Plans for the year end changed, and how!

What a Day!

Have you ever wondered how badly the morning of Christmas Eve could start? Here is what happened to us. I was banking on having a long beauty sleep. The previous two mornings I had got up earlier than usual, as I had to get ready for my morning holiday job. There was hardly any time to have a protracted bath, or a lazy breakfast, forget about doing a little bit of exercise or yoga. Nowadays, due to the winter cold, I've almost given up on morning and evening walks, and bicycling for toning the abdominal muscles.

To turn everything topsy turvy, the alarm rang at an odd unexpected hour, too early for today. It went off at the time I had set for yesterday and the day before, which was at 5:30 am. For some, 5:30 is not that early, but for me it is. My normal time to leave bed is around 7 am, so 5:30 is when I am fast asleep.

So when the alarm rang, I thought it was something else, in someone else's house. Only when my Equal Half shouted for me to leave the bed, I realised it was serious! It was the water heater. Our heater might have exploded. Soon the entire apartment would be flooded with water, and then make way into the floors below us. That would be a mess, not to mention the insurance claims that the down floor people would slap on us.

So it started with a dysfunctional water heater. I made emergency arrangements to catch the overflow with cups, bowls, cloths, sponges, and fill it into a bucket. Anything to avoid major bills. But there was no hot water to wash face first thing in the morning.
So, when Christmas starts on such a bleak , what could we expect? For some reason, our friends who were to visit us for Christmas did not turn up. And we cancelled the Las Vegas trip for the time being. Everything was going wrong.
As the day progressed, some red wine elevated our mood. Another bright idea flashed in our mind. What about Palm Springs? Maybe, we were to go to Palm Springs for the year end, after all?

Quietness on Thanksgiving Day

Last year I was in US during Thanksgiving, but the only things I remember about it was the turkey leftover I got to eat from a friend, and the Black Friday sale post Thanksgiving, when my Equal Half and I went shopping from one store to the other and we landed up spending much much more than we intended to.

This year has been so much different than what it was last year. Not only have I lived here more than a year by now, I've done enough shopping for the house and myself. Now I am in less need of more household appliances or new clothing for a new wardrobe.

So, this year my focus has shifted from the Black Friday deal flyers that came with the newspaper in the morning. In fact, too much shopping has started to get on my nerves, because I've done so much shopping all these months to arrange the house where I've started living newly.

Today was more about how to utilize the holiday. Should it be resting in bed and catching up with lost sleep, or watching a Netflix DVD, or cooking a Thanksgiving lunch. We'd cancelled a trip to Universal Studios with a family as we wanted to rest and catch up with personal things.

But, in the end, Thanksgiving is for food and we could not escape it. While we were out in the soft warm sun on State Street, we began looking for food for lunch. Only a few restaurants were open. Although I wanted something non-Indian, since we eat Indian food at home, we had to accept what was available. The Indian restaurant was full to capacity, as it wasn't closed like the others.

During daytime, when the restaurants here offer buffet, it is a hard time to choose something away from the buffet dishes laid out near the door. A buffet seems to good a deal, with all the array of food offered, compared to a la carte orders. Although we'd gone into the restaurant with a determination not to go for the buffet (so we would eat less and keep our weights under control), finally, after a prolonged perusal of the leather covered menu, we decided the easier way was to take the buffet and get over with the lunch time ordeal of making a choice from all those listed on the menu.

Hence for one more day, we overate. Buffets are designed for overeating, I have no doubt about it. and post-meal, it's time to regret what was eaten. Now I'm about to go to bed, my stomach still churning the luncheon meat and chicken, six hours after. But one thing was good about it. I got to eat someone else's food than eating mine from my kitchen, day after day. That gets somewhat boring. Another hand brings variety in taste. And variety is the spice of life, anyone would agree.

Old Hindi Songs

After wrongly listening to it for a long time, I've rediscovered this amazing website called http://www.dishant.com/, which has compilations of Hindi songs, movie songs classified based on movie, alphabet, actor, actress, etc. What a fool I was earlier, just confining myself to the Live radio section, and never exploring any of the other tabs.

Before that, my husband discovered he could play the Pandora Radio on his Palm Pre phone through the sound system in the house, which improved its music quality by adding stereo. Gradually, we were able to plug in the computer, and the old cassette playing tape recorder to the sound system, which dramatically altered the type of music we listened to. My joy was endless when I could use my music cassette collection transported all the way from India on ship.

The computer, now attached to the sound system, has become many times more valuable as an entertainment outlet. Everything comes on stereo. Mainly http://www.dishant.com/ has caught my attention. It has a large collection. To be able to listen to my favourite songs in the US is such a privilege. I wonder, what an age we are living in. The computer and the internet has revolutionized everything.

A few decades ago, when someone came over from India to the US, there was no Indian television. And the Internet was not even born. Telephone calls were extremely expensive and beyond one's pocket. The postal system was slow and did not reach every corner of the globe. And now? I don't have to explain, I guess.

About The Pearl

Yesterday night, after a dinner of wine and what my husband calls 'retrofitted' pasta, I picked up the slim volume of John Steinbeck's novel, The Pearl. On the firt few pages, the family of Kino, his wife Juana, and their son Coyotito are waking up in the morning and getting up from bed. It is a perfect day, a day similar to any other day when Kino eats the corn cake breakfast his wife makes in their traditional fireplace.

The entire scenario is so pristine, untouched, that it is a little out of the way when I get to know that they live in a brush house, away from the concrete and plaster houses on the other side of the land, and light a brush fire to cook their meal. There is a world of difference between these two segments of society. They are poor.

A sudden development brings their poverty into full focus. A scorpion bites the beloved child on his hammock. The mother Juana wants the doctor to come and look at the child, but she is informed by the neighbours that the doctor would not come to cure the child living in these houses.

Hence the march of the entire crowd to the doctor, who lives in a palatial house. The mony minded doctor refuses to examine the wounded child. He is also unable to find any value in the rough pearls that Kino offers instead of money.

What happens next, I'm eager to know. Would have to be patient.

Sisterhood

Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson, is a narrative in a style different from the usual. I would say, it is slightly similar to that of Esther's Inheritance by Hungarian author Sandor Marai, at least in the landscape. The two sisters are brought up by various people including their grandmother, grandaunts-in-law, aunt.

The novel gives details of the girls' childhood experiences. Their grandfather had died in a train accident, and their parents were there no more. When they reach adolescence, the sisters take different courses in life.

The story is told from the point of view of Ruthie, the elder, who becomes more like her aunt. Sister Lucille remains a normal person. Lives in the village where the family had always been.

There are extensice descriptions of the flood that damages their house located on a hill top. Also fine descriptions of winter, and the landscape, and days and nights, their day to day life with their aunt Sylvie, who is abnormal.