2006

Another year is coming to an end. We ape the nature to break our lives into comfortable parts. years - yipee!! lets party! months - now where is my pach check? weeks - catching up with friends. days - slumped in bed.

But yes, 2006 was a great year. Okay, a good one.
Learnt that puppies look even cuter when they are born at home. You don't listen to people who say 'how can a lab and a german shephard cross possible be?'. Yes, they can. So cute you would gladly give up your room to all 6 of them. You still wudn't possibly give them to your relatives who come over and make mushy baby sounds on seeing them. Your mum won't allow eight dogs at home. You can still beg for one, or maybe two. Mommy dear?

Plan and resolutions for 2007?
Bruce almighty didn't consult me while making his so let him guess on mine.

Looking back 2006 was quite good. Bangalore roads choked me up. Smothered it up with dollops of old friends meetings, scrumptious food and my own apartment!! Taught me to pay my electricity bill on time. Crap! Forgot the maintainence bill. First thing this weekend. Honest.

More pics of the babies

Their eyes are not opened yet but by some quirk of nature they have started to walk early so they keep banging into each other in a max 1/2 a metre radius!!!I have a feeling that they have started enjoying the game of banging and then falling on top of each other.

The pups arrived!

Six adorable puppies arrived at our home on 11th Nov !!! Kuzo is a proud mother now. Kuzo is being fiercly protective of them and Maggie has till now not even managed to get a teeny-tiny peep on them!

Collections

I have a penchant for collecting stuff. Though it rarely lasts for more than a few days. Starting from the very basic stamp collections, I have dabbled in with pen collections, new 10 ruppee notes (and donations are still welcome!) and some wierd cones I found at the terai mountains on one of my vacations long long ago.

Now these cones were very interesting. There were used in small mountain factories to weave cotton thread and wind them up on the cones. Once used there were just thrown away on the hill sides. My 9 year old mind found them nothing less than a precious treasure. So much to my mom's indignation there were carried very carefully piled up in the backseat more than a thousand kilometers back home !! The rest of the summer vacation was spend in finding a use for the pile up of cones in our backyard. Me and my brother debated (and fought) over a panorama of appropriate uses. While my brother wanted to construct a sort of mini aircraft out of them I wanted to use them to decorate our cats home. Well she just Had given kittens and they were all looking sooo cutee! Sadly neither was the aircraft constructed. We'd leave that to the NASA guys.. wont we? And neither did the kittens get their new home. However, some cones were badly destroyed in the process of trying to make either....

We grew up. Sometime in between then and now Mom though it safe enough to sneek them away to our maid. Just yesterday she found one lone survivor tucked away in my old cupboard. She has promised to keep this one safe untill we can go upto the mountains again for more.

Lewis Caroll

In Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's adventures in Wonderland' to assure herself that she understands the strange occurances around her Alice says, "I'll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, ...."

Now what is Alice talking about here? We all know that four times fives is twenty. Is this is an author's blunder or was Lewis Carroll someone much more than the author of a famous children classic?

blue eyed, blond haired - $10 each.

TOI edition dated 10th august' 06 boldly proclaimed 'Designer babies for $5k". For the mentioned price you get an embryo created in the lab. You also get to choose the color of your baby's eye and it's hair too! The clinic also boasts of sperm donors having Ph.D degrees and egg donors of having attended college atleast. Want to know what you baby is gonna look like? They are even gonna provide you with a couple of childhoos pictures of your donors.

Excuse me, sir? Are there not enough children in this world who could be given a better future? Anyhow since we are already at this stage of evolution why not venture to think a bit furthur. The embryo is created in the lab. The mother's womb is still needed for it's growth. Could the day be far off when that is also possible in some lab? And with the advances in gene research why not create one who can fight in a war and never get hurt, one who can all the pain and not cry or maybe someone who has 3 fingers and 1 thumb because on some creative day the world decides that that looks much better!

The perfect picture

When i was little we used to go to the hills for our summer holidays. On this particular one we were staying for more than a week in a cottage nestled in the then sleepy hills of ranikhet.

Dad woke us up at 5 in the morning. It was just twilight then and we all went out for a short walk upto the pine hills. Dad's secret purpose was to click a photograph of us in the early morning light. (If i remember corrently he had bribed us with ice-cream the previous night to get up early in the morning). Anyways so we trudged after him in the cold - me, bhaiya and mummy to the pine trees lining the mountains. Dad took quite a lot of time to take the pictures. If you look at them now you can see me and bhaiya as two bundles of warm clothing huddling close to Mum to beat the cold. Complete in our woollen scarves (the navy blue ones) sleepy eyes and smiles. Mummy is looking beautiful in her pink sari and a shawl drawn over. The mist is arising from the forest behind us. And Dad got his favourite pine trees in the background. One of the best pictures we have in the family.

Krish

Saw the movie Krish yesterday evening with my team. Courtesy: Peter, our program manager gave them for an M1 sign off. (Psshhh...i dont even know what an M1 is !!). But on the flip side - the movie was great, esp the second half. In the scene where he comes in his black cloak dress and flies off the floor to hit the baddies i actually clapped !! Something i have not done possibly since second grade. And we got free food coupons too. One of my friends, a pvr freak (or more importantly a movie freak), avidly vowed to join GE if they give her free movie and nacho coupons. Point to note - We should include that in our referral program.

Contemplating

There is someting i read a long time ago. And sometimes i keep thinking about the sayings wisdom.
It talks about the speed of life. Everything in nature happens slowly. It took trillions of years for the earth to begin and for the mountains to stand. It takes time for the river to start winding its course down the mountains and for the trees to start growing by its side. Nature does everything at its own pace. Nature does not know hurry. Man bought haste into this world.

Take a viper for example. It lives peacefully (yes, a snake) and only kills for food and when harmed. In a word it is quite content to be what it is - a snake. Not so homo sapians. We rush through the jungle of life and coerce nature to our own beliefs.

Ever wondered at our trust in nature? We dump chemicals into rivers, dig the earth for mining, use CFCs in our deo sprays - yet why do we complain of floods, earthquakes and global warming? And we even have an answer to this: The government is not doing enough! Even then nature is very tolerant of us (some reason behind why it is called Mother nature). However, the signals being sent back to us everyday are becoming weak. We can still shatter the delicate eco system, play with out genesm, tinker with the very chasms of evolution and in one word - play god.

Why do I believe that the millions who loose their loved ones in natural calamities every year would not agree to this.