House Hunting Is so Difficult!!!

We have been looking for a house to buy for sometime now. Going through newspapers, checking various sites online from 99acres.com, magicbricks.com, to makaan.com, to talking to brokers, this is what we end up doing almost every day now. We have been at this regularly for more than 2months now.

Everytime you enter a property listing site, it gives you the option of selecting what kinda property, whether you are looking for an apt, independent house, bungalow or a residential plot. You choose one and enter you other requisites like the number of bedrooms, oh more importantly the budget. You end up getting a huge list of results for any budget you enter. This used to give us the hope that 'Oh, maybe it may not be so difficult getting our place afterall' but then all such happy thoughts are normally shortlived.

We take down the number and call the place, the agency or the broker and every single time he would invariably say 'O so sorry, there was a typing error on the site, the house you saw and liked is not for 20lakhs, its available for 75lakhs'. How on earth can that be a typing error??? When the numbers 2, 0, 7, and 5 are so far apart. How can 20 be typing error for 75??? The next thing would be a goof up in the sq. ft measurement. As usual typing errors do happen there as well. And if none of that is the problem, the house would invariably be sold out by the time you call n you would be told,'It just got sold out yesterday'. How can houses be sold out exactly one day before I call!!! Every single person tells you can you try raising your budget a little higher, I could show you an amazing place and each time you think and think and finally raise it by another 5lakhs, that becomes the lower limit and again they ask you to raise it a little. I cant believe people would demand 20-25lakhs for a 800sq. ft house!

Why is it so difficult, all I want is a simple place to call my own. So that I dont end up paying a huge rent of say 10k, I might as well pay a few grands more each month and own a place. The whole thought of house-hunting is getting so painful now that I feel so jealous of those who already have 2-3 huge ancestral property in the city that too in the heart of the city!!

A Few Interesting Things About Me!

If you are part of my Orkuts friends list, you might think this is just a copy of the about me section from there. Trust me there is more here. I have been wanting to tag myself for sometime now. Some of the blogs I saw had really nice and interesting tags. Therefore, attempting to replicate one here. :)

• --I am a Mallu born and brought up in Chennai. I love Chennai more than my native place. Chennai is home to me!
• --I was born almost 22 years back in a hospital right next to my moms college. PS: She did not have me while she was studying, it just happened that the hospital was right next to the college she had studied in 2 years before I was born.
• --I am a cusp between a Virgo & Libra. Have characteristics of both star signs. I actually spend time reading forecast for both the signs each time I happen to go over a horoscope column.
• --I am totally cranky and extreme in nature. I either like something or someone too much or cant stand it at all.
• --I get hurt trying to be in the good books of people. I can give up or do anything at all for people I really care about.
• --I worry unnecessarily about things and get depressed too soon.
• --I can lie so perfectly well, that you would never have the slightest clue that I could be lying. However, this makes stating the truth difficult, maybe my expressions change or something, it takes me more time convincing people that the truth is the truth!
• --I used to dance… I am not kidding!! I had learnt Bharatnatyam for 5 years. Had stopped dancing during school and ever since never danced at all.
• --I have a veena at home that I used to play 7-8years back. It is now sleeping in a loft at my place.

• --I had learnt carnatic music for 9 years and couldn’t continue cos ma mom thought I should concentrate on studies and not music. I’ve always wanted to learn Hindustani classical but never really got to it yet.

• --If I had not joined Google, I may have chosen playback singing ( a couple of music directors wanted me to sing for them). I wanted a stable career and thought singing might not be a great idea. Maybe I made a wrong decision.
• --I used to peddle 18kms each day to in school (9kms up and 9kms down).
• --I am a complete clothes freak. I love shopping till I realized it’s the company that makes shopping exciting!
• --There is nothing that is too spicy for me. My friends eye starts watering whenever she sees me eating so much spice.
• --I have never broken a bone in my life. Touchwood!
• --I fear tripping in public and making a fool of myself.
• --I cannot stand being rejected. At anything. For anything.
• -- I have an obsession of constantly thinking the worst in every situation.
• --I love animals – cats & dogs especially. Did you know there was a time when we had 26 cats in my house? Yeah! We used to live in the cats house (5 human beings vs. 26 cats – majority wins!)
• --I was a non-vegetarian for 22 years – needed non veg each day of ma life. I turned veggie exactly a month back & its actually not as bad as I thought it would be. (Ps: Realised Veg food can be yummy as well)
• --I fear loneliness. I am scared I might end up lonely with no one to talk to.
• --If I could change one thing about myself, I would like to go back to being the slightly plum person I used be back in college. I have proof to show you that I used to be thin once upon a time, I swear!
• -- I love spending time with 2 people in life – in fact u can see me acting all hyper before and after I meet them! 
• -- I get along with almost everyone but that doesn’t mean they are my confidants. I have a special few whom I trust and depend on wholly.
• --I could do anything, absolutely anything for the 2 special people in my life. I could mould myself for them, somehow get anything I know they want irrespective of whether I can manage, fight with others for them. For those of you who know me well enough, you know who these two special people are. For those of you who don’t, it means you don’t know me much and or don’t know me at all, bad luck I don’t intend telling you about them or about me!!
• I just realized it feels a lot better to write such random thought down in your blog. Makes you feel lighter after a tiring day.
  

Yaay! My first tag is now ready to post. Thank you, if you have actually taken pains reading the whole post. Hope I dint bore you out of your wits!!

Valentines Day

This day has somehow come to hold some kind of importance in all our lives. Single? Though you end up telling everyone or rather trying to convince yourself 'well ok I dont need anyone to celebrate V Day. I am happier being single and all that jazz... some part of you still craves for the attention that you may possibly get in having the person of your life with you. You may try to ignore the fact that you are alone and try to find joy in maybe going out with someone else you love may be your friend, your mom or any of your family members.

I had a great day today with a lot of trainings to attend at work and my other half in some other work related training at Kakatiya Hotel. So the whole idea of meeting up was a big question mark. I was not sure if we would be able to meet in the first place! Thanks to his neck sprain and hectic work schedule. In my case, even though I have been in training the whole of this week and will be the next week too, I was pretty sure I would be able to meet him. But you anyways need your other half to be enthu as well about the whole thing. So having said all this, he was not at work the whole day but had promised to meet me sometime in the eve over coffee or something. I was all excited about this and got dressed up after a very long time, wore the new salwar that he had given me a little earlier. :)

I reached office in the morning and with the feeling of 'Huh! Its Valentines Day, so what?' kinda feeling. Once in I could see red heart shaped baloons everywhere. On top of it in the middle of my training when I had come out for a break, I could see girl rushing to the reception to collect their bouquets and teddy bears sent by their loved ones. I was talking to a friend of mine who did not understand the concept of V day at all and both of us finally agreed that it was a total waste of time and money. Later in the day when I reached my desk, I see something really really cute, a bouquet, not a flower bouquet but one made of chocolates with a note written beside it saying 'To the Special One! :)' It was a weird and an amazing feeling I should agree. All the concepts about wasting money and time vanished the minute I saw this. I was really really happy and all I wanted to know was how it got there. After that, when I was again away from my desk, someone placed another gift at my desk with a note on it saying 'secret admirer'. This is when I was slightly confused... why would my other half call himself a 'secret admirer' when he doesnt even say that he has never said that he admires me in the past 2.5 years. But all this confusion got sorted the minute I saw a photo frame that I had asked him to get me a couple of days back and the one he refused to get. (so the deal is I had gone shopping with him and our best friend, Pinki. she got a picture of her husband and her printed on a tile and I told him I needed one of our like that on a tile too. He has in the meantime placed an order for the same and told me that he wouldnt get me one considering that it is a big waste of money ) Seeing that photo frame with our picture with nice wording on them, made me feel really good n all I wanted was to go meet him and give him a huge hug. I think it was a super cute thing he did for me.

He called me later in the eve and asked me to come to City Center. I went over and my poor baby was in deep pain. But just so that he could make me happy, he decided to bear the pain and took me to play air hockey and then he said we will go home as I am not keeping well. I was ok with it as he was in a bad shape. But he took me to Indijoes to have a nice dinner and then made sure he put me back in a rick back home. Wow! thats a pretty long story!

Thanks to Maria for putting the gifts on my desk and to my sweetheart for taking pains literally to make me happy! I am happy to know you are there for me! I know the pain you underwent and the effort taken to keep me happy. Though you may not have liked the tee I got you, I hope you would wear it and stop asking me for clues about february 25. You will get to know about it on the 25th. Patience pays!! :)

Thats brings us to the end of the day with me starting off on why is there a V day and why is it a big deal to ending it with 'O My God! I feel butterflies in my stomach!.' All perceptions changes with time and people who care to make a difference in your life.

The Philosophic Me :)

If anyone happens to be reading this and has already read my previous post, I apologize for being totally philosophic... or rather trying hard to be philosophic. If it made sense to you, good for you. In case it did not make sense to you, better still as you dont have to think too much like I tried to. Once in a while, I get into that state where whatever you try to write or say, comes out completely as a fully loaded philosophic statement. I am just warning anyone reading my blog before hand that reading my blog can be injurious to health... Either you think a lot or you find it totally irrelavant and useless that you cease to think at all... so read any of my posts at your own risk. Thats a statutory warning for you :)

Sometimes Sweet! Sometimes Bitter!!

Why are there so many extremities in life...? Why cant things be simple...Why should people be hell bent on complicating things in their lives and in the lives of others? Everytime you think God My life sucks and is so damn complicated you realise that as days go by, the complication grows to an extent where you think and think and when you are tired with all the thinking and almost give up, that is when you see a ray of hope. A ray of hope from nowhere, giving you the warmth that you need amidst all the turbulence, giving you that hope that things might change for all you know and things may take a completely new turn to help you overcome the situation and relax. Things just seem to be a little relaxed, when again, you will have to get ready for another roller-coaster ride... I guess that is how life is and we will be a fool not to accept that and move on with the new set of complications in life.

Why are men so difficult??

Men...They call us complex beings but the truth is they are the most complex creature on the face of this world!! I am not an expert when it comes to guys but I have had the opportunity to befriend many and have had my share of exactly a couple of relationships. Men are great as friends but when the whole friendship line moves on to be a little more, there begins all chaos. Its like one is waiting for Dooms Day :) However, having said all this they are amazing people who know exactly how to wipe you completely off your feet.

Sometimes we end up thinking how sad life is without having a person to call your own or to lean on. Someone who will be there for you and with you no matter what happens. We all grow up with a great deal of imagination about how life will be and how you will find your Mr. Right and so on... But the fact is there is no Mr. Right. What we perceive as right may not be right when it comes to reality. We just have to learn to accept them as they are and try to adjust ourselves to have a life with them.

I was of the opinion that women have the ability to make a man change with all her love. Give him as much as you can and make him turn a new leaf to help lead a peaceful life. Trust me men never change. It took me 7 long years to learn that and by the time I realised it I was at the end of my wits to take anymore. This lead me calling off something that had lasted for more than half a decade. I then thought life is better off without the so called male species.

However, as fate would have it, ended up with this amazing person, who was there to help me when I needed help the most. A shoulder I used to cry on, yes I needed a shoulder to depend on when I made a call to break away from the past. A person whom I could trust with my heart and soul, a person whom I knew would be with me come what may and one who cared a lot and made sure I was safe at every juncture in life. He was or rather is my best friend. We work together and therefore ended up spending a lot of time together not only during the week but also during the weekends. We liked each others company. He was a person with whom I could talk anything under the sun and vise versa. We used to talk for hours together each day and I truly relished his company. The one thing that made him stand apart from my other friends is that the others would never stop me from feeling depressed over my past, they would merely empathize, whereas he was a person who would tell me stop being the pain that I am and stop complaining about things in life. He was a person who had gone through enough of troubles in life and was hurt at each juncture in life and he never complained. This made me feel little in front of him. Having gone through so much in life, I have never seen him crib about his past.

He was always blunt in telling me stuff, never minced words, no flowery words. Everything was point blank with him except for one thing (which I will talk about later). He cared a lot about me and I liked the attention I received. I used to look forward to weekends so that I get more time with him. He was a great friend (he still is). He is a person I knew I could go to at any point in time in life. This is something that mattered most to me.

Being a single child brought up by a single parent, things werent all that rosy for me. I had to learn everything in life the hard way more so by trial and error methods. I was brought up by my mom who was a brave woman. She could handle the whole world and a lot of problems with a brave facade. But it was not easy for her as it is difficult for a single woman to bring up a baby girl in this world. She had to go through a lot of troubles and she would try her level best to keep me and her parents happy no matter what. However, she had her own week moments where she would come back home and cry about her woes. I had to be supportive and therefore, would never vent out my frustrations or my emotional needs in front of my mom. I was and still am a pillar in front of my mom, who would listen to all her emotional calls.

However, I was a very emotional person myself and therefore needed to depend on. This is why I got into my first relationship as I received the warmth and care. It really felt nice at that point in time to be taken care of instead of you taking care of other people all the time. I was looking for a person who could take care of me and make sure I was safe, sound and happy with him. My first relationship had left me with a lot of scars and made me feel miserable and depressed in life. My friend was the one and only person who was there to push me away from this depression stage and made me feel better even when my family got torn away into pieces with some natural calamities. He is my pillar of support. :)

It so happens that when two people of opposite sex spend a lot of time together and like each other, relate to each other and stand up for each other the bonds are tied closer. My friend and me were part of a group of other friends. But all of us were poles apart from each other, and this in turn meant that there were some who couldnt stand the others company and so on. One such person, one of my roomies, could not stand my friend and I had to stand by my friend, leading to some chaos here and there. Inspite of all that I stood by him cos I had decided that he was a friend to keep for a lifetime and wouldnt let others tarnish it no matter what. Slowly things happened, and I came to a juncture where I had to decide if the relationship should be stopped at just friendship or if there was more to it than it appears to be. Thats when I realised that we had moved a long way and things can never be just friendship and the only thing I could do was pretend that we are just friends and move on with life. But I couldnt allow myself to deceive myself or my friendship to that extent.

We decided to confront each other with the issue, thats when I realised that my friend had a huge phobia of committing cos of the scars his past had left on him. But I was persistent, we decided not to put our friendship at stake and take things relationship-wise as and when things surfaced. Time flew and we continued as friends. There were many a times when he was totally mean to me and used to get mad at me for no fault of mine (at times). But I had decided to act mature and stick on to him atleast as a friend. I was ok with letting things just be the way it was, letting go of my ego and tried to mould myself in his world. I started to know his friends, became friends with them and realised that they were as amazing as friends as he was. Things however could not be kept quiet and hidden for a long time as my mom as a normal single parent would started pressurising me to get married and settle down in life. I started resenting whatever she said, started to move away from her cos I couldnt handle the expectations. I then had to bring it up again to make the coward realise that he couldnt be chicken anymore. He had to decide and he had to decide soon. Because I knew for a fact that he did not think of me as just his friend. Our relationship was a lot more than that. There were times when he couldnt help but fall, there were times when I could not help but fall... But at the end we decided that we would decide on what is to be done within a given time frame... and we did. :)

About Me

I am a person who is normally content with the way life takes me. Being born a cusp I am always caught in between extreme characteristics, either I love too much or I hate too much. It has always been a problem for me to draw the line in the middle so that I balance out things in life. I was born and brought up in Chennai, the place where my heart truly belongs. I lived all my life in Chennai and never thought I would move out from that beautiful city. People might not agree to the beautiful city part. However, I truly believe that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholders and I think its one really beautiful city with the amazing coastal line, seashore and the various shopping malls and all the exciting places to visit. I cant think of one thing that my city lacks. It is just one amazing heaven on earth to live in. I know I am biased towards my city. But who cares? I love the place and have no qualms what so ever agreeing. I am pretty sure any native Chennaite would agree to what I have just said.

I had lived all my life in Chennai. I was a pampered kid in my family where I had the liberty to do what I wanted. However, I was a person who did not know what to do with the freedom I had at that point in time. I did my schooling from two different kinds of institutions one an Anglo -Indian, Christian missionary school (Presentation Convent) and the other a totally Hindu based school (Montford) both of which are located in Perambur, Chennai. I did not have a great school life that is worth recollecting here, other than a few people worth mentioning here. I used to stay pretty far away from school and therefore had to take a bus to school. But I somehow preferred to pedal 9 kms up and 9kms down each day rather than take the bus. It was loads of fun doing that with a group of friends. I was one of the kids who wanted to have as much as I can at a given point in time and got into a relationship of sorts at the age of 13 when I had no clue what it actually meant to be in a relationship. This meant that I got to grow up with this person and happened to actually fall in love with him. It was something we were open about to everyone around us including our families, who were ok with the situation. We were in this relationship for seven years before things started falling apart owing to the changes in our lives and my job at Google.

Before I talk about Google, I need to talk about my college life. I graduated from Ethiraj college for women. It happens to be the best three years of my life ever. That is when I actually got the right kind of exposure, the right kind of friends and loads of fun. I had always been this person who was not the adjustive types. I would say Ethiraj played the part of taming the shrew. :) And I owe the major part of whatever I am today to Ethiraj. I love my college and the amazing time I had there. I really wish I could go back to Ethiraj and continue as a student. :( Miss ma college.

Now to Google, I was one of the first batches to get into Google through Campus recruitment. I had never thought I would start working after my graduation. I always wanted to continue my studies and get into CIEFL. However, I thought I will just give Google a shot as they had come to my college and a classmate of mine got through. I just applied thinking I could just give it a shot. However, I was totally impressed when they told me they would be flying me down to Hyderabad and back to Chennai just for the sake of interviews. I came to the Hyderabad office (RMZ) and I found that the office was soooooooooo good. Thats when I thought maybe I should join Google and do my education from CIEFL via distance education. However, that never happened. Long stories, will keep for laterzz. So I joined Google on May 2, 2005 with 7 other people, most of whom were freshers. Everybody in my batch knew Tamil and we were called the 'Tamizh gumbal.' I still remember my first day in Google where I felt so comfortable and at home, thanks to ma buddy and to the amazing TAs like Bharath, who made work so much more easy and enjoyable. I still cant believe I have been with Google for more than two years now. Google has taught me a lot of things in life and has given me loads of friends especially to a recluse like me. :) There are people who have been such an inevitable part of life that I really cant or dont know how life will be without them. I just think its high time I tell them that they really matter to me and will always be an integral part of my life. Love you people a lot!!


So thats me bragging about me and ma school and college life and about the past two years at Google. Not bad I seemed to have written quite a lot in this one post. Hoping to write more soon.