Cellphones and that annoying ringing

Just read a story today about a Kashmiri woman (that's Kashmir in India) who preferred her cellphone to her husband! If I have my facts right, she took exception to him taking exception to her always being on the cellphone and walked out. The miserable husband has now filed a missing persons complaint.
This just proves what I have long suspected - people are now impossible where their cellphones are concerned. If they aren't choosing ringtones on the train going home (now, why would you do that? Can't you wait till you get home), then they're refusing to turn them off during movies (and my message to them is - if you are so important that you can't sit though a two-hour movie without someone calling you and you NEEDING to take that call, then don't watch the movie). It's getting impossible, in India at least, to get people to turn off cellphones (at plays, during mass, for Christ's sake - pun intended) and at any occasion where it is polite to put the damn thing off (or at least in silent mode).
What is annoying, is that people simply refuse to understand that this is a matter of courtesy, politeness and good manners. I've also noticed that those with the fanciest phones (that in theory should come loaded with all kinds of silent modes and options where the phone doesn't need to ring) who can't seem to turn the damn thing off. And what really gets my goat is that now that having a fancy phone isn't even a status symbol (it was that in 1999, so people grow up), flashing it at all possible times is just so hick and nouveau riche.
One last rant - people who look at their cellphone for simply ages when it's ringing instead of actually picking it up!

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere

These always make me laugh... and some make me say, right on!

Inside every older lady is a younger lady -- wondering what the hell happened.
- Cora Harvey Armstrong

Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse.
- Lily Tomlin

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry with your girlfriends.
- Laurie Kuslansky

A man's got to do what a man's got to do. A woman must do what he can't.
- Rhonda Hansome

Every time I close the door on reality, it comes in through the windows.
- J ennifer Unlimited

Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body falling apart.
- Caryn Leschen

If you can't be a good example -- then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
- Catherine

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
- Gloria Steinem

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Daffodils

Author: William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

I'm delighted to realise that I can still quote this simple poem by heart. This was actually in a school English textbook and I remember having to learn it for an oral exam. I got it word perfect that time and today too!

Frank thoughts...

Was intending to post about Anne Frank (who I consider a fellow 'blogger' because of her famous diary) and just saw that Simon Wiesenthal is dead. The man who spent more than half his lifetime hunting down Nazi war criminals lost 89 relatives in the Holocaust. Was just thinking about what that represents and how someone who suffered that kind of loss lobbied for justice and not revenge.

Here's a link between him and Anne Frank from an MSN-AP story:
Among others Wiesenthal tracked down was Austrian policeman Karl Silberbauer, who he believed arrested the Dutch teenager Anne Frank and sent her to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she died.
Wiesenthal decided to pursue Silberbauer in 1958 after a youth told him he did not believe in Frank’s existence and murder, but would if Wiesenthal could find the man who arrested her. His five-year search resulted in Silberbauer’s 1963 capture.

Also remember reading a Reader's Digest's selection that featured the hunt for Eichmann, who was one of the main architects of the 'Final Solution'. This was written by one of the Mossad team who participated in the operation, and it's gripping - especially him talking about what it felt like to be in such close proximity to Eichmann while they waited to spirit him out of Argentina. Must get my hands on it someday.

Strangely ironic...

I used to hide my diary from my sister when I was little and now the whole world can see this.....

Something to think about...

What is past is past and will never return, the future we know not and only the present can be called our own.
-- Marie Corelli

Favourite authors - Ye Olde England series

It's said that Indians still have a British hangover (since India was a British colony for 150 years). But I prefer to attribute my love for authors that capture quintessential English life to the perfection of their writing and their ability to create an (unreal but very entertaining) world that relaxes, charms and never fails to move me. Give it a try and you'll see what I mean.
Okay, here goes:

Enid Blyton - because the first book I ever read on my own was from the Noddy series.

Agatha Christie - because no one combines murder and the English way of life with such aplomb. If you'd rather watch this combination distilled into a movie, see Gosford Park.

Miss Read - now how can you resist an author with a name like that? I would just like to live in Thrush Green in a thatched cottage all my days.

Georgette Heyer - read about how an endless succession of spirited young women find love in Georgian England. If you haven't opened a dictionary after reading a few paragraphs, mail me immediately, because I want to meet you.

These are my comfort reads -- whenever I'm sick, low, in need of cheering up or just exasperated by the rapid pace of life today.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Author: William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

If you ever thought poetry was unreal, then I must set the record right... a few years ago, I was camping with some friends in tents by the side of a lake and this poem was brought to life for me. At sunset, as we sat by the side of the lake, I realised the water was lapping against the side of the shore and quite spontaneously began to recite the poem, or as much of it as I could remember. A friend took up the narration and we both completed the poem filled with a sense of wonder. Even now, I can picture that scene in my 'deep heart's core'.

Poem authors

For those of you who haven't read them before

Roving... is by Lord Byron
Stop All The Clocks is by WH Auden

We'll go no more a-roving

SO, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

On death

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I first heard this during the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral and was instantly amazed by the searing grief of these words. They're also in the first edition of Poems on the Underground.

Love poetry

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet from the Portuguese, one of the best classic poems on love ever!

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Why do I like this... also because she was someone who kept her identity as a poet(ess) even after her marriage to Robert Browning...

Gee, this is addictive

Caught the blog bug and looks like it's gonna be with me for life.

A real gem from Wired News

Sounds Like Teen Charity
When student council members at a small Roman Catholic high school in Pennsylvania were pondering ways to raise money for Hurricane Katrina victims, they didn't just want to sell lemonade. So, instead, they launched the "Stop the Bop" fund-raiser. The school plays Hanson's 1996 hit "MMMBop" through the loudspeakers before classes begin, between periods and during lunch. In order to stop hearing the annoying song constantly, students must donate money to the cause. The school hopes to raise $3,000; so far, students have forked over $2,300. "Kids have said, 'If I give you a blank check, will you stop this music?'" said Meredith Cox, president of the student council. "They say ... 'We just want it to end. Even though it's for a good cause, we just want it to end.' It's rather funny."-- Jenny McKeel

My take on this .....
Thank God they didn't choose any of the bands I love!

Some info about me

I'm 27... and counting.
A voracious reader... one of those people who reads to live, lives to read and needs to read.
A journalist by profession.
A Net junkie... discovered it in 1997 and have never looked back. I check my mail at least five times a day.
Single and ready to mingle.
Rather shy and also very bossy... a strange contradiction but true.
A bit too self-centred at times (this is an honest confession).
Prone to periods of utter laziness followed by spells of furious activity.
Hyper is how most people would describe me (though I think that's unfair).
Petite and be-spectacled (nearly blind as a bat without glasses).
Loves to shop, loves fashion.
Prefers dessert to any other kind of food, with occasional cravings for chaat and chips.
One of those people who can spot typos anywhere and get irritated by them.
Also one of those people who can't type message as msg in an SMS, but can in a chat window.
Someone who loves the movies, and is very partial to watching them in a near-empty multiplex with a bag of mixed popcorn - half salted, half caramel.
Someone who dreams of living life on her own terms someday.