The thighs know the heart….

Endowed Women of the world rejoice !
Your days of corpulent misery are at an end. While you were reaching for that extra helping of Butterscotch ice-cream with the toppings,  researchers in Copenhagen University were hard at work. Putting their brainy heads to the thighs of hundreds of women, they measured, probed and reached the happy conclusion that those ‘thunder thighs’ had ’stuff’! The truth – as is most often the case – was simple, “women with thighs over 60cm (23.6in) in circumference have a lower risk of heart disease“.
The thigh measurement was taken “just below the gluteal fold”, which is the crease caused by your buttocks.

Doesn’t it warm the cockles of your heart to visualise that image..”an underpaid, undernourished young man in a crumpled white coat stoically measuring thigh after thigh into the wee hours of morning…” to vindicate those blubbery pillars of flesh!!

My thighs love ma heart !!

Rest easy… those are no longer thunder thighs but ‘low cardiac risk thighs’.
Take out that string bikini from the bottom of the closet.. ye can flaunt them heart-friendly limbs yet again … to your heart’s content!!

Oviparity and the Chinese…

(The following conversation took place entirely in Chinese..)
Pai mei: What did you invent, worthless one?
Disciple: Its a toy duck which lays eggs, worthy one…
Pai mei: A toy with an ovipositor !! Send it all over the world…
Disciple:Yes, worthy one..
Pai mei: But write in plain English what it does…
Disciple: Your wish, my command.. all the same..worthy one..

A Chinese year later…

Maybe it’s a sex toy…

The 3rd Chamber Pot of Shaolin…

The Southern Railways loves to post challenges for its passengers. Though, I have to admit, in all fairness, these challenges aren’t at all unexpected by anyone who has used the train services before.

I always knew that using the loo in our Indian railway was something between the 34th and 35th chamber of Shaolin in terms of difficulty. But this time, I think I achieved chamber-pot kick-ass stardom!

On our way back from Bangalore, by the Garib Rath (why can’t they call it something else??) my dear son had the loosies and needed to use the toilet…thrice.
Ever tried to stand in a 1 sq.mtr space with a 3 yr old and undressed,de-crapped, wiped, cleaned and re-dressed him without spills, drops, accidents all the while ensuring afore said 3 yr old didn’t touch any surface all the time?
I did that.
I have become the Pai Mei of the Railway Chamber pot. The top Dan, the sensei of senseis, the master..

Pai Mei in chamber pot position..

Kung-fu Panda, Shaolin, Jet-Li, the assorted femme fatales of Kill Bill, could all learn from me.
Manav, was mightly thrilled with the whole thing… and was especially curious about where his ‘kakka’ went.. ‘Where does that hole go?’. I suspect the third time, he wanted to use the loo, it was just for kicks.

He asked me today whether we could do it again sometime.
Fat chance, dude… we are flying next time.

p.s. For the uninitiated… here’s what it looks like..

http://www.geocities.com/michwink/pics_india/01_toilet.jpg

the one we hit, wasn’t half as bad though…

Bang Bang (My baby shot me down)

(Gun control or the Dalai Lama!)

We tried.
And have miserably failed.
The project had an optimistic heading ‘The elimination of firearms and/or firearm simulating devices from the home environment’.
Yeah, we thought we could get away without toy guns at home. The boy till he was about 2 was happy with his toy cars and random stuff but then realisation dawned (T.V.?, neighbours? Play school? Friends? Subliminal advertising??) and he became a Jeff Snyder incarnate.
We still didn’t have toy guns at home but being the creative dude he is, anything vaguely linear or pointable was transformed into a nifty shooter. Heck, a plastic golf club became a pump action shot gun.
We did persevere with our no gun policy… Careful filtering of TV, hawk-eye scrutiny of playmates, no fire-arm conversations at the dinner table….
But we had to throw our hands up in helpless surrender when he started bite-carving pistol shapes into his peanut butter sandwich. Bite, bite,… bang, bang,, take that..
That kind of dedication had to be rewarded. We had to give in. He got his toy gun.
Gun control? It ain’t easy !
I got help from most unexpected quarters though… here’s what the Dalai Lama had to say, “”If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”
And he had a Nobel peace prize in his shoulder bag…

No doggies here…

One week Post-Circumcision, it’s supposed to look like a dog chewed it off… that’s not me talking.. I am just quoting the pediatric surgeon (didn’t I write a story on this a hundred years back??).

But, hey… it looks pretty neat ! No doggies here!

Thanks doc !

Feeling..!

It’s not often that I am on the other side of the fence of my profession. The ‘treated’ side instead of the ‘treating’ one.

The little one had to undergo an elective circumcision. Tight phimosis..and the verdict of the pediatric surgeon was “off with it!”.

Being an alumnus of Calicut plus having a well known set of parents meant that between us, we knew just about everyone at the hospital on a first name basis. I love this about Calicut!!

But despite all that, there was still waiting…seemingly interminable.. Manav sleepy from being woken up early, hungry too (nil by mouth said the surgeon’s order) wondering out aloud why he was in hospital. We did tell him in very cushioned terms what; but with a 3 year old’s unerring instinct for the truth he deduced it to be something more than just ‘putting some medicine on his pee-pee!’.

He was distrustfully wary until the anaesthetists came. They were warm, friendly and totally non-threatening (God bless them!) and pretty soon the boy was kicking away energetically at an inflated rubber glove. On the theme of balloons, he heartily co-operated in blowing a green anaesthetic balloon and was out in a few seconds. Thank you analgesia, thank you amnesia, thank you thank you!!

Later in the day, lying in the post-op, groggy and a bit distressed, the little one whispered, ‘I feel like vomiting’ and promptly went to sleep.

A couple of hours later, he was up and demanded and got ten biscuits.

A little later he beckoned to me and whispered, “ I have no feeling”

With a doctor’s sure instinct for thinking the worst a hundred horrible thoughts rushed through my head.

But before I could hit the panic button, my boy whispered again, “Boopa, I have no feeling of vomiting now”

He got a lot of kisses, that one, then….

B.T.D.T.*

 (*Been there done that)

Singapore’s done. There’s just the rest of the world remaining.

 Jokes apart… I was singularly impressed by the place.

 Granted, the chilling efficiency is a bit scary, but then everything works.. the whole system!

 It started out at Changi airport, when we arrived. The lady at the immigration desk was grim to the point that Manav hid behind me – but we were out of the airport in less than 15 minutes(that’s including a trip to the duty free to pick up some Grey Goose Vodka for my cousin!). The information desk was helpful to the point where I felt like hugging them and doing a jig (behaviour which would’ve probably given me a lifer there!).Things work there !

It was fun, the trip being multi-dimensional, cousins reunion, old friends meeting up, first trip with the kids (trial run for further trips -we almost took notes!) plus the regular touristy things… The children predictably tired pretty quick with all the walking around but liberal doses of exotic cocktails kept us, the parents, on even keel throughout (the ‘I have become comfortably numb..’ feeling).

 Clarke Quay elicited wistful sighs from all the Kuwaiti residents.. if only…!!! I was most impressed with China town – it was noisy, crowded, crammed with delightful junk and had a pulse of its own which took over as soon as you stepped in.

 The tremulous school boy cousin of a few years back is a gangly young man now barking in rapid Singlish, “Auntie, no veggaaa..jessaa pepper crab/chicken..more beer..fasta fastaaa..ok yaaaa!” Loosely translated it meant: m’am we are all carnivores here.. we just need more meat and alcohol in a hurry!  He could’ve been speaking Chinese..maybe he was !

 The black pepper crab/chicken/deer/frog washed down with pints of Tiger beer was just awesome…

Maybe we should go back sometime,,, at least for the black pepper crab…

Being touristy…!

This is something I used to think I would never do!
Once upon a time travelling had to be meaningful. Time spent to absorb different cultures, new experiences, be in sync with the pulse of the country, rub shoulders with the man on the street, make and eat (not just sample) the local cuisine, learn the local lingo and do something for world peace and the environment too in the meantime. All this while roughing it, staying in an authentic village-setting-dwelling with (preferably) a large joint family who are just above poverty but so large hearted as to welcome you with beaming smiles.
We had a 5 day window for a trip to Singapore. Five days to do all the above!
The flight was reasonable. One can’t really consider travelling economy a luxury – I mean, there’s no other way of getting to Singapore (unless you want to stowaway on a cargo ship. And I really don’t think two sub7-year olds are going to be thrilled about 3-4 days in a ship’s hold).
Silkair has stewardesses who made me realise that I probably had more abdominal fat than the entire crew. They had to be anorexic or the recession has hit the airline industry really bad!
Anyway, we reached safe.
We couldn’t see any village-setting dwelling on the cab drive from the airport. Yeah, we took a cab instead of footing it or taking a bus (“I want to do potty …now!” is a decision-inducing-statement without compare!
We then succumbed to the tourist pulse totally… Did a round of Sentosa island (on the cable car, of course!), took pictures by the hundreds! Clicked everything at the zoo, even watched the elephant show completely (don’t we have them back home??), got kissed by a sea-lion (is there anything more touristy than that?).

Sealed with a kiss...

Now, I am taking a breather while my better half is searching around for ‘ethnic’ stuff to be taken back home and displayed and ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ over.
Jurong bird park awaits tomorrow. Have to check if there’s enough space on my camera’s memory for the hundreds of pics that I will take tomorrow of each feather.
Help! I have become a tourist !!!

Awaiting the rain…

One of the things that I really miss here is the rain.
Yes, it does rain in Kuwait, once in a while. Dehydrated clouds squeeze out a spatter which spots the dust at times. Hardly the kind of rain we get in Kerala. Monsoon! Heavy dark grey clouds yielding sustained showers, saturating the earth, making thousands of rivulets everywhere. The lushness which comes with it, making everything verdant, thick with life. The incessant stridulation of the crickets harmonising into a waxing, waning song…
Vacation time in Kuwait coincides with the rains back home. We sit for hours on the verandah, looking out at the dancing drops while the children shriek about outside in oversized umbrellas, reveling, soaking it in. Monsoon!
Sure, half the shopping doesn’t get done, the power fails from a fallen tree during a storm, the clothes don’t dry…
But who cares…! It’s rain, glorious rain !! And am waiting to stand in it…

Sibling rivalry (or Wimbledon 2009)

They did it again, didn’t they? Decimated everyone else and made the women’s singles a family affair, yet again! Centre court this year is the domain of the Williams sisters. I wonder how it feels to play against your own sibling. Would it be just tennis at stake here? For the sisters, both phenomenally talented, the other must’ve represented the opposition most of the times growing up. Did one of them ever wish (at least) fleetingly that the other did not exist? Would it have been the same, if there were just one of them? Probably the sibling rivalry honed them into what they are today.

Much as I admire their tennis, ruthless, efficient, power-driven, I can’t help missing players like Graf and later Sharapova. Their game was/is superb and yet they manage to stay fetchingly feminine. I know I am possibly stuck in gender stereotypes and that ‘come-hither’ looks don’t matter when powering a backhand return down the line but the fact is that its not just me who feels this way.

I remember in 1997 Steffi Graf gracing the pages of Sports Illustrated in the swimsuit edition. This is a sports celebrity hall of fame in its own right. She looked demurely sexy in those pictures.
Fast forward to 2003, Sports Illustrated featured Serena Williams, the new face of women’s tennis. Powerful, muscular in a white bikini. Sexy? maybe…
Demure? Not by any stretch of the imagination!

Venus too has featured in the swimsuit edition similarly (un)clad.
Is this something to do with the media with its obsession with celebrities or is it something fed by the demands of a ravenous public?
Why have whaletail pictures of tennis players? If its thong shots or butt floss they want aren’t there thousands of willing models around?

But if they must, they must. My vote, then is for Sharapova. Totally !

Drool!