Delivery

Tis lunchtime - although being self employed, I don't really have a paid lunchtime. It is whatever I want it to be. I just like to have lunch and take some time off at the same time as the people around me...

Been reading another blog for the past half hour and I am trying to do this chronologically so this all makes sense. I am still in 2004, reading about the birth of her first child and the entire process in the hospital. Its amazing! Its also horrifying! In my usual procastinator style, I've not spared much thought to labor and delivery till now considering that it is pretty far away. Suddenly 19 more weeks seem like very little time and I don't think I am prepared at all in any way...But what can you do to prepare? It is what it is, right? Well, in her case her hypnosis tapes seem to have helped her a lot among other things, although she still needed an epidural at the end of the day. Maybe I should join some breathing/relaxation classes - or buy some tapes or something..

I liked what she wrote about the delivery itself - how she always thought the process didn't matter as much as the end result and how she thinks differently now. It is one of the most significant experiences (not to mention prolonged and painful) that a woman goes through and she cannot help reflecting on it again and again later wondering if there was something she would have done differently. At least we have options at this day and age that gives us the luxury of wondering about it- epidurals and picotin and whatever else...

Well my self assigned lunchtime is over and I should head back to trying to floodlight the exterior of a high-rise building using some LED fixtures! Sounds more fascinating than it really is... like anything else I suppose.

What I am reading right now

Upamanyu Chatterjee's book "English, August". I started this book reluctantly since it seemed very dense and pretty pointless not to mention pretty depressing as well. I have since started admiring this book and I am only about halfway through it. I am not even going to try and summarize it or analyze it. Here are some favorite passages of mine from this book, from whatever I've read thus far.

' In the government, you'll realize this over the years, Sen, there is no such thing as absolute honesty, there are only degrees of dishonesty. All officers are more or less dishonest - some are like our engineers, they get away with lakhs, some are like me, who won't say no when someone gives them a video for the weekend, others are subtler, they won't pay for the daily trunk call to Hyderabad to talk to their wives and children. Only degrees of dishonesty. But, of course, honesty does not mean efficiency.'

'Bhatia made Agastya's secret life seem so ridiculous, he wanted to laugh. Its major consolation had been the possibility that it was a profound experience, something rare; now it seemed as common as a half-bottle of whisky, something he shared with Bhatia. Agastya faintly disliked him for this, for shattering one of his last consoling illusions. But he could not admit to their similarity. He realized obscurely that the sense of loneliness was too precious to be shared and finally incommunicable, that men were ultimately, islands; each had his own universe, immense only to himself, far beyond the grasp or the interest of others. For them the pettiness of the ordeal was unrecordable, worthy at best, only of a flicker of empathy. He was really not that interested in Bhatia's life; later, Dhrubo would not be interested in his, and his father would not be able to understand it.'

'The inhabitants of his world moved so much, ceaselessly and without sanity, and realized only with the last flicker of their reason that they had not lived. Endless movement, much like the uncaring sea, transfers to alien places, passages to distant shores, looking for luck, not sensing that heaven was in their minds. I was not born for this, said Agastya silently. He had said that all he wanted was to be happy. Now alone under the stars, he could finally admit this to himself without embarrassment. '

Been a while again

Its May 1 already! Time sure flies...What has happened in the while that I've not updated this blog? Not much and plenty - depending on how you look at it.

In february, I discovered that I was pregnant - something I didn't really think that I'd be blessed with so soon...Its funny how something becomes so much more precious when there is a possibility of it not being attained. I had always kind of wanted kids, but not in a desperate must-have way. When some medical problems made it seem like I may not have them after all, I did become a bit more attached to the idea of having em. How far would I have gone to have kids though? Luckily, that's a question I did not have to answer since this happened spontaneously without fertility treatments and expensive operations.... I suspect that if need be, I might have gone part way on this road, and then turned towards adoption. I truly believe that having a biological kid at the price of thousands of dollars is a terrible waste of money.

So I am excited about being pregnant and terribly nervous about being a parent. I find myself constantly referring to the past... What did my parents do right that I didn't turn out to be an axe murderer or cocaine junkie? I remember bits and pieces from my own childhood - stories my mother told me for instance, that I want to pass on as memories to my child as well.

I've been reading plenty of pregnancy and parenting books and magazines. In fact thats all I read. Admittedly my career has been relegated to the back seat. But I know (and hope) this won't be permanent - regardless of all the people who seem to suddenly think that having a child spells the end to my career aspirations.. I do want to focus as much time and energy on the child for the next couple of years though..

What else happened over the past couple of months? My father-in-law visited us for 3 months.
I joined Toastmasters and am having fun at their meetings every Thursday evening. I also sang a song at a local event for South Indians. We've met some new people in this city as a result...

life is good...