omigawsh..

i stayed away for so so long.. but i have some good stuff to share by now..

piccies!

that was real yumm cake with real cream as zaki pointed out. Zaki had just come down from the U.S. and still attended my birthday. very happy about that. :) Got an iPod mini from bro' and just learned a few minutes ago about how its difficult to recycle. Well, lets hope I don't need to throw it for a long, long, time.

so one day before my birthday I got a book signed saying 'happy birthday' from paolo coelho.. yes i met him in person - and on one of the days that my camera was out of battery :s

its all right though.. i do have a picture or two on the day of my birthday that remind me that i saw him. i'll put them up on this blog soon. just have to rush to finish some work which is a sore really because i'd rather blog blog blog.

in a good way, we have some really good jobs coming in at the factory. for a change we'll have money coming in. of course that means more work but i've decided to let dad know that i'll be going a different way in a month.

i hope i keep up the resolution. *fingers crossed*

here i am..

..and i've played around a bit with the page.. only slightly noticeable.. put the picture up on the sidebar, rather than below. And added a google adsense bar which might earn me some revenue. my further venture into capitalism.

hoping however, to quit dad's work and look for some writing jobs..

which reminds me, need to make a few calls! :)

Giessen = German for ‘watering plants’ (from high school memory)

Lots of stuff to blog today. Your mind becomes blog-oriented after a while… its the writing life. You steal from your life just so you can write about it. You’re always watching, notepad in your head, sentences ready to be typed and saved.

So here’s one.

I have mastered the art of dirty-looking.

My regular victim is poor Dad, who just returned from his trip to Dubai. He made some unpleasant remark about my facial hair just before I went to the ‘beauty parlour’; he had it coming. I gave it to him, and he immediately offered, “Sorry”. Love the power! Go eyebrow-raise, scoff power!

Oh, and I got my hair trimmed today, and couldn’t stop dancing and prancing about with it when I came home today. It didn’t take any broken-hearted affair to get it done either, or maybe the haircut was long overdue. I think the latter.

I just have to share two very special incidents. I got a great email from Falco, and it did make my day! But even more so, I got a complete surprise as a guy at the office, who is a peon of sorts, walked in randomly to my office, and brought in a small pot with one of those everywhere plants, the ones you take-for-granted, and go oh-so-ugly. But he picked out this one.



‘Aww’ is all I can say! I was stunned. I let him put the plant amongst my other plant collection and he was off, leaving me with a goofy smile, and like I told Meryam over the email (omigawd, you’re on the blog again), I still have the smile when I think of it.

Omigawd I got a flower on a plant today!!! Awww…!

Err.. its another matter that just before I left I decided to have a lookie and noticed that it was dying. I poured in a bit of water hoping it will be resuscitated, but even if its not, the memory is well alive, and I’ll keep watering it!

cat bit my fingers...

...and that's why i haven't been writing on this blog.

though i always really meant to. I finally finally sent off a letter to silvia, yay!! I posted a few pictures online and did some other writing online. I haven't been as regular on 43things.com but then again, hula hula cares?

I'm just so tired. The vacation I promised myself is well and nigh due, as is the massage I promised myself, and the Eurotrip, and a holiday for my birthday. I'm going to take 200 L.E. from Dad, and spend it on self-pampering. Hell, I'm tempted to charge it to the company account under HR bonus or something more official and serious and necessary sounding.

But ze break is nesse-zerry. yis. :) I think I'm getting a little better at keeping in touch. I've sent out a few applications to writing jobs, and am pretty happy about that, but I need to call and get back to one tomorrow. Might have an interview, but I'll just take it easy, plenty of stuff gets on my nerves. And while I'm there, I'll make a disclaimer to myself: there is no need for me to feel guilty about blogging or the lack thereof. Really, Chitra, you do plenty besides have to talk to yourself through indirect third party activity that you call writing.

See how lonely it can get in Port Said? So all you lazy bums write write write.. and if I'm the lazy party... err.. i'm getting there, cairo pace :)
mwah!

two attacks in downtown cairo.

disturbing.

Mom's Birthday

MomsBday2005, originally uploaded by Purplex.

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It's Mom's birthday today, 30th of April, and I hereby promise myself that the two pictures I took of her so far, I'll post online TODAY. Let's see if I do it. Mom looks absolutely beautiful. Some days, I look at her face, and see sagging skin that may lend itself to wrinkles, and I feel fear that she will grow old, but at 50+ she is remarkably young at both heart and in body.

Last night I saw Brett Ratner's Red Dragon, based on the Lecter trilogy, featuring Anthony Hopkins as the insane yet lucid genius, a cannibal and a doctor, Hannibal Lecter. I saw Anthony Hopkins' interview, and he said he was chosen because of a character of a doctor that he played, who was 'caring and sharing'. When he asked why he was cast as Lecter based on the impression left by a performance that could not be more distant, he was told that because he was a 'humanitarian'.

It's the classic joke, and I just got it now myself:
"If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?"

Did I mention I am now in love with Hopkins? It happened right after the opening scene; where he is attending a concert, and the camera closes up on his face, to record his wink, him motioning a gunshot, and then this sly-wry smile. Catches the heart! As one of the interviewees in the DVD says it was "delicious", his face records so many impressions, it is just a pleasure to watch him, immensely "satisfying". And while his character feeds others humans, the audience relishes his performance. So, I went online to learn more about him, and some of it say he is or was pompous. I remember him on Oprah calling Gwyneth Paltrow 'one of the best actresses (if not the best) that he had worked with', and that was around the time her father passed away. She suspected the veracity of the praise, and said that coming from him it was certainly high praise. Now if I could only see him someday :).