After the Initial Rush Dies Down

It is difficult to blog after that, given the fact that I have another active blog. But then it is not yet time to say that I will not blog anymore.  Also if I do not blog the snatches that I manage to catch about a day just vanish and one day is like the other till I get to travel.

These days I am reading Shantaram. It is a 900+ pages and it is like reading 3-4 books together. I am at 700 or so now. And I have been reading it for such a long time that I want to finish it now and read something else.

I might travel once again in Feb but it is not final.

I have booked my tickets to Nepal for another trek and even though it is a few months down the line it gives me a lot of reason to stay happy.

On the national front there is an ordinance around the rape laws in the country.

So that We Don’t Forget!

I am doing a course where we have a case on Bhopal Gas Tragedy. After reading the case we searched it on Google images and after one such image it was enough. The decision was conscious. After all business students should know about some of the worst manifestations of the industrial society.

The other staggering bit in this saga is that Dow Chemicals (that bought Union Carbide eventually) became sponsors of  London Olympics. The heartening part, people in London protested.

I hope this is going to be a learning experience for everyone involved in the course.

We also touched upon (via small caselets) on Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl and Tokiamura too. Not very cheerful activities before the long weekend but necessary none the less?

A Fun Day

Had a great day at work. We went outside the class today for our seminar session. I read somewhere that the way class rooms are designed can affect learning. I mean classes with fixed seating and a podium are different from classrooms without podium and flexible seating.

I tried to test this further so we went out to the lawn. I could observe a few changes in the behavior due to the setting. We all sat on the ground and brought two chairs. When I refused to sit on the chair one of the students did and conducted the class. I had to intervene and direct a few times, later students took turns to sit on the chair and conduct the session.

We were discussing a case study and it was a little easier for all of us to talk because of the informal setting. The coffee was on me. And we could come to a few common understandings which was great for me.

On another note I was reading a post by Easwar which involved a fatal truck incident. That reminded of the time when I was in Class 1. We used to live in the Railway Colony and I was going to school sitting on a cycle. On a turn close to school I fell off somehow and was thrown under a truck. Since it was a turn the truck was slow. It was a crowded place and many people shouted to stop the truck. Hence I escaped with a few minor cuts and bruises.

I was too young to understand it fully or get scared. But I guess I was really lucky that day!

It was a Happening Weekend

I attended two events over the weekend. The first was a wine tasting session with Four Seasons Wines (not how I usually spend my weekends). I will do a detailed post about it on the travel blog. So now I know of two Indian wines Sula and Four Seasons.

The second event was at Kunzum Travel Cafe, Hauz Khas Village today where I met Shubhra Krishnana of Travel Secrets. It was fun. This too will be a blog post on the travel blog.

But the weekend is almost over! Also I stayed at my sister’s place which is a bliss for me and work for her.

In the last few days I have used so much of Delhi Metro and I consider it a big blessing for me as I am not a big fan of driving. And I am hopeless with directions. Have always been.

I will end this post with an anecdote of my daughter. When she was even smaller and just about to start school. So we would tell her, “Chhavi school jayege” (Chhavi will now go to school) and she would tell us back- “Chhavi maatet jaayege!” (No Chhavi will go to market).

Well she did go to school without trouble in the end.

What did I do Today?

OK the immediate thing that comes to my mind is that I took a class and I enjoyed it.

What else did I do? Every day I spend some time on social media so did that too.

I never ever can get up in the morning so I barely had any breakfast!

The traffic on the way to work was bad in patches, really bad. One mini bus driver poked its nose and brought almost all the traffic to a stand still. I managed to get through before it got really bad.

In the evening my daughter was trying maul me and push me around and she calls it play! Later she was hitting a ball with my husband. She did it for such a long time that she finally told us that she was chip chip (sweating).

Then a must in my day is talking to my sister on phone, often for more than half an hour, daily. Many people wonder what do we have to talk about so long every day. The short answer is everything under the sun!

In the coming days I have lot of work. But then somehow time expands to fill in the amount of work I have, at least it did in the past, so I hope it will in future too.

Back Breaking Tired!

I attended a big travel event at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi called SATTE. I blogged the travel bit at the other blog. I don’t know why but I am really truly tired. So much so that I want to shut the computer and simply crash!

I delayed my lunch like anything and maybe that is the reason I feel so knocked out. In the end I came to one of the Haldiram outlets and had food. Pani Puri too. It is a pity I cannot eat pani puri on the road side anymore. The water doesn’t agree with me.

And when I twitted that I was at SATTE I found two other bloggers were there too!

And tomorrow morning I have a class for the other course I am teaching this semester. Some more butterflies out there in my stomach. Time to quieten them down!

The First Day of the New Teaching Semester

I have now around 10 years of teaching experience but even then on the first day of a new semester I get some butterflies in my stomach! I believe it has been a good start, we did something useful in the class. One of my favorite quotes to my students have been (which my Ph.D. supervisor used to say to us) “please remember that at the end of the day it is you who are working for this degree, not me.”

I got a decent size check today for my blogging at the other blog. I did not earn it at one go but I got it together and I can actually plan a decent vacation around it within India!

And while I type this my daughter is busy mauling my iPad.

I have been off Twitter these days as it happens at the beginning of a semester but I hope I will catch up.

Have to go now and walk to burn out some calories.

Travel blog has to be updated after that.

One of colleagues once said sometimes learning can be like getting on an escalator where even if you want to you can’t get off. I feel life at times can feel like that. Even though I want to get off and take a long break but I just keep working more and more.

And I Wanted to Write Two Blogs?

I wonder what I was thinking when I started this blog, my other blog, Travel Tales from India keeps me sufficiently busy! But now that I have started it, I am not going to give it up easily.

And actually I started it to capture some day to day activities so that when I read it 10 years later I could recollect some of my life as it was.

It is trying to get cold again in NCR.

I had a very unusual weekend. I met my school friend on Saturday at CP (and visited Agrasen Ki Baoli too) and I took two UK colleagues out to Dilli Haat on Sunday. And then we took a metro ride to CP and had lunch.

Otherwise if we go out on weekends we try to go at least 250 km away from NCR!

On the way to Delhi yesterday I saw two big hoardings that said ‘Wake up India, She is dead.’ I could not click a picture though.

There are No Friends Like School Friends!

I met my school friend today after a long time. We were in school from KG to 12th and then we lost touch. Thanks to Facebook we connected again. We met last year and then it took us one year to catch up again!

This time we met in CP. At the Rajiv Chowk Metro station she broke her footwear! Then she walked in her socks till we managed to buy another one!

With her I explored Janpath for the first time! I bought a handbag which is her choice. And it is one of my best bags! We tried having lunch at Sarvana Bhawan but it had such a long wait that we gave up!  We ended up at Costa Coffee (via Pizza Hut where there was another wait) and chatted like there was no tomorrow!

Then she asked me if I knew of any monuments nearby and I said we could go to Agrasen ki Baoli (Agrasen’s Stepwell). It had been on my list for a long time and I ended up there today without any plans!

We had some Moong Ke Laddo from a street vendor and then headed for home.

It has been a day well spent!

PS. Both of us were uncomfortable about Delhi and wanted to reach home before dark.

No Home Work Today!

We managed to finish some tasks on our training ahead of schedule! So even though there is still some work pending, I don’t have any home work to do today! I was telling to my instructor today that even though she was such a nice lady she managed to make us incredibly hard! I am so exhausted that I can hardly think now. Need the weekend for sure. This also means I can attend an event on Wednesday as I can now take that day off!

And I have plans for the weekend.