Adventures in Laundrying

I relocated recently, and for the first time in my life I am living at a place that does not have laundry machines in the unit or even in the building. For past several years, I've had and enjoyed the luxury of having easy and free-to-me access to machines.

Today, adventures in laundrying began as I went to a landromat for the first time in my whole entire life and spent approximately $20 on doing laundry! Washing lots of blankets and rugs etc. The experience, I must say, was quite pleasant. Minus the expensiveness of it. 

I specifically appreciated the speed at which this laundormat's commercial machines washed and dried everything thrown at it. Drying blankets at my last place would easily take 1-1.5 hours, and would take several loads due to the smaller size of the machine. At this landromat, we could shove most of our blankets in a single large machine. Washing took 20 minutes. Drying took 20 as well.

For someone like me who doesn't like waiting -- waiting in lines, waiting in traffic, waiting for someone, waiting for laundry to get done at a public place -- this was a dream come true. In and out in less than 1 hour!

Oh! What a time to be alive!

Happy Birthday, Nani

Every year on this day I would wish her happy birthday. No phone call today. No live voice streaming. Just memories. Bas yaadein reh jaati hain.

Second Half of the Year 1990

I wonder if babies pop out crying because they are mourning the loss of their past life.

I wonder where my nani is now.

I miss her.

I hope she's happy and worry-free.

I hope we meet again...

...and fall in love all over again :)

PS: My nani passed away less than 2 months ago. I blogged about it here, here, and here.

Reading Eat, Pray, Love

I've always described myself as a seasonal reader. I read books back-to-back, and then go through periods of absolutely no book reading unless it's "required". I haven't had required reading in while and so, the past several years, I read zero books... probably also because television shows are movies are so easily accessible now. I decided to put an end to this last year.

Book that broke the fast was The Secret Life of Bees; took me about 6 months to finish it. I read a total of 3 books in 2013.

For 2014, my goals is 10 books. Not ambitious by itself, however, decent in comparison to last year, in my opinion. I've mostly been focusing on non-fiction books, motivational or self-help type. I've read 8 books this year so far.

Moving onto a lighter read now - Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. A #1 New York Times Bestseller, but has its share of bad reviews. Not an issue. Because... I prefer to form my own opinion, and because... I often end up finding something good in everything.

So far, I like the short chapters. I'm only 28 pages and 9 chapters in.