Molten Cake, Blue Mango, 20 $ Lottery, Bday Cake n Kicks !!!

So it happens to be the 10th of March, 2010 today and as always I find myself in a whirlwind of mixed emotions, as I turned older completing 27 years of my existence on planet earth and entering my 28th year.

Things have been quite eventful since my last birthday, the most important being me getting married in between, and entering a totally new different phase of life. It's special, celebrating my first birthday after marriage, with my wife, but of-course on the other side of the coin is not being able to celebrate it with your parents who actually miss you a lot, and birthdays are such occasions which I guess are always emotional ones for the parents in particular, after all they are the ones who actually raised, nurtured and developed you into what you are today...

As I am writing this blog post on my birthday, I am already done celebrating my birthday and I am ready to call it the end of the day. But I just wanted to scribble something on this occasion before I went into deep sleep to wake up to see the sun rise on the 28th year for me :)

The celebration did start at midnight, although I was already fast asleep, when my cute little lady love woke me up and with some mushy mushy feelings, hugs and kisses wished me a very happy birthday. With sleepy eyes I smiled back and realized that there is a strong smell of something chocolaty in the apartment and on my bed-side table was a small little Molten Lava Cake, with a cute little teddy (which I don't know how it got there), 2-3 candles and a spoon in place of a knife ! And how can I forget the lovely card ... The small scoop of Molten Lava Cake was awesome and finger (spoon) licking mixed with not only chocolate but loads of love, emotions, kisses and hugs from my wifey !

The entire day today was quite silent at work, couple of colleagues stopping by to wish me, the rest of the day was spent replying to each and every single individual back on Facebook, Orkut, Chat Windows, Emails and personal phone calls who were kind enough to take out at-least a moment to stop by and wish me on my special day :) I was quite beaming in joy to having received those wishes and was fun catching up with some old mates and some new friends. I would like to personally thank each and every one of those who wished me through all the mediums humanly possible and made it quite special for me !!! Thanks a lot to all those near, dear and far ones who wished me from all the corners of the world !

The evening was something I looked forward to as me and Dipali headed off to a Thai restaurant called Blue Mango and had by far the most amazing Thai delicacies that one could ever have. The Cashew curry was something new that we tried and it turned out to be amazing along with the Panang curry and Garlic Tofu.

What was to come next was quite unexpected and did make Dipali create the biggest sad face ever. We stopped by at a grocery store to purchase the candles and the bowls and while I was paying for it, my lovely lady walks up to a stupid crappy **** #### @#%^ &&&& vending machine which dealt in Lottery Tickets. Now those of you who might not know, and most of you who are already aware, Mrs. Shah here is a big time gambler, give her a deck of cards and she would start playing them anytime, anywhere, anyday, anyhow. So she inserts a 20 $ bill into this screwed up machine, punches a button for one ticket (which by the way was just 2-3 $ worth), and then stands there like a wax statue waiting for the machine to yield the rest of the change. She waits, I wait and nothing happens. We call upon the assistant working there and ask him what's going on? To which that MORON, punches another button without even asking us, and out comes another ticket worth 3 $. (6 $ down the drain) ! Aargh !

Even more frustrating was the reply we got when we asked that Idiot about the rest of the change, and he is like "Sorry sir, Sorry Ma'am, this machine does not shell out change". I am like, WTF ? Are you insane? This is broad day light cheating, and I just want my money back. He is like, "Sir, as I told you this machine cannot return change, that means, you would have to play all the 20 $ that you had put in". Grumbling, pacing up and down, my head out of my convenient place, anger on the rise, I managed to murmur profanities in bulk, but nothing could be done in spite of me sulking for the loss of my dearest 20 bucks. Poor Mrs. Shah could not even manage to face me, let alone talk to me !!! Finally feeling helpless, we punched 4-5 more buttons and out came the weird looking crappy lottery tickets and we walked out cursing the store, the machine and the assistant. (PS: To add to it, none of those tickets are gonna fetch us a single dime Grrr Aargh !)

Oh Well ! Anyways, I was looking forward to the cake cutting as we came home after dinner and waited for my gang to arrive. Considering we do have a large group of friends here, it was surely gonna be fun time for couple of hours with some interesting characters in the hood who can never let any dull moment pass by without their constant comments and hilarious jokes cracking up people. We also got a change to watch this ROTF LMAO types video: Click Here

27 candles were lit up, and were blown away with a single stroke, some secret wishes were made (who knows which ones would come true), and with that I celebrated my 27th birthday. But the party was not yet over, as in spite of my constant urging that now that we have grown old enough, we should not be involved in any kind of vulgar masti, indecent fun and definitely no birthday bumps/kicks/pinches etc. But one hell of a group that I have filled with some notorious fun loving dudes that they did not hear one single freaking word from my mouth and picked me up, hurled me, gave me some 30-40 odd kicks, some chest chops, some really really bad pinches on some of the most coveted parts of my body and I was already rubbing my ass cheeks, my back and my chest ! Was hell lot of fun now that the trend has once again begun as I would look forward to everyone's birthdays going forward !!!

Well that was all for today, a great day spent with some 10 minutes of silence to myself, getting my thoughts right, refreshing myself and preparing myself for yet another rocking year !

Click Here for Pics

Once again, thanks to each and everyone of you out there, who directly or indirectly were a part of my birthday celebrations. Love you all !

Cheers
Samy
[PS: I am waiting for the weekend to get my birthday present from Dipali ... Can't wait to go shopping ;-) !! ]

Jaipur - The Pink City Trip !!!

It seemed that I was on an extended honeymoon, when I landed in the city famously coined as the "Pink City", directly from Maldives. Dipali was quite excited only for obvious reasons of shopping, mingling amongst the traditional artistic jewelery, decor pieces and visiting the rich Indian tradition and finding out more about historical places in this beautiful city of Jaipur.

Just as you land on the airport and come out of the glass doors, a flurry of cab drivers ,some of them wearing the ethnic turbans on their heads, prong your perimeter and urge you to rent their cabs for the entire day. Luckily we just wanted to take a one way ride to a temporary hotel in the middle of the city before my Uncle could send us the car to pick us up and drive us towards the outskirts of the city. But nevertheless, in spite of making strong clear statements that you are not interested in their one-day, one-week deals of cab rentals, the sweet spoken, typical rajasthani-gujju style lingo pops up now and then to urge you to give them a shot at taking you around the city in a single day. Amusingly, they refer to your as maharaja and your better half as maharani, which indicates their marketting talents.

Mind you, if your wife is too much into shopping, cities like Jaipur are definitely not the place to be where every 20 meters you find yet another ethnic showroom with the typical Rajasthani Jaipuri style clothing, art pieces, home decor items are laid as bait to lure your lovely lady into their shops and make your wallet even thinner. Luckily I got a reprieve as my Uncle called just in time, and made us go to Fort Amber for a speically laid out dinner just meant for both of us. We did not realize until we actually got there and witnessed the beauty of the fort and it's surroundings in the night and with the light show.

Fort Amber, situated on top of a hill looked stunning with different strokes of light. The cab driver left us at the bottom of the hill and it was a 20 minute hike up to the top along a steep winding road. There was a light and sound show going on on the other side of the hill due to which the shadows casted upon the entire fort were amazing. The surprise that we had for the evening was when we were taken to the top of the fort in the middle of the palace and were given a tour of the entire historical place. The rooms, the silverware, the walls, carpets, antiques everything had it's own sweet price and it felt as if we were traveling back in time and were amongst the riches of the past. Some of the outstanding displays was the "SheeshMehal (Palace of Mirrors)" and a room filled with 22K gold in entirety.

An even pleasant surprise was the dinner arrangement which was laid out in one of the most private, meant only for two of us, a stand-out section of the fort, a balcony giving us a view of the city of Jaipur below, and surrounded by candles and natural lighting in the form of Diyas (Oil lamps). The entire charisma was quite romantic with sublime peace and no one to bother as we were served the deliciously famous Rajasthani Thaali with approximately 27 (I did literally count them for my knowledge) different dishes. We were flattered at the staff's hospitality and their way of addressing us as someone special and we were even more flattened when we saw the bill at the end lol. Of-course all of this comes at a pretty fine cost but I would definitely recommend it to have a once in a life time experience. (Mind you - Only once in a life time OK !)

The other day we were headed towards the outskirts of the city towards "Chomu Palace", the place famously known for the shooting of the bollywood movie "BhoolBhulaiya". We were in Jaipur to actually attend my cousin's marriage in the first place and for 3 days the Chomu Palace was our fortress for us to reside in. The entire palace had been booked only for our relatives and the guests who would be a part of this marriage and it sounded really exciting when we saw the entire agenda for those 3 days. There was Garba, DJ Party, Mehndi and some other traditional celebrations. The entire arrangements were quite majestic and Dipali had a ball amongst the cousins, especially when they got her to sing during the Antakshari program. For someone like me who loves to be with kids, this was a perfect setup with so many toddlers and kidos around me I had the best time of my life playing with them. Simply adorable kids !!!

We took a tour of the other famous places on the last day of our trip and got a chance to visit the Hawa Mahal, Fort Nahargarh, Jaigarh Fort, the famous market places Johari Bazar and Bapu Bazaar. Of-course we did not forget the famous LMB place (Lakshmi Mishthan Bhandar) to help ourselves to some mouth watering delicacies especially it's famous Onion Kachoris.

An exhausting but a worth trip was well over as we headed back to Ahmedabad and a feeling of sadness slowly crept inside me as the days were coming near when I would have to once again bid my parent good-bye and come back to Uncle Sam's land. This trip had been quite eventful and had a lot of memories tied with it, something to reminisce for a long time.

Click Here for Sorted Pics
(Sorry due to privacy issues cannot upload lot of other pics ... )

Cheers
Samy

All That Started Good, Ended Greatly - 12th Dec 2009 !!!

So once again, continuing from my previous post taking you through to my entire wedding ceremony, one of the most important and most cherished day of my life, here I am with a short one on how the celebrations ended with a formal Wedding Reception Dinner Party on the 12th of December.

The venue, Kalhaar Exotica, true to it's name was exquisitely beautiful with plenty of natural surroundings and away from the hustle and bustle of the city noise and pollution. Not that far as the original Kalhaar Bungalows Scheme, the party plot is the common plot for the residents living in Kalhaar Exotica. Palm trees and lot of naturally grown plantations alongside the swimming pools and the entrance added to it's beauty.

After so many tiresome days and phone calls of planning, when we finally walked down that red carpet laid for us to reach the stage, the view that the floral backdrop gave, simply struck us in awe. The entire beauty of the flowers with the lights and the aura was just simply jaw dropping. The decorators had definitely done a splendid job, and so did the people from our factory in setting up the base, the columns and the framework for the entire wall filled with flowers. As expected the pictures came out to be simple gorgeous. I had amazingly fallen in love with the stage and so did Dipali.

But even before we went to the take our places under the lights, our photographer met us half way through and with Dipali's constant urging (now that she was my wife had to listen to her), we went through a painful round of almost all the poses once again, repeating some from the marriage, while also adding some new ones. With Dipali adding some of her own poses, the camera men were delighted to take the pictures even more enthusiastically. I was grumbling at that point of time, only to smile right now after I saw the results. (The most painful was me trying to get Dipali on my shoulders, trying to do a piggy back, but finally pulled it off)

Live music band playing all sorts of strictly happy songs, fun songs and vintage oldies made the event even more graceful and in spite of the chilly cold night, all those invited definitely seemed to be digging into the luscious and delicious Havmor food, while me and Dipali were trying to remember almost everyone that we met on the stage, as the night wore on and so did our hunger. Our faces and jaw bones literally ached with the smiles that we had to pose for the pictures.

But as we sat on the coveted thrones watching people watching us, I heaved a sigh of relief, all happy inside, watching my mom dad, all beaming with joy, grinning from ear to ear, Dipali too, enjoying her 15 minutes of fame, under the lights, grabbing little chances instructing the photographer to shoot some snaps, in between when no one would come on stage to wish us, and it seemed all that had started well, finally did end, and the end, a start to a new beginning as I always say, had been the best memory of my life.

Finally as we got down from the stage, sat down to dinner, feet bearing the pain of our weights, jaws bearing the pain of our dropping smiles at the end, I just literally jumped into the food without realizing that I have someone by my side whom I have to first ask whether she is hungry or not ;-) ! But when I glanced sideways, Dipali was already with a mouthful of sweets and chaats of all sorts... Phew ! I had just escaped a reprimanding, first of many to come that I expect !!!

Click Here for some Reception Pics !
(More on Facebook / Orkut)

Oh Well, we were headed to Maldives for our honeymoon, in a couple of days, and I was definitely looking for some quality time, away from the hectic life of the US, by the ocean, my feet in the sand, and the cool breeze in the hair ... Well more of Maldives in my next post guys ;-) ..

Till then Adios and if you have gone through the same marriage rituals as I did, just take out 5 minutes and relive those moments from your own marriage today :)
It's definitely going to bring back those lovely memories and more importantly would make your day with a great smile on your face !!!
So, go on and grab those pictures and cherish those moments with your soul mate :) :) :)

Cheers
Samy

Pre-Wedding Celebrations - A Week to Reminisce !!!

A trip back home, to India, every year scripts a lot of fond memories to be cherished for years to come. Whether it would be the first trip back home as a student, or the trip to one's birth place with your own hard earned money, a trip to hunt for your soul partner, a trip as an engaged couple embracing the much talked about social and family structure, or a trip like this year to put a seal to your bachelorhood and mail it off to a distant land from where it can never return back and thus hand yourself the official status of being married and therefore entering an entirely new, exciting, eventful new phase of life, for the rest of your life !!!

Yes, it was a special trip this year, for an occasion which encompassed not only the mere celebrations involved in it, but above all the warm welcome of a new member into our family. 11th of December, would be celebrated every year as our Wedding Anniversary, as I, and Dipali got married on this auspicious day to be entangled, intertwined and to be held together into a life long bond of love, passion, emotions, laughter, little quarrels and above all starting our own journey hand-in-hand vowing never to be apart in happiness or sorrow.

The marriage was held in our home city Ahmedabad, as relatives, friends and family members graced the occasion with their warm presence and zeal to get me and Dipali through to our wedding with pleasant memories to reminisce. Dipali and her parents already had started the preparations from Oct end as they settled down slowly in Ahmedabad. I took a flight a month later to join my parents and family members who had already been playing a 2-3 month battle with various vendors, caterers, decorators and a whole bunch of an entirely different crew of people.

The week long celebrations started with an offering to the God, wherein a Snatra Puja was held for the first time on the premises of our home. With all the relatives being treated to awesome home cooked food all week long, both for lunch and dinner in the compound of my home, it was going to be a delicacy saga for me especially that I love to try various dishes. Some of the menus were hand picked by me, my mom or some other on site demands. It was fun to sit amongst family members and have a round table lunch or dinner in the compound downstairs.

Champanivas, my home, was whitewashed and decorated from top till the bottom, the entire place was lightened up with powerful lights, the decor was done personally by my Bhabhis, Cousins and other relatives who played a significant role in giving the most ethnic, traditional look to the entire place. One piece that stood out was the entire cloth wall that was hand painted by them to display the indian traditional designs. Another master piece of decoration that they did was on the day of the Pre-Wedding Dinner Party on 8th Dec, held at our place, wherein they decorated the entire entrance with Designer Pots, Flowers, Water Colors and Lamps (Divas) which truly gave a warm welcome to all the guests.

Click Here for Pics

The Pre-Wedding Dinner party was the first step towards getting back in touch with almost all the relatives, elders, friends, family and lot of other new faces. Ghazals from a singer who has sung in almost all such marriage occasions in our family were soothing to the ears, as was the Upper Crust food to the greedy throat of mine. To add to it, Dipali was forced to sing along with the live music and I was supposed to be her so called moral support lol. She managed a few songs nicely and then the mood turned to some foot tapping numbers as Dipali's family and mine got together to dance to some tunes.

Next day there was a Mehndi session where in all the chicas of my side got together, with their ages ranging from a 6-8 year old to about someone in their fifties, got some colorful artistic designs done on their hands. I was quite busy too. Not in the Mehndi session, but in getting something prepared for the night to come.

As the evening flew by, another fun event that was to take palce was that of the Karaoke + Cocktail as the night progressed. This was held on the terrace and the Karaoke thing got my dad's friends and his cousins so much involved that at the end they were quite literally fighting to give their vocal cords a shot at the singing fame. Friends came by to have their own shots (definitely not at singing) but to clink the glasses and celebrate my end of bachelorhood LoL :) ... I was on the best of my behavior and under restricted quantity of alcohol consumption LoL !!! (I know most of you won't believe me, and as such Dipali does not read my Blog so does not matter :P)

Well, this was just a brief account of some pre-wedding celebrations that took place and I think I might as well stop here ... The only reason that I opted to pen down my experience was because, I think I will get married only once lol and so this was going to be my first and last time, which made me think that I had to blog about my own marriage :) :) :) Btw, these photographs are random pics taken by me through my own SLR :) :) :) !!! Please don't even take a guess as to how many in total I took ...

So then, Stay tuned as I prepare my blog post for my wedding day experience and the reception that followed after the marriage...

Cheers
Samy ...

Another Dimension, A Different Blog

Well friends, I was just going over my blog stats and comments and overall logistics and critics of my posts since I started blogging. Overall I found out that there are some out there who really enjoy word-by-word what I have to write, while there are some, who are just happy that I express something nice through my blog, and there are some who find my posts very long and tedious to read, but yet they do enjoy them a lot and once in a while drop by some appreciation.

Well getting criticized and also appreciated is all a part and parcel of this hobby of mine. On a given day, you would find some praising your efforts while the very same moment someone could be just looking down at you as if you just wrote something horrendous. Lol. Well that is how you build and grow - feedback, positive or negative always helps you improve and bring out your best.

Anyways, instead of getting sidetracked on what kind of feedback I have had for my blog posts, and explaining how comments on your own posts, helps you feel better - let me get straight to the point about this current post that you are reading.

Well, once you are done reading this post, you might end up in two states of mind - one, "This should be interesting" or second, "Well nothing special huh" and then shake your head ... LOL. Well no matter what you think, one thing for sure you would definitely understand is two different dimensions of ME !!!

So far, if you have been an avid reader of Samkit's Reminiscence and have relived and related some moments, memories and write ups to your own life, this post comes along your way as a relief from my long essays and as a pain killer to the regular headaches that you get reading to my descriptive scriptures. Lol.

Well I have created another blog for me to work on and to your surprise (and as the name of that blog would suggest), that blog would have NO WORDS at all...
First reaction - PHEW - I know that would be what some of you would feel !!! At last some relief from Samkit's writings ... lol ...
Second reaction - Well what is this new blog all about???

Well not to keep you curious any further, just go ahead and click the link below to check out my new blog:

My New Blog - http://simplypicturesnowords.wordpress.com/

Before you leave this post to check out my new blog, just a few lines about it - Its a simple blog, with no long posts with full of writings or words or descriptions ... It would just be indulged in photos, pics from around the world, anything that looks amazing to me will be put up there... Email forwards with amazing pics, some photographs captured from my own camera or from internet galleria ... Anything which will catch your eye shall be put up there ....

So now that you have an escape route with this new blog of mine, you can survive whatever I pen down here in Samkit's Reminiscence and thus avoid getting yourself a headache reading to my long posts. Just go to my new blog and you would be relieved. LOL !!!

Ofcourse - Comments on both the blogs are ALWAYS welcome and are inspiring to write more or click more (now that I have a new blog to use).

Hope you guys enjoy this new dimension of me where for a change I would not talk a lot through my posts, but just simply treat you with spell bounding images from around the world.

(Psst: I already have a couple of posts up and running on my new blog. If any one of you has any such email forwards, or images that you think should go up there, you are more than welcome to send them to me and I shall put up those on my new blog)

Cheers

Samkit

What does your name mean ?

I was thinking of what to post, and came across this thought of trying to know what does my name mean and suggest !
I was reading some Jain Scriptures, and came across the following definitions / meanings of what my name "Samkit" indicates ...

Click "READ MORE" to read the entire post ...

Samkit :
- Blessed state of the Self-realisation and Equanimity.....
- Synonymous with Samyak or Samyaktva; True path; Samyak darshan.....
- Three vows or goals :
1) Upshama samkit - dedicated 'faultless' doubtless following the guru or the enlightened one
2) Shaayik samkit - initial experience of the ultimate Truth after destroying all passions' and
3) Kshaayopashmik samkit - union with True knowledge, continuous and consistent realization of the same Awakening of the soul to the right path.

- Samkit means right faith in the nature of substances, animate and inanimate and conviction accompanied with self realization of soul as distinct from body and allied objects.
- Such a faith remaining alive in an embodied soul night and day and each moment of time is Kshayaka Samkit.
- On attainment of this sort of faith an individual can be liberated from the bondage to body and Karmas in the same birth or in maximum within three ensuingbirths.
- This state is obtained by the total annihilation of Darshana Moha (infatuation arising out of illusion and ignorance of self) and Anantanubandhi Kashaya i. e. due to clinging to erroneous belief of body as soul and not heeding the words of the wise, a queer type of passion is generated forcing an individual to act in a manner that causes him to wander in this universe infinitely.
- This kind of Samkit can be achieved in the present age of spiritual decay and corruption.

The overall conclusion I got from this excerpt is,
Once a soul has 'Samkit', he gets liberated within few incarnations....

Cheers

Samy

(PS: I would like to hear the meanings of your names too ... So feel free to write and post the meaning of your names ....)
;-)

Its just "I" and all about "Me" !!!

This is something I read in Neha's blog and thought of putting it up here too ...
Its all about "me", and I am not sure how much true it would be ;-) lol !!!

Click "READ MORE" to read the entire post ...

i am: What I Am, but at the end I would turn out to be, what my God wants me to be ...
i think: Not ALL of us out here are "that" lucky, so try and make the most of what one has in his/her platter of life - good or bad without complaints...
i know: I will make it big some day !!!
i want: to educate poor children in the future ...
i have: lived 25 % of my life, committing sins, and it will take another 75 % to wash those sins away !!! So I have cut a deal with God to let me wash my sins till I reach 100 !!! ;-)
i wish: I can own a big business !!!
i hate: hypocrats, liars, people showing false attitudes...
i miss: each and every moment of past life so far and so i keep on trying to recreate those again and again ....
i fear: the God's stick which might come down any moment to punish me or warn me for my sins...
i feel: i am living in a dream world of my own (typical piscean trait) ...
i hear: my own voice, when I am at the lowest point in my life ....
i smell: great with Ferrari Black, Blvgari and Davidoff Cool Waterg !!!
i crave: to give a great life to my parents !!! (i m giving them a hard time right now lol ;-) )
i search: for wisdom and positive points in others ...but I rarely find the latter....
i wonder:what I would do without friends !!!
i regret: lot of important things which I did and without which my life would still have moved on if I had not done those ...
i love: to driveeeeeeeeeeeee !!!!!!!!
i ache: for love from someone special !!!!!
i care: for everyone who I feel is worth caring for ....
i always: will remember one motto "Fight On" from USC !!!
i am not: able to control my emotions when I really have to ...
i believe: in Destiny !!! "One's story has already been written up there above, no matter who we are and what we do, we are just puppets at the end, controlled by our destiny"
i dance: alone in the bathroom...
i sing: when I feel people need to hear something soothing !!!!lol
i cry: only if I want to, not if someone makes me cry !!!
i don’t always: try and be emotional... I have learnt being practical too....
i fight: with almost anyone who sparks me off due to wrong reasons....
i write: in my blogs, some personal notes, some poems(newly found talent lol), some funny paras for friends ....
i win: when I have to - No matter what !!!
i lose: my appetite when I am under pressure...
i never: want to lose anyone or anything in life close to me, due to wrong reasons....
i confuse: people with my "Ha Bhai" style replies .....
i listen: ONLY to what my Parents have to say and not to anyone else ....
i can usually be found: pulling people's legs (people who know how to be funny and not react to it and are capable of enjoying the jokes.....)
i am scared: of being caught up in controversies !!!!
i need: to do sky diving, go to Europe, drive my car in the US at 100+ speeds, go on a cruise to Alaska etc etc.... the list goes on ....
i am happy about: this post as I never knew so many things about my own self !!!!!

Cheers

Samkit