To be or (K)not to be !!!

I kept thinking about it, and at the end of the year, I had "TO BE" 30 years old... could not do much about it... so here I am on the other side of the decade... in my "Thirties" now :)

The photograph is not really relevant except that the the title of this post is the title of the photograph as well :) But in case you can get some analogy going with the shoes, the knot, the years, you are more than welcome... but please don't come up with the "tie the knot" thing... its too predictable !!!

I like quiet birthdays and on the contrary when I was a kid the birthdays were FAR from being quiet... Mom used to invite all my relatives home and the mornings used to be Havan time and the evenings a cake cutting ceremony... I used to love it, mostly because that was one day of the year when the entire family used to be together... all my chachas, mamas, grandparents, cousins... fun times !!!

But over a period of time, things changed, the way birthday was celebrated changed, the family gathering reduced to phone calls, SMSs, Facebook and Orkut wishes, and ecards... Friends became more important than relatives, and evening dinners with friends took the priority over family dinners...

and then another phase kind of took me away from these as well... as of now, I like quiet birthdays, silent, peaceful, with either my parents or with just the friends who understand how I feel within... and not driven by social networking obligations... I like those few calls from "parts of my life" far away from me, and I like waiting for them too... and Aro you ass, you did not wish me this time !!!

This birthday was different and full of loads of fun !!!

• Midnight drive to search for Perkins and have pancakes
• Not finding anything open at 1 in the night
• Cutting a Apple Pie instead of a Cake
• Conversations that were put to a forced stop at 4 in the morning
• Getting late for all planned activities
• Driving to 3 different key "what to visit when in Milwaukee" locations and not getting inside any
• The amazing poori, matar paneer, aalu sabzi dinner... Thank you Deepak, Sapna for that effort, and ofcourse Deepali for the utensils :)
• Me driving Pritam's SUV for atleast 150 miles in 3 days
• The live music at Mo's Irish Pub
• Deepak's confession, which is now recorded on the camera :)
• Some conversations to laugh about for a long long time ! including what happens to a deer if you hit it with a car in Wisconsin :P
• Getting Choclates and a CD from Canada (Thanks Jas)
• Getting Tea cups from India (Thanks Swati)
• Tricking Pritam into giving his iPhone to me when the new version comes out sometime this year (Thank you Pritam ;) )
• Gifting myself a flash(not sure how much I need it, but I am sure I will put this to good use) and a macro lens (finally)

I have a lot going on in my mind these days... need to get some thoughts out, some things done, some tasks completed... one at a time !

side notes...

I am going to stop commenting on posts, blogs, photographs where the writer/photographer conveniently writes "thank you all", "thank you folks", "thank you friends", "thank you peeps" etc etc... I have seen that there are times when people ask questions or have something specific to say, and even if not, they spend time, a minute or two writing a comment for you... and its unfair to not address that comment personally... spending any time on such pages is only a waste of my time... I don't think it matters anyway to the author