ESL anyone?

Okay I'm going to keep this really short. Have you ever taught/ considered teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) in Mexico, Hong Kong or any European country? If you have then I'd love to know what your experience was like.

A friend and I are seriously considering taking a year off from our routines to do some volunteer work/ teaching in a foreign country. Apart from feeling like we're doing something meaningful, we will also get a chance to travel, experience a different culture and learn a new language. Right now this is our pet project and we're both trying hard to make it happen!

Any suggestions or leads to help us land jobs are more than welcome...

Viaggiatore solitario

This morning I watched Eat. Pray. Love. at the local theatre and while the movie wasn't that great, it did strike a chord somewhere. The protagonist has to travel three continents to discover herself and finally choses the word Attraversiamo meaning 'lets cross over'.

The protagonist's search for herself made me reflect on the way I've lived my life over the past few years, constantly moving from job to job and city to city trying to make some sense of this life. I've had the good fortune to meet some amazing people too, people who've come to mean a lot to me and have become an integral part of my existence. These are the people who've been there for me when I was all alone in a new city, when my bag got stolen and I was left with no money, when I went through a bad patch at work! Thankfully these people are still just a phone call away even though I've moved on.

Thats the thing with me! Every time I start to get settled in a place, get comfortable with my surroundings, with my job and the people around me I start to feel suffocated. My first instinct is to run, run as fast as my feet can carry me. It's like a siren that goes off in my head and a whole bunch of questions begin to haunt me... Is this all there is to life? Isn't there more to learn, see & experience? Will I end up accepting all the stereotypes that women in my culture eventually accept.. of becoming a wife, a daughter-in-law and a mother? What good is it to fancy myself as a progressive woman if I'm going to give in to the demands of society and people in general and do everything they expect of me? Should I give up dreaming, waiting for the perfect job, the perfect guy and just accept things the way they are?

Don't get me wrong, I'm no bra-burning feminist. This is not about my fight for women's rights, equality, trying to break stereotypes or defy society. In fact it has little to do with any thing outside of me. I just don't think I've had enough experiences, met enough people or understood myself completely to settle down and accept things without questioning their relevance to my life. The one thing I do know is that I'm not willing to conform to social prejudices and what is expected of a twenty seven year old girl (woman) in India.

Hopefully someday something or someone will make me want to settle down but till then my words are "viaggiatore solitario".

So whats your word?

Best Laid Plans... Not!

Talk about counting your chickens before they hatch!

So my 'foodie weekend' didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped. In fact it couldn't have been worse. Apart from the cake which was brilliant and got both my sister and me many accolades everything else was just dreadful. The crab curry looked amazing but the crab was probably a little off. And even after fair warning that the crab didn't taste as fresh as it should I went ahead and ate quite a bit. Both my parents and sister suffered upset stomachs for 2 days but miraculously nothing happened to me... until day 3. Which was Monday.

I have since been breaking out into terrible rashes - on my face :'( First came the red welt on my chin under my mouth which started out looking like a nasty scratch but is currently resembling a deep gash. Yesterday my nose developed a tiny cut and this morning I noticed red marks on it, exactly where my glasses rest. The skin under my right eye is also beginning to peel. Oh and it gets worse... I've been going to work looking like a freak!!!

A word of advice - Google may be the best place to find answers to almost anything but if you suddenly break out into rash do not DO NOT type in the symptoms and try to guesstimate what it might be.

Food talk

While I make up my mind about spilling the beans on the national issue that has me up in arms right now I thought I'd share my grand culinary plans with ya'll.

This is the cake my sister and I baked this evening. To be honest I just made the massive mess on it while she did all the hard work! I also went to the market and bought a whole bunch of stuff to experiment on feed my loved ones over the next three days.

Tomorrow night I intend to spend some time with my sister over a long dinner at the Westin. Thanks to our manic work and school schedules, we haven't been able to hang out in a while now. Mom is planning to make a mean crab curry for lunch on Saturday and Sunday night is going to be a fancy dinner with loads of Hors d'œuvres - fried calamari, deviled eggs, cocktail sausages, cheese & corn nuggets, kebabs, hummus and pita with sun-dried tomatoes.

I also managed to find a few fresh herbs while at the market and quickly bought all the basil, oregano, tarragon and rosemary I could lay my hands on. Any suggestions on quick and easy recipes using these, especially the tarragon?

So this weekend does indeed look like it will turn out to be a culinary delight. I'm particularly kicked about trying out some new recipes and hope they turn out as well as the cake did (it tasted better than it looked). Do you have any 'culinary' plans for the weekend? ;)

Post weekend blues

Hello to all my six blog readers! :)

It's Monday again which basically spells the beginning of another mundane week for me. On the agenda this week is writing a few more chapters of my blovel, meeting up with an old friend for dinner, traveling to the big city possibly for another round of interviews and maybe staying over for a friend's son's christening and/ or chaperoning my sister for a concert... not so bad actually. What plans do you guys have? Anything interesting?

I've managed to ignore this space for 5 whole days without suffering from an iota of guilt, a shitty thing to do in the infancy stages of an anonymous blog. I'm sure my blog is suffering from serious inferiority complex by now because not only do I not want to acknowledge its presence in my real life but I've also started giving it second preference over my blovel. As for the blovel it seems to be shaping up well (I think!). I've tried to get a couple reactions from friends without giving them the link to the blovel because, you know, its connected to this blog and I might have written/ plan to write about them in the near future and I sure as hell don't want to complicate matters. They seemed to like it which makes me wonder why no one seems to be leaving any comments on the chapters/ posts. At the cost of being penalized by the blovel police I've left the comments option on for my individual chapters and thanks to Blogger's updated capabilities I can now monitor traffic on my blovel site. What this basically means is that I do have visitors on the site but no one seems to want to share their feedback with me. So not cool! :(

There's this other thing that's really pissing me off these days and it has something to do with my country's current state of affairs. I'm hesitant to write about it because then you will obviously know which country I belong to and that will put my whole anonymous blogger idea in a funk. Decisions, decisions...

Wanna be tapping my feet not the keyboard yo!

Few things are more pissing off than having to work when almost everyone you know has the day off. Yeah thats me right now... Pissed off and bitter and bugged! I'm sitting in my little cabin with the dark windows behind me and frosted glass all around, typing away furiously trying to correct the grammar and language on some official text while sneaking glances at some of your blogs and cursing under my breath every 5 seconds.

If I had the day off today right about now I'd probably be driving my car super fast on an empty road while listening to 'Beggin' by Madcon, or dressing up to go out with my sister so we could both be fabulous together hitting the stores for some (window) shopping, or most likely just be lolling in bed with the not-so-interesting book I'm reading right now. The one thing I definitely wouldn't be doing is sitting in a little dungeon hoping to get out :(

On the upside I've now completed two whole chapters of my very first blovel. Yes the same one I still don't have a home for. Maybe I should just create another blog for it but generating traffic would be a huge task. And while having others read this blog isn't my number one priority (I lie ;), I'd definitely want feedback and encouragement for the blovel. When I do put it up somewhere and you do read it you will realize it isn't as crappy as this blog because fact is, in fact, stranger than fiction :D No but seriously I put in a lot of effort in writing the blovel whereas this blog is just a place for me to scribble my thoughts.

Better get back to work. Oh and if you're a fan of Step Up 3D (like me) then watch this video - Beggin - Battle of Gwai

Blovel but no spot...

Yes thats an actual word and unfortunately I didn't invent it. Although I might have thought of the concept way before anyone ever thought of blog novels as the revolutionary platform for budding writers to showcase their talent without struggling to get published. How awesome is that?! To be able to share your stories with people from all over the world... I think it's pretty fab!

A little bit of googling led me to Blovelspot, some guy's brain-child where bloggers/ writers can post their blovels. He's worked out a very nifty format so that the readers' experience is almost like that of reading a book. (Minus the reading in bed.. the only way I like to read). The other cool thing about Blovelspot is the set of rules - Each blovel should wrap up in 40 posts and once you post, you can't go back and change the post/ chapter. I read a few blovels and was really impressed by the stories woven by some of the writers. Inspired, I quickly signed up, hoping to start my very own blovel and share my novel (haha!) story with the world.

It has now been a little over a week and I haven't yet received my registration email yet. Neither can I login to the site, nor can I communicate with the Admin to report the issue :( In fact I've even tried to follow (stalk) blovelspot on twitter and the last update on the handle was on 1st December 2009. Does anyone know whether this site is operative any more? If not then maybe there's an opportunity for someone to create a similar site. Are there any other blovel sites functional currently?

Also, can someone tell me how a blovel writer can safeguard his/her rights against plagiarism?