Annual blog post

Since this is about the only time of year I seem to gravitate towards my blog, I figured may as well continue the tradition...

2012 in review

- It was the year of work, work, work, and then some. 

- It was a year of new beginnings, a new city a new home, a new life! 

- It was the year of fun, drinking, rediscovering a love for fine dine-ing and wine-ing :)

- It was the year of adventure, personal growth and plenty of learning.

Not as spectacular as it could have been/felt, but still good by every imaginable standard! 

2013 and stuff to come

Every year I say I will write more, blog more, learn more.

Well this year I'm not saying that.

Lets put it this way - This is the year of:

- Fitness: Not weight-loss or skinny-ness or 6-pack-abs (who am I kidding), but just fitness. Stay fit, be disciplined, live healthy type of intention. Bring on that gym schedule, and watch me kill it!
- Health: not just health food, but good old healthy-ness. Less eating out, more home cooked food, dabba lunches (!), less horrible snacking and LESS sugar.

- Cooking: As much as I may have denied it before,  It is an essential life skill, and about time I got jiggy with it.

- Looking good = feeling good. Looking fabulous = feeling freaking fabulous. I love dressing up so much, weird that I don't do it enough. 

- Travel: Forget that Prada bag, I'm spending my money travelling. I want to go spend time in at least 5 different countries this year, and see some of this big, beautiful world we live in. 

Enough for now, I'm thinking if I can keep to these, life will be gooood.
Over and out.

I like Big Books and I cannot lie...

I used to be that kid who read a lot. A whole lot. Forget the usual dance/music/drama classes - all I needed was a book or twenty to spend my whole summer holidays with. I started early, about 7 or 8 maybe,  on the leftovers and left-behind's of my older cousins' books; books that I was clearly not ready for, so much so that I had to underline words that I didn't understand, wait for my mom to come home in the evening, ask her the meaning of the words and then re-read all the pages from that day all over again! (Until I got old enough to use a dictionary. Man, I loved my big fat Oxford English dictionary)

A book could just hook me in the first 5 pages - I must've been the most gullible (or ideal?) kid to sell a story to! I'd happily read anything I could get my hands on. My favourite reading spot was the corner of the dining table. I always so stuck in the current book I was reading that I used to sit on the table, back to the wall, cross legged, head bent, ignoring all the warnings of "your eyes will deteriorate/you'll have glasses soon if you read like that!", and sit there reading for hours and hours. (still have perfect eyesight, btw.)

Fast Forward about 10 years. Done with college, been working for 6 years (!) now - and I almost can't believe that kid was me. I probably have read about 10 books in those 6 years - completely lost touch with that whole beautiful world. So many distractions, that so many years went by without being counted for!
Damn you Gossip Girl and ANTM and Grey's Anatomy, Damn you IPL and Damn you Facebook!!! Suddenly I'm left behind, I haven't read any of the books the world is talking about - maybe its in my head but I've become so "dumbed" out. Time to get back on track - nothing, nothing in the world can replace the experience of reading a book - laughing out loud (the non virtual kind!), unable to put it down coz you have to know what happens next, and then realising its 5am and you read all night just to find out :)

Thankfully its so easy to just get right back, find an interesting book and settle down with it. That dining table is long gone, but I'm glad that kid is still around!

Tribute to #203.

How easily a house becomes a home, no? We recently moved out of our apartment that we had lived in for the last year and a bit. Surprised I'm being so senti about it, but man, I loved that place :) It was the ideal combination of chilled-out yet party, door always open to family and yet our own little pocket of privacy, big and bright and airy and homey and comfortable, and basically it was perfect!

So many fun times were had in that house - can't wait to make a new house all homey again. And I have a feeling the next one's going to be WAY more exciting! :)

Touchy-Feely

Okay, this is really random.

So, I'm a very touchy-feely person when it comes to most things :P especially when it comes to shopping! As great and convenient and easy as online shopping is (Yay for asos.com), there's nothing like good old brick-and-mortar physical stores, whether its a clothing store or just the local supermarket.

With clothing stores - there's nothing like going to the store, trying on a top, being able to feel the fabric, and know how its gonna look/feel before you buy it! maybe there's something else that doesn't look all that fabulous, but hey its worth a try and then it turns out to be the comfiest of them all! (and you wear that top for the next year )
Even grocery stores - I mean, what's the fun in shopping online? for groceries?! I love going to the local grocery store/ gigantic supermarket with my list of absolutely essential items and then walking around picking up interesting stuff, trying out a new cheese, buying new spices and flavoring that I don't know how to use and then having some fun with it! Don't get me wrong; its great that Tesco will deliver your groceries within 4 hours of clicking on them, but come on man, how robotic!
[p.s: never getting one of these fridges that auto detect when you run out of milk and order it for you! ]

And don't even get me started about the therapeutic nature of just walking around and window shopping!

Boom!

9 days too late, but atleast I'm doing it!

2011, the year that was all about new beginnings...New home, new husband =), new job, new life, new families, loads of new friends, new car, new cities, new travel, new opportunities, new experiences, new learnings, new perspective, new everything! So. much. fun! It was the year of work work work, with loads of weddings, crazy new friendships, travel, food, and parties thrown in. It was the year that was so much fun that it just flew on by when we weren't watching. It was the year that was everything the previous one wasn't, and how!

Now that it's over and done with (still too fast, I say) its time for a whole new one to begin, time to stop, look back, say thank you, take a deep breath, and get ready to rock and roll!
Time for a whole new set of experiences, a fresh start, new perspective, a clean slate.

2012 - oooooh so much to say, so much potential, so much just waiting to happen, life is literally waiting to explode! and I cannot wait! :D
In the middle of all the madness, I want to take as much time out as I need to live it up, to read lots, to play more, to be my fittest yet, to travel, to meet people, to make new friends, and dream new dreams. 

Here's to a year filled with more new things, more fun, more love, life & laughter than ever! But I don't want to jinx anything, and I don't want to come in the way either - let the good times take over :)