THE TIME I HAVE FUN AT LULU!!-DAY 1

Hey, everyone! You can see in the tittle, Day 1. Well, I’m a big YouTube addict. I absolutely love watching videos of YouTubers, especially their vlogs. Yes VLOGS! Vlogs are everyday videos that they take of themselves daily and tell the world how their day went. Well, since I look totally unflattering in videos, I thought I’ll blog about my days. It’s kind of like a personal diary, but with no details about my latest crushes, my enemies, my arguments etc. So let’s start.

Today, I had a pretty fun, busy day. I woke up at around 8.30. I did the usual stuff in the morning and had Idli-Sambar for breakfast. Yum! I had to go to college for a senate (a student body that represents the students of the college that mainly discusses the problems of the college) meeting today which was at 12.30. For that, I needed to get out at 11.10, and so I started getting ready at 10. I put on my uniform, applied my eyeliner, took a good look at the mirror for my own confidence and got out. I got in the bus, paid 13 bucks, texted Archana (my college friend who is also in the senate) the bus details so that she could get in from Kaloor and listened to songs on my iPod until then.

The senate meeting went okay, I guess. The seniors just discussed a lot of complaints about the college given by the students. That took about an hour. After, we go to the nearby bakery and just hang for a while.

Ashline, Archana, Ajith, Navaneeth (all of them are senate members) and I decide to go to Lulu just to eat food and chill. That was pretty awesome. I met the boys only today but they turned out to be so much fun!! We talked for a few hours, took embarrassing photos and just roamed around. It was a pretty fun day. I came home, went to the treadmill for a little bit, read Agatha Christie’s ‘Hercule Poirot’s Christmas’ (wow, too many apostrophes!!) and watched TV. Today is also the day I fell in love with Sam Smith’s ‘Writing’s On The Wall’. Oh my God, best song ever!!

Anyway, thank you for reading this. Hopefully, I continue doing this so that you can read about my day tomorrow. Until then, good night! (or good evening or good afternoon or good morning depending on where you’re from).

POEM BY A BORED TEENAGE GIRL

I sit in my room, feeling aloof

Thoughts swivelling in my mind

I look around and up at the roof

Wondering what to do with my time.

The clock is ticking faster and faster

I just sit idle and reflect

Should I engage in friendly banter?

Or just think and regret?

I have come a long away

And I know I have no shame

This is so silly of me

But who can I blame?

This is boredom, pure and simple

I know I have a life

If only I got a nickel

For every time I was in this plight.

This is me, signing off

I have nothing else to add

You might think I’m a bit odd

And to that, I say,’ That’s just sad.’

WHAT DO YOU DO AFTER FINISHING A BOOK?

So this is the dilemma I’m faced with right now. I just read one of the most interesting books, The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella, and it is absolutely a wonderful book. It’s funny, cute, romantic, serious and a page-turner. I finished within a couple of days from borrowing it from the library and now I’m thinking, ‘What do I do with my life?’, because that’s what all avid readers like me feel after reading a book. We just get so immersed in the story that we can’t think of anything else until we read the book completely. A good book is like a very addictive drug. Once you’re hooked, there’s no turning back.

I recall those times when I was young and I was reading the Harry Potter books. At that time, I was very scared I wouldn’t be able to finish reading them in the allotted time, so I borrowed one at a time. And after every book, I would rush to the library to get the next one. By the time I got to the last book, I was praying J K Rowling would write another one. But she didn’t. And I had to move on. Wow I’m making this sound like a relationship!

But honestly, a world without books is something I cannot imagine. So what DO you do after finishing a book? Get another one and start reading!! 

DAD

Let’s rewind 61 years and a few months to January 20, 1954. It was a momentous day since my grandmother was having her second baby – my father. Like all babies, my dad probably would have come out crying but since I wasn’t there (obviously), let’s skip all of that and come to the present day, 2015. My dad has grown, and over the years, he has attained so much in life. From a small boy playing cricket in the streets of Alleppey to the successful man that he is today, he truly has come a long way to get where he is now. This is not about my dad’s journey but more like anecdotes of his everyday life – some incidents of significance, other incidents of humour.

As I was growing up, my dad introduced me to books. And boy was I in love. He told me to start reading Enid Blyton. And my love for short stories and novels grew as my dad took me frequently to the library. I quickly grew out of Enid Blyton and started reading classics. I remember my dad telling me to keep a list of all the classics I read and to give it a score on a scale of 1 to 5. In the end, I read about 33 classics and my favourite was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Then he introduced me to Agatha Christie and the book he told me to read first was The Labours of Hercules. I still remember how fat the book was and thinking that I won’t be able to finish it. When I told my sister this, she said that dad had picked out that book for her to read first too. Some things never change.

I remember another incident when it was my sister’s birthday and she was gifted an iPod. I told my dad I wanted one but never thought it would actually happen. The next day, he bought me a purple-coloured Apple iPod. I was so surprised and just so happy. I hadn’t even meant it and before thinking it over, he went to the store and bought it. What can I say? He really is amazing.

Now my dad is a man who loves his poetry. When he was small, he used to buy poetry books with his pocket money. In one book, he had written “Poetry is life.” And in another one, “Poetry is distilled prose.” He used to come to my room and read poems to me. And by ‘read’, I mean recite it through memory and refer the book only when he forgets a word or two. Yes, he used to by-heart the poems. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ is his favourite poem till date and it astounds me that even after 40 odd years, he still manages to remember the words, verse for verse. I sometimes can’t remember what I did the day before and here is my dad, reciting a poem he learnt when he was my age.  He also used to read a threnody written by PG Wodehouse, called ‘Darkling’. And the way he recited, it was hilarious. Words like ‘worms’ and ‘dyspepsia’ were said so comically that it resulted in incessant laughter.

The world’s best planner may be someone in the USA or Africa or China. But to me, it is my dad. He is so organised that he plans our holidays to the minute. He prints up an itinerary and writes down the approximate time of arrival and departure at every airport and every railway station. He also books tickets for most of his relatives and to make it easier, he has three calendars in his room, one showing the present month and the other two showing the successive ones. Some might think he is a bit queer but to that, pat comes the reply, “There is a method to my madness.” Yes, indeed, I would hope so.

So yes, this is how my dad operates. And even though there are a thousand other things about him which are unique, these are the incidents that came to me instantly. So if anyone asks me who the greatest man alive today is, I would say my dad, because he really is something. 

LIGHT CURES CANCER?!

This might be a very bizarre title but it’s true! A few cases have been mentioned where the person suffering from cancer gets cured if they are hit by lightning. Around thirty years ago, there was a farmer who had cancerous cells in his mouth and chin. He had been suffering from it for a long time and had finally agreed to do the procedure to get it removed. On the day before the procedure, he had gone out to the field when it was heavily raining and he got hit by lightning. In the events that followed, the doctors called it a miracle but for almost ten years, the farmer was cancer free. No one could explain it but marvel at the fact that the lightning had somehow made the cancer vanish. But unfortunately for him, after those ten years, the cancer came back which proved to be fatal. Although getting hit by lightning is not such a pleasant thing for anyone, its powers to rid people of cancer should be taken into consideration before ruling it out as something physically impossible to do. A lot of people suffer cancer and every time someone dies because of it, it’s all the more sad because it’s one of those diseases which does not have a simple cure. And even though chemotherapy is an option, it does not always work and the treatment is also exhausting. Lightning as a cure does seem pretty drastic but in a world where technology is soaring and people are coming up with new stuff every day, why is it hard to find out some way to create electrical charges that have the properties of a lightning beam?

New studies by renowned doctors have also shown that lightning bugs, or fireflies which is more commonly known, also have the ability to cure cancer. Miniscule amounts of radiation are emitted by lightning bugs every time they flash their hind quarters. Researchers from London inserted the firefly gene that activates the bioluminescent light into modified cancer cells hoping to set off a chain of events that has a proven track record of fighting the disease. This light source, known as Luciferin, caused the modified cancer cells to glow much like it does with the firefly. When a photosensitizing agent was added, the combination proved lethal for the cancer cells. This firefly technique may add a further layer of depth to photodynamic therapy, an effective treatment that uses bursts of light to attack tumours that sit near the skin’s surface or along the lining of the internal organs. The light triggers production of active oxygen species that can destroy cancer cells.

Light is such an important resource but who would have thought that it can cure one of the scariest diseases existing today? But the reason why chemotherapy is the main treatment option is that it is a cancer treatment which uses chemical substances which are readily available such as anti-cancer drugs which are part of the chemotherapy regimen. But although affordable enough, chemotherapy does have painful side effects like fatigue, headache, muscle pain, stomach pain, pain from nerve damage such as burning, numbness or shooting pains usually in the fingers and toes etc. it can also cause other severe problems like mouth and throat sores, constipation, diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting and blood disorders. Because of all these reasons, it is high time that doctors and researchers started working on light and how it can be used in a patient having cancer as a cure. And if there is a definite science behind it, the chances of curing people are high and assuring them of lesser side effects.