A Day Trip to Bribie Island

How has the new year been so far? Well, it has been all of 3 days and nothing has considerably changed from last year. Unless you count the fact that I haven't worked at all this year and yet expect to get paid for these days.

That's just me being cheeky there. Ignore me and read on. 

The day trip I spoke of in my last post turned out well. The weatherman said there was possible rain on New Year Day and definite rain on Sunday and Monday. As normal, (s)he was lying. It rained on Saturday. Non-stop. Drizzled, increased, stopped, poured, showered and did all of that in various permutations. May I also mention that the following couple of days have been bright and sunny with no sign of showers?

Praying that the rain will not deter my companions from going ahead with the trip, I set about getting ready for the day. I think it almost did in one of them but for my insistence and her baby's excitement at going to a beach. What we would do in the rain, at a beach, we were not sure. We decided to go because the plans were in place. 

As I announced later that day, someone up there really loves me. Or maybe the li'l one. Whatever! It was a couple of hours worth of train and bus journey before we arrived at Bribie. It could have been later but, as I said, someone up there loves me. We hopped off the train and standing right there, ready to leave as soon as we hopped on, was the bus to Bribie. We got off the bus near Woorim Beach and voila, no more rain! A quick scan of the what and where of our surroundings, Kid and I changed and took off towards the water. 

The long stretch of white sand felt great under our feet. The first splash in the brown waters of the Moreton Bay assured us there was no need to acclimatize. Perfect water temperature for a play. There were too many sea-weeds closer to the beach but we wanted to play with the waves further down anyway. It must be all the summer rain, we gauged. The clouds hid the sun but restrained from dampening our beach-day out.

Splash splosh splash. Click click click click. Shower. Change. Time for the bus. Rain. Whooosh.

It poured heartily while we ordered our lunch and spent 2 hours enjoying a yummy margherita pizza from Dominos, a delicious order of pancakes with maple syrup, cream and ice-cream and some crummy French Toast. While someone up there loved me and the kid, it was not the case with the kid's mum. 

She asks a boy on the beach if he would take a picture of us and he goes, "Ummmm... ah... No". 

She orders pizza at Dominoes and we all wait outside for them to call us when it's ready. 5 minutes later, another crowd goes in, orders and leaves with their order. Another 5 minutes and the same repeats. We peep in, the girls are chatting on phone, hugging each other and having a merry time, showing no signs of getting our order ready. Ten minutes later, mum and kid go in & are back in seconds, with the pizza. The order has been ready for a while, we waited for the girls to call us while they waited for us to go in. Duh! Hot pizza, anyone?

She orders French toast while I go for pancakes. We finish the pizza. A massive serving of pancake arrives. We've finished the pancakes, the coffee, a conversation and just missed our bus, so we have to wait an hr. We tease her that they must have forgotten her order. She goes in to check. Sure enough they have! What were the chances of that? When it finally comes, it is a tiny serving, all of 2 slices of bread with a smear of omellette. 

She walks to the bus driver on our way back to confirm that we are on the right bus. The driver snaps at her, "Didn't you see the board before you got in?"

Back to our day trip. Rest assured that her day being snappy did not meddle with the spirits for any of us, her included. From then on, throughout the journey, it rained like the rain Gods were having a gala to bring in the New Year. Stepped off the train at my station and walked into the damp air but no rain. 

As a kid, I used to believe that if I did something on the first day of the year, the rest of the year would follow suit. If that is true, this year is going to be fantastic! So far, the trend seems to be in order. A day trip on the first Saturday of the year. The next two Saturdays have been booked for day events too. All of them involve taking the same train and then another means of transport from the station. Interesting.

Xmas to New Year

I've been slack on the blogging front. I think up stuff to write, I have the material and then I get lazy. After a blissfully beautiful Christmas, which I insist on calling "the traditional Aussie Christmas" even though people tell me there's nothing traditional about an Aussie Christmas, I made up my mind to blog about it. The draft page remained open on my Chrome for a week before I shut it when I had to restart my PC for updates. That was the end of it.

It has been a crazy week. Busy and free. Full and quiet. Odd and lovely at so many levels.

Christmas Eve involved attending a family mass at the Holy Cross Church at Windsor. It was my first time. I've wanted to do that for many years now. A lovely experience. It felt nice to be at a place of worship after a long time. I had not realized until then that I missed going to a temple or church. It was touching to see that many people with an unfailing faith in God. There were bits when the priest was speaking that seemed to come straight out of the movies. That could be because movies take things out of life in an attempt to make it seem real. It felt out of place but that was just me, of course. I was allowed to take pictures but alas my mobile camera is not the world's greatest. In the end, we all held hands and prayed, then when everyone whispered "Peace be with you" to each other, in reverence, it took me a while to go from 'psst psst psst' and 'Merry Christmas??' to what it really was. Managed to return some myself, eventually.

Christmas was perfect. There is no other way to describe it. Ever since the festive season started, I had begun to feel more than ever that I wanted to see what the inside of a Christmas was really like. I wanted to spend it with an Aussie family and see what they do. Everyone I spoke with merely said "lunch with family", "exchange presents", "that's about it". I wanted to be part of it anyway but no such thing was going to happen. So, I got a stack of books from the library and told myself that I could atleast lose myself in the magical world of stories. That is when I received an invite to attend a 10-day camping trip to Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. Excited as I was, it was too short a notice to obtain time off at work and to prepare myself. I hated having to let it pass. Then an angel sent me EM, girlfriend of RVR, from my Krav classes, at our pre-Christmas BBQ. 

RVR picked me up from home at 10 on the morning of Christmas Day. The afternoon was spent volunteering at a church, helping with the community lunch for the lonely/homeless/poor. It was interesting to meet so many people, listen to some of the older ones talk about life in their younger days, the even older ones discuss their times, really young ones argue about the fascination of their generation. EM's mum KM chattered away and introduced me to everyone. Such a social and amiable person, she is. Reminded me of my mum. Went back home to EM's parents where EM and I made dessert - chocolate biscotti tart with caramel filling. Yumm. Watching the family exchange gifts in private, is a memory to lock away and cherish. Showered, changed and got lost catching up with the rest of the extended family that came in for a fabulous Christmas dinner. Meeting all those people, the chatter, the excitement, the exchange of information was so overwhelming. The Christmas dinner was a gala affair, starting with PM "saying grace", the Christmas crackers, reading the cheeky jokes aloud, the 3-course meal, the conversations... can't say enough about it. Later, the exchange of presents, reading newsletters, sharing news, more talking, the excitement in the air was simply marvellous. At the end of an enjoyable evening came the goodbyes. 

I was the first to arrive when the day had just begun and the last to leave. A quiet drive back home with RVR, talking about stuff. Bedtime. A perfect Christmas.

Boxing Day was, of course, all about sales and shopping. Even though I had a late start to my day, thanks to the fun and frolic of Jesus' birthday, I shopped till the stores closed. The next day, it was more shopping again. My day started earlier but the spending spree was on till the shops closed. Buying gifts for others can be so much fun, especially when the salary's just been credited into your account. When you toss in a few things for yourself in there, it only gets better.

Back to work after the tightly packed 4-day weekend, which also included cleaning up the mess I call home. I loved it nevertheless, needed to exercise my brains. The 3 quiet days at work went by like a fantasy. Less people, no noise, lots achieved. 

New Years Eve was somewhat like Christmas Eve. Spent the evening with BT and NT. Only, this time it was watching fireworks instead of mass at the church. Walked back to the station, noticing how crowded the city gets on such days (where do all those people come from?) and eyeing the drunks warily, enjoying the colours and how Brissie comes alive on occasions like this. Twenty minutes before the switch to 2011 I knocked off for a good night's sleep.

New Year Day has started on a warm summer morning, just cool enough to enjoy a hot cuppa. Quiet, except for the odd bird. Shooting off to a day trip with friends. Looking forward to a fun day to reign in 2011.

Vishu: Happy New Year

Even as kids, my brother and I loved this festival. The astrological new year for Malayalis/Keralites. It did not matter that we had to be up by 4AM (nowadays it's 5AM) and were not allowed to go back to sleep. We loved the Vishukanni arrangement that dad painstakingly set up the previous night. We loved the money even more. 

As part of tradition, we wake up early in the morning and walk to the pooja room with our eyes closed (dad brings each one of us to the pooja room). We open our eyes to see the Vishukanni first thing in the morning. Then we wait patiently while dad lights the lamp, does a little pooja and then distributes coconut, jaggery and some money placed on a couple of betel leaves with a couple of betel nuts (kaineetam). Mum says when she was young, her parents used to give her anything between 25 paise to a rupee. We started off with Rs. 20 as children and now dad gives us Rs. 500 each. Mum gives us a 100 bucks because she is "not earning". Bro gets an additional 500 from me because I'm elder to him. Anyone who visits us today get something (usually a tenner).

Here are some pictures of our Vishu this year. Oh yea, I made 610 bucks (10 from granny).

Vishukkanni

Dad lights the lamp & gets the kaineetam sorted

Dad gets kaineetam from his mother

For accurate details on the significance of this festival, go to wikipedia or click here.

2010 Ho!

New Year's Eve always meant celebrations. As a kid, I wanted to stay up and eat a lot of chips and drink lots of coke and watch TV. As I grew older, I wanted to party and dance but only managed to continue the tradition of junk food and TV. The only thing that changed was that I didn't really try to make Jan 1st the best day of my life, so the rest of the year would go well. I guess, at some point I realized that it doesn't really work like that. Like Santa Claus. Say it but don't believe it. Something on those lines.

So, when I fell sick this NYE and had to sleep through the night as we moved from one year to another, one decade to the next, I felt no regret. In fact, I did not even feel the weird sinking sensation that I have felt almost all the previous years, on the last day of the year. 2009 hasn't exactly been what I would call the best year of my life. There have been some good things and I've met some really amazing people but overall, it hasn't been my best year. If anything, it's been a continuation of the year 2008 and a journey down darker alleys.

I woke up on the morning of 2010, feeling refreshed from a good night's sleep. I felt good about starting a new day. I've been saying that 2010 is going to be a good year for me. I am not as sick today as I was yesterday. I had an early morning bath & breakfast on a holiday. A phone conversation I'd been looking forward to.  A reading marathon planned for the weekend. Whereas I'm still in bed, watching all the episodes of season 3 of The Big Bang Theory, I don't really feel like I've started the year badly. In fact, I'm looking forward to it. So, I've gone from the sinking feeling of the year gone by on New Year's Eve to a welcome feeling of the year ahead.

When amma called me this morning, the first thing we said to each other was "Happy New Year". It reminded me of the times when, as kids, bro and I would answer the phone and say "Happy New Year" to the caller, as if  it were a replacement to "Hello". We were excited about wishing as many people as we could. Those were the days when there were no telemarketers and unknown callers calling on our home landline, so we would most definitely know whoever was calling. For the rest of the month of Jan, we said HNY the first time we met somebody. If we forgot to do that and we got a 'Happy New Year' first, it was embarassing. Shopkeepers, the milkman, friends, teachers, relatives, no matter who it was, you just couldn't forget.

Dates. Remembering to put the right year at the end of every date was another big deal. I would be so proud of myself every time I remembered to end the date correctly and not have to erase it or score it out. Every time I had to do that, it was like a failure. It was so exciting to see the new year on the dates in the newspapers. It sounds rather silly now and hard to understand but it made me happy back then. Maybe it's partly because I don't need to remember dates anymore. All I have to do is look at the bottom right corner of my monitor and I have the date. Change of month or year hold no meaning anymore.

I used to make resolutions every New Year, write them on paper and forget all about it until I had to do the same next year. Yet, making resolutions was such a fun activity. A couple of years ago, I decided that it was not worth making any resolutions because I would never remember them anyway. This year, I have one. Yeah, just one. I am going to make this year mine.