Devesh’s Gratitude Journal

The burst of energy that was a few weeks ago has subdued & subsided.

For now, there will not be any “thankful” posts coming up.

I’ve been really tied up with a lot of work on my plate and also have been dealing with a few scars from my past.

Until I stumble upon a miracle, there’ll be an indefinite hold with my updates on this journal.

Thanks to everyone who supported me, for however little time this was online.

In hope that this will re-emerge another day, goodbye.

What an awesome few days… PHEW!

Well - as most of you know, I was away in Melbourne over the weekend and only got back on Monday. So to catch up on my list - here are a few items I’ve been truly grateful for over the last few days:

• I’m really grateful for taking the chance and impulsively booking tickets to fly down to Melbourne. I still remember, a few days after I booked them, I actually went back on to the airline website to cancel them - just coz I didn’t feel like going anymore. Anyways, fortunately for me, they didn’t offer any refund if I cancelled so I ended up going. I had the most relaxing 3 days, since the longest time I could remember ever :) A very big thank you to the lovely couple - Rishi and Shalu who looked after me so well. Shalu was so excited that I came over as it was a surprise for her - she didn’t know about my arrival until I walked through the doorstep. She couldn’t stop cooking for me - all my favourite dishes, constantly. I can’t believe I actually had 4 meals a day for 3 days in a row :) Rishi, was a true mate’s mate - we had our long chats until the wee hours of the morning, reminiscing our old days and realising the stark truth that now we’ve known each other for over 15 years heheh.
• The best destination during my visit to Melbourne was a trip to the local Planetarium. Anyone who knows me well knows of my affinity towards the stars and astrophysics :) Infact - ideally, if I had a choice of a destination to take a girl out on a first date - I would take her to a planetarium :) I’ve always wanted to do that for years - unfortunately I’ve never met someone who would be open minded, fascinated by, and also enjoy conversing all night about the wonders of the time and space continuum LOL! We also spent a few hours at the Science centre, next to the Planetarium - brought back memories of when I was in school :) Last Sunday, therefore was truly a memorable day for me :)
• The trip made me reflect on the friends I have in my life - no matter what, they’ve stood by me in my best and my worst - always helping me see the right perspective in life, through decisions I’ve made. Even for all the wrong choices I made in my life, my friends have always stood their ground, looked after me, cared for me and gently help me get back on my feet. Thank you to each and everyone one of you, my friends. I cannot even express how grateful I am to have you known you in my life :)
• As I didn’t come in to work on Monday I feared the pile up of work on Tuesday. Mondays are the worst days - to check if all the reports have successfully finished running over the weekend and to fix the code for the ones that crash. On my flight back home, I started dreading the following Tuesday. When I walked in on Tuesday to work, I was pleasantly surprised to see my colleagues have helped me out and fixed the reports that crashed, emailing me the corrected changes etc. It’s Wednesday today and I’ve finished all of my tasks for the week :)
• I walked in home from work last night and noticed that my flatmate was busy packing his suitcase. Before I could even gather the words to ask, enthusiastically, he informed me that he was flying to the country side tomorrow for a week. I think he was inspired by my impulsive trip and ended up doing the same. This only means that I’ve got the apartment to myself for a week :) As mentioned in one of my earlier posts - I really miss living on my own sometimes and love to get back to an empty house. Well - now I’d be getting back to an empty house for straight 7 whole days :)
• And last, but not the least at all, the most important point that I’m grateful for - this is the point that pushed me to post this update in the first place - Just another day at work. I was cleaning up some code when I got a call from my mobile service provider, Optus. Firstly to inform me that my old account manager has moved on, and this new account manager, Rossana would be looking after me. Next thing she informs me that despite the fact that I’m currently in the middle of a contract with them for my N95 - due to loyalty and being a good customer - they’ve chosen me as a priority client to give me the new, upcoming Apple iPhone - soon after it’s released :) With all the hype around it, and most naturally me being your average geek-gadget enthusiast - I’ve been eyeing the iPhone since Apple made their announcement of its launch in Australia. The phone is being released on the 11th of July - all I have to do is wait for it to fall in my lap. I never really thought I’d ever be saying this… but “thank you” Optus :)

Oh boy - I’m so charged up with that last point already hahahah… Anyways, a few pics from the trip to Melbourne can be found here: http://flickr.com/deveshm :)

Jumping in, straight to the point - here are the points that I am appreciative for yesterday:

• I’m really grateful for being able to accomplish my weekly tasks at work by mid-week. Happens quite rarely but this only means that the rest of the week is relatively relaxed.
• Received a call from an old client of mine. He tells me that as it’s tax season now, he’d rather pay me for a website renovation than the tax guy and suggests on pre-paying me for the whole year! Now as elated as I was on hearing that - I told him lets draw the parameters of the extent of the project so we both can be on the same page - hopefully heaps of moolah coming in shortly ;)
• Got another call from a small organisation I had recently done a website for - they need to made a few additions and asked if I could sort it out for a fixed fee :) Suddenly work seems to be propping up out of no where - and I’m truly grateful for it :D
• My flatmate has been busy with his exams lately so we hardly have been watching any TV at home. I was in two minds last night whether to watch a movie or not - also didn’t know what to watch and wasn’t sure if he’d get tempted and keep his books aside LOL! Anyways, turned out that he was quite prepared for his test the following day and came home with the intention of watching a flick - coincidently, they just started showing The Sentinel on Fox - both of us hadn’t seen it before, and the synopsis seemed intriguing - so we ended up watching a proper movie to its completion after a long time last night :)
• Well, overall I must say that I was thankful for another relaxed day yesterday.

I think my posts are going to be a bit irregular over this weekend - considering I’m flying to Melbourne for a short break. I guess I’ll make a cumulative one on the trip later :)

All day today I thought I was not gonna post in for yesterday. Primarily because yesterday was just a very straight-forward, downright, boring day. But then I thought to myself that I should put something down even if I dont have 5 whole points.

So here is the only biggest thing that I was greatful for yesterday:

• Overall I’m greatefull that yesterday was a much needed break kinda day. No blood nerving excitements, thrills, worries, stress or even news - which was good ‘coz all I did was breeze through the day and felt truly relaxed!

:)

There’s a fair amount of time lapse between my committment to post and me posting. However I’m still glad that pretty much the next day that I write about yesterday - not as bad eh?

• Yesterday was a pretty busy day at work - usually we have reports that run over the weekend and Monday is ideally supposed be a day where we follow up on checking if they all ran fine. since the time I’ve been here, I’ve never seen all reports successfully run over the weekend. Yesterday was the first Monday ever that all the jobs had finished running and it was pretty much, ideally, business as usual for this week. Which only meant that this week would be relatively relaxed from Wednesday onwards :)
• After work I caught up with a friend of mine - we hadn’t seen each other in over 8 months or so. It was time very well spent indeed :)
• I got back home pretty late in the evening, and considering how social I was feeling that evening - I ended up catching up with another close friend. Next thing I realised was that it was 3am already! Time does fly when you’re having fun :)
• Well - there were 2 more things I was greateful for yesterday - however, I can’t publically write about it yet - at least not until it works out. Simply put, there could a big change coming over the next 6 months if it works out. And when it does happen, you can be assured I’ll be writing about it ;) Time will tell.

So I guess that’s it for yesterday. I’m keen to get back to writing as the day ends - let’s see if I can do that tonight :)

Sunday usually is what I call a “whining” day! It’s the day where I sit and mourn on the death of the weekend :-\

But hey! This is a place where I’m writing down what I’m grateful for, not what I despise - so here goes a list of things I am thankful for yesterday:

• Saturday night was a long night catching up with a few close mates - and I stayed over at their place (Strathfield) - Now recently, I came to know of this Asian shop in Strathfield that serves really awesome omlette-sandwiches! Reminded me of having omlette-pav (soft, small bread rolls in India) in Bombay. My mates were planning to drive down to a place to have a full meal - but I decided to not join in and instead darted straight to that Asian shop and relished 3 servings of their omlette-sandwiches - totally made my day :)
• Usually if I’m out of my house for over 24 hours, I start craving to get back - just an annoying addiction of sorts. As mentioned in my previous post, I can’t stay away from home for long. As much as my feet were twitching to get back home, I decided to take the train and head the opposite direction to the next suburb and spend some time at the bookshop. Once again, it was a good satisfying feeling to just relax, read snippets from various books and just be in the moment not stressing about anything else :)
• Another pet-peeve of mine is coming to an empty house - getting back home and realising there’s no one there :) Don’t get me wrong, I really like my roommates (plural as my roomie has a friend stay with us for a few days). However, I still love the feeling of returning to an empty apartment. And that’s exactly what happened. I got back home to find no one home. Called up my roommate and he was at work :)
• Eventually my roommates got home and they decided to cook some good old butter chicken :) So there ya go - had some of my favourite meals all day :)
• Last but not the least - got a call from a really old friend of mine from Auckland - caught up on a lot of things - he recently got married and was sharing his new found woes (in a good way) with me with his wife next to him scoffing at the point that boys will be boys hehe!

All in all it was a pretty relaxed day with a lot of decent things that came along :)

(darn! did you see the number of smileys on the post above? LMAO!)

I wasn’t home last night and therefore didn’t post anything. However, I’m still being loyal to this and here goes my five things I’m grateful for, from yesterday:

• Last week was really hectic - with work and client commitments after work. With so much happening, I was running short of a fair ounce on my sleep. I know this is silly, but I’m really grateful for the fact that I caught up on my sleep on Saturday. I didn’t wake up until 1pm or so. It was so refreshing and much needed :)
• There was an uncertain expectation of negotiation for a quote on a recent piece of business I acquired. Saturday morning I received a confirmation email from my client that she is happy with the quoted price for the project and wanted to discuss deadlines :) 
• Recently we got our Foxtel connection back after a long time - I had put a stop to it more than a few months ago as I used to live alone and realised it was a waste of money considering I hardly used to be home to watch it. Saturday arvo, I thoroughly satisfied myself and vegged out on the couch straight for a few hours, doing nothing but watching movies on Foxtel :) Yes I had a lot on my mind, but it felt good for once to put all that aside and just enjoy some good old movie reruns.
• A few set of close friends had invited me for a long awaited get together - in their words, I quote, “let’s try and relive our old days for one evening”! I had been quite disconnected with them for a while now, you know the usual rut of life. As much as I normally wouldn’t have gone, I made a snap decision, took a shower, got ready, put on my shoes and took a train off to their place. One thing I’m always uncomfortable with is staying over at anyone’s place - no matter how late it is, I always prefer to come back home. However, last evening I went over to their place with a mind-set of spending the night there. It was great seeing them after so long - they all got drunk to the core (pretty much like the old times hehe) and I got high on insane shots of macchiatos which had me buzzing until the wee hours of the night. Ended up streaming live videos over the internet all night (friends on twitter were pulling their hair - sorry tweople hehe). It was really decent - for once I just let myself loose -dropped all inhibitions, worries, concerns, got transported back in time and truly chilled out :)
• Last but not the least - I think there was a good incentive for me to head over to my friends’ place last night - I got to “re-install” their computer. Almost everyone who knows me, know about my obsessive compulsive disorder about fresh computer re-installations - I just love doing it and will jump to any opportunity I get hehe.