A rose without thorns..

...  is like love without heartbreak - it doesn't make sense. 

And so what am I without the dearest of my dear friends? (I would probably make more sense, maybe?) :)

My birthday cake this year from the devils! :)

Prior to my birthday (which happened to be yesterday), I wasn't really looking forward of celebrating it. It's just never the same without Sathyan - the master of surprise planner in our group. Every year he will organize massive dinner plans, inviting every single person near and dear to me - to shower me with love and smother my face with cake! Even when it is his birthday, I'll get the cake all over my face - somehow! Every restaurant that we go to will definitely end up in disaster. 

Cakes everywhere except on our plates and stomach.

I still remember the time he made me stand on a chair, sing a song at a pepper mill and blow my birthday candles almost two feet away while still standing on a chair at a restaurant! Oh, not to forget the time he tried his best to cook something up for me on my birthday and the best he came up with was egg and cheese sandwich - which still had egg shells in it. It was really cute! The look on his face when I pulled out the egg shell, was priceless. I still ate it :)

I celebrated my last birthday with him last year - at that time I didn't know it will be our last celebration together. Yes, even at the hospital the cake got on my face as well...

I'm forever grateful for the wonderful girls who has always been with me and made my life and day much brighter yesterday. I thought I would be sitting in a corner of my room, keeping to myself and cry from the break of dawn till the wee hours of midnight. But that wasn't the case. And I am also so very deeply grateful they did not waste the Baskin Robbins cake on my face or the floor! It would have killed me instantly to see an ice cream cake die tragically outside my mouth!

So here's a BIG thank you to everyone who made it a wonderful day. I know Sathyan is smiling - he left me in good hands. :) But sorry girls, I still cannot promise a place in heaven for all of you though (I know my place is already reserved :P).

We had lunch at Golden Triangle - Sathyan's favorite restaurant. I could just feel him all around me yesterday :) My favorite was the prawn of course. Here's a picture of the big juicy prawns we had (I finished most of it anyway).

Yes, that wasn't the kind of treat Sathyan would give, was it? I know, I know... So, I will plan for a better one. He's going to be so proud of me. ;)

Pictures taken using SGS2.

Sometimes I wish, some things last...

Sathyan's last birthday wish - for me.

One Sunday Morning

Copyright Leena Ganesh

Finally, I made the time to get back into my photography. I took this picture today morning at Penang Hill, while the morning dew still fresh - the whole place felt rejuvenated. Best viewed large.

 Copyright Leena Ganesh

 Copyright Leena Ganesh

I woke up at 4.30am today to catch the sunrise but it was a cloudy morning, unfortunately. It was also drizzling. After much attempt (my first attempt to shoot during twilight hours) I felt I did a pretty good job with the picture below. I wouldn't go on bragging how awesome the picture is (I know it's not :P) but I felt a sense of satisfaction looking at my final result - a picture taken without a tripod! Sathyan would have been proud of me - I've honored his last wish :)

Copyright Leena Ganesh

Introducing my Senshie

An unexpected birthday gift from a friend - Sennheiser HD229. Well, it's about time I upgraded my current earphones and this headphone came as a savior!

I named it Senshie. Loving it very, very much :)

Iridescent

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation
You build up hope, but failure's all you've known
Remember all the sadness and frustration
and let it go, let it go.

- Linkin Park

Worth the wait!

Coming soon! *all smiles now*

Upgrading time!

I am probably the worst person alive (after Puspa) who fail badly in keeping up with fashion and trends. It's not that I'm not interested. I just never bothered. Well, both literally mean the same thing but they actually don't. For me.

I certainly don't make sense sometimes. IT zombies are always like that.

Anyway, I realized the last I bought any decent shoes was 3 years ago. Bags? Bleah. Lipsticks? Errmm...

Nail polish? All dried up...

So, these past few weeks I've been trying to spend some time to upgrade myself, or rather the things I own and use. I ended up buying two pairs of new shoes - Hush Puppies and Crocs, two bags - Sembonia and Guy Laroche and a bunch of Revlon products spending mainly on nail polishes! :)

Yes, those stuff burned a huge hole in my pocket but they can definitely last me for another 2-3 years. So I see it as an investment. Like how some men see cars as a form of investment.

Which brings me to the next topic - my car. Buster needs a serious repair and upgrade. It has been 7 years and I'm really surprised it made it this far. It's just amazing. After all the abuse wear and tear it had to go through...

I am not at the point of changing cars yet, but I did have plans seven years ago to get a new car in 2011. But it looks like there are some delays in this plan. So, hopefully 2012 could bring a fresh, better looking Buster home. :)

Today My Life Begins

Life in a movie

Have you ever watched Hindi movies where the flashbacks of an ex-lover or someone dead comes up so real that the person thinking about them could actually touch them?

Mohabbatein is one such movie. I have no idea how SRK could actually dance with Aishwarya so realistically when she was actually dead throughout the movie. How I wish it's the same for us, mere mortals out here living our lives outside the movie world. How nice...

Sometimes I become this looney girl who speaks to herself in her car. While driving to and fro work most of the time. And who am I talking to? Sathyan, of course. Sometimes, when something interesting or exciting happens, the first person that I wish I could share is with him. It makes me so mad that with all the advances we have in our world today, no one actually tried to figure out how to connect "wireless"-ly to the other world. It would have made it easier for me to maintain my long-distance relationship with Sathyan. :)

I really hope Sathyan and Steve Jobs are doing something about it, now that both of them are in heaven!

I miss him all the time and once in a while a memory gushes in and takes over my brain and common sense. I even thought of cloning him but somehow no amount of DNA samples that I have in store is enough for the "experts" to bring him back alive - even then it would have been too risky; the outcome could be disastrous, so I was told!

Why didn't God create another copy of him? Someone who looks like him and has all his attributes and surprisingly single. Like how it happened in Kaho Na Pyaar Hai.How come all these happens in movies alone?

Why God, why didn't you make a backup copy of my husband? 

In case you did, where is he? Tell me, tell me! :P

I've learned by Andy Rooney

I've learned that no matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend to act goofy with.

I've learned that no one is perfect until you fall in love with them.

 I've learned that opportunities are never lost, someone will take the ones you miss.

I've learned that love, not time, heals all wounds.

The Due Date

As I stepped into 2011, my heart was filled with hope. My brain was filled with wisdom. My life was filled with revelations.

I had planned so many things for this year, but as I go through each and every one of it, I feel nothing but sad. Disappointed in fact. Deeply depressed.

Alright, I was exaggerating :P

But that does not mean the feeling that 'I have not achieved anything big this year" is not there. As the time to draw curtain for this year gets closer, the feeling gets even more intense. 

I have not achieved anything big, but I certainly have lost something huge. Somehow, it's like drowning in a deep, choppy sea but miraculously being saved by someone who still wants you to be around. Grief after the death of a loved one is probably the hardest feeling one has to overcome and I am definitely lucky that I made through the hardest part. Well that's what I thought!

Fate has a funny way of meddling with my life. Trouble seems to find me somehow, no matter what I do to avoid being sucked into the poison well. Ah yes, twists and turns are part of anyone's life and so far I have been through the worst, so let's see what else could possibly be harder! :))

On trusts

Last week, I had the privilege to attend a 2-day training on dynamic work habits which is basically about the habits of highly effective people. 

My favorite take away is the quote mentioned by the trainer:

"Trust has to be earned."

One of the most fragile aspect of being human is our ability to trust. A broken trust is probably the hardest substance in the world that you can try to patch back, but it will never be the same - again. There are few things that happened these past few days that made me realize how true this is.

One of the things I value most in my relationship with anyone is privacy and personal integrity. I highly value these basic human rights because that's what we are - we're human. We have the right to have our own privacy. And when we selectively confer someone with some information that is highly private for us - we trust this person to keep it that way. But what happens when someone breaches this trust and exploits the privacy? Isn't it a way to lose one's integrity? Where are your moral values as a civilized human?

See how easy it is to spot someone not worthy of your time?

For me, even sharing of my phone screen lock password with anyone is highly offensive - I'm hard-coded that way. That's what my job is about. Every day I work with thousands of records and data that has millions of customer information. Often I've came across cases where bank-related information were entered in incorrect fields which makes it very readable (it's purely human error). But I was trained to be a person with the highest form of integrity, so it is my responsibility to safeguard these information (I often mask out sensitive data before it reaches the wrong hands). See how crucial this attribute is? 

What if you sent your credit card information to a friend (to buy something for you) and another person reads his/her email (probably through a saved/shared password) - imagine if it was read by someone who makes unethical use of your private information? Just imagine the consequences!

Would you trust that person again?

I was out shopping with Puspa yesterday at Parkson. The salesgirl that we were dealing with took the items Puspa bought to the nearest cashier for her and it just so happens to be the queue was very long! Leaving Puspa queuing up at the cashier counter (typically Malaysian you see, we don't want to lose either way), the salesgirl and I went to check whether the opposite cashier (which was partially hidden) is open. The salesgirl gave a quick look and said to me it's closed. I was sure it's not.

So I walked further towards the cashier counter and saw a small girl sitting there, waiting for customers to come! There were none! I verified with the cashier girl whether the counter is open and she said yes! So lesson learned?

Trust is good but verify is better. :)

Catchy tunes

Ever had one of those moments where the song just does not want to leave your brain? It just sits there, playing and rewinding, then playing again. It seems like the first thing that comes to your mind when you wake up is not what day it is, but why-is-this-song-still-playing-in-my-head realization?

I had such instances lately, and not surprisingly, my CD player in the car loops the same song when I go to work - that's 45 minutes of the same song playing over and over again! Can someone enlighten me why such phenomenon (if that's the right word for it) occurs to human alone?

The current song that is stuck in my head: Chammak Challo! And there are so many versions of it! I wonder who is the choreographer for its video.