A scatterred collection of ideas and words that makes sense to me
20 April, 2005
Moved to..
.. Live Journal! As a part of my initial blogging exercise, I tried Blogspot / Blogger, Y! 360 & LiveJournal. Seems like I am most happy with LiveJournal at the moment. I may return to Blogger for its pleasing templates.. may be!
It is yet-another-rainy day here in Sunnyvale. Not even remotely my definition of good weather. And especially not so when we have had plenty of them rainy days since December. I acknowledge the power of the clouds and the wind that can so efficiently transform a bright, sunny day into a gloomy, rainy day.
Leaving behind my perspective of rainy weather, I begin to wonder where the rhyme "Rain, rain, go away" originated.
Rain rain go away,
Come again another day,
Little Johnny wants to play,
Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never show your face again! According to this link that I chanced upon in my search for an answer, the rhyme originated wayback in the late 1500s. And the rivalry between England & Spain during that period, explains why the rhyme implores the rain to go to Spain. Talking of rain & Spain draws back from my memory, the famous dialogue from 'My Fair Lady' - "The rain in Spain, stays mainly in the plains".
While on the train of thoughts revolving around verses on rain that one has known since childhood, here is another :
I hear thunder, I hear thunder,
Hark! Don't you?
Hark! Don't you?
Pitter, patter, rain drops,
Pitter, patter, rain drops,
I'm wet through, so are you.
This one I remember reading from my Std. II Gulmohar textbook. Having dwelt upon sweet childhood verses, how could I ever complain about the rains that brought me to them today!
Tis my birthday today! It isn't my 1st birthday... but it is a first of sorts. My 1st birthday away from my parents, sister & grandmother. My 1st birthday out of India (read Bangalore). My 1st birthday as a married woman.
The last year has been a most eventful one. This day, last year, I knew little more than the fact that I was going to be married to Shiv. Everything else was an unknown.
The last year saw many transitions - one from an eligible bachelorette to a married girl (sorry, just couldn't write woman here again - sounds too old to be referring to me ;) ).
Another was the relocation from India to the US. This was a tough decision to make for I would not be accompanied by a job. Also, I was in a very comfortable position in the project I was working in at MindTree. There was even the tempting possibility of a trip to Zürich, Switzerland and more recognition. On the other hand, moving to the US was a tempting challenge too. It would mean independent time for Shiv and me, away from known society and relatives. Also, the job market not looking too bad here combined with the fact that I was going to come on a L2 visa which allowed for work, seemed to make the opportunity a promising one. After much confusion-filled contemplation, Shiv & me decided to take the chance.
I came with an open mind to a new land which I hoped we would both like. I was also excited because this would be the very first time that I would be living independently which meant more freedom as well as more responsibilities. The first few months saw me learning to drive around (unlearning Indian driving included) and setting up a new home - our home. There are a lot of things I learnt, the most important of them is learning to cook! :)
The biggest transition was moving from a working life to being a homemaker. I had started to work in less than a month of graduation. So, I took this period as a long deserved holiday. I started dabbling with a lot of volunteer activities. When we were trying to decide whether to take up the US opportunity, many warned me that I'd go mad after a couple of months of staying at home. I look back at my last 8 months here and I say, "I could do with a few more free months" :). I am searching for a job now, not so much because I miss working but because it is the time & age to earn and also because it brings in more discipline & confidence in one's life.
It's been a great year - one during which I think I have truly grown. I have also understood myself better in some ways. And I am thankful to have found a most wonderful life partner!
We just returned from a nice dinner with friends at a quaint restaurant in Palo Alto - Bay Leaf Café. The restaurant specializes in vegan food. The food was very different and yet very pleasing to the tongue. It is the probably the first time we have been to a non-Indian pure vegetarian eatery in the US.
After dinner, we headed to our friends' residence. What was interesting apart from the food that evening, was what we learnt about Pakistan. These friends are Pakistanis from Lahore. It was enlightening to know how different the administration of Pakistan is, in contrast to India. In my mind, the feeling that life for many would have been so much better had not partition happened arose yet again, as they had when I had read "Freedom at Midnight" last year. Also, I can't help feeling glad that I was born in India and I hope we will be able to play a role in improving our nation. And I also pray that Pakistan awakes to a better future! I am reminded of one of my favorite verses written by Rabindranath Tagore.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake!
And if you are a GMail user, I wonder if you have noticed anything different in your GMail account when you logged in today. Apart from the different front page, you'd see that the storage space of your mailbox keeps increasing as the day progresses. I noticed mine to be 1559 MB this morning and wondered why they would increase it to such an odd figure. Shiv suggested that it may be an April Fool's Day prank. May be it is.. or may be it isn't and it is indeed a 1st birthday gift from GMail as they claim it to be.
Btw, my current maibox size is 1672 MB. What's yours like? :)
Being ignored is also not something anyone desires! And I am surmising that, being ignored is the reason the Internet Explorer on my laptop decided to call it quits a month or two back. I didn't bother fixing that because I never use IE in the first place. Firefox does very well for all my needs. The only thing I may have needed IE for was to access my Outlook Webmail. But incidentally I have been using Y! Browser (which sucks overall - a poor wrapper around IE) to check that. So in summary, IE was well and truly ignored. Being taken for granted is also something no one likes! I guess that is why the Windows Explorer on my machine decided to make its presence (or must I say lack of presence thereof) felt when it decided to crash every time I called upon it. The error message said that some instruction was trying to access memory location 0x00000000! Oopsy daisy - that didn't sound good at all. As time slipped, I began to realize how essential Explorer was to many of my everyday tasks on the machine. My prime suspect was the Microsoft Antispyware that had been installed in the recent past. I was always suspicious of that piece of software. May be it felt that a working explorer makes a system vulnerable to spyware attacks! You never know....
While exploring & trying out the various solutions to get the Explorer to work, IE started to work out of the blue. Good for it! ;) Along the way, I hit about this feature that the Windows XP OS provides called System Restore. It works well, but unfortunately it didn't help me :( And finally help came from this advise from a similarly frustrated Windows user. I have my Explorer working and according to Microsoft, my machine is vulnerable. Yeah, but I prefer a vulnerable system to one that is so secure that it doesn't allow its owner to view its data!
All's well that ends well! I have made a System Restore Point when both IE and Windows Explorer are working. You never know when they will go on strike again! I suggest you too do so, especially if your machine is left online all by itself, free to scheme with other fellow softwares in cyberspace!
It has been a "completely" sunny day after what seems a long while. And with days getting longer, the sun is still providing warmth & light at this hour. What more could one ask for! I wonder if it is having been born and spent 20+ years in a tropical country, that makes me yearn for sunny days. Would I have been different if I had grown up in a colder or rainier place? The sun seems to be bring with it enthusiasm & energy which makes me do a lot more in a day!
I am not sure whether to attribute this blog entry to the weather or to the fact that I am a newbie to blogging. After a lot of contemplative inertia to start a blog, I am currently dabbling with Blogspot & Y! 360. Am also trying to learn CSS to see how best I can customize my blog here. I intend to try and see how LiveJournal stands wrt these and then I will settle for the one that suits me best and do away with the rest! Sounds like a plan! :)
Signing off hoping tomorrow is another "completely" sunny day!
