Travel bug

The weather is suddenly so glorious in this part of the world. The temperatures are near 20s and the sun is shining so bright that it is difficult to believe that till a couple of weeks back it was freezing and snowing. I just  finished reading Around the World in Eighty Days and as easily influenced as I am, want to go somewhere again. Since I have a husband, a small child, a job and a hundred other things to take care of, I obviously can't  travel around the world in one go. Besides, I don't think it would be any fun to just travel the circumference of the earth without really seeing anything much, like the protagonist, Phileas Fogg does in the story.

There is a holiday coming up, the 1st May which falls on a Wednesday. So, we are planning to take the Thursday and Friday off and drive to Cote D'Azure for a short vacation. As usual, we haven't booked yet, but I hope everything will be in place by this weekend.

I have a busy week ahead at work and at home. There is an Indian festival Navratri going on at the moment and on the 8th day of this festival, little girls are worshipped, are treated to a meal of poori, chickpeas and semolina halwa and are given small gifts. In India, this tradition which happens twice a year is a worthy practise since there are many poor children and a sumptuous meal, gifts and money will mean a lot to them. They go from house to house collecting their treats and gifts. Out here in Germany, I am inviting some of my friends and their little daughters and obviously they will feel special, but they are all privileged pampered children from well off families. Anyway, I am going to enjoy the day as I really love girls (and hope to have one of my own some day).

Spring Cleaning

I am trying to spring clean my life. I see too much clutter and too many distractions. So, as a first step, I decided to take a hiatus from Facebook. I am addicted to Facebook like many people are these days. Very often, I find it extremely useful to send messages to friends and family, to organize an outing or a date with my friends etc. But I also found myself spending increasing amounts of time just browsing through the news feed. Since I already spend a lot of 'real' time with my friends, I decided to cut back on the virtual time with friends and acquaintances.

There are only 24 hours in everybody's lives and since I find myself rushing always to be on time, be it at work, be it something planned for Sunshine, be it personal appointments, I decided it is time I took a good hard look at my schedule and cut down on the unnecessary activities.

On a totally different note, I won a book giveaway on Marias Book Blog. It is 'The Last Doctor She Should Ever Date' by Louisa George. I just casually checked the blog to see if there are any new updates and suprise - I had won the giveaway. I have added her blog to my blogroll. She writes some amazing reviews about novels especially romance novels. I love reading especially romance novels and it is my secret (not any more) desire to write one on my own some day.

In the evening my very talented friend Vij is dropping by with her son who is the same age as Sunshine. Vij makes the most scrumptious the most detailed and perfect fondant cakes ever. She has taught herself how to do it and she does it better than even the bakers who appear on TV shows. It was her birthday last week and I couldn't meet her. But, I have a surprise gift for her today and I baked a batch of cupcakes yesterday. I am going to frost one of them today so that she can have a late birthday celebration.

I spent a lot of time with Ms Positive yesterday and she tried a lot to inspire me to chase my dreams and also create new dreams and goals in my life. She might drop in today when Vij is here, if she is free by then. Who needs Facebook when your life is full of such wonderful people.  

To be or not to be - a vegetarian

On Friday, Sunshine and I were invited to my friend Rumi's place. She bought her own house and moved there recently and she invited her girlfriends and their kids to celebrate. The main attractions for the evening were her scrumptious chicken biriyani and mutton curry. There was a small problem though - I am an on again off again vegetarian and I am in 'on mode' at the moment. The last time we met, I still ate chicken and seafood and I forgot to mention that I had turned vegetarian again, when Rumi invited me.

I have a difficult relationship with non-vegetarian food. I love seafood and like to indulge in indian preparations of chicken once in a while. On rare occasions, I have eaten lamb and enjoyed it too. But it troubles my conscience to eat non-vegetarian food. There is the obvious problem that you have to kill a living thing to eat meat or seafood. I grew up in a coastal region and seafood was part of our diet almost every day. So, though having to kill an animal does not exactly make me happy, it doesn't trouble me enough to turn vegetarian. What really troubles me is the hunger that is so widespread all over the world. Every time I eat meat, the images of hungry children's faces haunt me and makes me think of all the resources that had to go into getting that piece of meat on my plate. A small percentage of the people in the world gets to consume such a large percentage of the resources. I know that this is true for almost everything in life, but when it comes to something so basic as food, it seems all the more unfair. It sometimes makes me loathe myself that I would willingly cause more environmental degradation and consume more resources while so many people starve, just to satisfy my palate. However, I am a foodie and the glutton inside me wins many times. Since I am too weak to become a vegetarian permanently, I try it for a few months at a time.

Rumi was mortified that I didn't inform her about my food preference. But I enjoyed her vegetarian starter dahi bhalla (lentil fritters) and I even had some gravy from the mutton curry and ate some rice sans chicken from the chicken biriyani. Rumi and her other friends were curious about my on again off again vegetarianism and asked me about the reason for it. I actually felt very embarrassed while explaining my reasons. For one, I sounded like an environmental nutcase to myself. The other reason was, I did not want to sound preachy or superior or worse still condemning about other people's choices.

Sunshine loved the mutton curry that Rumi made and asked for several helpings. He loves chicken and his caretakers at the daycare have told me that he eats eagerly when there is fish on the menu. I wonder if it is because these are things which he does not get to eat at home. In any case, for the next few months atleast I do not plan to eat or cook meat or fish.