Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable.
Just one year ago I was so happy to get a job at last after several months of job hunting. And now today I had gone for an interview (after receiving a call without even applying) at another Engineering college very far from our residence just for the heck of it, while being already employed.
After a demo and few questions, the panel readily agreed to the salary asked by me (which of course made me feel I should have asked for more) and were very insistent on me joining as soon as possible.
SIGH!! Wish I could but given the distance and the exhausting commute that it will be, I am happy with my present workplace though the salary is unsatisfactory. D drops me to my work place daily or even if I go by my two wheeler it takes 20 minutes hardly. Better infrastructure, better employee facilities etc are a few among other pros. Also I am not much of a job hopping person. Inspite of all the politics and bad colleagues I stuck at my first work place for 6.5 years only to leave for Bangalore after marriage. That change was really needed and was refreshing. As for the present workplace it has been only one year…. I have just started 🙂
Even if we shift to some area in the middle between this new work place and D’s office, rent will get high. And I have to start taking the BMTC bus to that place! Horrors of horror! I dread taking the bus because of my severe motion sickness problem and congestion and crowd in buses.
So the decision to refuse such a good offer is so hard. One side money another side comfort. But I know in my heart my need for comfort and peace is much more than my ambition. Should it be other way round? I don’t know!!! If I had been very hard working, god knows what heights would I have attained by now.
Sigh!!!
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You may have heard the old saying that a couple that stays together start to resemble each other. A lot of research has been done in this field and you just need to Google it to read all the articles and see all the photos. For example, University of Michigan psychologist Robert Zajonc conducted an experiment to test this phenomenon. He analyzed photographs of couples taken when they were newlyweds and photographs of the same couples taken 25 years later. Apparently, a couple who had no resemblance when they first married began to have similar, though subtle, facial features after 25 years. Research reveals that the happier the marriage, the more the couple resembles each other.
But what about their behaviour? Does it also start to become similar?
Where do I begin to tell the stories of D’s forgetfulness? And I think it is hereditary because my FIL is very forgetful and so is my SIL. Once , while on his way to the ration shop to take kerosene, my FIL came back home thrice….first for shopping bag, second time for kerosene bottle and third time for wallet!!
And now I am becoming like D. Once, I hurried up to the return bus at work to get a good seat (I like sitting only in the front or second row and near window to control my motion sickness) and settled down nicely. The bus was about to leave and my gut feeling was telling me something is missing. Then I remembered – I had come to work on my two-wheeler that day!!! 😳
With much embarrassment I got down from the bus with all colleagues, walking up to the bus, asking me what happened.
And, again today, I repeated the same incident!!! :oops::oops: And D reminded me while I was talking to him on phone!! 😀
Sigh! Ab mera kya hoga?
“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
P.S. the title is in Hindi and means “someone who forgets”
A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip.
As a child, I simply loved celebrating birthdays with cake cutting ceremony, balloons and gifts 🙂 Lunch also used to be a major event with an extensive menu of at-least 7 different types of dishes. Not that I had any huge birthday party…it was just a family affair. Later in teenage, when I developed a close friendship with my classmate and neighbor, she became the sole invitee to my birthday celebration. As soon as my birthday was over, I used to countdown to the days remaining for the next birthday. 🙂
Then I went to hostel. I still remember the first birthday I celebrated in hostel; the midnight wishes, receiving card and gifts, the cake smearing more than cutting, midnight snacks and cold drinks, dancing routine and the birthday bumps, giving treat to friends next day or someday in the week. 🙂
Then I came back home and though again there was no invitee, celebrated birthday with same enthusiasm. If my birthday was after summer vacation at work, I distributed sweets at work and gave treat to colleagues-friends. Although I had the policy of taking leave on that day if there was nothing urgent.
After marriage, birthday celebration has been with D alone. But with cake and balloons nevertheless and of course gift, movie and restaurant lunch/dinner. And blessings/wishes from both sides of the family.
But this year, after many years, I had to go to work. Though it was a holiday due to fourth Saturday, there was exam scheduled on that day and those coming to work will get a compensatory leave later. So for the benefit of an extra leave I decided to go. It was an enjoyable day. I distributed sweets to all colleagues present and my lunch group colleagues-friends gifted me a saree which was a complete surprise. By the time I reached home it was 5.30 pm and we were going for dinner outside so no time to bring cake, cut it etc. So there was no cake and no balloons. Just a quiet dinner at Barbecue Nation. Well not exactly quiet…with the loud music and servers doing a dance routine 🙂 That is Barbecue Nation style.
D’s 6-year-old nephew called to wish and inquired about my birthday celebration and after hearing that I didn’t cut any cake and didn’t put up any balloons, concluded that I had a very “boring” birthday. Sigh!! 😦
So I think, as my mother used to predict, I have grown out of the phase of usual birthday celebrations and counting days to the next birthday. Someday in the coming years I may even forget its my birthday. God forbid!!! 😯
P.S. for those who don’t know, my birthday was on 22nd June and it was also my WordPress birthday as in I had moved my blog from Blogger to WP in 2008 on that very day.
WordPress informed me 3 days ago that I had registered on WordPress.com 5 years ago and wished me Happy Anniversary. Errrr..but according to my blogging archives and memory, I have completed 5 yrs already and 6th year is going on!! And none of my other blogs under the same username are anywhere near 5 years! So WP, how come you are saying I registered 5 years ago??
Anyway so the wish and the sentence “Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging!” shamed me into writing a post. I have not been a good blogger at all since last two years. 😦
I didn’t write a post on my 3rd marriage anniversary which was like the easiest post to write because both of us spent 75% of the day in train traveling from Kolkata to Bangalore!! We had gone to Kolkata in Jan end during my one week vacation at work.
That is taken at Poovar in Kerala….Both of us and my parents went on a trip to Kanyakumari – Poovar in March. It was awesome! Travelogue??….Ahem..ahem..cough…ummm..coming soon when I get around to write it!!
I didn’t write a post on the 2nd birthday of my dearest niece which was also a very easy post to write..just post one of her cute pics and gush about her 😀 or maybe just a pic and a wish would have sufficed 🙂
I even pledged (in my mind) that from 1st June I will take up month-long writing exercise as in daily posting challenge but due to session end time at work, 1st June just flew by!! 😦 And once you don’t start the challenge on the first day, it doesn’t feel like one! It is not proper! So I have rescheduled it to July. Sigh!!
But for this month I will post more than just this one post. And read more of your lovely blogs! That reminds me…how horrible it is that Google is shutting down its Reader service on 1st July!! why couldn’t these essential and wonderful services be forever? Now I have to clear up my backlog and learn the working of a new feed aggregator. Humph!! By the way, here are two good links Google Reader Is Shutting Down; Here Are the Best Alternatives and Five Best Google Reader Alternatives to help you choose a new feed subscriber. I have chosen Feedly. How about you?
That reminds me…my anniversary gift. D gifted me Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 P3100 and it was a good deal with that Samsung own now plan!! Loving it!! [ Though I am using it to play Angry Birds mostly 😀 😀 ]
Enough for today….See you all again soon!!
A sequel to this post
2012 began. I had been six months out of job. But those six months had been quite busy – visits from in-laws, parents, brother-in-law, sightseeing trips and then there was settling down in a new city.
As soon as March began, I got two calls for interview. One for a position in an Engineering college and another for a position in GATE Coaching Institute.
Hello People!
So I am back from my trip to Ahmedabad and Delhi. Well it has been one and half week but you know the law of inertia 😀 Of course, travel posts on my travel blog and reblogs here will be posted. Oh God I have so many pending posts to write – Mysore, Pondicherry, Mahabalipuram, Ahmedabad and New Delhi – that my laziness grows! Anyway so here are some updates.
Just a quick post!
D and I are going on a trip to visit relatives. Places on the itinerary – Ahmedabad and New Delhi.
Will be visiting both places for the first time. 🙂
Will be staying a long duration [one week] with SIL and her family in Ahmedabad for the first time. 😎
Will be boarding an aeroplane for the first time. Shudder!! 😕
“The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.”~ Oscar Wilde
I had resigned from my job in July 2011 after working for 6.5 years and moved to Bangalore with D. After being in the teaching profession for so long and loving and enjoying it to the core, I couldn’t think of any other career. But I had no idea that the search for a new job in Bangalore would be hard even when there are so many engineering colleges here. For the same reason I had not searched for a job before resignation. Though I admit I was not that proactive in the beginning because I was kind of enjoying the break from work and was also busy setting up home and playing host & good DIL to in-laws. 🙂 But soon enough I became proactive and here is my tale of job search in Bangalore. Why a whole post on a topic like job search? Because it is my first experience of job hunting. My first job is the only job I have ever been in and I had got that quite easily. I stayed at same job and same place for 6.5 years.
She was born exactly a year ago…a miracle in her parents’ lives and in all of our lives. And she has turned one today!! How time flies! Still haven’t been to hold and cuddle her as she lives so far away. Thanks to Skype, her grandparents and aunts are surviving counting the days to her arrival in India.She has got six teeth now, is able to stand up holding table etc and is so very cautious by nature!! She laughs a lot when I sing the nursery rhyme “Hickory Dickory Dock” to her and she likes eating bananas just like her Reema mashi!
Looking back on 2011 😀 😀
My Random Thoughts 