OverSharing Anonymous program

“Hello, my name is Bubbly, and I’m an oversharer.” Yes, that’s all you need to do, you oversharers, admit you have a problem and deal with it. That’s Step One of the 12-step program – Admission of the Problem.

Good. And no, there is no need to admit you have a problem on Facebook or Twitter. Keep your phone away. Thank you. Now, sit down in a dark corner and figure out the next 11 steps of the program. After everything you’ve put us through, that is the least you can do.

The oversharing plague

I’m now going to address all my fellow victims of over-sharing. Raise your hands wave, if you are a victim of oversharing. (If you’re reading this at work, like how I’m writing this at work, I would suggest not raising your hands, but just nodding your head. Not a head rock. Just a gentle nod. I think your boss will be impressed by that).

Alright, so “oversharing”, at least on social media is not something I grew up with it and I’m so grateful for that. I don’t think I could deal with Facebook, Instagram or Snap Chat during my (ahem rebellious) teenage years.

Do you have friends on your Facebook, that make you feel like you’re ON their honeymoon with them. The check-ins, the pictures, the love quotes…too much, right? Look, you’re happy and we’re happy for you, BUT maybe you’re ‘oversharing’ when for each day of your 30 day honeymoon, I know what you did, what you ate, where you sat and kissed, where you pooped,you get the drift right?

Then, we have the new momma’s on Facebook, whose new status updates is about their babies constipation issues. No joke, I do have a Facebook friend who discussed her baby’s constipation issues on Facebook. Then, I’ve seen the couple who fight, break-up and make-up all on FB, then the ones who have a cutsie ‘fight’ on who loves each other more….

Hmmmm, Northie and I’ve decided that when and if we ever have our fabulous honeymoon, we will refrain from bombarding Facebook and Instagram with pictures. Snap Chat – we’re not cool or young enough to be using that anyway. Although, we might just bombard broker aunties, thinking boy, greasy boy, uncle boy and definitely weekend boy with the fabulous pictures. And dear loyal readers, I know you’re wondering what’s going on in our lives. Lets just say we’re dealing with so many variables right now, that we’ve haven’t really felt like sharing oversharing for now. Oddly enough, the variables are not very arranged…

Anyway coming back to the topic, I know that some of you out there might be thinking – aren’t you guys oversharing on the blog, with all your arranged marriage dates and issues. I mean, do you really care about our lives? Maybe not. The blog was created for us to reflect on our situation and make you laugh along the way. You must admit that our posts can be thought-provoking, inspiring and downright hilarious! Come on admit it! That’s Step Two of the OverSharing Anonymous program you know – compliment your victim.

Ok so inner peace is setting in. I guess I’ll just sign off by saying to each his (her) own.

See that! See how reflecting and working through my rants, helps me develop inner peace!

Single woman spends 14 years with mannequin family to make a point [17 pictures]

I don’t know if I would ever get to this, I hope not at least. The pictures she’s taken with her mannequin family is simply amazing. I thought it was a cool idea, but I do wonder isn’t it a teeny bit odd that she spent 14 years with the mannequins? Here’s the article.

After hearing the same question over and over from friends and family — “Why aren’t you married yet?” — art director Suzanne Heintz got tired of it and set out to do something about it. She got herself a little family…of mannequins.

Over the course of 14 years and 10,000 miles of travel, she took her fake family everywhere and took all kinds of “family” pictures….

Next time if any Aunties asks  me – “Why aren’t you married yet?”, I might just tell them I plan to have a mannequin family soon.

 

 

Life sans auto-correct and smartphone – Day 5 (Feels like Day 237)

You guessed right, I don’t have my iPhone,  I’m bored and I’m blogging away. Also, ‘youtubing’ away and that’s how I discovered Supawoman on YouTube . Thought this particular episode was pretty funny and very relevant to our blog – so you know what you need to do now, right? Yes, hit play and watch (duhhh)

 

Nah, Nothing, Zilch, Nada.

Hello hello our 3.75 readers! Person who checks out our “about us” page every day, we totally love you. But of course you don’t know that because its on this page and not the “about us” page. Unrequited love, this.

And that brings us to my post for today, which has absolutely nothing to do with unrequited love. But still it got you sufficiently interested didn’t it? HAH! Okay fine – we’re back to our favorite topic, parents! More specifically, parents on boys. Because our parents love talking about them these days. In fact thats all our parents ( and everyone else talks to us about). And we never have anything to say. To quote Southie “nahh, nothing, zilch, nada”. But that doesn’t stop anyone from asking.

Like my parents. Who are currently in a conundrum. Because there is a boy. Yes, you read that right. And no he wasn’t found on a dot.com so Shaadi, please chill. But yes, since it’s not done “via our channel” the parents are required to chill and back off. Except they are doing nothing of that sort. After trying to be chill for a month exactly, the mother went off on a long rant about ” what is there to think so much…what are you doing…how long will you wait………….” Obviously I had to intervene and ask her what she would think of a boy who declared true love for me and proposed marriage within a month or so. Without skipping a beat the mother said “which idiot do you speak of?? Is that what this boy you found did?? Why don’t normal people ever ask you out?? First those film makers, now these filmy types….” This was followed by the father stepping in to “solve the problem”. After hushed conversation with the mother, a joint declaration was made “beta, you take your time. You must. We insist. Its how we raised you. But just take your time quickly okay?”

Which was also about the time I gave up on my normally super rational parents. They decided to pretend to chill after above mentioned disaster conversation too. Except the chill period seems to disappear every week or so. When I am asked questions like “so, made any decisions lately?” #facepalm

Also, since you ask about the boy – after he got over the existence of this blog and that I regularly ( ha ha ha) update it, he wanted to know if he would be written about. But since he hasn’t made most deadly, ripe for rejection errors so far, I have nothing to say really. You can join my parents ( who if you ever meet them are kinda cool I will admit) in their daily hope that I will have something to say, sometime soon 🙂

The Linku who didn’t Pingu.

This is a story – of a boy meets girl ( okay calls girl but see how that turns weird very easily?) so yes, boy meets girl over the phone. And girl decides to think okay, boy you are weird but less weird than I imagined. Girl also decides her imagination tends to run wild, very wild. Just not the wild you’re thinking.

The reason girl is telling you this story, is because her friend unfairly promised she would tell you the story. And maybe because I want to tell you the story – but lets just blame Southie? I like that more.

Anyway, ( isn’t my 500 days of Summer beginning totally cool?) – lets call the boy Linku. And Linku did indeed call.

But before that, Linku sent an extremely well thought out email saying…

“hello Northie,

I got your contact details from your father. Here’s more about me:

<Facebook page>

<Linked In page>

<Orkut page>

Kind Regards,

Linku” 

Obviously I was floored. And decided in 2 seconds that THIS was the boy. And when I “knew all about him” decision was reaffirmed. After all who can resist a boy still using Orkut?

In case you’re wondering, the above was sarcasm.

Linku was spoken to only because the parents insisted I should be open minded. And that conversation didn’t do anything except tell me that this boy can talk, but shouldn’t really talk. To anyone preferably but definitely not me.

And post conversation, Linku added me on gtalk ( duh) where he decided to never pingu.

As is getting obvious we need new topics! Southie and me want to explore non AM topics, and so this blog changes just a little bit. We still rant, but other things take more of the spotlight. Works no?

And meanwhile, all of you read A Suitable Boy. I’m re-reading and can say, I LOVE it even more now. Especially Kabir. But also Pran. #signsthatI’vegrownup

Watching, Talking, Thinking….

Yes, it finally happened – I finally watched Before Midnight and Jesse and Celine are finally together! There are so many layers to this movie that I know I have to watch it again to absorb it all (and this time without an annoying friend who wanted to share stupid comments every 10 minutes). It was really great catching up with Jesse and Celine! Yep, catching up. The way the film is written and shot (like the last two), really make you feel you know the two characters personally. You get so involved in their conversations, that you feel like you are there in the moment with them or if you’re like me, you feel you are Celine – I just love how neurotic she is!

While the earlier movies, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, were about chance encounters, romantic strolls, youthful innocence and hope, Before Midnight is about everything that comes after.
Everything that comes after the honeymoon phase of a serious relationship. Issues like finding time for each other, figuring out whether they still love each other, compromises or sacrifices they make for the relationship, children, career, and messy divorces all creep up into Jesse and Celine’s conversations – the trademark walk & talk of the ‘Before’ series.

A while back, Northie and I were discussing that even though now it feels like finding and marrying a boy would solve a lot of our issues, marriage is actually just the start of a new set of problems. In the movie, Jesse says ‘the time between you leaving your parents home and you having your own kids, is the only time you ever get for yourself completely’ (I’m pretty sure he says something like this at some point). Right now I feel like I’m stuck  (Insert product placement: Fevicol) in a place where I don’t seem to be moving forward with the marriage business and I can’t seem to just sit back, relax and enjoy “this time”. Even with all the “zor laga ke hayaaaa” as Jesse says..oh wait that was a Fevicol ad. No, Jesse declares that “humans are always in a state of dissatisfaction….”. So dear readers, the moral of the story is – if you’re stuck in this AM rut like us, don’t worry it only gets worse!! Muhahaha

An open letter to ALL boys everywhere…

Courtesy – Veda. Who I don’t know, but whose blog I’m totally liking.

And here is an open letter she wrote all the way in 2006 and its exactly what I would write in 2013. Also its Saturday night and I’m reading blogs. Its best my letters are written by someone else.

http://theotherveda.blogspot.com/2006/07/letter-to-big-b.html Check check . ESPECIALLY if you are a prospective boy!

And just so you know:

1. I will be okay if you haven’t heard of Franz Kafka but are willing to find out and listen to all I have to say about him ( and any other author I like. There are many on that list just FYI).

2. My parents are not very Maharashtrian mainly because they are not Maharashtrian at all. That said we do love the marathi manoos, chinta nako kara. ( I’m almost certain I got that right)

Funny Indian Advertisement

One of our loyal readers, that is, one of 3.5 readers that we have (.5 are for those who just look at the pictures & don’t read) sent us this really funny Indian ad from a matrimonial website JeevanSaathi.com. On this blog, we tend to focus on Shaadi.com a lot but Jeevan Saathi does the same thing and has the same weirdos on it.You may have noticed that it takes us a very long time to get to the point on our posts. But hey that’s what makes us interesting and hilarious right?!!!

Anyhow, what I basically wanted to say was that hey you should check out this ad because it’s hilarious! I just hope my dad doesn’t get too inspired and start doing the same.

Stay tuned for some news on a new dude called ‘Mr Linku’ who doesn’t “pingu”. Don’t ask…Northie is a bit weird and says a lot out of weird shit.

Lots of love,

From the deep South

Of Photographs and Parents.

You know how this blogs favorite topic is parents. Okay after Farhan, weird boys, ridiculous boys, all sorts of boys……parents are one of our favorite topics. But we do have lots of posts on them – here, here and here. That’s because they go from “No, no what do you know – you’re just a child” to “What, how have you not done this – you aren’t young anymore” in the same conversation. Mostly, everyday.

Take for example my parents – one of our first AM assignments was, we need to find a photograph where you aren’t making faces. ( yes I’m one of those, I think its important my quirkiness  awesomeness, and individual-ness is best expressed by making faces at the camera. It is also expressed by me making up words sometimes all the time.) But anyway, I’ll stop digressing before I reach the point of no return – digression wise – and then we have to talk about all sorts of things and express individual-ness…….have we reached point of no return already? *shocked expression*

Basically the mother and father needed photographs. They realized that :

(a) I have mainly weird pictures

(b) They don’t actually have any photographs of me after I turned 18. ( my parents believe in the importance of a photographs folder because “who wants computer pictures, go print them for me” is their thing. My brother and me are sort of lazy and don’t always end up printing stuff)

Being the ever helpful daughter I am – I suggested they just log into my Facebook account and check if there is any photograph that doesn’t make them think they raised a monkey. Note: my mother refuses to add my brother or me on Facebook because she believes we will ruin her “peace of mind” with our most likely stupid posts all day. In fact she even rejected our “requests for friendship”. My father has one friend on Facebook – my mother.

Hence the need for password exchange.

My suggestion was met with stony silence. Which was followed by my mother telling me she couldn’t believe how I was so flippant about privacy – giving around my Facebook details like this. This was followed by a lecture on how privacy is MOST important in the digital age when our lives are all but public. Apparently, the only thing I should guard with more care than my passport was my privacy.

Since I don’t give up too easily – I did try to explain how this was going to save us time and effort and boring conversations. But more stony silences and privacy law lectures followed my passionate defense of the initial offer.

Obviously – I had to look at my monkey pictures myself to see if there was a non-monkey one hiding somewhere. And yes since you asked – I did find two.

Meanwhile this is how I amuse (not) my parents these days. Truly WTF no? Like the last one?

Aziz Ansari is in da house y’all

Aziz Anasari a.k.a Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation

After reading his interview, I feel like Aziz and I (yes we are on a first name basis) are totally on the same page when it comes to love and marriage. We both also have a South Indian background and of course we both are just hilarious! Just saying y’all…I’m really like this y’all today, don’t ask why. It’s got nothing to do with Britney Spears – I was a fan, but it’s all in the past. Everyone has a past ok.

I absolutely loved a lot of the things Aziz had to say about dating and marriage, even arranged marriage. Here are some of my favorite excerpts and my thoughts too!

When you meet someone you really like and connect with, I think that’s very special, and not to be taken for granted. They discuss this in Before Sunset, one of my favorite films, in a way that really struck a chord with me. Julie Delpy’s character says when she was younger, she thought she’d meet many people of the opposite sex that she would have a special, deep, personal connection with, but as she got older, she realized that’s not the case, and you realize how rare those kind of connections really are. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found I agree with this sentiment.

Hellooooo! Before Sunset is one of my favorite films too! See, I told you we have so many things in commons. But yes, as I get older, I find that when it comes to friendships and dating it really is a lot harder to connect.

When people hear about an arranged marriage, they immediately think, “Oh my God! Do they hate each other? Ahhhh!” But wouldn’t that be just as fair a question if it was a non-arranged marriage?

After reading more into it, my impression of arranged marriage is that it’s your parents saying, “Let’s find a good person for our kid to start a family with. Let’s find a good family to bring into our family.” That seems reasonable, right? Of course, it probably doesn’t work out for everyone as well as it did for my parents, but again, the same could be said of non-arranged marriages. I’d put my parents’ happiness up against any old white couple that had a non-arranged marriage.

That’s what we keep saying here. Arranged marriage is totally reasonable and practical guys….

In this era, we have more choice than any group of people ever. When you are out at night, anyone in the universe can contact you instantly. Think about how crazy that is compared to even a few decades ago. There was an article I read about a guy who started online dating and went on all these dates. He was in this one relationship, and he said normally, he would have probably moved in with her and likely married her, but because he knew about all the choices he had with online dating, he broke it off and ventured back out to find someone who was a better fit. Shit like that is super-interesting to me.

Hmmmm really? That’s just sad man.  We are one confused lot – our generation. Will it only get worse or will things change once we get more accustomed to all these technological changes? I don’t know. But I’m definitely not liking the way things are now.

I don’t want to get married tomorrow, but I also don’t want to sit around dealing with stupid texting games or whatever. Maybe it’s that I’m turning 30 this year? Look, I like going out and I like being single, but a growing part of me would rather just stay home, cook food with someone I really like, and do nothing. Well, that’s not a really strong pitch, “Come cook food with me and do nothing.” Maybe that’s my problem.

Can I just say, I’m single. I hate the stupid texting games. And I have no problem staying at home and cooking with someone. I don’t even want to get married tomorrow. Maybe the day after? Haha what a bad joke!Yooohooo Aziz?

Maybe we should rename our blog to Arranging a Aziz Ansari. That would work really well – AAA!