Gramatically Yours

hi
i just read 1-2 paragraphs and found lot of grammatical errors as well.
honestly, i dont like the style.

I received that message from someone to whom I had given the link to my blog and decided to copy and paste it here for the world to see. It humored me how someone who isn’t bothered to use capital letters or proper punctuation is the first to make a comment like that. Honestly, I was a bit upset when I read it and immediately wanted to attack the person that would shove such a cold and sharp dagger into the heart of my ego.

But then I took a step back and looked at it in a different way. I know I don’t always spell correctly. I know the grammar in which I have chosen to write would make my old English teacher’s hair fall out in clumps. I write to be funny, not correct in a grammatical, punctuational or any other way for that matter. Like Pee Wee, I am a rebel and a loner. A lone reed. A lone reed standing in a sea of something, blah, blah, something. I forgot the rest of the quote but it is from the film “You’ve Got Mail” so feel free to look it up at your leisure.

I like using commas. I would even go so far as to say I like abusing commas. I like inventing or modifying words when I can’t think of an existing one that fits. Sometimes I like short sentences. I do. Really. And other times I like to run on and on wherever my mind wishes to wander not caring if the subject matter or focus changes mid sentence or makes sense to anyone but me. And I like to start my sentences with “And.” I don’t know if the end of sentence punctuation goes inside or outside the quotation marks, but I don’t really care. If everyone who wrote concentrated on those details, we would not need editors and proofreaders. I like getting my ideas out. I like that I have ideas to get out, and every time I write in my blog, I think of my friend Christina who encouraged me to do this in the first place. In fact, she used to be my audience of one and it was in the wee hours of a San Francisco morning that I sat in her amazing living room up in the hills off Castro with a straight shot down the middle of the Bay Bridge, all jet-lagged from my previous day’s flight from Beijing that I started this blog by posting a few of the stories I had emailed her over the years. She was the one that edited my profile after I typed it out, cutting it down by half.

Perhaps this means I have arrived. In all the years I have been writing stories, I haven’t had anyone say anything negative. In fact, total strangers like Stephen and Pierre have become friends. I have met people like Suzy who already knew things about me, things I had forgotten I had written about. But that little message made me realize something. At some point I stopped writing for me and started writing for other people. I started writing what I thought would make someone laugh or be about something they wanted to hear instead of just writing about whatever popped into my head.

I have also become a bit lazy and instead of setting aside a reasonable amount of time to actually write the way I like, I steal five minutes here and there and quickly post it online. I miss having the time to sit and just let it happen, but that is my own fault. I spent two years without a television. I moved to India and had no friends and everything was new and surprising and exciting. Everyday was an adventure and lately it seems to be about work and coming home and eating and watching show after show until it is time to sleep so I can wake up and do it all again the next day. My life has become routine, dull and predictable. And that is saying something when living in India.

So perhaps that little grammatically incorrect, capital deficient and poorly punctuated comment has some use that goes beyond puncturing my ego. Maybe it’s a challenge to stir some things up.

TGIF

One of the great joys of moving around and living in different areas are the people we meet, people we may not have come into contact with back in our old surroundings, our lives played out in familiar routines and places.

It was just over a year ago that I met Stephen and Pierre. Stephen and I met through this very blog and started exchanging emails and then a week or two later made plans to meet up. It was that evening I first entered their newly decorated apartment that would become a source of envy for me, lingering even after all these months. That was also the evening they dragged me to TGI Fridays for margaritas. I had not been to a Fridays since I left New York so many years ago.

And now tonight, just over a year later we are returning to TGI Fridays for our last drinks before Stephen and Pierre head back to Scotland and wherever life takes them beyond that. They will be leaving quite a void in our lives here in Delhi. We have gone in cycles of seeing each other a lot, having the filet Mignon at Smokehouse Grill, Blueberry Mojitos at Sevilla or grooving to the Sunday afternoon beats of DJ Ahsish at Aqua while talking trash about the guys trying to play volleyball in the pool, more often than not sending the ball hurling toward our drinks that would then find themselves poured all over our linen shorts and designer swimwear. The drinks always got replaced by the bar, but for some reason they only seemed to get knocked over when they were completely full, so no free drinks for us, just sticky legs and sandals. And then sometimes not seeing each other so often due to their addiction to weekends in Sydney and other exotic locales, but sooner or later they would always return, just a 20 minute drive from Defence Colony, a phone call away from another adventure in cocktails.

I know we will stay in touch and I am confident we will be clinking glasses again somewhere on the globe, hopefully against a backdrop of clear blue water and sandy beaches littered with hunky, scantily clad guys in their Aussie Bum shorts. But I can’t say I am not sad. I will miss them very much. That is the downside to living abroad, most of us are here for a limited time and then we are off to start the process all over again.

But for Stephen, Pierre and I, we will always have TGI Fridays.

D is for Diet

Geographic intelligence seems to be at an all-time, nose-bleed inducing high.

According to Miss Teen South Carolina, most US Americans can’t find the US on a world map because they don’t have maps due to the lack of education in the Iraq and such as.

The bulk of US high school graduates can’t locate Washington DC on a map of the US. I assume this is also because they don’t have maps, again let us blame it on the Iraq and such as.

There are people who are not smarter than a fifth grader and who think Turkey is Hungary, Europe is a country and Amsterdam is the capital of Copenhagen. Let’s just blame that one on good old fashioned stupidity.

So I was not really surprised when I discovered that in addition to the United States, France and Italy, Hermes has included Hawaii in their list of countries. Did Hawaii just pull a Kosovo while I was out shopping? Perhaps Hermes should consult a map. Assuming they have one, of course. But I guess when you are that glamorous, you can call anything you want by any name you choose. After all, a rose by any other name is still a rose, and if it comes in an orange box, all the better.

I was on the Hermes site doing research. I seem to be swimming in a sea of luxury brands and exclusive retail experiences these days, all while getting paid to do so. It’s fantastic. Earning a living while participating in my favorite full-contact sport. Lifestyle and luxury have become the buzzwords around my team as we pitch for a client who at this point in time I must keep under cashmere cover lest I get in trouble for disclosing portions of what falls under a non-disclosure agreement… The advertising version of patient-doctor confidentiality. But when I write my Tori Spelling-esque tell-all, I will spare no details…

While Googling the US and searching for images of world maps I could print out and hand to the poor unfortunate souls without one of their own, I just discovered that it has been over a month since I last wrote anything here. A whole month. It begged me to ask myself that age old question, the very same question we blonds have been asking ourselves since we blonds began asking questions… That question is this “where have I been?” and I realized I had no idea. I was stumped. I paused. I reflected. And then in a montage worthy of Gloria, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille” Swanson it all came flickering before my eyes.

These days have indeed been filled with all sorts of exciting (and boring) new hobbies for me. And it all started a few weeks ago when I accidentally joined the elite ranks of inventors and creators. No, I didn’t invent anything nearly as passé as lets say an iPod or a quick fix for that little issue of global warming which seems to be quite the hot topic at the moment. Glacier melting, blah, blah, blah. Instead, I invented something much more noble and useful. I had no prior intention of becoming a celebrated, perhaps Nobel Prize wining inventor destined to impact the lives of dozens everywhere, but destiny lent a hand and the rest is bound to be history at some point in the future. It all started on a normal Friday evening.

It was a warm February late evening, dust hanging in the air, overisized bats fluttering overhead and our names inked in on a guest list for the opening party of Forbidden City, the new bar and restaurant to be seen at in Delhi. We walked up the path lined with replicas of terracotta soldiers, past the fountains and right to the bar where we ordered passion fruit and basil mojitos while the rest of our glamorous entourage strutted in. Anjali arrived and we hugged exchanged enthusiastic New Year’s greetings, drawing odd and confused looks from those around us. Chris and Poul appeared and staked out an alcoholically strategic location. No way a waiter was getting past them without taking drink orders.

Stephen and Pierre were sunning it up and shaking their groove things in Sydney for Mardi Gras and Danielle was doing whatever it is that Danielle does when not with us. She works for an embassy in what I imagine to be a very 007 like role.

So there we were in our little group, drinks firmly in hand and sampling the never-ending tsunami of edibles that were being shoved upon us. It didn’t hurt that we were in the company of Bennie and Tina, two of the arrangers of the party. The keepers of guest list. The ones that hold the keys to the kingdom of social excellence. We were served shrimps wrapped in spring roll, aloe and cucumber salad, chicken satay and on and on it went until we had been whipped into complete culinary submission. The drinks kept coming and food kept drifting by and suddenly, my life was forever transformed by a silver tray. There they were, little blobs of epicurean heavenliness. Prawn and lychee balls in a light and fluffy puff pastry topped with just a dab of crème fraiche and a tasteful sprinkling of orange caviar. I popped one in my mouth and it was nothing short of an oral orgasm. And I had multiple ones that evening. I think at one point my eyes actually rolled back in my head and it was everything I could do not to start screaming “Yes! Yes! Yes!” until I blacked out from pleasure. But instead of that, I kept banging my head against the headboard of fabulous hors d’ourves. I did what anyone in my situation would do, I cornered one of the waiters and begged in my best quivering begging voice until he left a tray on the bar for me. I immediately shot everyone a look that said “think about it and die!” Chris and Poul managed to sneak a couple, but I quickly shoved as many as I could into my mouth. And like Jell-o, there always seemed to be room for more.

It was then and there that the idea occurred to me. I would join the ranks of Beverly Hills, South Beach, Subway and the Grapefruit by having my own diet. I guess I was born to this fate. My mom was, after all, a professional dieter. One of those people that live to diet and if she wasn’t starving herself, counting her calories or finding some new and inventive way to lose that stubborn 5 pounds that seemed to haunt her very existence, then she really didn’t see the point of breathing. In fact, she had even been so bold as to create her own diets. You might remember the Pepsi Diet. The noodles and soy sauce diet? The lettuce diet? The-three-calorie-a-day-until-you-pass-out-diet? My diet was a little more glam, prawn and lychee balls in a fluffy puffy pastry topped with a dab of crème fraiche and the obligatory sprinkling of caviar.

I can only hope I make my momma proud.