Timeout

My system, has asked for a time out

For reasons quite manifold

I certainly hope it’s a short bout

Right now it is leaving me “cold”

My writing, my love and my passion J

Will have to be put on hold

I hope you will wait with compassion

For stories that long to be told

Now, promise me you will be smarter

When bodily signs do appear

With them it is stupid to barter

Their message is simple and clear:

Go play with your friends, take a breather

Embrace every soul that you meet

Take detours both hither and dither

Then go home and put up your feet

It may take a while, maybe longer

To untangle “cable” and “wire”

But somehow we will emerge stronger

To do all our heart may aspire!

Positively (in all connotations of the word) shocked by BBC News

A while ago I read Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. I was fascinated by the book, the author and the country which he so vividly described, India. The former convict relates a story that is as revealing about his own life and the complex nature of his character, as of the many faceted and in many ways incomprehensibly diversified country, home to 1.2 billion people.

One of the most intriguing passages of the book is about his time living in the slums of Bombay, describing how people, regardless of ethnic, religious and other differences, look out for each other.

One particular event gives an account of a firestorm, threatening both people and the ramshackle sheds in which they reside. The description of how some individuals take charge, organize the necessary steps to put the fire out and to rescue people, disregarding the peril they put themselves in, is captivating. It sounds almost too selfless, too altruistic to be true, in a loosely organized society, where people are deprived of almost all the basics that we consider fundamental to “civilized” life and behavior; education, steady jobs, health care…

And then, yesterday, on BBC news, I heard about a fire in a Calcutta hospital...


Read more at Positively shocked...

Plans

Today I had a plan. Or a to-do-list. I often make lists. Usually, just before I go to bed I jot down things that reealy need to be done and things I’d like to have accomplished, but don’t grow stale if they wait another day. More often than not, therefore, the list comprises things that didn’t get done the previous day. It is strange, though, how things work, or don’t work out.

 Some days I have lists stretching from now to eternity, and I know I have a snowball in Hell’s chance of having it all dealt with by the end of the day. And then, miraculously, everything gets ticked off, one by one. People in public offices pick up their phone after one ring. That special item I need to get hold of, preferably before yesterday, is in stock, at the first store I call. The presumed complicated, and therefore dreaded, text I need to finish just pop out of my head and hits the paper before I even have time to think. And before I am able stop, I am already well into a new one. The challenging meeting scheduled to last two hours, covers its agenda in 30 minutes. The always reoccurring dilemma, what to have for dinner-riddle, solves itself when I craftily disguise yesterday’s leftovers with a garnish of vegetables, garlic, red pepper and ginger. A scam that also saves me a shopping trip! And then, voila, everything is done, ship shape, dealt with.

And then, there are the other days. Like the one today. The list did not look too frightening, nothing particularly complicated, nothing untoward. Should be like a piece of the sugarfree, but delicious raspberry cake I made the other day, a day like the ones described above. And from then on, everything went wrong, downhill, down the drain, not according to my precious plan:

To read more, go to

http://www.evernote.com/shard/s92/sh/e25fe88b-fe22-4fc1-8fcf-0f5dda8bb7b1/06ecc8675eccfc25f4302868300dc112
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