Driving: My Passion, My Dream

 
If I were a boy, I’d become a driver because driving seems like the best profession in the whole wide world. I’ve always envied a driver more than a doctor but for the life of mine I could never afford to buy a car for myself neither had I the privilege to learn.
Knowing to drive must be loads of fun; seriously I fail to understand why some people hate driving or why big shots need drivers to drive them around the city or to work. If only I knew driving, I’d drive, drive and drive. If I had money I’d rather invest in cars than in real estate properties.
At this stage of my life, I deceive myself by thinking I’ve achieved the very basic necessities of life except maybe a car to complete the cycle. If I were to die in a couple of months, the first thing on my bucket list will be driving.  To me driving is like craziness, I totally adore it and it’s going to be stuck with me for a long time to come.
Now that I come to think of it, car loan is the sole reason why I joined a bank instead of the civil service, in the first place, since bank employees can avail car loan at 5 %. If only I could own a car by myself I wouldn’t have to rely on others to learn driving. As it is people are quite reluctant to lend their car for learning purpose because many believe new hands are not good for their car. As much as I love driving I’ve this wheel phobia equally (whatever the technical term for this is), but it’s not going to stop me from pursuing my dream, come may hell or high-water.
While walking to office in the morning, I envy every driver on the street that sweeps by me, that I’d so consumed by greed by the time I reached my office. For me, the greatest possession of any man, is a car (s), although almost every Bhutanese buy car (s) on car loan provided by the banks.
I just can’t wait for my probation period to get over so that I can avail the car loan too. Doesn’t matter how big or small, which brand, as long as it has 4 wheels, mobile and can take me to places?
Having learned absolutely no driving till date, I’m little skeptical of this car craziness; whether I’d ever learn or if I could afford, of accidents, of license etc etc…but come on, let me think of all these things in future. For now, I need to reassure myself that I can do it if million others can….

My Current Affairs

Waking up in the morning seems like a toughest thing, at least in the morning. You head feels like hundred kilos and you wish you could sleep for couple of hours more but can’t really do so because there’s always an office to go to and work to be accomplished. Though weary of the mere thought, you drag your heavy drugged body out of the bed and head for the bathroom. As soon as you splash a handful of cold water on your face you are jostled by reality so hard that it comes in full swing to you, then comes the problems associated with it. That’s when you begin to think of the day ahead; work pressure and domestic and personal problems and then you wish you could collapse on the bathroom floor and die in peace there.

Office work can be compared to household chores, how much ever you do today; same amount of workload can come up the next day as well. There are always so many issues to resolve, last minute problems that need your immediate attention. You get so engrossed in your work that it’d be lunchtime before you realize the time, yet you can’t exactly skip your lunch because your empty stomach hollers for it. Lunch is always a hurried procedure since there is personal work to be attended to because you can’t bunk your office for personal needs.

With the lunch break over you resume your work and mull over it for hours before you realize it’s dark outside and time for you to leave. As soon as you reach home you’d feel like stretching your cramped muscles, rest your tired exhausted body or even take a nap but where’s the time? Dinner is awaiting your arrival, all set to be prepared. Now who says cooking is a pleasure, that you’d enjoy doing it? You only cook because nobody else is going to do it for you. There are dishes to be washed, curries to be prepared, floor to be swept and other basic necessities to be done. You’d be so tired after doing all that it’d be after midnight when you eventually retire to bed then there’s always a romantic novel to keep you awake all night. At the end of the day you realize that you wasted away all day doing nothing significant, one precious day of your life is wasted just like that and yet you couldn’t have hoped to do more because you have only 24 hours in a day just like the guy next to you. Likewise everyday is spent, doing the same old things, learning nothing new and leaving you vaguely dissatisfied and regretful.

Yet your financial problems are never far from your mind. The salary you get at the end of the month may seem like a huge amount to someone but you could finish that in the in no time and there’s no extra source of income. You have few expectant faces relying on you, so many ways to spend money, so many people to spend on but all you could ever do is to wish and to dream, yet you are scared to dream for the fear that dream may not materialize. And so and so the problem list is endless that makes you wish if you could escape to a very far away land.

Sometimes you become so engrossed in your problems and thoughts that you forget to call up friends, socialize that you lose your touch with the world outside. Yet all your week days are spent with trifle things and kept you so busy that you’d be looking forward to a quite Sunday, all day in bed but when the day dawns, you are awakened by the shrill ringing of your cell phone because you forgot to switched it off the night before, people needing your favors, help etc that takes away the much awaited sleep. The day is over before you know and your plan to sleep off the day has failed to surface yet again.

The next morning you are in office before time just like any other day except, this morning you have Monday-morning feeling hanging in the air around you. That’s when you know how futile and vain this recycle of life is.

Being an Egg Dealer

My sister has 24 hens back at home in Paro. A small poultry farm, if I dare say so. The hens are beautifully red and big and the poultry is immaculately kept, spacious and cozy.

In our locality, there are so many farmers raising hens since the bird flu spread over southern Bhutan and egg prices rose like hell, that eggs won’t fetch much amount now. So one day my sister asked me if could find buyers in Thimphu. That was about a month ago, since then I’ve sold more than 50 dozen eggs at Nu. 100 per dozen. Being an egg dealer is my first business venture. Although I get absolutely no profit or no commission from selling eggs, somehow it feels good to be doing something for my sister. I haven’t been able to help my sister financially because my monthly salary is hardly sufficient for myself and my livelihood but this egg business gives me an immense pleasure to be helping my sister and also to make myself useful.

Couple of years ago I’d be ashamed of selling eggs but now, trust me, I feel proud to have something to sell. I guess I can only credit this feeling to maturity. Adulthood is great; it acknowledges the truth of reality. Well before I divert from the mainstream, I’d once again I am a full fledged business woman now (this may sound little exaggerated, sorry).

At my place here, my brother-in-law, brother and nephew are always mad at me because I won’t let them have even one egg without paying. Though I am fond of eggs myself, I always let my brother-in-law buy eggs from me, for our own use. So they’d be kind of happy when occasionally some eggs are broken on the way from Paro, because then I couldn’t sell but forced to have them for ourselves.
I call up my relatives, friends and acquaintances if they want to buy and always make it a point to collect the payments on time. From all these experiences, I now believe I’m a ruthless business woman and loving it

Well, my next business venture; I’m thinking of buying few shares of Druk PNB but nothing is confirmed yet. Though I believe investment is the best business, I can’t help but be little skeptical about it. That’s all I can say for now.

Books (Novels) I've read

Books Read List

Sleepless in Thimphu...

Since the last day of Paro Tsechu I haven’t had much of sleep. The night before I could go to bed at 11 pm and wake up at 2 30 am. It was more than an hour’s drive to Paro. Along with thousands other devotees I had the blessing from the holly Paro Tsechu Thongdrel. When we returned to Thimphu, it was already past 9 am so I had to report directly to office.

That was 4 days ago. Since then I didn’t get enough sleep to rest my exhausted body. Day time in office and night time there’s always some problem with the system so I had to stay up all night. Today’s my fourth night of sleeplessness.

Sometimes I wish I could really lash out at somebody, or even cry to let out my frustration but when I think about it there’s nothing much I can do but resign to my fate. This is a life I have made for myself and can’t really blame anyone, like it or not. I can’t really call it a life because I haven’t been living for a long time now mostly due to that fact that I have been doing nothing a normal person does. Where I reside, there’s no clear distinction between a personal life and the professional one for I have jumbled up everything like a thick vegetable soup.

Friends are accusing me of not responding to their chat, not calling them and not keeping in touch but I have always excused myself, thinking “next time I’ll, as soon as I get time to” although that time has never come so far.

At this juncture of my life, I have neither friends nor foes because I have lost all my good friends and I never got time to make foes. At times I wonder if I am really living for I have become more of a robot oscillating between home and office and yet when I have the leisure I can’t rest because I feel restless, a void in me seeming like something is missing and I feel like a school girl having bunked the classes and scared of being caught by the teacher.

If only I could redo everything, bring my life to the normal track I have been traveling before, things would be so much simpler. …

12 Angry Men – A movie review

12 Angry Men would remain my favorite for all times for the theme and the storyline and cast everything. Set up against the post war period of 1957 America, the movie was made in B&W.
An 18 years old boy, brought up in slums, mother died when he was only 9 was tired in the court for murdering his father.
It was a first degree murder, two witnesses, an old man and a middle aged woman have claimed that they saw him stabbing his own father in the chest and insisted that there’s no denying the facts.
Those days in the American judiciary system (I’m not sure if this custom is still in practice), a jury, comprising of 12 stranger men from different states, of varied background and profession, of whose identity nobody knows, were summoned by the court to decide the fate of the defendant.
Well these 12 men are first briefed on the case, they were made to watch the court proceedings for 3 consecutive days then they were locked up in the jury room to decide the fate of this boy in question.
However, the verdict is to be unanimous. The vote should be twelve-to-zero, either in the favor of guilty or not-guilty. With that, these 12 men are locked up in the jury room, with no contact with the outside world. Anything they require, they just need to knock the door and the man guarding the door hands the things in.
The men then sits down to talk despite the souring heat of the room since the old fan the room possessed has long ceased to function. At first, the pleminary vote was called out. 11 men voted guilty. Had it not been for this one man, they could have made the decision then but there’s 1 man who voted not-guilty. He’s the protagonist of the movie, Henry Fonda (one of my fav. Hollywood actors), when the other 11 men argue with him that the boy is plainly guilty, he says they are sending this boy to an electric chair, that they cannot decide somebody’s life in just 5 minutes. They could talk for an hour supposing they are all wrong.
And talk they did. Throughout the movie we see heated argument of the jury men. Personal prejudice, carelessness, frustration, impatience were some of the feelings the men had to endure for the hours they were locked up in that room. The lone man who voted not-guilty initially has this guilty conscience what if they are sending this innocent boy to an electric chair just because the men are not willing to talk it out.
Well this protagonist, with his thoughtfulness, tactics reason with others, argue and slowly gain the confidence of other men that there’s a room for a doubt in this case. With his detective-like brain, we now see more votes turning in favor of not-guilty. Some because they genuinely believed in the reasons, some because they are impatient go their ways, get home not bothered with what happens to the boy.
In these 12 men we see very varied characters. Each man is different from the next as it’s in reality. Some are sensitive, some with cool business-like attitude, some are nasty and loudmouth, some bother less but towards at the end of the movie, we see all the men turning their votes in favor to not-guilty because of the specific details and the possible mistakes that might have gone unnoticed by the defendant lawyer, as explained by the protagonist. Even the nasty, excitable man had to change his vote to not-guilty because he couldn’t prove the defendant otherwise. We see this man acting like he has some personal grudge towards this boy he has never seen before in life except in the court few days ago. But at last we see the protagonist forgiving this man because he had differences with his own son and this hatred to his own blood has blinded his judgment and developed prejudices to all sons. This man has taken the case personally and wanted the defendant hanged.
Well with the unanimous verdict of “not guilty” the men all exits the room to go their ways, to their old life, but changed and learned.
What happens to the defendant, an 18 years old boy, is obvious. Though not shown in the movie, we assume he’s a free bird since the jury found him innocent of the murder of his father. If not him, who was it that murdered this boy’s father 3 months ago? Nobody knows…

My collection of Phrases & quotes

Following are the phrases and quotes i have collected over the years from the Novels I read and movies I watched. Many may sound like cliques, for that I beg your pardon

Competition brings out the best in all of us.
May the best man win.
Spare me the jokes.
Isn't everyone entitled to an impartial judgment
Stirring a muddy pool
Injured silence
Run errands
Even prisoners on death eat turkey on the thanksgiving
What's an age? a sign that i've been here before you?
Doing nothing will wear you out
You are young once
'I like woman with past and a man with future' - Oscar Wilde
'The day's when women's sole aim in life is to secure a husband are long gone' - Penny Jordan
When in Rome do as the Romans do
A simple Yes or NO will suffice
Keeping head over water
stay loose
if you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen
mend fences
Pigs will fly
it's better to be called Mr. Late than late Mr.
What's death? When could they remove the organs of a man deceased to use them as replacements
for defective parts of man diseased?
Husband/wife material
Even Mona Lisa's smile would get on your nerves
Marriage: the truimph of hope over experience
Lost cool
Sugar coat
Holier than thou
Ratio of cow to bull
Play god
there's more to life than having men around all the time
i didn't mean to pry
he thinks in Black & White but me in a shade of Gray
chalk and cheese
Taking toll
then we are even
hush-hush business
monday morning feeling
two advisers: Sally success & Fred failure
Millions saw the APPLE fall but Newton was the one who asked why
the grass is always greener on the other side
If he can - i can
the sixth sense
see the oak tree not a corn
i don't think Noah has copyrighted his name yet. He's probably tried though
overlooking facts
Food for thought
Round of applause
History repeats itself
crying over spilt milk
Putting cart before the horse
take the bull by the horns
Leave no stone unturned
pull yourself together
Put words in one's mouth
time of one's life
stubborn as a mule
strong as an ox
aching void
acknowledge defeat
goes without saying
spill the beans
where angels fear to tread
cocooned life
i-told-you-so looks
ignorance is bliss
as we speak
mood swing
beggars cannot be choosers
old habits die hard
devil-may-care attitude
one thing lead to another
buy it
Not in so many words
who am i trying to fool
a leopard doesnot change his spot
a son can't be a man until his father dies
spare the rod and spoil the child
victorain attitude
much water has passed under the bridge
where ambition runs thicker than blood, where relations change every friday
reel romance turning real
wallow in self-pity
inner voice/divine mind/intuition
amen to that
love is a game of power, manipulation of emotions
a piece of stock has no future; you have to know when to cut losses and when to sell
green signal - permission/approval
survival of the fittest
barricading the heart against hurt
it rains on the just and unjust
cloud nine
picture of health
news to send champagne cork flying
commitment phobe
social niceties
playing hard-to-get
breathing down my neck
even god rested on seventh day
jokes apart
revenge is a meal best served cold
every Tom, Dick and Harry
'However' is a fancy 'But'
'enough is enough' looks
a moment on the lips, forever on the hips
rats deserting a sinking ship
well behaved women rarely make history
Politically right/ technically right
genteel poverty
sex: do not condemn it; condom it
in cash or kind
Blessing in disguise
wishful thinking
Miss High and Mighty
caught off-gaurd
the ball is in your court
too good to be true
in business, one man's loss is another man's gain
when dinosaurs roamed the earth
plauged mankind for centuries
affairs around the globe
cat that ate the cream
oldest trick in the book
there are good fish in the sea as they came out
stand behind, stand firm
women: can't live without them, can't live with them
you can't hurt me. you don't matter enough to hurt me
Novelty: bejewelled, breathing fossils of feudalism
His jaw quivers and his saliva runs
don't put all your eggs in one basket
which way the wind is going to blow
i'll reason with him
if you played your cards right
Proper channel
Parts & parcel
Long Face
illicit activity
Pea green with envy
Your secret is safe with me. i'll take it to my grave
the battle maybe lost but the war is far from over
the pot's calling the kettle black

Twitter Updates on your Blog

I know twitter is some sort of short blogging system. I also know that you can twit from your mobile to your blog, a way to keep your friend and readers updated on what’s going on with you. In fact I have reserved a space on the right-side bar on my blog for my twitter updates but I wasn’t sure if our mobiles could support this.  I knew twitter is a hot stuff in the western world but in the third world countries, I couldn’t be sure.
So I was shocked to see twitter on OL Tshering Tobgay’s blog. Frankly speaking, I must have conceived this idea long before he did but things doesn’t work so easily for us so he got it on his blog before I could.  I do admire him for keeping in touch with his readers with twitter updates, twitting his daily and hourly activity on his blog.
I just can’t comprehend how the guy’s done that. Don’t even know whether it’s some mobile application or internets, whether it’s free or charged. Can anybody tell me how it’s done here in Bhutan? But I’m guessing you have no idea too since nobody has it on his/her blog except for the OL.

A Letter

Dear blog
i know i haven't been in touch with you for a long time now but trust me i have been really busy with life. These past weeks have been crazy times of my life not that i blame time but I was starting a new phase so can't really blame anyone.
well basically life's been oscillating between home and office. working, running here and there, doing favors for friends and acquaintances and long hours in office makes my day but in the end what matters is how much you learned that day, how useful that day has been to you, isn't it?
on the whole I'm happy with the end result of my "Day Planner". All my "to do" lists were ticked and I'm glad for that. Life's busy but quite fulfilling

Watching Druk Star on saturday afternoons, having dinner in office, waking up at mid-day on sundays were some on my outrageous weekend activities. Besides those i look forward to sundays all week because that's the only day I get to sleep late.
Well well well I don't have time to write more. Gotta work on that new blog i am designing in wordpress with xampp database but I got to tell you this; it's going to be different from the previous one. This new one mainly focuses on IT stuff, something I should have done before only. Just wait and watch. deal?
Yours Payday

Agony of Valentine’s Day

For the last 3 consecutive years, in Bangalore, I have received the same message (sms) on the eve on the Valentine’s Day:

“For those who are single on the Valentine’s Day, happy independence day”

This constant reminder of my single status really got on my nerves so last Valentine I vowed not to remain single on the next. One year has passed without my notice and here I am as single as before. Couple of years ago I used to think there’s more to life than having men around all the time but this childish perception of mine had to change with changing times. Today you’d be considered a gay if people do not find you dating an opposite sex frequently.

Girls my age have kids going to school and I am still deceiving myself with the idea that I am too young to settle down in life. I didn’t get time to hunt for Mr. Right and can’t compromise with Mr. Wrongs, which left me where I was 5 years ago, a single woman and probably a confirmed spinster all my life. Perhaps I am being too skeptical of those guys I have met till now or maybe I haven’t met the guy I like to spend the rest of my life with.
But then I never had any problem with my marital status, not on any other day except the Valentine’s. This day reminds me of the romantic love that I lack and makes me want to creep into a hole. More over living in the heart of the city is like rubbing salt to a wound because you get to hear all the lovers’ conversation from outside, when you are trying to shut off the couple’s talk and sleep off that day so that you can wake up to a normal day.

This year I changed my tactics though, I have decided to visit a temple instead of being lonely on the fateful day. Fortunately the day coincides with Losar (Bhutanese New Year or Tibetan is it?), so I get to run away from the buzzing city. After all what could be a better hide out than my quite village and who could be a better company than the almighty himself?

So this plan of mine, if it gets executed sounds like a perfect one. It may seem pretty weird but then it’s better to spend a day with god instead of a bunch of girls locked up in hostel like the previous years.
I just wish this day comes once in 100 years so that I won’t be here on the earth to witness this stupid day at all.