Good Friday .. Saturday, Sunday and even a Monday :)

I just had one of the best Easter ever.. We went camping at Fraser Island for a couple of days and it was just brilliant. Four of us, full camping gear, a turbo charged 4.7 litre Nissan Patrol and plenty of spirits.

After a four hour drive to Rainbow beach we took a ferry to Frasers and then we were in a completely different world all of a sudden. The whole island is a white sand island with natural forests, beaches and freshwater lakes.

After we arrived, we drove along the beach which was a new experience for me and I was told to be careful about washouts which can be quite dangerous and the sand was very wet in certain areas. I had driven a lot in the deserts of Middle East and was very used to the dunes but this was slightly different. Although not as challenging as the desert driving – this was more fun than dune bashing.

We found our way to the camping ground and pitched our tents and set off for the lakes.. This time we had to take the terrain track and this really tested the 4.7 litre engine under the hood. Again a fairly new experience for me... Everyone enjoyed the ride although it was getting dark and we had to get back to our tents soon.

We rolled out the cooking gear and sat around the stove to keep ourselves warm and after a lot of wine and food we changed the focus to ghost stories and J gets the creeps with anything related to the supernatural. And to add to the creepiness we were pitched next to a tree, the kind we find in the scary movies. Since there was not much lighting around there were a lot of stars visible in the sky – had never seen so many even when I had spent countless nights in the desert staring at them. Like they say there is something about the sky down under.

Next day we set off early and drove along the beach to the famous Maheno Wreck and spent time taking pictures and all along the way we stopped at natural bodies of water, dipped in the beach, played a round of cricket ( yes we brought cricket gear too ). It was good full all the way.

Then we went inland through a rough terrain track to get to Lake McKenzie which is the deepest fresh water lake there. The water was amazing and swimming in lakes is much better than in the sea. We spent hours there trying all sorts of fun stuff like synchronised swimming, holding breath competition followed by beers :)

Then after more of terrain driving we got back to the camping grounds for another night under the stars, wine, bbq and a game of monopoly.. This monopoly had Australian cities as properties. We were pretty upset as there was no Brisbane Station ( though there were Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth ). Wonder if there is an Indian edition of Monopoly with Kochi as a station:-P

Next day was all gloomy as it was the trip back home.. So we did a bit of driving around in the morning then packed up our gears and set off for our return journey. All in all it was a great experience would love to do it again sometime may be to a different island or maybe head to the mountains for a change.

Michael Kasparov ?

The MBA classes are going great so far except for the fact that I have already dropped a subject from my over ambitious plan. I like my weekends to be weekends :) and don’t want them to be spent in a class room. So yeah no more weekend classes.

Often in the class we have these group discussions where you have to randomly form a group and introduce yourself and chat about a topic that is posted on the board and it was on one of these sessions that I came across this very familiar looking Aussie bloke. Finally I figured he looks like a cricketer from the Australian team and I thought I should tell him that. So I said hello and introduced myself and he asked me what I do and where I live etc. He told me that he does some coaching on and off and used to play a bit of sport etc etc.. Oh sports !! that got me talking and I asked him what his sport is and who he coaches .. and he says “I am not sure of you have heard of the Mumbai Indians.. I am their bowling coach” And I go “ So you are Michael Kasprowicz.. aren’t you ? “ He nods with a smile.. Ha you should have seen the excitement on my face as this is the first time I am meeting a sports personality. I mean WOW.. Out of the blue I ask him.. So you have met Tendulkar ?? .. oh damn.. What a silly question.. He said of course yes ( with a ..’what a weirdo’ look on his face ) .. and then we talked about how he is also the Australian Goodwill Ambassador to India and he is interested in building relations etc ..

I get back home after class and wake up J who was half asleep and told her that Michael Kasprowicz was in class with me.. and she goes Michael Who ? Oh damn.. no one to share my excitement here.. so I call up my dad in Dubai who is a diehard cricket fan.. woke him up from his sleep.. and he goes.. oh yea WOW nice.. isn’t he the South African Rugby player ?? That conversation didn’t last long.. Went online and found my brother in law in Delhi on Skype and I immediately called him and broke the news to him.. and he goes.. “ WOW bro – it’s really cool to have a chess player in your class.. Michael Kasparov” Okay this is not going well at all. All my excitement wore off in a matter of minutes. J couldn’t help laughing at all this.. and finally I rang up another friend of mine in Brisbane and told him..” oh yea btw there is this Aussie cricketer who no one’s heard of in my class.. called Kasper”.. and he goes – WOW.. Kasper is actually in your class? Did you shake hands? What did he say.. I mean thats AWESOME! And then we went of to discuss ashes and the famous Brisbane tests and how Tendulkar belted him etc etc.. but had to say he was a damn good bowler at his peak as he used to bowl alongside the likes of McGrath who was the best seamer in the world.

I was so glad that I could share my excitement with someone that night. Also since Kasper is good friends with Tendulkar I am hoping that I can coax Kasper into introducing me to my legendary hero next time he visits Queensland :)

OMG !!

What am I doing here? I don’t belong here! Can I still withdraw ? Will there be a penalty? .. these were the thoughts that were running through my head as I entered the waiting area for the orientation session for new students of MBA at the University of Queensland Business School.

As I entered there were three men and a lady all suited up to kill and typing away on their PDAs. One of them glanced over as I entered and sized me up with a what are you doing here look. May be I should mention that I was in a pair of jeans and a shirt but I think I was presentable. Hmm.. I felt intimidated at their corporate like activities and was wishing deep inside that they are not my co students. Should I shake hands? Say hello? I really didn’t know – so I let it be and when and sat down in the waiting area cursing myself for not dressing appropriately.

My thoughts immediately turned trivial as the lift opened and in came a spikey haired 20 something guy with jeans well below his bum and a shabby T-Shirt and more like announced to the secretary that he is here for the orientation. *phew* At least I have a proper shirt on :)

More students strolled in all casually dressed and towards the end it was the suited up corporate wannabees that felt out of place :) .. And the classes got away, a lot of mingling, chit chatting etc etc went on for a whole two hours and all of a sudden I felt a lot more comfortable. We talked about work and family and travel and rising expenses. Most of the students were sponsored by the company except for me who might get approval for expensing my car parking charges let alone my tuition fees. Yes I am paying through my @!@#hole for this over rated course. Really hoping to god that this is worth the time, effort and money.

J has been all supportive of me doing a part time course and made sure I had a new notepad and pen and she even gave me her HP Mini for my classes. Last night we called up her parents and my parents and my grandmother just to let them know that tomorrow is my first day back to Uni after eleven odd years. Granny as usual already set her hope high all over again asking me to top the class and bring glory to the family. I wasn’t surprised. But then what caught me out was that when she was speaking to J ( oblivious to the fact that she was on speaker ) she mentioned to her that I am a total bum when it comes to studying and to keep an eye on me. J agreed trying to suppress her giggles. Hmm.. I guess granny just wanted to encourage me with all this talk about ranks but she knew exactly what I was capable of.

Anyway I thought I’ll just blog about this special day. Two years from now I shall post a picture of me from my graduation ceremony :) and secretly hoping to prove granny wrong as far as my performance goes!

wet wet wet

Ever since we landed in Brisbane people at work has been telling me about the great floods of Brisbane over the last century. On one instance they even showed me the flood lever marker showing the level of water reached at each of the floods. Most of the conversations ended up with ..”oh well we won’t have to worry about them floods anymore .. cos we have the Weivenhoe Dam..” and since I have heard that statement over and over I really didn’t worry much even on the morning of the day when the floods actually hit us.

The floods covered the basement, ground and the first floor of our apartments, but we were safe and sound on the fourth. Although at that time we didn’t feel all that safe as we saw the water rising up by the hour. Just when we thought it had stopped rising and things are going to get back to normal soon – the power went out and warnings of a king tide was out. But luckily we had seen the worst of it by then.
Here are some pictures from our suburb – luckily no one was hurt and during the whole “flood” experience, we made some new friends in our apartment building and learned to support each other during the testing period. Thanks also to our friends with whom we spent a few days till the flood waters receded.

Now Brisbane is almost back to normal thanks to a no holes barred effort from the Queensland government and more importantly the helping mentality of fellow Queenslanders. I was completely taken out by the amount of voluntary workers that registered and showed up for cleaning up the city.. “our city” as I would now like to call it. We did our part too we were out cleaning up the basement with the rest of the tenants, also donated a decent amount for the Premiers Flood Donation.

This is the first time that I have seen a whole country come together for help when it was needed. And it was not just talk but actually coming out and getting their hands dirty so that your neighbour has an easier time cleaning up his backyard.








As I am writing this post there are cyclone warnings out in the north of Queensland – but I am not a least bit worried. When you are in a community like this there is nothing to worry. Cyclone ?? I would say “bring it on...”

Socially Un-Networked

Back from a holiday to Dubai and India - visited parents, relatives and friends and dined, drank and laughed at old jokes and new. Two weeks just flew past and here I am back in Brisbane with some good memories and a massive jet lag. Back to work - but I guess what are sick days for after all :-P

Last month J was all excited about her first trip back home after marriage and was happily shopping for little things to take back for everyone, basically just small mementos or fridge magnets or stuffed toys for all her little cousins. We had different classifications such as “gift cousins”, “chocolate cousins”, “only a phone call cousins” and “lets meet them next time cousins”, making sure she didn’t miss out anyone etc etc.. In the mean time she had also announced her countdown to the start of the holiday on Facebook. Not much time passed before she was contacted by various ‘friends’ here at Brisbane with a list of things that they wanted to be brought back from India. She being ever obliging agreed unwillingly. Pretty soon after the list was compiled our trip was ending up like a delivery service. Even wondered if we should change over from Emirates to DHL Super Jumbo.. hmm. We had people coming over and dropping things off for us to take to Dubai and extremely pushy offers to be dropped off and picked up from the airport. Finally I had enough and put my foot down and said I am not brining in anything from Dubai or India. We had one set of guys who had their two year old son call us up and ask us if we could bring him the milk powder from Kerala – and this was after some heavy prompting from his pushy mum in the background. The extend some people go to is unbelievable *sigh*

It has been two weeks since we got back and there is no news from our milk powder friends. The book that they also requested for, which required me driving down to a different village in India at 10 PM at night through what seemed a ghost town in order for me to pick up, is still lying here at our home in Brisbane. I guess it wasn’t that urgent at all. Oh well..

Soon we got alerts in email with “you were tagged” on FB. So there were caught having fun with some of our friends who we had met during the short trip. This left the others friends who are also on facebook, wondering why we didn’t bother visiting them or giving them a ring, let alone take picture with them. Wonder if we will hear from them again. And to top it all off one of them even tagged us in a picture of a stuffed toy we had gifted their kids with a caption “from J with love”. This must have left some impression on the other “non gift” friends and in Kerala this is enough material for starting a family feud.

So I guess we have been socially un networked from a few friends…

I read an interesting article about Mark Zuckerberg who had to pay USD 65 million to keep a bunch of uni students quiet about them claiming that he stole their idea while working together on a same project. Apparently Mark delayed the project they were working on and in the meantime launched Facebook which had a striking similarity. Difference they called it “dating” and Mark called it “networking”. Talk about play with words.

And the other talk of the town is the commonwealth games about which the less said the better.

Old Habits Die Hard !.. or do they ?

Sitting on the front porch in an arm chair was one of granny’s favourite pastimes. Not that the view was great – but she loved all the attention she got from passersby who would greet her by calling her “chechi” – as in elder sister in Malayalam. So thirty something men and women who lived in the neighbourhood addressing her by “chechi did wonders to her ego, and you can actually see her face light up. She even mentioned casually to me about how the whole village thinks she looks so young for her age. I usually have the “no comments” look on my face when someone’s ego does the talking. Also she thought of this as an opportunity to catch up on the various gossips that float around in the village. Over the years it became hard to imagine our home without granny on the front porch trying to grab some attention.

Years later I found out that the tradition still continued when I came back to India after high school to write the Kerala State Entrance Exam. Preparations were on full swing with me signing up for entrance exam coaching which involved trips to town where the classes were held – and this immediately opened up possibilities of exploring the numerous movie theatres around town. It was just a matter of running into the right group of friends ( or “mites” as Aussies would call them :-P ) before we started seeing a movie every other day. Also this was when I got introduced to the world of dodgy noon shows .. don’t let me get into that now.

So soon the talk of the village was “mon ( a not so cute name for son in Mallu ) and his entrance exams” thanks to granny and her gossip friends. So every morning she would make announcements to passersby on how well “mons’s” preps are going for entrance exams and how he is hoping to score a good rank. My mum who knew better would try to shut her up but in vain. This became a regular routine for a month..

After a month of solid preparations the big day arrived. The Kerala State Entrance Exam! and granny decided to accompany me to the exam centre. We started off in her white Ambassador with Mercedes Benz wheel caps (Yes! granny had a souped up car). She asked the driver to slow down at every house nearby so she could inform them that “mon” is off to write the exam today. I was in the front seat trying to hide my face in embarrassment, one, because I hated being referred to as “mon” and second because I had a vague idea about how the results would turn out. I slid down in my seat as far as I could.

What I loved the most about entrance exams was the fact that they were all multiple choice and I had one in four chances to get it right and with my common sense I could narrow it down to one in three which I thought was pretty good.

Soon the results were going to be out and I was busy trying to find colleges in Bangalore because that was further away from home and Blore was much more a happening place than Kerala. Granny had taken down my registration number so she can check the results in the local newspaper first thing in the morning as she is usually up before sun rise. On judgement day I got up late as usual and came out to the front porch to have coffee and get some fresh air... but something seemed wrong! The chair was empty. Granny was nowhere to be seen.

Apparently I managed to get a rank of 4000 something in the entrance exam in a world where anything above 1000 was considered pretty crappy and I would not get into any of the decent colleges. I already had Bangalore in sight. What I had done with my performance was break Granny’s 15 year old habit of sitting on the porch and gossiping away to glory. To save face she had to stay indoors for a few days and make limited appearances in public till all the talk of the entrance exams died out. I noticed on a few occasions how she avoided any talk remotely related to academics lest the question of entrance exams and “mon’s” rank came up. Those were tough times for poor old lady.

“Mon” did finally attend an Engineering College and he even managed to roller coaster his way through attaining a BTech within the allotted four years. Both of granny’s daughters were brilliant in studies and were rank holders frequently during their academic life, so I do sympathize with grandmother as none of her grand children lived up to her expectations. One passed away a while back at the age of 24, another one has taken solace in religion and finally the prodigal ‘grand’son, somewhere down under, has limited achievements that she can boast off sitting in that arm chair in front of the house. The fatted calf survives.

back again ..

This is probably the longest period that I haven't blogged for since I started blogging an year or so ago. I guess marriage, Australia and settling down kept me quite busy. I have got in to a rhythm now and so I am trying to find some time start blogging regularly again - and to actually read the blogs of a few other fellow bloggers I had started to follow a while back..

I have heard that marriage changes people quite a lot and now experiencing it live. I guess it changes women more than the men and its true in my case as well. J has turned from a junk food loving, shopaholic, FB addict, carefree university student into a completely new person. Now we hardly eat from out as we (she) cooks at home on a daily basis, spends less on clothes and her FB status gets changed once a month as opposed to hourly updates. When we browse around at shopping malls, more than DKNY and CK she gets attracted to Robin's Kitchen and the crockery sections at Target. How things change.. that too in a few months.

I like to think that I have changed myself as well.. but have to admit not as much as her. I try and help clean up the house, help in cooking, watch romantic movies with her *sigh*, and gave up on alcohol ( if red wine at social dinners does not count ;). I come home early, do not bring work home at all.. little things that help us be happy, I try to do. Oh Wait I got one more.. I returned Band of Brothers back to my colleague without watching it because J hates bloody war scenes ( okay now I am struggling to find ways in which I have changed :p ).

Anyway the only conflict we have is my two nights of playing soccer with the boys every week.. Although she seems pretty cool about it, I am sure she would rather I spend the time with her :-P which explains the sudden headaches or back pain she picks up on Friday afternoons :-P. Whenever we get together with friends for dinner or gatherings, the wifes are all conspiring to keep the boys at home on soccer nights and share ideas on how toe accomplish the mission. They discuss drastic measures like plan to go on a shopping spree as long as we play soccer, or no home made food and a few other things.. etc etc ..and the thoughts are getting more evil week by week.

But on the other hand we do spned a lot of time together and also made a few sightseeing tours to Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Sydney and Wollongong.. I love Australia. Also got ourselves a new car - "golfie" as she likes to call it. So we spend a lot of time driving around .. Here are some pics from the places we visited.

Wollongong

Sydney

Harbor Bridge

Golfie :)

From J's Kitchen

:)