Year of 2010 - Memories Replenished

2010 !! I would call it a big year for me..

My 2010 year started with people saying "Kalyana kalai vandhachu" and "soon to be bride". These words sent tickles in my stomach as it was a big and huge step for me. Single life was soon to get over and I had to start thinking of the big future ahead of me. !! And when I used to go into this mode, some thought would tap and wake me up and ask me to move towards reality. I was working towards making myself more responsible for the coming year where I have to not only take care of myself but another person who will be the most important in my life. January flew like a whirl wind and the calendar dates were rushing into February which was going to be a big month for me. I wanted to enjoy this feeling but I know I was too late to start enjoying it. My visit to India in Feb before the wedding.. would I call it mixed emotions.. Yes ! I was soon thinking of returning back and stepping into Singapore as a couple. I will not be on my own but with my best friend who was going to be my husband. Life was breezy then and when I think of the fact that I need to treat my best friend my husband, felt weird in a way but nice. And yes.. I was tapping myself up this time as my flight landed in India. First time did I feel the gush of excitement and tension rushing down each nerve in my body. Writing an exam or attending an interview was better I guess. I was given a princess welcome to India. I knew noone would bother if I landed or not if not for the wedding. :) Thats the fact. Pampering was not the word I could use. Everyone at home would feed me with fruits and juices just to make sure I look flashy with glowing skin during the wedding. Oh gosh !! I am what I am I would think. Slowly I used to get night mares of leaving my parents and sister to live at my husbands place. But my mom used to keep saying that I will be in good hands and that things have changed so much these days when compared to her times. My sister used to comment that she will be at peace after I get married. lol. :) True ;)

Soon days flew and even before I could enjoy this pre-wedding fever feeling, there I was with Mehendi all over my hands and legs. And luckily it was bright red this time. And I think the calendar skipped a day or two :) and there I was at the most important place where a big life decision was going to happen. And yes it was the wedding hall. I had my best friend around me which gave me some strength. Literally yes :) Colorful silk sarees, kilos of gold, traditional Indian food, wedding decorations, mehendi, hairstyles, wedding gifts, meeting old old friends, music, hugs, kisses, flowers, garlands, agni, mantras, wedding wishes, etc etc. Typical Indian Wedding it was. And the big big day arrived. I was decked up with all jewels and traditional wear and at the blink of the eye, the mangal sutra got on me and I was "someones" wife. Totally different feeling making my best friend my husband. Well !! We wanted it this way :) It was one great big wedding I would day. Thanks to my parents to have made it such a wonderful celebration. The rest of the month flew by visiting temples and relatives and having nice Indian food.

And then back to Singapore.. Same old Singapore but new life I would say ! It was still like a small dream land where I was responding to wishes and comments on Facebook. :) Back to work, emails, laptop, meetings etc. March rushed and we were all waiting for the planned holiday in April. Phuket it was.. and with 10 of us, I was sure we would have crazy fun. We were all totally looking forward to this trip. We had a gala time in Thailand and we dint wanna get back to reality and work !!!

April was a crazy month and it flew past and with May entering we decided we needed a break again :) Yaaay.. Honeymooning. We did a lot of research and booked a trip to Australia. We were totally looking forward to visiting Beautiful Australia during winter. Shopping for winter wear, new clothes, shoes etc etc. Shopping spree I would say. The day arrived.. and yes I panicked as it was my first long haul flight. I managed to get through it and we entered the winter wonderland. The trip was awesome. We learnt a lot of new things and saw different places. We explored trains, different cuisines, enjoyed the winter, shivered like crazy, awestruck looking at the gigantic oceans etc etc. We were totally rejuvenated when we came back. June flew with all Australian memories. And then my birthday month arrived. It was a simple and calm birthday with small gifts and presents.

August had nothing significant that happened as it was work work and only work !! September was flowery and happy as we had a family reunion at Singapore again :) Time went past very very fast and October was the month of travel. Double trip to India over the same week just for the fact that I did not have leave and my company refused to give me unpaid leave for management reasons. Oh yes !! if you ask me about it, am still furious. But at the end of the line, looking at it in the positive sense, I made it to both the functions. One was 70th Birthday of my father-in-law and the other was Diwali (Thalai Diwali). The birthday function went on very well and this was one of the first 70th birthday functions I've attended so far. Meeting relatives and having good Indian food is what every NRI would dream of during a holiday. Rite !!!? ? And it was fulfilling. Next in line was the Thalai Diwali celebrations for which my parents have been preparing for more than 6 months and it was a very nice close family function that they organized. New clothes and good food is what I can think of now :) And obviously crackers and fireworks after 3 full years of non-cracker fun. We enjoyed every moment with our parents :)

And then it was back to same old Singapore... I keep whining I say !!! ;) ;)

I had something to look forward to.. I had arranged a surprise for my husbands birthday and that was a trip to Bintan, Indonesia. We were just back from a break and we already needed one! Bintan was relaxing and calm. Nice people, good food, archery, beach, ATV etc etc. Fun-filled weekend. As we stepped into December, we were pushing and pulling days for the holiday season thinking there will not be much work ! But here I am, sitting in office on 31st of December 2010, hardly working (with loads of work piled up) and working hard on my blog. :) :)


Overall a calm , nice and festive year :) And that was 2010 for me.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!! :)

Bintaning !!

Bintan is one of the Riau islands in Indonesia. Riau islands are an archipelago located in the east of Sumathra and south of Singapore. I think the archipelago has more than 3000 islands, of which Bintan is one of the most famous and beautiful tourist spots.

It was a very short trip to Bintan. We boarded the ferry (ARIA BUPALA) at around 12pm on a rainy afternoon. The ferry was huge with economy and emarald classes. The journey was for around an hour and we found people from different countries traveling with us.

After an hour, we reached the Indonesian immigration and got a visa on arrival. We boarded the bus that went to the resort we booked (Bintan Lagoon resort).



The garden facing room was very beautiful. We dropped our bags and ran towards the beach. It was an awesome view with white sand and light blue waters. It was a calm and relaxing beach with children making sand castles, boys playing throw ball, some of them playing in the beach, some clicking pictures and enjoying the water sport activities.The rocks had weird pencil like drawings on them. And when we clicked a picture zooming on to the small parts it looks like this



After relaxing for a while, we managed to catch a slot for the ATV (All terrain vehicle). We were supposed to follow the guide with the ATV. Surprisingly, this vehicle moves on any terrain, for example, beach sand, slush, hard roads, water, mud etc.
We went around the resort to have a look at what it had. It had many shops selling shirts, beach wear, fridge magnets, massage oil etc. We were tempted to buy a few souvenirs :) We also realized that if we pay them in Indonesian Rupaya they return the change back in Singapore dollars. :) The country's currency has no value I suppose. We were carrying millions of IDR as 1 SGD = 7000 IDR. I was shocked when I saw a million dollar Rupaya note :)

The next morning was very sunny and we managed to reach the free breakfast buffet on time. Usually when you go out for vacation, you tend to sleep a lot. The international breakfast was a big hit. We were totally impressed with the donuts they had. Oh yeah !! I think they knew what I liked :D

We got a foot massage done and it felt so good. Indonesian massages are equally relaxing as Thai massages. We managed to get some beach beds to relax on the sunny beach mid afternoon. It was very sunny and were totally tanned.. Again, we saw a lot of Caucasians relaxing and having fun with their family. This was totally a relaxing holiday spot.

After 3pm we decided to go for Archery to try it out. We were taken to the golf course and I think this was one of the greenest places I have ever seen. Sometimes I feel they've poured green paint all over. Lol. We had an awesome Archery session. And now I feel I wanna do more Archery :)

We still had 4 more hours for our ferry back to Singapore. We decided to rent a Buggy to get around the place and see the different kinds of Villas they had. It was awesome fun going around the 300 hectares of deluxe island resort.

We took the last ferry back to Singapore and it was a very memorable trip :)

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle : Go Green

I was browsing through the daily newspaper today and suddenly the words "GO GREEN" caught my eye.

Yes ! This blog is all about what I read in the article.

The three R's of waste management is Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.



As you can see in the picture, the three R's are denoted by three arrows chasing each other. Each one runs over the other to go green. By following the following steps and understanding the purpose we can make earth a better place to live in.

Reduce : Try to reduce your consumption on something that is unnecessary. For example, dont print unwanted emails or bills, or but extra products or goods that you wont be using in the near future. Try not to waste water or electricity.

Reuse : Try to reuse old clothes for cleaning purposes or pass them to needy people. Also, make sure you use old magazines and newspaper for useful purposes. If the product or thing is really unusable, please throw them in recycling bins for further processing.

Recycle : Old products can be recycled for future use. Old papers and plastic items can be recycled and reused.

Thalai Diwali

This was our first Diwali after the wedding and hence its named Thalai Diwali.

Let me first explain why Diwali is celebrated.

Diwali is one of the most important festivals in India and is considered to be the start of the New Year for many communities in India. It is celebrated on the darkest night of the year. Diwali is called the festival of lights. All over India, homes are decorated with lights and lamps filled with oil. The name "Diwali" is derived from the Sanskrit word "Deepavali" which means row of lights - avali - rows, deepa - lights. These lamps are lit to banish the dark and welcome good luck and fortune into the house. People wear new clothes, visit friends and relatives, burst fire crackers, eat good food and sweets and decorate their houses with flowers and lights. Prayers are held at home to honour Lord Ganesha and Goddess Lakshmi for wisdom, good luck, prosperity and good fortune.

Diwali is a festival of joy, prosperity and good luck, and a celebration of the victory of good over evil - which is expressed through different stories in different parts of India.

One of the most well known story behind Diwali is Ramayana, the great Hindu epic. According to Ramayana, Rama, the prince of Ayodhya was ordered by his father, King Dasharatha, to go away from his country and come back after living in the forest for fourteen years. So Rama went on exile with his devoted wife Sita and faithful brother, Lakshmana. When Ravana, the demon king of Lanka abducted Sita and took her away to his island kingdom of Lanka, Rama fought against and killed Ravana. He rescued Sita and returned to Ayodhya after fourteen years. The people of Ayodhya were very happy to hear of their beloved prince's homecoming. To celebrate Rama's return to Ayodhya, they lit up their houses with earthen lamps (diyas), burst crackers and decorated the entire city in the grandest manner. This is believed to have started the tradition of Diwali. Year after year this homecoming of Lord Rama is commemorated on Diwali with lights, fireworks, bursting of crackers and merriment.

Coming to my Thalai Diwali, we went to my mothers place on Thursday evening 4th November. We were welcomed by "Harathi" that my mom took. Harathi is made of kumkum and water. After this we were given sweets and savories to eat. All home made items were yummy and delicious. After this we all went to the terrace to start bursting crackers. It was fun to do this after three years. After this my husbands parents were invited and we all had sumptuous dinner prepared by my mom and grandmom. We got to eat payasam, vadai, onion sambar, tomato rasam, potato curry, mango pickle etc.

The next day we were woken up at 4am and we were supposed to take head bath after oil was rubbed on our heads by elderly people. After this we were given new clothes to wear and we ran to burst more crackers. It was a fun day with parents and again my in-laws were invited for luncha and food was more delicious than ever. This was how we spent our Thalai Diwali. One of the most important days in my life. :)

Here are some of the pictures of sweets and savories that my mom made.

Fireworks and crackers

Loneliness at its peak !!

• Trees seem dry
• Clouds seem dark
• Flowers seem dead
• Food tastes sour
• Water seems to have some weird taste
• I always keep clicking the Ctrl+Alt+Del button on my laptop
• Music seems numb
• Television series are boring
• Fruits taste bitter
• I run to pick up every phone call to see if its you
• My calender always shows dates in future and not present
• All colors seems black and white to me
• I use the stapler instead of scissors
• I type the wrong persons email on the TO field
• Instead of water I pour MILO to my cactus plant
• I keep looking at my watch but time seems to run as slow as possible today

I have no words to explain how isolated and lonely I feel without you. Come back sooon !!!!

Phuket Frolic !!

Phuket !!! The tropical destination that one has to be in. It's got awesome beaches and white sands. Everyone with a monotonous lifestyle has to take a week-off to visit Phuket. It gets into you seamlessly and it's soothing to the core.

I went there with a group of fun loving people and we had utmost fun in the beach and waters. Frolic in the sea, jumping for friendly waves, walking in the sun, getting awfully tanned is the way to go. Such a trip between a high-stress job (filled with projects, deliverables and meetings) gives in some positive energy. We had good fun at the beaches and also city tours gave us more information about the place.

DAY 1: The first place that we went to was the Karon view point where we could get an awesome view of this beautiful tropical island. This is more of a tourist spot with some good photo-op. We got to take a lot of pictures around here. The place was very hot, especially at midday, but the beach and the beautiful view was fabulous.
The next place that we hit was the elephant trekking. We sat on wooden stools that were placed on the elephants back and it took us around a circuit in the jungle. In the hindsight though, we did not enjoy this ride much since it was a pretty sad sight seeing the elephants struggle to carry the weight. The fact that the elephants looked tired and old did not make us feel better either. My recommendation would be to avoid this, especially if you are an animal lover.

The next stop was the Phuket shooting range. They gave us earplugs to protect us from the gunshot sounds. Some of us did the shooting and it was real fun to be there.

We were strolling around the place for a while and the tour guide took us to this beautiful temple called Chalong temple. This was one of the most beautifully made temples I have ever seen. The name 'Chalong' means 'festival' in Thai - many years ago the area was named 'Chalang' after locals, fearing Burmese invaders, had moved from Thalang district. Though we dint get to go inside we enjoyed the view of it from outside. The Chalong temple had a luck hole where fireworks can be burst for good fortune or luck. We did light up a few inside but not sure what luck or fortune we might come across :)
We took a lot of pictures in and around this place but we were getting late to see the Big Buddha which was supposed to be very scenic during sunset. Next stop was at the Big Buddha. The statue was huge but still incomplete though. This statue is one of the revered landmarks in Phuket. We had some nice Thai tender coconut which was heavenly. We moved from that place because it was about to rain. We stopped at the highway to have a super view of Phuket where the sea met the sky, The Horizon. We clicked a few pictures here and drove towards the hotel.
The day was long and we were all dead tired. We decided to have dinner and sleep early as we had an island hopping tour the next day.


DAY2 : Right from the start, we were all excited about this as we've heard people say that these islands were supposed to be fabulous. We had taken a island tour package which included Phi-Phi island, Maya bay and Khai island. We started at around 7.45 from our hotel heading towards the ferry terminal. A mini bus took us to the ferry terminal were there were lots of groups waiting for their ferries to arrive. When it was our turn, we all jumped into the ferry for a speedy ride. The sea is generally rough and this is when you feel you breakfast back in your mouth. It was a fun ride and after an hour or so we reached the most beautiful place we have ever seen and that was the Maya bay.

This beach had blue-green water with a white shore. It was a heavenly experience to sit on the beach and watch the waters. This was one of the places that was captured in the movie, The Beach. This beach is considered to be the tropical paradise beach and by all means it was. Very calm and smooth. We jumped into water and enjoyed the calmness and clicked a lot of pictures. The day started with a bright and elegant beach. After an hour or so we were asked to go back to the boats to ride to Phi-Phi Lay, which was another very beautiful place to see.


After a short ride we reached the Viking caves. We were not allowed to get off the boat as it was a private property and these people manufactured the product "birds nest".
We were taken to the mid waters to do snorkelling but since it was 2m deep and none of us were swimmers it was a bit difficult and intimidating to say the least. Though there were not much corals to see but we heard from other people that there were cute fishes that they could see. Then we went to Phi-Phi Don which was also another very calm beach. This beach had a restaurant and we were provided with buffet lunch. Being a vegetarian is not easy and with usual difficulty, I had to look for vegetarian food to fill my stomach. But yes I got some amazing Thai vege food with french fries. We were left to hang around this place for a while before we left to the Khai island.

We reached Khai island in about 20 minutes. This is a very small island surrounded by waters and is 15 minutes away from Phuket. It was an isolated place and we were dropped in there to do some snorkelling. Not much of it but we could see small fishes and some rocks. It was more of a relaxing place where beachchairs and umbrellas were placed. It was extremely hot and we are got maximum suntanned there. The place was very beautiful with green waters again. It was a bit cloudy after a while and we all returned to the chairs and got ready to leave. The speedboat ride was a very short one to Phuket. We came back to our rooms to freshen up a bit.

After a while we all decided to walk in the streets of Phuket to get the feel of night life around. We walked into Bangla street which was very loud and crowded. All the pubs and clubs had pole dancers. We helped ourselves with a drink and walked back to the hotel to crash for the night.

DAY 3: We woke up early and rented motorbikes to so some beach hopping. We enjoyed our bike ride and there was something funny with the road rules there. We had to travel in the right and then left in different roads. And the gasoline pumps was something that was totally different as well. They did not have petrol stations but rather gasoline stalls. We filled up our bikes and headed towards Karon beach. It was around 9am in the morning and the beach was empty. We parked our bikes in one corner and jumped into the beach. It was a nice cloudy morning. We had awesome fun in the beach and after a while we decided to leave the place. Some of us wanted to do water activities in Patong beach so we headed towards Patong. On the way some of us though it would be great to visit Kamala beach which was supposed to be one of the beaches that was very calm and beautiful. We headed towards Kamala beach. It was a quite a long ride to the beach on wide roads, mountains, small lanes etc. We had difficulty in finding the route to the beach but we managed to find it at last. It was more like a backpacking experience this time where we were goin to a place which we had no clue of. We enjoyed each and every bit of it. At last we reached the place. The place was not as good as we expected. The only good thing about this beach when compared to the others was that this beach had beds and cozy pillows right near the beach with umbrellas. Just a look at the beach and some photo click we returned back to Patong beach. Some of us decided on jet-skiing and para-sailing. It was a new experience with these water activities. This took about 2 hours and we rode back to the hotel to freshen up for the long awaited massage. Massages and spas are very common and famous in Thailand. We had booked an appointment with a local spa. We took an assortment of Thai massage, foot massage, oil massage and back & shoulders massage. The feedback from every one of us was indeed very good. After this, we packed and checked out from the hotel and flew back to Singapore with some nice memories and heavy heart to get back to work the next day.

Phuket Rocks !!!