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Friday, August 22, 2014

The Secret

English: Flower bouquet with daffodils and tulips Deutsch: Blumenstrauß mit Narzissen und Tulpen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Secret Admirers

You return home to discover a huge flower bouquet waiting for you, no card attached. Who is it from — and why did they send it to you?

As long as I can remember, anything like this has never happened in my life. I mean I seriously never had any secret admirers.

But if I get into a thinking process for it, I do not think anyone else than someone who would want to apologize to me would send them.

I mean seriously, why would anyone send me a bouquet. For what I mean?? If someone really knows me well, then they would know that I am not a flower person. I am severely asthmatic and cannot take foreign smells, especially of flowers that have synthetic aromas sprayed on to them. And these days all that is there in commercially available good looking and smelling flowers is just all of that. Chemicals Chemicals Chemicals.
Probably the only commercial bouquet of flowers that I can tolerate on my olfactory senses is that of white lilies. They sense mild and are pretty peaceful to look at; obviously not like the bright and bold roses.
So now coming to the part of being gifted one; as I have already mentioned that all my near and dear ones are aware of my condition and therefore do not gift me flowers, therefore the probability of being gifted such a thing is only through a complete/incomplete stranger.

Now coming to the WHY part of the prompt.

"Why" is a question that includes a broad set of answers. For an instance it could be for any of the following:

1. To apologize on something.
2. In order to know me better
3. May be to mark an impression on me
4. the person did a bulk purchase and so ended up gifting me one
5. trying to trick me into something nasty
6. the person is actually the secret admirer of mine

Really!! I just made up all the first 5 points, but the last one is the one that is completely made up.

I know why would anyone be or need to be the secret admirer of mine??

Do not know about this one really. But if any day I would, I then would update why and really why along with all the extra details.

The Name’s The Thing

English: Male long hair in Western culture. Totnes, UK 2008 (Saturday afternoon, about tea time) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Kamisuki (Combing the hair), A colour woodblock print, Japan, Taishō era, 1920 Goyō (1880-1921) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you ever named an inanimate object? (Your car? Your laptop? The volleyball that kept you company while you were stranded in the ocean?) Share the story of at least one object with which you’re on a first-name basis.

Ever since I remember, the problem in my life has always been love. Love, Love, Love. I am so prone to falling in love every now and then and that too with non-human beings. By mentioning non-human beings I simply do not mean pets, other animals, insects and pests alone. I do at times fall in love with objects, like real inanimate stuff. Really, I am not joking.

There is so much of stuff that I have hoarded on to in all these years of my life that I have actually stopped counting on the numbers. Like I recall having all this in my memory of the stuff that I have kept myself since years like the old spoon, few old books, hair clips, old school kitchen gadgets that my mom used to use ages ago (now that she has upgraded herself to latest gadgets), old school mosquito repellent electric gadgets, old newspapers, vintage jewellery and the list could go on and on and on for long.

Though, at times I do get a mixed feeling towards the reasoning for my behaviour in hoarding all these stuff. Like sometimes I feel that all those stuff are actually useful and that is probably why I still carry them around with me; but many more times I end up realising that it is more on the still-so-much-in-love thingy and a little less of keeping for the utility reasoning that I have become a hoarder for used and retro stuff.

But very recently I have reduced this obsession of mine to a great extent. I mean I had to, because since some time I started getting the feeler that this kind of kleptomaniac behaviour of mine within my own house was getting towards becoming a serious illness. The realisation daunted on me when I started calling my hair-clip a "baby". I used to caress for it as if it was a child of mine. I would take care while using it, be more cautious when I would be sleeping while still using it on my hair. I mean the well-being of a hair clip had actually become a thing of concern for me. The obsession was also not limited to simply calling and caring for it like a baby; I also started experiencing a deep connection with it. For an instance I remember getting breathless once when I did not find it around me after removing it at the time of a shower. Believe me this is not the end of the crazy story, there is more to it. My heart used to skip a beat whenever the hair clip would fall off from my hand; and that day I realised this-is-it. I then took a conscious decision and told myself to get sane. I slowly and slowly started on my path to pull myself away from my obsession of considering mere hair-clip as my little baby. Yes, I agree it was a little difficult to do initially, but slowly I got over my insanity and one day I just graduated to a plain stretchy elastic band.

2 months of using it the band instead of a hair clip, and I must say that I am completely over my strange habit of addressing a hair accessory my "baby".

Ahh...my "sweet heart" just got entangled on my long hair during the time I was writing this post, so please do not mind the typos on this one.

Matters of Taste

English: Crew of the final ill-fated flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia, mission STS-107. This is the official crew photo from Mission STS-107 on theSpace Shuttle Columbia. From left to right are Mission Specialist David Brown, Commander Rick Husband, MissionSpecialist Laurel Clark, Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla,Mission Specialist Michael Anderson, Pilot William McCool,and Israeli Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When was the last time a movie, a book, or a television show left you cold despite all your friends (and/or all the critics) raving about it? What was it that made you go against the critical consensus?

Now this one is also a co-incident one in a row. This just happened yesterday when I was watching the film "Gravity". I had to watch this one since a long time, may be since the time when I got to know that she received so many accolades along with the nominations and awards for the same movie. Moreover, my moviepedia friend also told me that Gravity happens to be his all time favourite as well.

So, since a long time I was looking for a moment to grab this one, but as usual I hardly get time. So, as I am currently on a vacation, hence I thought of utilizing the opportunity to watch the Gravity. But as I never gave my moviepedia friend a chance to store the movie in my laptop, so I had to ask my cousin to arrange it for me.

My cousin being a nice and resourceful person did download it for me and so I ended up watching the movie with him yesterday.

Moving on to the movie, yes initially it seemed attention generating and also looked beautiful with the spectacular visuals and almost documented scenes; but gradually I realised that it was a more or less fictionalized take on the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

And thats all what I have for the movie to talk about. Obviously, the struggles and the will to survive of the leading lady portrayed by Ms. Bullock were close to natural and were in fact touching, but apart from it I just felt I was in a planetarium for 91 minutes. Of course, there was some dose of entertainment in the form of Mr. Clooney doing the inspirational and soul uplifting bit in a humorous tone, but that is it.

The visuals where in the leading actors are fixing some stuff of the shuttle in the space and a nail flows by, was much like the typical scenario wherein a husband and a wife are in a garden and a flower flows by when the wife is bust pruning some flower stem here and there, and obviously the husband runs (and not flies) to bring it back to her.

There were set-backs to existing set-backs and to me it seemed the entire movie was just a play of close to reality sets, visuals and cinematography.

Now it seems that I should not be talking more nasty stuff else I will start getting hate comments from all portions of this World, considering how popular and respected the movie is considered by all.

By the way, that moviepedia friend of mine had one bit of advice for me, since he totally got disgusted with my not so good comments on it : "You should have not seen the movie on a laptop screen, it is simply not meant for it. I know it because I saw it thrice that way ".

P.S: The scene shown in the movie where a fellow space shuttle colleage is seen dead with his face blown hollow and his family album floating alongside him was devastating for me to watch; my dad also had his face blown up and there was a burnt album of ours (which majorly had my pictures) along with a burnt sandalwood book mark that I had gifted him.

But this fact has nothing to do with my dislike for the movie.

A Bookish Choice

Books in the Douglasville, Georgia Borders store. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am glad I reached till here. So, following is the description for the Daily Prompt and after reading it I realised there cannot be more coincidence in this World.

A literary-minded witch gives you a choice: with a flick of the wand, you can become either an obscure novelist whose work will be admired and studied by a select few for decades, or a popular paperback author whose books give pleasure to millions. Which do you choose?

As I wrote at the beginning, this particular daily prompt seemed so much for me. Firstly, the literary-minded fairy part seemed me only. Well, I have witch-like qualities and I am literary-minded, though I do not know if both the qualities combined will make me a literary-minded witch, but I do feel so that I am one.

So, now moving on to the prompt part. If given an option to select one amongst the choices of either being an obscure novelist not known to many or to be a famous paperback writer devoured by all, I would have a clear cut subscription towards the not-so-known author who is applauded and revered by a niche group of readers.

I urge to not be judged as being under-ambitious, or being considered someone who looks down upon the writers who publish the paperbacks. I am fine being an obscure novelist read by a select few readers whose books come out in paperback. I would like to state that I as an writer would love to be understood and heard read read as someone who knows her craft well and does not do stuff to please people in order to get rich and famous.

I know I might be sounding somewhat sarcastic here, but neither I intend to state that paperback writers write to just earn riches and prime time shows; nor am I saying that such writers involve in strategies and focus more on being an author-entrepreneur rather than an author.

No, no; all I am trying to say is I would want to be understood by few than being just bought, half-bought, or half-read by a lot many. I want to write to be heard, heard for the stories that I have in my mind, brought to a reader through my flair of juxtaposing of appropriate phrases and words.

I do not know what I believe in is correct or not; but I believe it is, because all that I know for sure is "the number of pages read is not similar to the number of copies sold".

New Wrinkles

You wake up one day and realize you’re ten years older than you were the previous night. Beyond the initial shock, how does this development change your life plans ?

This is the second time I am using the Wordpress's Daily prompt service, although I am a little late in posting; but as long as I blog, I have no major issues. So here it goes:

I think to wake up one day and realise that I am no longer what I looked like the previous night is going to get me into a terrible state of shock. I know that an emotion of shock is quite obvious, but in my scenario it is more than obvious. It has got to do with the fact that I actually have stopped aging on the outside since a long time, about 8-10 years to be precise. I know it seems a little to unbelieving and self-flattering, but it is the truth.

In order to validate the truth I have attached my picture of recent days to this post (do not scroll down now). Again, it would seem that the argument of me being not-so-old-looking will not be validated due to the absence of data - data as in my picture of 10 years vintage from today. But that will be manageable considering the fact that the picture inserted at the end of this blog is of current me, which is precisely 32 years old. Yeah...I am that much carbon-14 material in me.

Ok, so now coming back to the effect of change caused due to the development of wrinkles worth 10 years of age on my face in a span of one night. I will probably do all the following, though not particualry in the order mentioned, but this is all I am sure I would do:

check if I am not suffering from some sort of Amnesia or any corollary disease of it.
sue my anti-wrinkle cream which I have been using for the last 7 years.
consider buying (read investing) in more of Term life Insurance.
check all my savings so as to plan a travel trip to Iceland, or any other country which would still be untouched in my travel bucket-list.
check if the person I love is still with me. (I hope he does not end up reading this one, good that I put the not-in-any-order disclaimer, lol)
check if the person I love has also fast-aged like me (the person on 5 and 6 are the same, do not know why I felt like making things confusion free here)
check if my mother is still there with me (my dad is already no more)
check if my daddy is there. I mean that sounds eerie considering the point No. 7 above, but if I can grow old overnight, he can also re-happen anytime. Yeah.
check if the book that I am writing is available in the Amazon or am I still writing it.
is anyone reading this post. (yeah I kind of made up this one due to lack of creativity)

picture taken 6 months back (approx.)

Second Opinion

Your-Opinion-is-More-Important-Than-You-Think Barnstar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What are some (or one) of the things about which you usually don’t trust your own judgment, and need someone’s else’s confirmation?

Conforming to the daily prompt of Wordpress; I thought of participating in today. So, here I am blogging on today's word-prompt: Second Opinion

I know of a lot of stuff that I know I am not good at and therefore end up spoiling the stuff and human relations associated with it as well. Therefore, very recently, I installed my very good friend to the duty of being my official Second Opinion provider at all times.

So, he is basically the one who has the duty of checking all my actions, especially verbal, to ensure that whatever I end up doing is politically correct. Yes, his duties also come across as my official spokesperson, but many a times he is perfect in his job of being the one who gives the Second Opinion.

Talking about the stuff that he usually guides or rather auto-corrects me on include being wary of people I do not know well, the part where I should think about dealing with stuff from work, or simply managing my work-life balance. I know all the things that I just mentioned sound unbelievable, but I am sorry they are real simple stuff that I still cannot deal with on my own, successfully.

Like very recently, I was offered an extension to my existing job role in the company that I work for. I actually liked that extra bit that was offered so I did not show a displeasure in accepting it; but since I am aware of being trapped into problems, I did not accept the new responsibility at the very moment; but actually ended up asking for some time to think about it before coming up with a definite YES or a NO.

Obviously, I then went to this Second-Opinion generator friend of mine; and he then gave me the best advice that he could on the situation. Hence, I then ended up making optimum use of the a week's time that I bought from the HR, and then put forth my expectations, especially the monetary ones and negotiated the best deal out of it.

Ahh Lucky me to have my Second opinion constantly with me....

I know you will comment here the moment you will get to read this one.

Thanks and love you loads my auto-default, auto-play Second Opinion generator....