Mixups

So it seems it was a good idea I went to the airport after all. Even though I left an hour before the flight arrival, the flight arrived 45 mins early! Since Sumit was a Business passenger, his luggage and all came out quite fast and he was out of the airport as I reached. Luckily I had left him a message stating I was just reaching. When we were about to get into the taxi I noticed that the luggage piece with him seemed different. It took Sumit much longer to realise that he had by accident taken someone else's luggage! He refused to accept that he made any mistake, even though I told him our suitcase was dark brown and the one he had was very light brown. His point, 'brown is brown!' (sigh!men!!!!)

So we ran around the airport trying to return it and get back our suitcase. It was very important to me especially cos all the goodies my mom sent for me were in it and I wasnt about to lose them. God knows when we would get it and whether they wud have spoilt by then. Thankfully the nice Chinese gentleman whose suitcase we had was very understanding about it.

Hmmm

So 5 days seems to have gone by faster than I expected. Thanks to me sleeping thru most of it. Sumit should be back in 2 hours and I am trying to decide whether or not I should go to the airport to meet him. On the plus side, it would be a good surprise, on the minus side, it would mean a one hour ride all the way there.

We have been having so many friends and cousins who had babies recently (last 6 months), and I know it sounds lazy of me but I really hadnt sent out gifts for some of them. With some people, you dont want to gift clothes and the usual stuff. Plus some places I couldnt find good online stores, where I liked something worth sending. Its one of those things, I like to send something that I feel the other person would like. Sometimes I find something, but in the wrong country and it doesnt make sense to ship it internationally. So finally I came round to doing my gifting. I found this great site for the US, which shipped these incredibly cute rockers for kids. I mean they had the cutest designs I had seen. I was totally in love. Its totally impractical to carry around though but still...I mean they were cuuuteee and they sang songs as well. I sent a butterfly to my friend in NJ for her baby girl and froggie for my niece in CA. Both of them told me today that they got the packages. Seems like it has been a big hit, I am so glad.

Anyways as much as I am proud of finding the right gifts, I still have a few more to go. As soon as I finish one round, seems like more people are popping out!

Sumit leaves for Singapore tonite on business. Well its his first 'Business Trip', so I am being supportive. Even though he is gonna be gone for 5 days and I am gonna be stuck here alone, I am being supportive. He is super worried about leaving me alone, since we dont have friends here and he is sure I am going to something crazy and get hurt. I am not six! I do wish I could go with him, but I just came back from Singapore few weeks back. I met up with everyone I wanted to and had a great time.

Anyways, in other news, my day started with swimming around in the pool, finally after they turned the heater off. Its such a simple pleasure of life, to be be able to just float around in cold water. Blissful start.

I decided to make South Indian for lunch today, my 2nd attempt at sambhar. I know its quite a shameful thing that being a south indian, I dont know how to cook sambhar. But the sheer number of steps needed to make a decent one used to really put me off. Not to mention the number of utensils that get used. I am more of a lazy one-step all-in kinda cook. It came out decently, not as good as the last time. Ah Well! I knew there would be left over and I could just use that for dinner.

I am sooo looking forward to my mom coming here end of July. I am running out of ideas and patience to cook. Dad is trying to drop by sometime too, on his way back from Iran. I am completing 24 weeks of my pregnancy. I cant understand why people keep telling me that I dont look pregnant, cos when I look in the mirror, I see a very big belly. On most days I get some major kicking from inside to remind me also, as if I had forgotten. Trying to deal with belly itching. Nothing seems to work.

I discovered Fox's cookies in our local supermarket and it has become my comfort food. I sneak in one or two biscuits a day. My favourite one being Chocolate Viennese....mmm buttery and yummy yummy yummy. I am giving myself this allowance now with the promise that once the baby is out, I will be more careful with my calories.

Dearest Mama

My guru S. Sathyalingam Mama passed away recently. I had not seen him in many months as he was battling cancer. But his lessons will always be with me, I will strive to follow and teach my children.

Summer Woes

Its summer time again, weather keeps going up and down. There are weeks when its just plain horrible heat with absolutely no wind, leaving a suffocating feeling. On other days, there is a cold wind which subdues the heat and makes it bearable to go on walks. I look forward to such days, when I am not going to be on house arrest. One of the other perks of such days is being able to go for a nice cool swim. Except my stupid gym had closed the pool for half the week in the name of maintenance and when they finally reopened, they started the pool heater! Its summer for god's sake, who wants a heated pool?? And after all the 'maintaining' they did the pool was still sooo yucky and not very clean. Sigh, makes me miss Singapore a lot.

Of course there are perks of being in Abu Dhabi, especially when you dont want to get cooked like a lobster. You can get nearly EVERYTHING home delivered. Even if its just one lemon you want, they will deliver it and quite quickly too. Now my regular stores have seen my pregnant bump, I get priority service.

But all said and done, I will take the rain any day to the sun!

My Bakes

Sitting at home, I started experimenting with various recipes, especially cakes. The good thing is its just two of us, therefore if something screws up not too much is wasted. Initially I tried very basic quick breads and brownies. Few months back I proudly bought a mini muffin tray to add to my collection.

So far I have managed to successfully make lemon, orange-strawberry, and lemon-blueberry breads, brownies, variety of muffins including cheesecake. But I have been having craving for a simple marble cake. So this morning I tried the first recipe I came across and very proud of the results. Thanks to my friends K and S who got me some amazing cocoa powder from Brussels.

I have been waiting to put up this post for a while, but since I am not a great photographer, I am dependent on Sumit to take the fotos and give them to me from his complicated camera which I refuse to operate and he doesnt trust me with! So finally I got some of the fotos out of Sumit's camera to put up.

So I am proud to present my

Lemon Cheese cupcakes

Orange and Strawberry Bread

Orange Cake with Chocolate-Cinnamon Frosting (Had baked it for a friend's birthday. I know the cake doesnt look so great but it vanished within 30 mins!)

Marble Cake

** Special Thanks to Sumit for being my practice dummy, eating everything I made and giving valuable feedback. :)

Positive News

English movies usually show a girl taking a pregnancy test and bracing herself by sitting on the toilet seat, indicating that it was positive and unexpected. On the other hand in Tamil movies they show this girl running to vomit. Her husband comes rushing to see if all is ok. The mother in law in the background will smile and whisper to the father in law, who will whisper to the son, who will then ask the girl 'is this true?' and the girl will give a bashful nod to indicate that she is pregnant. In Hindi movies, the girl will faint and someone will check her pulse and say 'Badai ho, aapki beti maa ban ne wali hai!' Its just soo funny and oh so melodramatic.

For me this was always just a joke, something I made fun of and never really believed happened in real life. I mean come on. My body works like clockwork, I knew exactly when my next period was gonna come. I never had pain or vomiting or cramps, I used to run and dance even during my worst days.

So I was in India attending a family wedding, getting ready for the evening function, out of the blue I rush to the washroom to puke. I havent eaten much all day and am terribly dehydrated cos for some reason the wedding hall was short of water. So naturally my first assumption is I have acidity. But of course it had to happen right in the middle of the room where all the ladies were. My mother in law's looked at me very curiously and asked 'Are you pregnant?' Immediately all the others chimed in and started asking me if I was late or expecting this and feeling that. To me that was a ridiculous question. I wasnt even late! I know it had been three years since I was married and they had been expecting that by now I would have had 3 kids, but still, I would know if I was pregnant rite?

All night I kept telling everyone ( cos the news had spread thru the entire wedding hall!) that I was alright, it was probably nothing, just acidity. I was sure of it in my head that it was impossible that I could be pregnant now. I mean Sumit and me just had the 'oh we should think about a family when I get back' talk, the day before I left.

As soon as we got back from the wedding, my sister in law had already bought some home pregnancy kits for me. Even though I had insisted I would go back to Abu Dhabi and get it checked 10 days later. The pregnancy tests came out not positive or negative. I wasnt even sure it was correct. But somehow my family read it as 'if it isnt negative then its positive' and promptly called Sumit and told him the 'good news'. SO much drama, rite? I just found all of this funny and little annoying, seemed like no one was gonna wait for me to go back and check. In the meantime, I had been banned from doing any work around the house, including going up and down the staircase. I felt like an idiot, while everyone around me was running about doing work, I was sitting down. I had also been told not to tell anyone anything yet, obviously cos as far as I was concerned, there was nothing to tell.

Finally after much fuss was created around me by my mother in law and sister in law, 10 days later I reached Abu Dhabi to find out the truth. I took the pregnancy test and when I finally saw the result, I had to sit on the toilet seat to brace myself.

It was positive!

Homemade spa

So when I was back in Singapore last month, I commented to my mom about how her complexion has remained fair in all these years. Last few months she has not been working and her skin has cleared up a lot more too. Of course I started complaining about how inspite of me doing the same, I dont seem to stop tanning. (I might have missed telling her about my regular swimming in the sun.) More importantly my mother has not been to a spa or hair stylist as far as I can remember, not even for my wedding. Obviously I wanted to know what her secret was.

Mom: Its simple, when you are making ghee from butter, what ever remains in the wrapper, put it on ur face. If your milk has cream, take a little out, put it on ur face. If you cut lemons or oranges, rub the peel on ur face before u throw it away. Then wash your face. Take some yogurt and besan, mix them and use it like a mask.

I know there are many home remedies for skin care out there. But when my mom said it I really felt it was bizarre! A friend of mine told me she used to wash her face with milk before her wedding to remove the tan. But still it was something I had never tried. Not that I am against the idea.

So after coming back to AUH, I decided I was gonna try some of the ideas. Considering I am wasting time at home anyways, why not. I am sure most of these are probably quite common and I am quite behind in my 'discovery'. Nonetheless, here are a list of things that I tried out.

1) Yogurt and Besan: this was awesome for the summer heat. It worked as a scrub as well as a mask. Very refreshing feeling after

2) Orange peel and Milk: I had a lot of heat boils in Singapore, and the marks just refused to go away. But After I rubbed them a few days with orange peel soaked in milk, Voila! They became soooo much lighter. This has become a regular thing now for me especially after swimming.

3) Milk and Honey: This one was great for dry skin.

4) Strawberry and Yogurt: I had bought some strawberries which were really sour. I did not want them go a waste, so after eating as many as I could, the made a paste of the last few, mixed with yogurt and made another face mask. It exfoliates the skin really well, quite refreshing.

Jab We Met

Event: Dad’s office party

Me trying to be polite and chatting with random people

Aunty No.1: “ So your husband is north Indian?”

Me: “Yes”

Aunty No. 2:” Did he used to work in Singapore?”

Me: “errr….No”

I know where this is headed and I was trying to prepare a version of the ‘long story short’ in my head

Aunty No. 1: “Ohhh…how did you guys meet then?”

Five years since we met and three years of my married life, I was getting a little tired of the question. Would they know if I lied?? Cant mom please call me now? Sumit look at me..rescue me…Damn it, he isn’t even looking.

Random uncle: “Ladies, why don’t you guys start having food?”

Thank God!

Aunty No. 1: “NO NO..I want to hear this first” Grabs my hand and makes me sit down

Sigh, I am stuck

The Short Version:

So Sumit while studying in IIM Bangalore, came to NTU, Singapore on exchange. At the same time, I had recently started working in NTU. We met first thru a common friend. It wasn’t love at first sight or anything, we became good friends. He left within one month and we had a long distance relationship. Two years later we were married.

Grilling matter

Lazy friday, spent having wonderful belgian waffles in the morning and awesome sandwiches for brunch. Thanks to a wonderful gift I got for my wedding. Problem is I dont know whom to thank for it.

Generally I dont forget what I get and from whom I get it from. However my wedding was an occasion whereby I left Singapore the day after I got married and did not even get a chance to open all my gifts properly. So my parents did the honours and also made a notebook of who gave what, so that I would know. Then they promptly lost the book in midst of all the commotion of coming for my reception in India. So I only got to see my wedding gifts a year after I got married. Among the few gifts I did manage to check out before leaving were 5 coffee makers and a sandwich maker cum grill cum waffle maker, the latter being something I really wanted. I did not have time to repack it with me and considering that I knew I was gonna be in India for few months before moving to Abu Dhabi, I felt there was no need to carry it with me then.

But over time it got lost, and placed somewhere very 'safely'. Mom and me searched the whole house, mom was sure I must have been mistaken. Finally 3 years after my wedding, I found it, still perfectly wrapped and in good condition. I sincerely wish I could remember who gave it to me though, cos I would really love to give that person(s) a huge hug. Its one of the most used thing in my kitchen.