Fourteen random things about me

1. I am a dreamer and am almost always in a dreamland. While walking to the tube station, cooking, cleaning.....I am almost always dreaming. The only time i am not dreaming is when i am writing which is when i am putting to words all that happens in my dreamland
2. If you and i are walking together you will always be on my right. I cannot , CANNOT  walk/talk with anyone on my left. You might be the President of the US of A but i will have to politely ask you to walk on my right. Yes, I am a freak that way.
3. People tell me their stories. I think i get that from my Mum because I grew up seeing a lot of people pour out their hearts to her.
4. My cleaner who is Polish and i work very well together. The main reason is that I dont undertsand a word of Polish and she does not understand a word of English.
5. A collegaue's two year old son (lovely looking chap with blonde hair and blue eyes) S and I have discovered that we like and enjoy the same things. Dinosaurs, soap bubbles and leaves - S has to fight for his stuff when i am there. Muhahaha.
6. When having trouble sleeping all i need to do is hug a book to fall asleep in a matter of minutes
7. I have to speak to Mum each day. Ever since i left home, there has not been a single day when i have not spoken to her. Not a single day and i am not exaggerating
8. Sid spent half of our recent trip to Paris trying to convince me that a Louis Vuitton bag will be a good purchase and that i should have an LV bag. The only thing i bought was a necklace which has for a pendant a white stupid looking owl. It was bought from a flea market and it cost a total of 5 euros. I have never been happier with any buy.
9. A British colleague asked me to teach him a line in Hindi. I taught him how to say 'Mera deemag kharab ho raha hai'. We high five each time he says it right.
10. Watching 'Bade achche lagte hain' and 'Indian Idol' makes me miss India a little less.
11.  I can now finally make aloo ke paranthes that are not as thick as a slice of bread. I have realised the hard way to never underestimate the aloo.
12. We are contemplating going for the 4:45 am (yes, am) show of 'The Dark Knight Rises' at iMax. I am not sure why because neither of us is really a big fan.
13. We are going to meet a few friends today for Teri Meri kahani. Sid always yawns before saying the name of the movie. it is almost like the name of the movie is Yawn Teri Meri Kahani.
14. I can speak 3 full sentences in French and a spattering of words that can come in quite handy. These are'I am very busy today', 'I love you' and 'I am very good at French'. French people tell me that my accent is very good. *smug smile*

If you blog about 14 random facts about yourself, please leave the link to your post in the comment section. I would love to read!

Love
R

I am nature's biggest Fan

I can safely say that I am well travelled. When i look back and think of the times I have truly felt alive and by alive i mean really truly completely alive- each cell of my body alive- it has always been when witnessing the beauty of nature. The last I felt like that was when we went to see the Niagara falls. Mystical, magical and magnificent- they captured my imagination like nothing else ever had.  To read the hastily written post on the Niagara falls while i was in New York- please click on the link below : Niagra Falls

Hence, when today, some of our friends thought of trekking along the southern coast of England where they promised me natural scenes of stunning beauty, even though I have been down with some muscle pain, I decided to go.

Side note: For those who think i bunk work and head off to the coast and the cliffs, please note that thanks to the Golden Jubilee of the Queen, we are off work today and tomorrow.

Coming back: Sid and I, along with our friends, boarded the 11:23 from Tower Bridge to Hastings, a borough in East Sussex, on the south east coast of England and started our trek soon after (incorrect really because we were almost an hour late as we were not able to find a toilet but less on that!).

We 'conquered' (yes, it was an uphill battle, pun intended) 3 hills and walked a total of 14 kilometres of incline. It was a fairly tough trek, I must say but the scenes around us were stunning. Sometimes we trekked through the woods, at other occasions we walked along the cliffs and looked down into the sea.

The woods- green and verdant. So full of life. The brown and the green. I would close my eyes and take in the sounds and the smells.

The rolling meadows and hills- dotted with wild flowers. The green of the grass and the yellow/ purple of the flowers. The sheep and the cows. The sun shinning on the grass. The vitality and beauty of the English countryside.

We climbed some pretty steep stairs (about 100 i think) to reach the open meadow below. 

I loved the red/brown in the picture below. Some of up there has a great sense of color.

 The coast and the Sea- As the sun shone and the sea shimmered in different shades of blue I shook my head in disbelief. I turned to Sid and said ' The world is a really beautiful place, Sid. I hope together we can see more of it'. The sea was our companion for most of the trek. In the pic below you can see a low hills we trekked across.

And the pic below is my favourite picture from the day. The many shade of the sea, the shimmer from the Sun is barely visible in the far right of the pic and the wild pink flowers on the top of the cliff. This was breathtakingly beautiful and my fairly poor photography skills do little or no justice.

Look at how the skies seem to kiss the grass in the pic below :):

  And we walked along paths like the one shown below ( i have very few pics of the steep bits and i now realise that that is because i was so busy huffing and puffing my way up!)

The weather was predictable in being unpredictable. So we had clouds, bright sunshine and a quick drizzle in that time. And as everyone huddled under the tree being the bollywood heroine that i am, i insisted on standing in the rain. Sid tried his best to reason with me and asked me to stand with them, but i stoutly refused- i was having too much fun, on top of a hill, the green trees around me the rain falling on me to listen to him. I now think i have fever. Sigh.

The sights around us were stunning and well worth the sore legs i know i will have tomorrow. Occasionally we met other trekkers too. Unlike Londoners, most said their hellos and this was a pleasant surprise and change. The entire trek was dotted with wooden chairs dedicated to people who have lived in the area- with a little sentence about them.

I want be like Mick.

We trekked hard. The pic below is atop another hill with the sea below. It was one of the few times we rested. I sat on the grass and then lay on it for sometime, lost in the beauty of the sea and the cliffs..the grass and the flowers doing their happy dance beside me as the wind blew gently.

I am now back in London and am steadily sinking deeper into the duvet as i type this. My legs are already sore and I am exhausted (very glad that we have a day off tomorrow, i will certainly need more time to rest my legs). But I know one thing for sure. The world is a truly beautiful place. See it :)

Love,
RP.


PS- Next up: Post on my recent trip to Paris. The post is mostly done, i just need to put in the pics. Keep watching this space!