A Blog To All Blobs.

Long long ago there was a time in my life when if someone told me "Dude, I'm in shape" then I would say "Yes you're right, round is a shape". This was when I was training 5 hours a day to one day become a national level swimmer. Pffft!

Although both my parents are big structured and my grandfather closely resembling a small car, I was happy that I was blessed to get my grandmother's genes. I was tall and lanky. I was ruthlessly cracking weight jokes around my overweight relatives not once realizing that one dreadful day I would be on other side of the grass.

Recently, my mother was looking at some of my latest pictures on Facebook and she said " Aditi, you look like a cow". The minute she said it, she laughed so hard that it felt like she was finally able to take revenge by removing 21 years of weight frustration that I had slowly built inside of her , brick by brick, by my subtle yet awesome jokes!

So I decided that before I transform from a cow to a buffalo, I would take charge and go on a diet. Needing to shed a few pounds, I googled all possible diet tips and tricks until I finally found one that I liked. I put a bet with my-same-body-type-friend (anonymously named Tubey), that each of us had to lose 10 pounds by September 1st, else we would pay each other $150. Money motivates people greater, mind you. I also put a skimpy poster of Gisele Bundchen as my wall paper , so that everyday I would open my laptop to think " Someday I am going to look like you bitch"

With diligence and zeal, I closely followed all the recipes for each meal of the day even though it was enlarging the already present hole in my wallet. I was gymming or playing tennis everyday.

My motto: Dieting is a weigh of life.

• It's not the minutes spent at the table that put on weight, it's the seconds.
• The biggest drawbacks to fasting for seven days is that it makes one weak.
• The toughest part of a diet isn't watching what you eat but watching what other people eat.
• An excellent way to lose weight is by skipping.... snacks and desserts.

There would be times of the day where I would be so hungry that I could eat the plate, then I found out such an edible plate does exist. Chen Liang-erh, 50, an amateur inventor living in Taipei, Taiwan has perfected an edible plate. It is made from wheat grain, and he plans to mass-produce it with other edible crockery including cups, bowls and food containers. He argues that hungry diners, tempted to lick a plate after a delicious meal, can now go a step further and demolish the whole lot. Sadly, I have learned, the plates have the taste of unsalted popcorn - not exactly an exciting culinary delight. In his favor, Chen says the crockery can be boiled and will provide a nutritious meal for your pet.

As time progressed, I started feeling terrific until one skinny ass of a friend (anonymously named Cherry) burst my bubble and said "Damn, you put on more weight!". At that instance all I felt like doing was stuffing his face with 100 tons of cheese so that he would never have the audacity to say such a thing again!

After that, I was like screw this diet, screw Cherry! I started getting all philosophical and pondering upon the deeper questions to weight loss. Then I figured that the dumb head who had conjured up the rules on weight measurement that has millions of people depressed and even suicidal, had got it all wrong! The most accurate way of measuring weight is to actually lay down on the floor , with your back flat on the ground and have your legs raised up high and placing the weighing machine on your feet. Voilà! you instantly lose 130 pounds.

Isn't this just awesome! Now I only weigh 10 pounds. Life seems so much more beautiful with chocolates and ice creams in the world again.

So apart from making truck loads of money with this revolutionary discovery, I hope to save the life of my friend Tubey who is in a relationship with big mouthed Cherry.

College Living.

As I am about to graduate from college, I would like to pass on a few words of wisdom to all those who are about to know what life is all about.

In India, my whole lifestyle was very very different from the one I had here. My parents are all about good grades. Their life revolves around it. So, I was the kind who thought that nothing was hard to get as long as I got good grades, which I did and so I got everything I ever needed and much more without so much as a sigh! And then one day I decided to come to America to "study" further. That was the day I went from being a princess to a poor girl on the streets.

As expected, I had thought that the good grades philosophy would hold true anywhere. Come on, its only natural! I was spending away my earnings to a point where I would have one dollar in my account at the end of the month. Seeing this, my parents decided that their daughter had to "build some character".

So they kept me on tight budget lines every month. I was then forced to put on my thinking cap and find ways through which I could overcome this mess. I was not allowed to spend my own hard earned money, what do you expect! I tried and tested several money saving methods to overcome this hiccup in my otherwise awesome life. Today however, I am not writing about the things that worked but I am going to talk about the things that did not work.

• Do not create a secret bank account. If you were the obedient kid who gave all your passwords to your parents in the beginning, then my friend you are doomed! And once you realize the shit you are in , don't make it worse and create another unknown account where you could save up some money for your personal use. Although it will give you the feeling that you are one of those millionaires that who keep all their illegal money in an offshore account in the Caribbean, it is bound to fail. Parents always have ways of finding out, ALWAYS! The universal truth is parents are 100 times smarter than you, the faster you understand this the less trouble you will be in.


• Do not take secret vacations with friends. Whats even worse than a secret bank account is going away with friends on a holiday with your saved money without telling parents. Nothing gets them more riled up than you travelling with FRIENDS, especially if you are the only daughter. Its a time bomb waiting to explode and all you can do is say "Oh Boy" !


• Stop buying so many shoes. You know who you are. You can only wear one pair at time, unless you wear them on your hands, too. How many shoes do you need, anyway? ( remember, I am putting this point under the things that did not work for me)


• Stay behind times. Wait until books come out in paperback (half price books) and until movies come out on the internet. Don't buy the latest electronic gizmos; see if you can mooch gently used cameras and not-all-that lightweight laptops from your friends and relatives when they upgrade to the latest models. Don't bother changing your hair or clothing styles until people giggle and point to you whenever you leave the house.


• Stop thinking about your maid in India. If you were the kind who never made your bed in your "previous" life wait until you come to live in America. Stop thinking about your maid back home when you are scrubbing the bathroom floor or cleaning the kitchen or doing laundry or are starving and feeling lazy to cook. It only makes life harder! Face the fact you cannot afford to hire a maid here.


• Don't buy a cheap cell phone plan. As the saying goes, when you are not allowed to do something, thats the one thing you will want to do the most. Buying a plan that gives you very less minutes and absolutely no texting is like going on a diet when you live next to the chocolate store. No amount of not picking up calls, not charging your phone etc will help you save minutes. It just won't work! In fact, you will just exceed your minutes and pay a lot more than the normal plan that you didn't buy to save money.


• Water down your shampoo. I must say that Pert Plus not only lasts longer but works better when it's watered down a bit. I don't know the scientific principle underlying this discovery, but using this tip can save you literally hundreds of cents a year.


• Don't buy groceries until you are eating pickles for lunch and dinner. Use all the ready made food that you brought from home. Don't go to the grocery store until you've absolutely run out of everything, thats how it happens at my apartment anyway. To be honest, I doubt you can save any money this way, but what the heck I thought I'd just mention it.


• Listen to tapes. Once upon a time, in the age of boomboxes and Walkmen, tapes were the hottest selling music format around. Now that they've been kicked to the curb, first by CDs and then by digital downloads, no one seems to want them anymore — which means you can find perfectly fine tapes for fifty cents or a dollar at any decent thrift store. If you've still got a working tape deck, let your analog freak flag fly. Sure, you can't easily skip tracks but hey, who needs to skip tracks when you are listening to the greatest hits by Simon & Garfunkel.


• Don't get gym subscriptions. Lets face it, Indians, in general, no matter how they try tend to put on weight when they come to America. Guys put on weight in the face and girls put on weight everywhere else. I know its necessary to keep your market value up high, therefore go running on the streets and lift boulders/bricks to build muscles.


• Don't get tattoos. They're expensive going on, and even more expensive coming off. If you want to impress that rocker chick at the bar, draw something on your arm with a Sharpie before you introduce yourself to her. It doesn't matter if it looks convincing. She's not going to be interested in you anyway.


• Never leave the house. Doing stuff outside the house tends to cost money, so avoid the outside world whenever possible.

Although doing none of these saved me any actual money, there is however one tip that might just work, get an old fashioned loving boyfriend with a good job.

Riding The Bus

I often question what exactly it is that helps guide people through their darkest days, not only to survive but to move past those circumstances and to ultimately attain the level of success and fulfillment that would have once sounded impossible, what comes to my mind is not the big moments that you usually tend to remember but instead the small life defining moments that get you by even if just for a minute.

Today, as I walked into what seemed like my never-ending-stream-of-no-job-getting-interview, I saw a guy. He was clean-shaven, maybe mid thirties, dark haired, of average height and slight build, he was wearing the sharpest suit possibly custom-made, out of a beautiful piece of cloth. It's more than just a garment, it's the whole look - the tasteful tie, the muted shirt, the pocket square, the understated cuff links and watch. Nothing obnoxious, just well put together. No flash, no bullshit . Just sharp. He reminded me of a Ferrari circling in slow motion, with the whirring sound of that unbelievably powerful engine as it idles, waiting and purring like a lion about to pounce. Seeing him pass me by just gave me a sense of feeling that maybe just maybe someday I will be there too. This encounter is crystallized in my memory - almost into a mythological moment that I could return to and visit in the present tense whenever I wanted or needed its message.

These recent times have been hard and difficult for me with possibly everything going wrong. Life seemed to have taken a 360 degree turn with my clock ticking in the opposite direction. From what seemed to be like living in an everlasting sunshine, I suddenly felt I was helplessly caught in a never ending period of gray foggy skies with continuous days of bone-chilling rain. It was like I was falling and falling heads down into the bottomless pit of failure.

Then I remembered a brave man telling me last night, "Whaaat is life without a few failures, look at me". I pondered upon it and realized that there is joy even in failure. It pushes you to be stronger and work harder to crawl out of that pit leading to a strange sense of satisfaction. It makes you appreciate success ten folds greater that you otherwise would. It lights a fire inside you - to dream, to succeed. I started drawing inspiration from everything. I looked for ways to find "happy"ness and humor. And then I finally began seeing roses in the ghetto.

So to conclude, everyone has big things happening to them but what you need the most is to have that one person in your life who will create that one small moment that turns your life around.