Notes from dont ask me where

Is a holiday about doing new things in new places or doing old things in new places? Like getting lost on a rusty TVS in new lanes. Or reading a book (on the kindle! on the kindle!) sprawled on a new window sill. Pigging out in a new restaurant. Snoozing the alarm 25 times on a new bed. Or does it have to be completely different from your routine to feel like one?

Wow, she thought, never seen a lizard with such interesting patterns on its back. As she looked closely, she realized it wasnt a lizard, but a frog! Climbing up a wall! Actually climbing, not randomly jumping. She didnt know frogs could do that. No one seems to have told this frog it couldnt, she thought. And then looked around to see frogs all over the bathroom wall. Behind the heater, on the shower, everywhere. She would have killed for the attached bathroom she rejected yesterday, too taken in by the spiral wooden staircase that led to a room in the loft to bother about a bathroom. Well, she had what she paid for. She asked the frogs to please stay up the wall while she rushed through the quickest bath in the world. Fortunately they were domesticated enough to understand.

The world cant seem to make up its mind about whether i look like a tamilian or not. All my life i've grown up with the image of TAMILIAN stamped in large friendly letters on my forehead. Some people seem to be able to see that, i get random strangers coming and talking to me in Tamil. Some people dont, this one guy asked me in broken english "Which is country" and wouldnt believe me when i said Tamilnadu. Not even after i spoke to him in Tamil. Apparently i look French.

One of the books i read was the Phantom Toolbooth. The dude one day suddenly remembered he had it and jumped up and down insisting that i read the first chapter and for some reason only the first chapter then and there. I didnt, but i did start on it later. What a book, whataay book! I want to tear lines off it and paste them all over the place so i can see and not forget. Its a children's book thats filled with "wisdom", delivered in such a way that it (mostly) doesnt feel like you are being lectured. Like, Milo, our hero is lost and this guy Alec tells him - Being lost is never a matter of not knowing where you are, its a matter of not knowing where you aren't. When i finally "got" that sentence, i wanted to jump up and down, for now i know why i feel so lost - i dont know where i want to go!

Another thing from the book that has firmly lodged in my mind. The king has ordered pastries from the half bakery. Milo wonders what the half bakery is. Someone explains it to him - the half bakery is where half baked ideas come from! They are very tasty, but they dont always agree with you. When i read this, i was bang in the middle of one of my half baked ideas and i wanted to laugh out loud in the bus. All my ideas from now on are going to be poked with a knife or a knitting needle to see if they are well done. I'm not saying i wont have half baked ideas, but at the very least i'll know what i'm getting into.

There is this bird making knocking sounds. At night. And another that makes whistling sounds in the morning. Because living in the middle of nowhere isnt spooky enough.