Bucket List?

Don't be misled by the '?' in the title. I know what bucket list means...the things to do before you die et al.

Over the lunch table chat in office yesterday, someone mentioned that he had a bucket list of wishes and how he was going about checking them off. I will come back to his conversation later, so put a book mark at this point and read on.

So I got curious (and hence the "?") as to why it is called bucket list. As usual google offers more answers than you look for. But this one made sense so I put it down to memory. Bucket list originates from the ancient style of hanging the criminals where the noose hanging around the criminal's head would strangle him (or her to be politically correct...though I assume more guys were hung to death than females) when the upturned bucket on which the criminal was standing would be kicked. Hence the connection to Bucket.

Back at the lunch table... this elderly gentleman, as it turns out is a very interesting lunch companion with a new set of anecdotes everyday. This day the conversation started when in the middle of the meal he realized that someone had paid on his behalf. He paused mid morsel, took out his wallet to pay my friend saying that when he kicks the bucket he does not want to owe anyone anything.

And so started the conversation on how many things he has checked off his bucket list, the last one being a visit to the Great wall of China and the forbidden city.

His wife lives in the fear that she would be thought of as boring lady by the folks in the morgue when she died...so she wanted to die an interesting lady by getting Tattooed at a not so public body part!!
While I am narrating this here, I was a mute audience in this anecdote over lunch since I did not want to further the conversation lest it get embarrassing :)...

So our gentleman's wife got "Wicked" written in that place in Mandarin...邪惡. Now this gentleman is an old fellow...so as much as we discount what could be the age difference between him and his wife, she also would be of a respectable age by now... so as described by my friend, her tattoo now reads as WWWWWIIIIIICCCCCKKKKKEEEEED thanks to the sagging skin!!!!!

This conversation put in my head...What did I want to do before I kicked the bucket!
Yes I do have that list... have had it for a verrrrry long time indeed.

Back in the engineering days, a bunch of us went out for dinner to this place where they had a palmist sitting as a customer attracting tactic. And the girls being girls...lined up there.

What that guy mentioned, I guess put the first point in my to do list. He saw my hand and said "तुम ११ देश जाओगी" (you will travel 11 countries). Since then I have been counting the countries my job has been taking me to. And I have been stuck at 10 for the longest time ever....when you travel you click pictures...and when you travel alone you click pictures of everything around you but yourself :)...so that's the second thing on my bucket list...to learn photography and make a coffee table book of the photographs "I" click. Not making much headway with that given that I am sitting in front of a screen for most part of my weekends as well, and there is only so much creativity I can put into clicking pictures of a laptop and a hotel room! But will click sometime... (that is why it has not been checked off the bucket list yet!!)

I started travelling on my own sometime in 2005 while I was still doing my Post grauduation (well actually...I have spent my whole life travelling...Thanks to Dad's profession. That was all भारत दर्शन (India touring) and I will take it up later...Keep putting the bookmarks and keep reading...(I am not one structured writer :) )

Coming back to my independent travel and the chronicles thereof. That will digress us too much cuz I get lost in talking about it all. But when I overcame the awe of sitting in a flight and landing in a foreign land, I decided that I should put the adventures to paper, and hence adding the third wish to the bucket list...to have a blog which people can read for pleasure and not just for travel tips. There is a reason I put this post under my travel blogs...cuz had it not been for travelling none of my bucket list items would have come into being.

Coming back to the भारत दर्शन. My Dad retired as an Army officer, and so we as a family were constantly on the move every 2 years, till he decided that his kids had enough adventure in terms of changing schools, changing friends, and basically becoming nomads :)...A blessing in disguise (for him) came in the form of a transfer to Delhi where we would have a stable school life (with a real school and not barracks converted to school and Mom converted to teacher). Thus came to an end the travels, even before I began to appreciate them for anything more than the long car drives and the stop overs at dhabas en route to our destinations!

Someday when I have a relatively less nomadic life, I would like to continue that travel while clicking pictures all along and adding them to my coffee table edition of "Neha's Travels".

I just realized that all of my wish list is about travelling. Is that the case actually? Hmm...not really. But then bucket lists as my lunch friend so amply made public, needn't be all public wish lists :) So yes, I do have some of those too (I will reserve them for when I am writing a  book about...(Something...don't know yet...). But yes, writing more than a blog is on my bucket list as well :) (you must be thinking...damn she is so overconfident bout her writing prowess...but then who said that the book has to ever be published (I don't mind if it does and gives me a little xtra cash in hand though :) )).

Through my school and college life, I always missed having the talent of a solo performing art. I mean yes I could go on stage and talk for an hour, but then that's no art (is it?) :)...I could not sing, nor could I play any instrument....so sometime before I kick the bucket, I would like to be known (among my small group of friends, if not the world) for at least being able to play some instrument (even if it is a bongo!!). Wishing that I get the vocal chords of Lata Mangeshkar, would be trying my luck and ability a bit too far :)

Tell you what, like the usual shammer that I am, I kept aside my work to write here when someone praised the idea of writing about my bucket list and I really really need to get back to completing the work lest, my office folks kick my bucket tomorrow itself. So I will end this list here (for now) with a very very apt comment which came my way for a draft of this post...'What if never finalizing my bucket list is a part of my bucket list'!!! (apologies for the Copyright infringement :) )

One night at the Airport

Ever been in one of those situations when you began trusting your Travel desk for taking care of your travel needs, since they had not goofed up, only to have your faith crashed to the ground in a second?

Well I am in one such disillusioned situation today. In the midst of the project when everyday firefighting was not getting on to people only because they were counting days to go back home, I was in that select group of unlucky people who were asked to stay longer than others. So naturally you can imagine how anticipated was the day when I would get to board the flight home!! My travel desk diligently sent me the tickets and I went about with a spring in my step that the ordeal was about to come to an end. One by one the days flew by. Checking the tickets and printing them out was the exercise which came to my mind right before leaving office on the last day when everyone was leaving office. However,it was at the time of the web check in that I realized that I had a 14 hours layover in Kuala Lumpur. For the journey from Manila to New Delhi which takes7.5 hrs (as recorded by the solo direct flight which started recently), I would be taking 18 hrs!!!

Deep breathe Neha....relax...you are going home...counting reverse numbers to calm myself down, I sat in the cab. Just on this day and this hour, the entire city decided to show off their vehicles on the road. I have seen traffic jams. This was not the worst,but when you leave 2 hours before the flight time, even the smallest of jams can turn you into jelly!

Naturally when all the vehicles will be on the road, they will have a destination...and Airport is one such destination...right? So the people traffic at the airport was beyond my expectations. Anyways, I timed myself 15 min to deposit luggage, 20min for immigration, 10 minutes for security....I still had 30 minutes to spare. Mentally patting myself, I started the process, only to stumble at the second step itself. The immigration line was serpentine (and not any serpent...it was the size of a mythical serpent (we have a very large sized imagination right?)). I crawled through it in 25 minutes,reached the counter, officer chats with me for a minute and then tells me that I was in the wrong line.I should have been in the line for the people with work permit (reverse counting...)...25mintues before boarding start...I walk up to the 'right' counter. There was a Chinese lady getting her visa checked and immigration cleared. In a style typical to Indians,once her paper work was done she sweetly murmured something to the officer at the counter who grudgingly agreed to it and pop came 5 of the Chinese lady's family members (who were tourists and supposed to b apart of the serpentine queue), for their fast stamping!!! (relax Neha....you are next after these 5 @#%&#&#)

Stamping done, security check done, I sat in the flight,not a minute too soon! That's it...I am headed home...and that's all that matters,right?  What has happened has happened...I will check into the Transit hotel and take a nice long nap before boarding the next flight.'Nice Long Nap'...This phrase I can use to cheer myself anytime. But No....Transit hotel (which they have made in the farthest corner of the KL airport) was fully booked and there is only one transit hotel!!

So scrambling for a comfortable place to sit, I have finally found this Starbucks where I can pay for the coffee to basically be able to sit comfortably...so much so for the nice long nap! Its 2:45 in the morning and the cleaning boy of this Starbucks has cleaned the clean tables twice already (I guess he too needs to do something to not fall asleep)

Here's me closing this post hoping that nothing more will happen after this and I will peacefully be able to reach home and sleep through the day!!!