'd flunk one of the tricky skills or fall flat on my face during one of the stunts, but all went well and now we have both earned our black certificates (to me, it's the equivalent of a black belt).

This is me, doing a skill called 'toe-heel transition'.

And here is Xena, demonstrating a rather tricky one called 'eagle'. 

2019 was also the year when I threw caution to the wind and travelled to India in June. 42 frikkin' degrees. And I call Singapore hot. But it was nice to catch up with my parents and aunts and uncles and cousins, and then it also rained so it wasn't too bad. 

Xena turned 8 last year, but her 8th birthday was different. Increasingly, birthdays had been making us sick, with all the gifts and the plastic and the wastage and what not. We were really glad when Xena was instantly on board when we told her how we wanted to celebrate her 8th birthday. We had a very small gathering and we expressly forbid people from bringing any gifts (including cash/vouchers). We told them that all we'd accept were homemade cards and handwritten letters and our friends stuck to the instructions. In addition to cards made by her friends, she got some lovely letters from our friends too. There were no return gifts of plastic items smothered in plastic packaging -- we gave the guests a copy of my friend Shub's amazing book on introducing kids to recycling, along with some homemade cookies that Xena had helped me bake. We did not use any plastic cutlery. For party games, we had a treasure hunt on recyclable and non-recyclable items. We hope to continue doing something like that this year too, and hope we don't stress out our friends who choose to have conventional birthday parties. Everyone is free to do what they want to do. This is just a small start towards leading a slightly greener life. There is so much we still feel SO guilty about, so much more we can do. 

Last year was also the year Xena got majorly into Harry Potter. She's on book 5 now; she gets to watch the corresponding movie after she finishes each book. We still don't have cable TV and she still doesn't have any alone screen time (and it doesn't seem to bother her, which is great). Once in a while, we watch carefully curated movies together. So far, so good. 

I had some fantastically good fortune in gardening this year, though I have the blackest thumb I know of and I'm perfectly capable of killing even a cactus. We don't have space inside the house, so I planted some cherry tomato seeds in pots at the staircase landing and crossed my fingers. I also learnt from a neighbour how to do composting, but I still haven't nailed it yet. To my utter amazement, compared to the 6 cherry tomatoes we had harvested when I did the same in 2018, this year we had a bumper harvest. In 6 months, our amazing plants (Xena christened them Tommy, Timmy, Tammy and Tom) gave us about 60 tomatoes. Amazingly, 40 of them were from Tommy and he's still going strong. 

Tommy's gorgeous offerings

Our big holiday in 2019 was Tasmania, which is now my new favourite holiday destination. Highly highly recommended for kids. I've started updating the travel blog, though I'm afraid it will take a while. Because Tasmania is so beautiful, you cannot not take 23094839027534 photos.

This year, I consciously chose not to make any formal new year's resolutions, mainly because I need to sort my work-life balance before I can embark on something serious, but I do have a few vaguely-worded secret ones that I am working towards (and afraid of breaking). Let's see how that goes.

So how have you guys been? Any non-secret resolutions? :)

Back to the mothership

So yes, I have gone ahead and done it.

I've joined the full-time workforce again.

After 8 years of working from home.

I'd made the decision to quit the corporate world in 2011 when all the complications with Xena's health began. To someone who was very ambitious and driven about climbing the corporate ladder, it was quite a shocker to consider a break like this that could possibly never end. But I knew it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, and to this date I've not had a single regret about giving up my career for Xena. What I did know was that I needed to continue working, in whatever capacity, to retain my sanity during those dark and difficult days. Just something else to fill my head with other than my seriously sick kid. I am grateful that my publisher (my first employer) always had enough writing/editing/freelance projects to keep me busy. And all these years, they had also been patiently waiting for me to join them full-time, telling me every year that they will always have a place for me.

This year, I finally gave in. I'm back at the mothership, the company where I started my first real job. The job that gave me a chance to permanently lock up my engineering degree and do what -- in Marie Kondo's words -- sparks joy in me.

It was been such a strange experience going back to the same office building I left 12 years ago. So much has changed and so much is still the same. So many new faces and yet, so, so many familiar ones. Many editors have come and gone and come back and then gone back again, but some of the illustrators and designers are still there. They never left. It was so lovely to be greeted so warmly by all of them.

My ex-big-boss who's also my current big boss saw me working at my cubicle and said, "It's like you never left." I know exactly what she meant. It does feel like I never left. I merely moved into the cubicle adjacent to my old one. In fact, quite often, I find myself turning into the wrong lane, towards my old place! How can muscle memory still function after 12 years??

And then there's the emotional dinosaur part of me. The one that has preserved all the memorabilia from the good old days. I have an A-3 sized poster that my designers made by photoshopping my face over Priyanka Chopra's body in Krrish so I'm in (sheesh!) Hrithik Roshan's arms (they knew me as that crazy Bollywood fan so they thought this would make an apt card), a mock cover of my precious magazine (I worked on it from 2003 to 2018 till it ceased publication) with me as the queen bee and my team members as the other busy bees, and here's the most hilarious one -- a 'mass resignation letter' bearing the signature of 17 editors, which was presented to me when my team found out about my resignation. There's even a tiny footnote: 'If Management is reading this, it is just a joke. If Sayesha is reading this, it is for real.' And they had all tried to "jump off the building rooftop" if I left (I had blogged about it; there is a even silhouette picture of them on the rooftop!) The Krrish designer came by my desk today and you had to see how his jaw dropped when I showed him the poster he had designed all those years ago. At times, I feel so silly and foolish hanging on to these little things, but I am also happy that these precious little memories have a proper home now.

Quite a few things have changed greatly. The IT lady came over to 'set up my computer' and she was armed with a MacBook Air "I won't get a desktop?" I asked. She gave me a funny look. I have never in my entire working life, worked using a laptop. So it has been rather strange getting used to it. And there are so many systems and databases and spreadsheets to learn about. But I have to say it's exhilarating to be back in the thick of business decisions.

Another big change is the sheer number of people in my life right now. I'm not used to having so many adults in my everyday life, and boy, is it a welcome change! All these years, it had been me+comp for the first half of the day, and me+Xena for the second. This sudden swarm of adults around me is exciting and sometimes scary at the same time. But I have to say it is nice to dress up in my formals (just a few weeks ago, I was looking at them and wondering if I should Konmari them away) and take the bus to work and spend the day working on stuff I'm passionate about and go for lunch with colleagues (OMG colleagues -- I have real, human colleagues!!) and then end the work day and really end it (well, so far), unlike my freelance days where I would work every minute that Xena was away (at school, sleeping, art class, etc.) so that I could be fully there for all her awake moments.

Come to think of it, everything has really gone according to the new plan. *touchwood* I wanted to give Xena all my time during her early years and then get back to a full-time career once I was assured that she would be okay. So far so good. She seems to understand that this is important to me and has been very supportive.

Because I had waited so long for this and sincerely paid my dues, I bounce into the office every morning like an excited fresh graduate and not someone who's worked in the industry for 16 years. The jaded folks at the office must really be wondering what's wrong with me. Especially since I have to wake up at 5:45 am so I can make and pack Xena's recess and snack boxes and send her off in time for me to catch the 6:45 am bus to work. (Yes, I literally watch the sunrise every morning... from the bus!) I've made my work hours start really early so I can pick her up from studentcare as early as possible so we still have some time to play and share about how our day went.

My schedule is a bit bonkers at the moment as I try to get used to this new development, and I'm hoping that things will be smoother soon. I still want to make time and do all the things that I don't want to stop doing, like reading and cooking and baking and gymming and... blogging!

Wish me luck (and please pardon any typos or grammatical errors -- this post was written in a I'm-kinda-sleep-deprived-but-I-wanna-blog-now state)!

A new start

And a brand new year begins!

So I have this (silly?) belief that whatever you do on New Year's Day is representative of what you will do for the rest of the year. For the last many, many years, I have made it a point to make sure that on New Year's Day, I do a bit of everything that I intend to do all year. Today was no different. Heck, I even went to the gym for just 20 minutes in spite of a very bad knee (that's been giving me hell at my skating lessons).

And of course, I couldn't let this day end without blogging!

I will blog later about the highlights of 2018, as well as share some strange family resolutions I have planned to implement for 2019 (one called the 5% rule and another called the black box rule). For now, I just want to wish all bewdas a very happy new year! Sending you all the positive vibes I can, especially those related to good health and happiness.

See you soon!
Sayesha 

The scruti-knee

So my left knee had been hurting for the last few weeks. For no apparent reason. In the past, I had hurt my knee in the gym once or twice by being overenthusiastic with the weights, but I knew that wasn't the reason this time. Because I just hadn't been able to gym.

First, we had the long Labour Day weekend, followed immediately by a school holiday for teacher training and with Viv being away, there was no one I could leave Xena with and go to the gym. Then they had Mother's Day celebrations at school last Friday morning so I was there. I start work around 9 am so if weekday mornings are taken up by something else, I have to skip gym. Also, since I have to drop her to school in the mornings in Viv's absence, if we are delayed by some reason (e.g. Xena not waking up in time, taking approx. 83748947 minutes to finish a glass of milk, etc. etc.) there goes my gym time.

Skipping gym really annoys me. Once I saw a gym named 'Gym and Tonic', and it made me nod vigorously. Because my gym really is my tonic. As long as I can go to the gym every weekday, I feel healthy and happy and I don't have to care too much about what I eat.

Anyway, so with all the gym-skipping that had been happening, I knew that the pain in my knee was not a result of a workout injury. I had not fallen or banged it against anything. I was not walking around in high heels. I did have a knee fracture but that was the other knee and it was 18 years ago.

And it was only the left side that hurt, which really puzzled me. Strangely, as the days passed, the pain only got worse. I couldn't believe it. What had I done wrong? What was I continuing to do so wrong that the pain was actually worsening with each passing day? I was struggling to climb up the stairs to go to the upper level of double-decker buses. I, who does 100 squats without pausing, couldn't even do one anymore. Working out on the treadmill hurt. Working out on the cross-trainer hurt. Working out on the exercise bike hurt. The idea of leg weights had become laughable. I couldn't even do any post-workout stretches involving my left knee. Once, I sat on the floor to read with Xena and I couldn't get up without support.

I wondered if I should go see a doctor. But what would I say? "Hi, my knee is hurting for no apparent reason." The doctor would probably ask me to "monitor the situation" and arm me with some painkillers. Going to a specialist seemed a little ridiculous. After all, I had done nothing to cause it. I had no reason to get an X-ray or whatever-other-scan done.

I didn't even want to Google it. What would I type? "Knee pain?" There are 33782758365896439857 reasons for knee pain and I was in no mood to go and read all the possible things that could be wrong with me.

There could only be one possible reason for the knee to hurt without reason.

Old age.

*GASP*

Oh dear lord no. Surely I, the regular exerciser, strength-trainer, milk-drinker, spinach-eater, broccoli-lover, couldn't be so old that her bones were giving way?

Or was I? Was this what my future was going to be like? No gym? No squats? No climbing stairs? Nooooooooo!

One night, I just couldn't sleep thinking about this. I decided to go through every little detail to investigate what exactly was happening.

1. The knee pain had started about the time Viv left for the US.
2. The only thing that was different since then was that Xena was sleeping next to me on our bed.
3. Only the left knee was hurting.
4. The pain actually got worse with each passing day, even after I had skipped gym for five days straight.

What was I doing wrong? What had happened to me without my own knowledge?

And *ting*! There it was! The lightbulb above my head lit up brightly.

Whenever Xena sleeps on our bed (Saturday nights and when Viv is travelling), she has this habit of pushing me (only me, never her father) to the edge until I'm almost falling off the bed. In addition to having my face punched and pummelled and socked and breathed into by my child, I also have to deal with this. I cannot count the number of times I have woken up and slid her faaaaaar away from me, only to find us nose to nose after approximately 3 minutes. "Please give me some space!" I'd say every single time. (She's probably going to say the same to me as soon as she hits teenage.)

So, for fear of getting head-butted in my sleep, I'd turn and face away and sleep in whatever little space she allowed me. And now with Viv being away on one of his longest trips, she'd been sleeping in our bed for three weeks straight. So I'd been sleeping for three straight weeks in a cramped position, almost at the edge of the bed, with my right leg over my left, most probably with its centre of gravity resting sharply on my left knee or something. All night. And that was probably why I was waking up to that pain every morning.

So two nights ago, I told her what I thought was happening, and I asked her to sleep on my side of the bed while I slept on Viv's side. My hope was that she'd continue her moving patterns, leaving me the humongous space that Viv gets when all of us are in the same bed. Sure enough, that happened (though a part of me was apprehensive that she'd reverse her movement and push me off anyway). I remember changing my sleeping posture several times that night. Because there actually was space to change posture!

For the first time that morning, my knee didn't hurt.

I took the stairs up in the bus when dropping her to school, and the pain was only a fraction of what I'd been experiencing all these days. We followed the same sleeping arrangement last night too. Today I went to the gym and did 20 minutes on the cross-trainer and 20 minutes on the exercise bike. I did stretches that involved the knee. Minimal pain.

What a breakthrough.

I'd like to end this post with this public service message: Please be careful. Having children may be great for your heart, but it's terrible for your posture.

L is for lovely

Without any attempts at any subtle plugging, I shall go ahead and shamelessly proclaim it -- it was my BIRTHDAY yesterday!

After a certain age, birthdays are not that exciting. When someone asks, "Ooh, what are you doing for your birthday?" there's no real cool answer to that. "Nothing much... normal workday, then birthday dinner in the evening." has been my standard answer these last few years. And though you wouldn't associate the word 'exciting' with this scenario, to me, it's a perfectly acceptable way to spend an adult's birthday. However, this year, I felt a weird sense of inner joy and contentment and that was pretty exciting. Old age, I tell you. I wonder what else it has in store for me?

The days leading up to my birthday had been rather crazy. My magazine's current issue had to be sent to press urgently, a colleague wanted the proofs that I was working on so urgently he was ready to meet me at the airport (in-laws left for India today and I'd told him I wouldn't be home) to pick them up. On top of that, I'm organising the Easter party for our neighbourhood and I totally didn't expect 95 adults and 75 kids to register for it!

Viv has been literally living in the office in preparation for his US work trip, once in a while making it home, say around 3 am or 5 am. And not to even mention the April blogathon. In the midst of all this, I'd thought my birthday would just come and go. Like any other day. But it was quite lovely, to be honest.

I was working late on the eve of my birthday when dad-in-law popped his head in exactly at midnight (Why was he awake at that hour, you ask? I have three letters for you - IPL.) to wish me a happy birthday. At about 12.05 am, I heard the keys in the front door. It was definitely more likely to be a burglar than Viv. But it was Viv! My husband had crossed oceans and fought dragons cast aside screens and screens of C++ to get to me as soon as my birthday began! I was touched. We decided to take a midnight stroll and get some ice-cream. It was a privilege because we can do this kind of thing only when someone is home with Xena.

When we got back, I scooped her up from her bed and transferred her to ours. She turned sleepily and mumbled something. Viv said, "Hey Xena, what day is it?" She immediately got all alert, and kissed and hugged and wished me before promptly going back to sleep.

On the morning of my birthday, I put on new clothes after my shower. I can't remember the last time I'd put on new clothes on my birthday right from the morning. I do buy something new for my birthday (or save an outfit gifted by someone) but I wear it only in the evening when going out to celebrate. But this time, the in-laws had taken me shopping for my birthday and got me a whole bunch of outfits. I could wear one in the morning and then wear another one in the evening, and I'd still have two more to go! It was pretty exciting.

Then the WhatsApp fiasco happened. A neighbour, who occasionally plays badminton with me, decided it would be damn fun to wish me for my birthday on the neighbourhood WhatsApp group -- yes, the one with SIXTY-TWO people on it -- instead of messaging me directly. As more and more people felt arm-twisted into following her message with their own happy birthday messages, I had to literally beg for it to be taken offline so we could spare everyone the spam.

But this meant that everyone in the group now knew it was my birthday. And because I know almost everyone (because I'm the admin of the neighbourhood FB group and organise the social events), many of them took the time to send me personal wishes. I was touched. To me, if someone is taking time off to do something for you that is 100% optional, it's very touching.

Later, when I checked my FB account, I saw a lot of birthday wishes on my wall as well. Many of them from people I'm not really in touch with. Again, going by my 100% optional rule, it was touching that people had bothered to wish me. I decided to spend some time replying properly to each person. I didn't want to simply 'like' their wishes, or post generic thank you messages to everyone, or just write an FB post on the lines of 'Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes. Feeling blessed.' I feel that is just lazy and also stresses everyone else out -- those who had not wished you and now that you have thopo'ed your birthday on their faces, have no choice but to sheepishly say 'Happy belated birthday'. So I took a moment to think about each of them, about our last interaction or something relevant about them that I remembered, before individually replying to them. I felt like it was the least I could do. I felt happy doing it.

It was strange to feel the kind of gratitude I was feeling, because in my 20s I used to be someone who had high expectations from everyone on my birthday, which on hindsight, was not a good thing at all. These days, I'm a lot more mellow and content with whatever I get. So much more soothing for the soul. For example, if an acquaintance wished me on FB, my first thought would have been 'Ha! You remembered only because FB reminded you!' whereas now I feel grateful. FB reminds everyone, but it's those who take the time to wish you when they didn't really have to, who make it that much more special.

The sister-in-law had sent me a very pretty wallet for my birthday. Knowing my practical self, she'd let me choose what I wanted and ordered it to be delivered to me. But she had a bigger surprise waiting for me on her blog -- a heartwarming post about me! (Well, it's about Viv and me, but mostly me, hehehe!) In the post, she's documented our friendship from the first time she'd met me some 12 years ago when I was just Viv's girlfriend. Who doesn't want to read stuff like "She fires on all cylinders, she’s living proof that it can be done. At any point in time, she’s juggling a dozen balls, and doing it in a fabulous dress and kickass heels." on their birthday? Because this week had been one of those where my super-efficient self was also having its doubts about itself, this really helped. It made my birthday extra special.

When I picked up Xena from school, her friend's mom who knows it's my birthday insisted on dropping us home in her car. "I have to drop you home. It's your birthday!" I couldn't say no. I'm always declining her offers to drop us home (mainly because we are bus people and I don't want Xena to get used to being ferried around in a car every day) but I had to take it. On the way she was telling me how much she loves her own birthday, and suddenly it struck me -- one should!

For lunch, mom-in-law had made puri and aloo ki sabzi. Like dad-in-law, I really like puris too, but I rarely make them because of the hassle and oil involved. She, on the other hand, had made about 20 or maybe more puris, and I swear I only had about 7 or 8 of them. Not more. Mom-in-law looked at my guilty face and insisted that the puris were really tiny so it was okay, but the truth is the truth. I told my inner fitter self that it was okay because I had gone to the gym in the morning and no one goes to the gym on their birthday. My inner fitter self just shook her head and said, "Riiiight."

And because I'd not already consumed enough calories at lunch, in the afternoon, right after I'd sent the issue off to the printer and the child off to bed for her nap, I made a cake. (Of course, I make my own birthday cake. It had to be homemade, low-sugar, yada yada yada.) I made a heart-shaped green pandan cake -- no icing. And I have no pictures of it because we cut it up and ate it. It was soft and spongy and homely and comforting.

In the evening, all of us went for dinner at Super Loco, a Mexican restaurant I'd been dying to go to for the longest time. I'd chosen an outlet which was at walking distance from Viv's office because I expected him to go back to work after dinner, but strangely he didn't. Yay! We wrapped the evening up with some tiramisu and cheesecake (definitely not homemade, definitely not low-sugar, but definitely tasty as hell).

It was a lovely day indeed. I guess growing older isn't that bad.

All dressed up and... somewhere to go!

A few weeks ago, we were invited by a neighbour to a Bollywood-themed party! You can only imagine my delight.

So I racked my brain on what Viv, Xena and I could wear to this party. Xena is at the stage where she wants to wear everything I wear. If I'm wearing a dress, she'll insist on wearing one. If I'm in a short skirt, she'll want to change to one too. So when I told her that I was considering going as 'Babita', she did not ask me who on earth Babita was. She simply said, "I wanna be Babita too." So I told her that we could do two Babita looks -- dress Babita and salwar-kameez Babita. To my surprise, she agreed.

So we had a dress rehearsal. I was dress Babita, in a black and white polka-dotted dress, gigantic white goggles, hoop earrings, plastered-on-forehead hair and a flower hairband that I borrowed from Xena's collection. I dressed her up in a sleeveless floral churidaar-kameez that we'd bought when we were in India and made a very Babita-hairstyle for her using her dupatta and a fake bun that I ordered online.

So here we were, having multiple dress rehearsals, while Viv was just chilling. "Dude, you'd better not turn up as yourself. Xena and I will look ridiculous if you look... err... normal!" I told him. That got him up and about, and after looking through his wardrobe, we realised that we could put the most colourful stuff together to make him Munna from Rangeela. So he wore a pink shirt over a blue cricket singlet, put on his dhinchak cricket glasses, and borrowed a bandana and a hat from me to complete the look. And oh, he folded up his pants a bit to make it look more 'tapori'. And gosh, he even said he wouldn't shave for a few days to be true to his character!

Seeing him all suddenly enthu like that, I briefly considered switching to Mili from Rangeela, for I have the tight pants and the knotted shirt, but I do not have that voluminous head of hair that Urmila is blessed with. Besides, Xena was already excited about going as babita and I didn't want to mess up the plan.

So there we were -- Munna, Babita senior and Babita junior, and all of us got rave reviews at the party. It was the most fun party we'd attended in a long, long time. My normally shy child had no problems even hitting the dance floor with me!

 

  

 

A few years ago, we had a Govinda-themed costume party, and would you believe it -- I didn't win the first prize in spite of my light blue pants, a fluorescent green spaghetti strap top, a red-green-blue-black checked shirt and bright pink slippers! You can only imagine what a ghastly sight the winner (my good friend Pizzadude) presented.

A friend and I have been discussing about organising a Bollywood-themed party for Christmas or New Year's this year. We are even entertaining the thought of having it for Halloween instead, where you can only wear costumes from Hindi ghost movies! Any ideas (other than candle-holding white sari-clad singing ghost)?

Free space

"Ours is an era of distraction. It's a punishing drumbeat of constant input. It follows us into our homes and into our beds. It seeps into our... into our souls, for want of a better word."

Viv and I have been binge-watching 'Elementary' on Netflix lately, and though initially I found this version of Sherlock quite OTT, almost grating on the nerves, I've come around to not entirely disliking him. And I believe it was this statement of his that caused the switch. He'd finally said something that showed his vulnerable side, something a regular person could instantly relate to.

I often think about this. The constant cacophony of noise, news and distractions in our lives, and our inability to escape them even though a part of us really, really wants to.

And it is for this reason I love the beach next to our place. It's a beach all right, but the part where we adda-maarofy is different. People do not come here to make noise. They come here to sit and watch and listen and contemplate. I've lived near this part of Singapore for nearly 12 years, and even now, I just love, love, love it.

It's amazing that in the busy, crazy, noisy, crowded, unforgiving, relentless, fast-paced, metropolitan city that is Singapore, there exists a space that tells me that my home is but a tiny little island and if I seek it, I can find both joy and serenity in the same place.

Photos taken during a family picnic last evening at the beach

Poster girls

"Congratulations, Sayesha! You've become a celebrity. Just saw your poster!" my neighbour sent me a message.

"Poster?? What poster?"

"The poster on the main road. Of you and some baby."

OHHHHHH!

Then it struck me. Almost a month ago, I had entered some photos of Xena and me in a 'Joyous Smiles' photo contest organised by the community centre. The contest flyer asked for photos of smiling faces, and said that the selected photos would be part of a poster for the community centre's notice board as part of the National Day celebrations. Now the community centre isn't huge, and their notice board certainly isn't, and I could only imagine how small the poster would be, and how small my photo, if selected, would be on it, but I entered anyway. I have a HUGE collection of Xena's photos that Viv and I like to call our 'retirement plan' (in the sense that when we are retired, we will sit on our Joey chairs and pass our days looking at the photos on a giant screen).

So I'd selected some photos, one of a grinning me holding a grinning baby Xena, and a few more of just her as a very smiley baby, and sent them in. And then forgot about them till the message from my neighbour arrived. I asked her for details on where exactly the poster was because I was baffled as to why the poster was along the main road and not a tiny part of a tiny poster stuck on a tiny notice board in the tiny community centre.

She told me the details and also insisted that the baby I was holding was definitely not Xena. I laughed and told her that it was very much Xena and then sent her the photo to prove it. She seemed rather shocked at how much Xena has changed.

So we took a walk along the road that evening to check out the poster. Turns out it was not one poster containing all the winning photos. Instead, it was a giant banner with each winning photo arranged like a poster on its own! To my utter surprise, I saw not one, but five of the photos I had sent! Of course, there was the one with Xena and me, but they had also selected four of Xena's smiling baby pictures, which of course, had gone unidentified by my neighbour. So we took photos with each of the posters. Here are two of them.

I'd have thought that being on the humongous banner itself would be the contest prize, but as it turns out, they gave us 50 dollars of shopping vouchers too. Wow.

This one's for you, dad-in-law, who, whenever I get sceptical about entering contests, says, "Only if you enter a contest can you win it, no?"

One for the books

"Whatchu reading?" My neighbour asked me as he walked by. He's a friendly, middle-aged guy I often see around the pool or the gym, and he always stops to chit-chat.

I was sitting by the pool with my book. Xena was in the middle of her swim lesson.

"You're not going to believe it." I said.

He stopped, looking really curious now. I showed him the cover of my book.

"HO!" He said. It sounded like something between surprise and delight. Exactly what I expected.

I was reading 'The Naughtiest Girl in the School'.

Yes, that book written in 1940 By Enid Blyton.

That book that I happened to chance upon because of a crazy craving Viv and I had for Coffee Club's muddy mudpie the other day. It is one of our favourite desserts, and when we crave that mudpie, we are willing to travel across the island for it. Both the branches we were aiming for had shut down (no, not closed for the day, but shut down omg), but it was not a wasted evening. We found an open-cart book sale, and it wasn't just any book sale. A book sale that pretty much felt like someone had filled up a sack with my childhood and emptied it into the carts. Famous Five. Secret Seven. Nancy Drew. Hardy Boys. St. Clare's. Malory Towers. You name it, they had it.

And... The Naughtiest Girl in the School.

My dad had bought me the book when I was maybe six or seven. He even wrote on the first page, "To the naughtiest girl in the world". (Gosh that was SO NOT TRUE -- I was always the teacher's pet and the nerd of the highest order in each of the seven schools I attended.)

Over the years, I read the book so many times that by the time it was time for me to come to Singapore, the book was in no state to accompany me. It lay in a box with other tattered and yellowed books from my childhood that my dad refused (and still refuses) to part with.

But now, not only had I found that book, I'd also found the next two in the series. And it had brought back some amazing memories. Of how wonderful boarding school used to sound, with the lacrosse and the horse-riding and the tuck boxes and the nature walks and the school meetings and the midnight feasts. Oh, how appealing the strange foods that I'd never had before sounded -- scones and sizzling bacon and potted meat and treacle and cream cheese and marmalade and golden syrup and ginger beer. Heck, she even made boiled eggs at a picnic sound mouthwatering. In later years, I had a chance to taste many of these items and to my utter dismay, most of them elicited nothing more than a 'yuck' from my taste buds. (Except ginger beer, of course. Nobody say anything bad about ginger beer, okay? Okay. Especially my all-time favourite - Bundaberg ginger beer.)

Viv hadn't been sure about me filling up our recently-Konmari'ed bookshelf with these books, but I knew I had to. He had no clue about the joy they sparked in me.

I had two big reasons to buy them.

One, I want Xena to read them some day.

Two, I want them for myself. Right now, later and forever. 

Dead on target

Friend (over WhatsApp) - Tell me your secret. How do you get so many things done?

Me - Because I'm a carcass.

Damn you, autocorrect. 'Hardass' is a real word, ok?!

About time

Would you believe me if I told you that the number of blog readers who have asked me to share my time-management tips and tricks is in the double digits?

10, to be precise.

The most recent email on this from blog reader V has convinced me that I really should write a post on how I get the zillion things in my life done. I'm finally in a zone where I'm not questioning myself "Am I doing enough?" I know I am doing enough and happily so. I'm not overwhelmed with the stuff I do. I'm in my comfort zone. So a post on this would be handy if I start to slack some day and ask myself the "Am I doing enough?" question all over again. 

Not knowing where to start, I asked Viv what he thought I do differently, and his reply was, "You plan well. And you go through with it. You have a very precise idea about how much time and effort each task takes."

True, that. I do believe that if you can own your time, you can own your life.

So here they are, some simple tips and tricks on time-management. I am aware that these might actually might be too simple and obvious, and something you've always thought of, but perhaps never got to doing. Hope they help you as much as they've helped me. 

1. Know what you want in your life.

Take a moment to think - what do you want to do in your life? Not with your life. That is a much bigger question. In your life. What are the things you want to be doing in your life? What is important enough for you to invest your time and effort in? For me, that is Xena, my work, Skyping with parents, fitness, cooking, planning events, meeting people I want to meet, travel and hobbies. 

2. Know what you want in your kid's life.

As long as your child is a child, it is your job to decide what to fill his/her day with. I do let her have some 'boring' time at home and she comes up with the most creative and amazing stuff, but her outdoor activities are all governed by me.

What do you want in your child's life right now? What do you want his/her days to be filled with? I want to be there in Xena's life as much as I can. I want to be there in her childhood memories. I want to parent her to the best of my abilities.

One of the biggest sacrifices I have made is to quit my full-time job. After she was born, I turned  freelancer because I couldn't bear to not work, just as much as I couldn't bear to be away from Xena. It was crazy, but it worked. Now my new job still allows me to mostly work from home, but the hours are a little more regular, so I get more time to do more things with her. A lot of my planning goes into what I want her to see and do.

3. Know what to chuck out. 
Once you have points 1 and 2 in order, make a priority list. It helps you assess your time vs tasks so you can chuck out what is not important at this point.  You need to decide what is not worth it. There is no point feeling guilty forever about something you're not able to do. Either do it or chuck it. Don't mull over it.

Though I am someone who wants to do everything, I have had to make my choices. About a year ago, I got into Mandarin classes and nail art, and more recently into baking, and I had to chuck my sewing dreams. As a kid I had joined sewing classes and my teacher told me I was fab. I thought one day I would take it forward by sewing clothes for Xena, but there simply isn't time to fit it in. The fact that sometimes Xena is almost like a teenager who will only wear stuff she picked, helped to cement the decision that taking up sewing again is simply not worth it. I've made my peace with it. For now, I'm content sewing back fallen buttons and taking up hemlines of short dresses which I feel are, erm, not short enough.

Having said that, don't chuck important things like goofy time with your kid, or a fitness routine, healthy eating, or family time. For me, blogging always goes out of the window during very busy weeks, but I have the advantage of some bewdas emailing me to remind/scold me to blog. It inspires, touches and motivates me to blog. Because I love blogging and I don't want it in my 'To chuck' list.

Once you're in the groove, you will know what to say no to. My friends wanted to do something called the NaMoBloMo (i.e. every day of November you need to write a blog post about Narendra Modi... kidding!) together, but I knew that November was going to be a crazy period, with the new job and houseguests and an upcoming India trip, and I didn't want to do a shoddy job at it. I already struggle doing the April blogging challenge because of Viv's work travels. So I said no to NaMoBloMo, and I was glad I did. I would have gone mad trying to blog every day.

Speaking of chucking things, one of the most important things I've realised lately is the importance of not hanging out with people you don't want to hang out with. Often, we find ourselves with people who make us wonder why we're hanging out with them. Well, stop it then. It's not just a waste of time, it's a waste of emotions -- space in the heart. Life's short and it's totally not worth it. Get out of the rut of forced friendships. If you're always the one reaching out, and there is no response, take the hint. Stop. If the other person is not making an effort, it is a waste of your time and thoughts, when you could be in a happier place, literally and otherwise.

4. Make time for fitness.

Whenever we get busy, our fitness plans are usually the first to go out of the window. So have a plan and stick to it. I go to the gym for exactly half an hour. Not a minute less, not a minute more. I always remind myself that the key to a good workout is that it should leave you energised, not exhausted. And 30 minutes is just nice. Also, that's all I can afford, even though 30 minutes of exercise five times a week is actually the minimum recommended. So if you're not doing that, get to it. Until last year, I wasn't a regular at the gym. Housework and running after Xena gave me enough exercise anyway. But I've come to realise that fitness is not about losing weight or getting a six-pack. Fitness is, or should be, a way of life. And after toying with exercise classes, badminton and workout videos, the gym is where I'm most comfortable and get the desired results. Another good thing about the gym is that you don't need another person for company or motivation. You are your company and you are your motivation. 

5. You snooze, you lose.

There is nothing I dislike more than the snooze button. It serves no purpose. It makes a joke of the alarm, and it makes you feel horrible anyway because you didn't wake up when you wanted to. So I pretend that there is no such thing as a snooze button. When your alarm rings, you wake up. If you're really tired and need some more sleep (say on a weekend), turn it off and go back to sleep. Seriously. Don't mock the sanctity of the alarm by overriding it again and again and again with the snooze button. It's also extremely annoying if your partner wants to sleep but your snooze keeps going off every few minutes. (Ask me. I've now banned the snooze button from our household. Viv is coping well.)

6. Have a good morning.

Get up early. Have a good morning. If your morning is good and productive, the rest of your day will go great. If you wake up at noon even if it's a weekend, two things happen. One, you continue to feel tired because oversleeping causes a weird kind of lethargy. Second, you feel quite useless and wonder, "Aaj maine life mein kya kiya?"

Of course, be reasonable. If waking up at 6 am every day to do yoga is torture for you, don't do it. At least for me, waking up at 6 am any day for any reason is torture, so I don't do it. Sustainability is a big factor. Of course I can wake up at 6 am and hit the gym, but for how long? I know some people can do it very easily, but not me. I will have to do it at some point when Xena goes to primary school, but not now. I know my limitations. I go to bed by 11 pm but I set my alarm for a reasonable 7 am. That gives me sufficient sleep, and sufficient time in the morning to make a hearty breakfast for my family before I send them off. 

7. The daily routine

So this is my typical weekday routine. In fact, a lot of you have asked me for just this; the rest is just bonus footage I guess.

7.00 am - Wake up. Feed Blueberry (or get Xena to do it.)
7.30 am - Finish making breakfast (I don't like the idea of toast and I don't like to repeat stuff in the week, so I have a roster of omelette, idli, uttapam, paratha, bread/suji upma, poha, and a filling veggie patty sandwich. Of course, Xena doesn't eat any of it, and only has a glass of milk, so I pack a snack for her.)
[From 7 to 7.30, Viv brushes his teeth, Xena's teeth and gets her dressed and ready at the dining table, before he goes to bathe.]
7.30 am - Do Xena's hair and coax her some 4353445 times to finish her milk. [Lately, Viv has just been putting a timer on his phone and that has been miraculously helping her finish her milk within minutes.]
7.45 am - Breakfast
8.15 am - Daddy and daughter leave for work/school. I head to the gym.
8.45 am - Back from the gym and quick shower
9 am / 9.30 am - Start work
12  noon - Have lunch (mostly leftovers from the night before; but sometimes I head to a random cafe near Xena's school before picking her up)
12.25 am - Leave home to pick up Xena from school
12.50 pm - Pick up Xena
1.30 pm - Shower Xena and give her milk (she has lunch at school)
2.30 pm - Put her down for a nap and start work
3.30 pm - Finish work and do some vellapanti, e.g. reading Bollywood news, Facebook, Youtube, blogging, etc.
4.00 pm - Xena wakes up
4.00 - 5.00 pm - Goofy/creative/housework/academic time (I plan an afternoon activity that Xena and I do together, e.g. baking, painting, craft work [we made our own snowflakes for our Christmas trees this year!], learning Hindi letters, listening to silly songs like Pigeon kabootar by Daler Mehendi [yes, there is such a song!], singing, reading books, laundry, folding clothes, cleaning the house [I sweep the house while she clears up stuff and tidies up her room], etc.
5.00 pm - Give Xena a fruit snack; feed Blueberry
5.30 pm - Prep for dinner (e.g. if I'm making parathas for her, I make the atta. If I'm roasting vegetables for us, I chop and marinate them.)
6.00 pm - 7.00 pm - Outdoor time (we go to a different place each day -- the playground, the library, the pool, the beach, the field, and on one of the days there is a play date... with a kid whose parents' parenting philosophy matches mine)
7.15 pm - Shower Xena
7.30 pm - Make and serve her food
7.40 pm - Viv is home and takes over feeding duties, while I start cooking our dinner
8.15 - Finish cooking our dinner
8.30 pm - Family dinner and catch-up time (yes, Xena is still eating her dinner!); no devices allowed
8.45 pm - Viv brushes Xena's teeth and puts her to bed, while I clean the kitchen
9.00 pm - Xena is asleep (hopefully)
9.30 pm - If neither of us has any office work to finish, we turn on the magic device -- the TV. (We only watch TV when she's asleep and because we've unsubscribed from all the channels, we don't find ourselves mindlessly watching something just because it's on TV. We pick and choose our movies and TV shows and we watch only those. Currently we're hooked on 'Breaking Bad'. It's beyond awesome.)
11.00 pm - Zzzzzzz

Weekends are a little different, with more tasks (Skyping, cleaning the house, ironing, grocery-shopping, etc.) but there is less eating in and more outings. 

8. Make time to clean your home.
Of course, if you have someone who cleans it for you, great. If not, spend some time cleaning it. A clean house induces a special kind of happiness and serenity. After we renovated our home, Viv and I are charged up about keeping it as clean as we possibly can, or rather keeping it as clean as having a child in the house will allow. We do a thorough clean on weekends, and we try to do it first thing on Saturday morning. Then you have a nice, clean house to invite people to or just hang out happily in. Obviously cleaning is not the most fun part of the weekend and it's extremely time-consuming, but if you push it, chances are you won't get to it, and it will hang heavy on your conscience, especially if there was nothing else productive you did in the weekend.

We even have a shared chores spreadsheet, where we list daily, weekly and month chores and we put the date when it was last done (except the dailies, of course). It's greatly helpful in keeping track. For example, when was the last time you cleaned out the inside of your fridge, or checked the expiry dates of the medicines in the medicine cabinet, or took everything out of your wardrobe to sort, throw and reorganise?

Another good way to keep your house clean is to invite people regularly. After our renovation, we held 21 housewarming parties (I cooked for all of them!) over a few months. We didn't want to have ONE big one with 3994874085 people and not be able to interact with anyone properly. So each weekend, we invited individual families, and small friend circles. That set the tone for a clean house every weekend.

One of the rules I also try to follow is to ask myself just before I leave the house -- can I come back with an unexpected guest? Is the house in good shape, or would I be ashamed to enter it with someone in tow? That motivates me to keep it as neat as possible at all times, so the weekend cleaning is faster. I'm not a super-duper-tidy person by nature, but I'm trying hard. And it helps if you have a kid because you have to do the right things to teach the right things.

9. Don't underestimate the power of 5 minutes.
Many of the tasks that never get done or don't get done as regularly literally take 5 minutes. You can find several of these 5-minute pockets throughout the day. For example, Xena likes to play with her water toys for 5 minutes before her afternoon shower. Instead of simply standing there and waiting for her to finish, I clean the washbasin or the mirrors while she tells me all about what happened at school.

Another example of the powerful 5 minutes. Once or twice a year, I organise a donation drive (clothes, books, toys, etc.) around my estate. Friends ask me how on earth I make time for community service alongside all my other stuff. Well, I simply break it down into 5-minute tasks. It takes 5 minutes to email an organisation to ask them what they need (I already have a list of organisations) and fix up delivery. It takes another 5 minutes to post a 'call for donation' for my neighbours with a specified drop-off time. It takes a few more 5-minute bands to get the stuff together. And another 5 minutes to arrange for delivery. So, overall, organising a donation drive seems like such a big task, but if you add up, it's about half an hour's work overall. One can surely spare half an hour, twice a year!

10. Get organised
An organised life is a big time-saver. Our post-renovation home is so much better organised. Not that it was a total mess (or maybe it was), but it was far from what it is now. We wanted to make our home a place we wanted to hang out in, invite friends to, and one that we felt like cleaning. I wanted a kitchen that I wanted to cook in and keep clean, a work space that made me want to work without taking 3924738297 breaks. We wanted Xena to finally have her own room -- a room that she would be proud of, that she would want to keep clean and invite friends to.

The room that used to be my workspace is now her room. It used to consist of my workstation, the ironing board, our workout equipment and every unwanted item on the planet. Not exactly an ideal working space. Now I've moved my workspace to my room. Viv designed it to be very office-like so I actually enjoy working more. My new job needs me to work about 5 hours a day -- 1 or 2 mornings a week at the office and the rest at home. And working from home needs discipline. You really need to focus and stay away from distractions such as Youtube and Facebook (not that I don't indulge, but I try to avoid it during my working hours) and also the most important one -- THE FRIDGE.

I use Google calendar extensively to plan my work and I stick to the timelines I give myself. I guess working in a strict deadline-oriented industry helps. I'm also a big lover of lists -- grocery lists, to-do-lists, list of chores, list of deadlines, list of Christmas shows in malls to take Xena to -- you name it, I have it.

In the 'new' house, everything has a place. Stuff is easy to find. Quick to clean. Nice to look at. I've picked up a lot of organising tips on the net too, such as how to fold and vertically stack socks and underwear. It's the coolest thing ever. Seriously. Takes longer than simply throwing everything into a drawer, but the look and ease of finding stuff sure makes it all worth it. 

An important part of getting organised is also fine-tuning to maximise efficiency. For example, travelling and blogging about my travels is important to me, but I feel I'm not as prompt with Hopscotch as I could be. Most of it stems from the fact that I need a couple of hours to sort through the hundreds, sometimes thousands of pictures I take. And one of the ways I'm going to fine-tune it is to take fewer pictures during my next holiday. (I don't really believe that one should just take pictures with the mind and not with the camera to truly enjoy a holiday. A good holiday is one that you can relive again and again by looking at the pictures. So I do need to take a certain number of pictures, but not so many that it becomes a hindrance when I'm blogging about the holiday.)

11. Multitask
My mom-in-law always tells me that I'm really quick in the kitchen. This is after years of practice dove-tailing and multi-tasking. For example, I don't chop all my vegetables before I start cooking. I chop only what goes in first, chillies and onions for example. While that's cooking, I quickly chop the rest. This means that the stove is up and running within a few minutes of me entering the kitchen. This means that a simple dinner is ready within half an hour, and a fancy one within an hour. I also follow a sign I saw at MOS Burger - CAYG. It means Clean As You Go. So while things are on the stove, I start cleaning up and clearing away what's not needed anymore. This makes the post-cooking clean-up a breeze as I just need to wipe the stove and countertop.

I also multi-task at the gym by turning on the TV and getting the news while I work out. Sometimes, when I'm on the treadmill, I also do a bit of work in my head, like thinking of a catchy title or a funny cartoon for the article I'm working on. Also, since I refuse to get a data plan, I have no Facebook or WhatsApp or whatever distracting me during my bus rides to pick up Xena, and that is also a very relaxing, de-stressing time for me and my thoughts.

12. Get help

And by that, I don't mean hire a helper. Viv and I are thankfully on the same wavelength on this one. We don't want a stranger living in our house, cooking our food and bringing up our kid. Thankfully, my job allows me to be home. We have tried the 'part-time helper' path, but it's didn't work out well, mainly because Virgo-man thinks (and I agree) that we do a better job. The help I'm talking about is within the family. Everyone pitches in, so you're not the only one managing the kid and the household. Viv, of course, does a lot of housework, but Xena and I are in the house for the most part, so we do quite a bit. I read somewhere that having kids is like continually having to clean up after a party you didn't attend. Well, I refuse to. Since she was a toddler, I've made her do chores and now she's pretty good at it. She can clear the dishwasher, remove dry clothes from the clothesline, put clothes into the washing machine, fold clothes, clean her room, wipe tables, etc. etc. Of course, I still have to run after her to remind her that I can't see her desk anymore and she needs to clear out the 309582875 things on it, but I'm hoping that in time, tidiness will become a lifestyle for her.

13. Plan fun
One of the questions blog reader V who emailed me recently asked was, "Do you also plan 'fun'?" The answer is a resounding 'YES'! I use Google calendar to make sure that our weekends are nicely filled up, because those are exactly the kind of days that just go up in smoke, making you wonder on Sunday night, "Where did the weekend go? What did I do?" When you look at the events for the week, they should excite you. So we invite people, go to restaurants, have picnics, hang out with friends, go cycling at the beach, etc.

During cricket season, Viv is pretty much out all weekend, but we maximise family time in the off-season weekends. Xena and I hang out all the time, but I make sure there is something that involves all three of us. When you don't have time for your family, the feeling of being very busy gets elevated, adding to the stress. If every day you can have some goofy time with your family, you feel more relaxed and less guilty about being so busy all the other times.

And of course, if time and finances permit, go on at least one vacation a year. We aim for two - a big one and a small one, if possible. Vacations are not only fun, they also break the daily monotony and clear your head. I always come back from vacations, feeling charged and actually looking forward to regular life.

14. Don't overdo it
Having said all of this, do remember not to overdo it. It's nice to accomplish a lot in a day, every day, but if you feel overwhelmed or exhausted, you're doing too much. Don't go at breakneck speed because you want to do X and Y and Z today. Think about whether it is possible to do X and Y and Z today. Listen to your body, mind and heart. Much like the post-gym gyaan, doing all the things that you want to do should make you feel energised, not exhausted.

I remember, once I had the craziest day ever. I had tons of messages and emails from people, and I was quickly skimming through it all, but there was no way I could sit down and reply. There was so much to be done. It was a mad, mad day. And then it struck me how many people I know who have entire lives like that. Don't do that to yourself. Take time to respond to people who are reaching out. A big shoutout to blog reader Bubblegum who takes time to send me the longest and loveliest emails every now and then, and it makes me slow down and push replying to her to the top of my priority list.

So there you have it, my super-long gyaan list on how to do all the things you want to do without going bonkers. If you've actually read it all the way to the end, congratulations and thank you! If you have just scrolled down all the way to check if the post ends at all in this lifetime, here's the one takeaway again -- if you can own your time, you can own your life.

Do share your tips with the other bewdas in the comments box, or drop me an email if any of these tips worked for you!

Cheers,
Sayesha

This post was selected by BlogAdda as part of their Spicy Saturday Picks.

Sounds of silence

So I went to see the doctor on Sunday, demanding my voice back. He prescribed a bunch of meds, including antibiotics, and asked me to practise the ancient Indian practice of maun vrat (vow of silence) for the next few days to speed up the process of getting my voice back.

For someone who is second only to Xena when it comes to non-stop chattering, it was really weird not to have a voice. Must have been a real respite for Viv though because Xena and I are constantly talking to him, and sometimes he has to issue a queue number system.

As I was talking less, I realised I was hearing more things around me. For example, I had the opportunity to hear a patient at the clinic ask the nurse, "Before or after food?" when she handed him an ointment and asked him to apply it on his injured foot twice a day. I also had the opportunity to really savour the 'dharti phat jaaye aur main usme samaa jaaun' expression on her face.

We had not fully unpacked so we had all our meals outside. We were at the coffee shop downstairs for breakfast. Viv was in charge of the easier job - standing in the queue to order our food, while I was doing the harder job - keeping Xena on the chairs that we had managed to bag with difficulty. I realised that the sum of all talk in our household is a constant. Because I couldn't talk, Xena was trying her best to maintain the sum. She wanted to go everywhere, talk to everyone, do everything at once. The two elderly ladies seated at the same table were very amused by her and asked her, "You how old ah?" Suddenly, Xena got all shy and refused to answer. Then they concluded, "OH! Cannot speak English lah!" Then they looked at me and said, "Cannot speak English ah?" I smiled and mouthed "Can!" which they interpreted as "Yeah!" and so nodded and repeated, "Ah. No wonder. Cannot speak English." They must be thinking, "Daughter cannot speak English. Mother cannot speak at all!"

Yet another task of mine had also been compromised. Xena's running commentary in the bus is usually controlled by me by either explaining to surprised commuters what she said/meant, or somehow distracting and stopping her before she said something really weird. This time, there was no chance at all, so when she pointed to a lady and said, "LOOK MAMA THAT AUNTY'S BRAID IS REACHING HER BUM-BUM!" I couldn't do anything at all. Except smile apologetically at everyone.

I was slightly panicky because there was a parent-teacher meeting in Xena's school on Monday, which I was supposed to attend. Fortunately, Viv took leave and decided to come along with me as my voice so that I didn't look like a fool miming all the questions I had for her teachers, "Does she finish her lunch? Is she respectful and courteous in class? Is she picking up Singlish from her classmates? Which kid taught her the term 'yucky smelly poo poo'???"

That last one would have been hilarious to mime.

X is for xĭhuān

I was racking my brain, thinking of what to write with X. 'Xena' would be too predictable, and I'd already done 'Xerox' last year. X-ray? X-rated? Xenophobia? I even briefly considered 'xylem zamana' but I didn't want to be chased down the streets by readers armed with the modern equivalent of the jhaadoo or the belan. Selfie sticks, maybe.

And that's when I remembered the goldmine! The Mandarin language is bursting with words that start with X! I went through google of course, but I wanted to pick a word that I had learnt in my Mandarin classes. After careful consideration, I picked 'xĭhuān', which means 'like'. I thought I'd make a list of random things I like, and revisit this list a decade later to see if (a) I like the same things; and (b) if Xena likes the same things.

So this is my 'wŏ xĭhuān' ("I like") list.

Wŏ xĭhuān:

- sadakchhaap pani puri
(though well-wishers tell me that I'd better be careful. The tummy's resilience is no longer what it was when I left India in 1998. Besides, I haven't been to India in the last 5 years!)

- floral dresses

- strappy high-heeled shoes
(the heels have to be just right though; not too low and not too high)

- making adrak/masala chai and cold coffee
(company is compulsory)

- cheesecake

- Cadbury's fruit & nut dark chocolate
(I can finish a big bar by myself within minutes. I kid you not.)

- Sour cream & onion rippled potato wafers
(they have to be rippled; no rippled, no eat)

- the Harry Potter series

- the colour purple

- blogging

- picnics

- organising parties

- Bundaberg ginger beer

- Mexican food

- nail art

- vacations

- the rain

- winters
(mild ones; living in Singapore has rendered me incapable of handling real winters)

- watching movie trailers in the theatre

- Bollywood music
(any kind; well, almost any kind)

- singing

- cooking

- long walks

- being organised

- fitness
(not the working out part so much, but the results)

and last, but definitely not the least...

- being mommy to Xena. :)

J is for jewellery

Our pre-renovation preparation involves getting rid of all our existing furniture, so for the last few weeks, we have been donating/selling whatever we can. Yesterday, I was clearing out my dressing table, when I found myself going down memory lane. Two drawers were full of jewellery, mostly earrings. I've always been an earring-crazy person, with a strong preference for artificial ones. They are cheap, so you can buy earrings to match or contrast with every single outfit you have. And if you lose them, you don't sit and cry for half an hour. And if you get bored of them, you just toss them out.

My mom finds this behavior very disturbing. She probably thinks that my distaste for gold jewellery brings shame to my family name. I still remember how shocked she looked when I told her that I wanted to wear artificial jewellery at my wedding because I wanted it to match my sari EXACTLY, and gold wouldn't. In fact, she forced me to go to Mustafa to scout for the gold jewellery for my wedding. On hindsight, it was a very fruitful trip. I came back armed with an iPod nano. My sister laughed her guts out trying to imagine me wearing the iPod with my wedding sari. Of course, Mom found none of this funny. She put her foot down ("you have chosen the boy, we will choose the rest") and I had to wear some very ghastly jewellery and then run around with all that excess weight to the marriage registration office and what not. I still laugh uncontrollably thinking of my poor friend Starbreez, who accompanied me everywhere with all the gold perched on her head.

My mom says gold is an investment and will be passed on to Xena for her wedding. I can only think of my friend K's wise words, "Who knows if this generation will marry at all?" In any case, I can't imagine Xena to be anything different from her gold-hating momma. She does seem to have the same taste as me in general. Favourite colour: purple is just an example.

Xena has always been quite fascinated with my jewellery boxes. She likes to take each item out and tell me if it's nice or not nice, and which outfits I should wear it with. She saw me sorting yesterday, picked out some of my favourite earrings and asked, "Mama, can I share your jewellery when I'm five years old?"

"Sure, baby, but why five?"

"That's when I'll get my ears pierced."

"Ooh. Okay."

(Even though custom says that this is best done as early as possible, we did not pierce her ears when she was a baby because we did not want to mess with her already weak immune system. The doctor also asked us to keep her away from anything that could cause an infection. I figured that it would be nice to pierce her ears when she asked for it herself.)

So it looks like our little girl is almost ready to get her ears pierced.

We will try to draw the line at ears.

Catch-up #8

Hello, bewdas!

It has been an absolutely mad week, and now that the weekend is almost here, promising to be quite mad as well, I thought I'd quickly sneak in a catch-up post.

Li'l Xena turned 4 years old this week! It sounds odd, but the best way to describe her is that she's a complete person now, full of ideas, jokes (really bad ones, just like her daddy), stories, opinions and never-ending questions. I will, at some point, write that post I've been writing after each of her birthdays, to share the parenting gyaan that has helped us manage her (and stay sane) as she went from three-nage to fearless four.

My mom-in-law flew in this week, and you know what that means! Afternoon chai-ya-ya-yai-yaaaaa! (Try to sing it in the tune from Gupt's title song; at least that's how it plays in my head.) As some of you would know, I'm not a chai addict, but I love making it for other people and I love chai when I have company. So every afternoon, mil-dil sit down together for a cuppa and talk about life.

Work has been super this year, and I'm quite happy with my first-quarter projects. I published two kiddy books with my dream publisher and I'm in the midst of a third one with them. The deadlines tend to be quite insane, and when I feel stressed, I look to ducks for inspiration. Calm on the surface, furiously paddling underneath. It helps.

As you know, we tend to do the craziest things when we really shouldn't be. For example, I should be working on that next chapter instead of blogging now, but here I am. Like how I was crazy enough to sign up for the A-Z blogging challenge in April last year. At a day's notice. A post a day. With Viv away on his annual pilgrimage business trip to Vegas. With me managing the house and Xena and my work by myself. Cuckoo! But I did it -- I wrote 26 posts in a month, and I must be stark raving mad because I've decided to do it again this year. I've also convinced Clueless to do it, and if you click on her blog, you will see that her last post was the last post of the challenge. She has agreed, and now I'm working on my next target Shub. These are the two people who used to live in the far west end of Singapore and I pestered and pestered them until they moved to the east! (At least I like to think it was me.)

So let's see how it goes. If you have ideas on topics that I can blog about during the challenge, please share them with me. I will be very grateful because my mind is blank at the moment.

See you in April! (Every day!)
Cheers,
Sayesha the bartender bhai

Love is friendship set to music

Last Thursday, Viv and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. A friend expressed his amazement at the 8 years of marriage, 13 years of togetherness, and almost 17 years of knowing each other, "You must know each other perfectly by now. Are there still any surprises?" Thankfully, the answer is yes. As we evolve, there still are surprises and differences and new things we discover about each other along the way. Five years ago, I heard on the radio a statement which I have used as the title of this post, because I think that's kind of what we have.

Though Viv's initial plan was to celebrate by going for a movie together (my sis-in-law had agreed to babysit), I flatly refused because firstly, the movie he had picked was something I was not going to watch under any circumstance. Much as I love Sherlock, I was not watching The Imitation Game, after suffering through two hours watching Enigma. No more movies on cracking codes for me, please. Less so on our anniversary. Secondly, I did want to include Xena in at least a part of the celebration.

So I told him I'll put together some miscellaneous activities for the evening, and all he had to do was leave office a little early. We started the evening off by going bowling, something that we had not done in a decade. It was also Xena's first time bowling. They didn't have a Styrofoam bowling ball for her, so we had to help her push the extra extra light ball that they gave us. But they had these little bumpers popping up on both sides of the lane whenever it was her turn, so there was no chance of a gutter ball. She thoroughly enjoyed it, and so did we.

Afterwards, we indulged in McDonald's Prosperity curly fries, which are made available to us deprived folks only once a year, around Chinese New Year. The yearly pilgrimage was totally worth it as the fries were just as yummy as they had been last year. And even Xena popped in a few of them! Wooohoooo! (See, regular parents would tsk-tsk and shake their heads at the thought of parents rejoicing about their kid enjoying McDonald's, but as you might know, ours is a special case. McD trips are approved and even encouraged by her dietitian.)

After that, we grabbed a cab and went for dinner to one of our favourite restaurants - Long Beach UDMC - which is by the beach and serves the most awesome chilli crab ever. Of course, Viv being a vegetarian, I had to eat the crab all by myself ("err... the smallest we have is still 1 kg," the waitress told us) and I managed okay. Xena contributed significantly to project 'Help Mama finish the crab' by eating approximately 5.45637 grams of it.

Then we went home, and while I put her to sleep, Viv went and fetched some Q drinks. I asked for pineapple and he said "You like pineapple flavour??" Mango is my known favourite flavour, but pineapple is my secret favourite flavour. And he didn't know that. A well-kept secret. For 17 years. Ha!

And we sat down over the drinks and went through the '36 questions to bring you closer'. It was my idea. In the daily grind, most of the time we end up talking about Xena or work or food or friends or family or cricket or movies or home renovation. We rarely just talk and share. And when this link popped up in my Facebook feed last week, I just knew it would be the perfect end to the evening.

It was very very interesting. I can't say for sure if it brought us closer like it promised, but it did give us a newer insight into each other's minds. It also made us appreciate each other more. We ended up thinking and talking about many things that we otherwise never would. Sample these:

- Would you like to be famous? In what way?
- If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you choose?
- Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
- Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
- What do you value most in a friendship?
- If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
- Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
- When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

But the one that surprised me the most was this particular one.

26. Complete this sentence "I wish I had someone with whom I could share..."

Viv immediately said he had nothing on this. I immediately went, "Me neither." But then I thought a little more and surprisingly, I did have something. I had a sudden realisation that all my life, I've never had anyone with whom I can discuss and dissect Hindi song lyrics the way I want to. I am insanely (and rather laughably I must say) passionate about them and yet, there was and is literally no one in my life -- not family, not friends, not colleagues, not neighbours -- who would not instantly fall asleep if I got started on how I think the song 'Tinka tinka zara zara' was probably written as 'Tinka tinka zarra zarra' by the lyricist and the music director changed it because the tune didn't work or something, just like 'Apne karam ki kar adaayein' should really have been 'Apne karam ki kar ataayein', how extremely simple lyrics ('Tum yeh kaise judaa ho gaye, har taraf har jagah ho gaye' and 'Dard jab teri ataa hai toh gila kisse karein' are just two examples) can be so beautiful you get goosebumps or a lump in your throat even if you don't identify with the situation, and how you have to really really search very very hard in the current generation of songs to find lyrics that touch the heart.

I have to admit I felt a little sad when I thought of all this. It was a weird kind of 'loneliness', if I may call it that.

So the real question is -- will Xena grow up to be that person?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But I sure do hope so.

Broken record

So one day, I found myself added to my school's WhatsApp group. I didn't know such a group existed. And they didn't know that I existed on WhatsApp. Anyway, other than the very annoying 'good morning' memes, 'interesting' forwards ('drink coriander juice every day and you will NEVER get cancer') and Santa-Banta jokes, it hasn't been too bad. A lot of reminiscing. A lot of leg-pulling. A lot of laughter.

You see, my Dad moved a lot when we were kids, so I ended up going to some 7 schools in 12 years. I conditioned myself not to get too close to my classmates, because it was too heartbreaking to have to move two years later. But this was the group that I was the longest with - four years. That too, when we were in the 15-18 age range. So obviously, this is the group that knows me the best, the group that I remember the most, and connect the most to. So I got a warm welcome, and within half a day, someone shot this question at me.

"So Sayesha, do you still like toota-phoota ("broken") songs?"

"Toota-phoota songs??"

"You know, the dukhi aatma ("sad soul") kind of songs?"

"What?! When did I like dukhi aatma kind of songs??"

Before I could even protest properly, they were all nodding in WhatsApp unison. Seriously? That's how they remembered me? That's how they ALL remembered me?

And then I tried to remember. It's true that I used to sing a lot of songs back then. On demand. In competitions. Anywhere and everywhere. I tried to jog my memory and think of the songs they had heard me sing - 'Tere bina zindagi se koi', 'Tere dar par sanam...', 'Rulaake gaya sapna mera', 'Dil kehta hai chal unse mil', 'Saare sapne kahin kho gaye', etc. etc. And I had to admit that most of the songs I sang were sad, or at least kinda romantic, but sad. But it was not because I was a dukhi aatma. It was because these songs had the most amazing, heart-touching lyrics.

So I decided to stand up for myself.

"Heyyyyyy! I liked songs with meaningful lyrics, okay??? I did not sing random toota-phoota songs like 'Tum toh thehre pardesi' and all that!" I protested.

I could sense their amused smiles in WhatsApp unison.

Hmmmph.

And then it struck me. Sometimes, it's your school friends who really know you the best, who can sum you up in a way that no one else, not even you yourself, can. And sometimes, it's okay to just accept it graciously.

So yes. I like toota-phoota songs. What can you do?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and put my latest toota-phoota discovery called 'Tu hai ki nahin' from Roy on loop. 34798236948327043280 times.