Stages of Sleep 2 (feat. Saathi)

Hey there everyone. A few weeks back I published a post titled 'Stages of Sleep' which was all about the experience of sleeping with a little dog in your bed. After that post I was bombarded by questions and comments about what it is like if the dog is big! Well, not only do I have a big dog but a big dog who is rather lazy and stubborn. So here it is! Stages of Sleep with Saathi - the big, black, lazy beast who loves his cuddles as much if not more than Hendrix :)

Until next time!

How to take your workout to the next level.

Do you, like most people, lack the motivation to get up and roll out of bed every single day to go for a run? Or are you looking to step up your game and make your workouts more effective? There was a time I fell in the first category (given my love for partying) and last year I found myself in the second category. And let me tell you something - I found the answer to all my workout related problems! Get a dog! Get a dog? Why? Here is why - 

Now, before you run out and get a Hendrix be sure that you actually need all that exercise :P Until next time.

The French and The Pizza!

So there I was, 2011, a new chapter of my life (one I had dreamed of since childhood) – I moved to Paris. Paris of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Belle Epoque, Hemmingway, Balzac, Van Gogh, Dali, Proust… Yes, I moved to Paris, bag and baggage with my cheese allergies and red wine allergies and a general dislike for all things sweet. And the past two years have been an interesting culinary adventure since the usual French delicacies are pretty much out of the question. I discovered Turkish kebabs, mussels & fries, violette ice cream, …rediscovered lemon tarts (the only exception to my me-no-like-sweets rule), black black coffee, rare steaks…and, to my surprise, the immense love the French have for Pizzas. They can be found everywhere…in all shapes and sizes…with all kinds of flavors and sauces. Yes, unfortunately they really can be found with all kinds of flavors and sauces. ‘Unfortunately’ because I am an Indian – we do have pizza hut, dominos and Papa John’s but we are very very far away from the classic pizza – Italian or American! We love spice, keema, tomato sauce (ketchup), paneer and lots of onions on our ‘very thick pan’ pizza. We like our pizza very very cooked and God Forbid you do not offer a good vegetarian version or if you do not give us FREE oregano and chilli flakes. All of the above are also reasons why I never liked pizza (especially the tomato sauce). 

Crash and Burn Pizza!

Now, here I am in France surrounded by Pizza at every corner and when I happen to be in the south of France literally every restaurant has pizza on the menu. And what pizzas – with tomato sauce (read Italian but still processed sauce) or cream if u please…a half fried egg (why not)…all kinds of cheeses…mussels too if you like…and they do have a vegetarian one too – margarita! After managing to make me dislike pizza even more than before Paris decided to smile down at me and lo and behold! There was suddenly a Dominos next to my house! I was delighted! Mostly because I was bored of eating McDs or kebab every time I was lazy and did not want to cook, but also because my darling boyfriend loves pizza and I thought well here is a compromise – I can get the safe and time tested pepperoni and cheese pizza :D There was me prancing and dancing my way to Dominos for (finally) a good pizza until the menu hit me like a ton of bricks – there was no pepperoni and cheese! No, there was Indian pizza with curry sauce and some strange Turkish version with chorizos and all kinds of French ones and even a couple vegetarian ones… but no pepperoni and cheese! Sigh! Well here I am again in this mean old town with no sign of relief from the French Pizza!

Grasse - A Personal Discovery ;)

On a bright sunny day we took a long drive up the hills of Cote D’Azur, dog and all, and made our way to Grasse – the little town made famous by it’s historical perfume industry.  Now, I have been to Grasse before and done the whole explore-the-town, perfume museum tours and shopping for perfumes dance. This time round though we went in with a very single minded focus – a sort of self-discovery – we went to Grasse to create our very own custom perfume!

Yep, you heard it right – I now have my very own signature fragrance :D and so does Alex haha. Anyhow, it all started with me doing some random research on what ‘else’ could I do in Grasse other than buy perfume (read: me wanting to invent my own walk around the city :P ). I found a few companies which host perfume making workshops with many many MANY different permutations and combinations of price points and offerings and recalled (rather randomly) that Alex always wanted a unique perfume that no one else had. It being man’s birthday and all during our vacation week I decided that a workshop like this makes for the perfect gift. We picked Galimard, which is the oldest Perfume house in Grasse (started in 1747), offers a complete 2-hour workshop and the noses that work there can speak many languages. At the start of our workshop they gave a set of 9 bottles with no names on them and asked us to choose 2 smell that we liked the most. These two smells served as the base families of our perfumes. From there we went on to pick out heart notes and then finally head notes; with a break in between so as not to get too muddled with all the smells around us. They had around a 100 scents to choose from for both men and women and each of our individual perfumes is made up of 4 base, 6 heart and 5 head notes. So, not just do you get to make your own signature perfume but they also keep the recipe on record so that you can order the perfume again once its over and also order stuff like Eau de Toilette, Soap, Body wash and Body lotion.

Turns out that Alex and I both like very strong, woodsy smells :P Also, I loved the hospitality because not only were they kind enough to accommodate the doggie poo but he actually went into the workshop area and slept blissfully in the cool AC room :) Overall I would say that if you do take the time out to go down to Grasse at any point do make an appointment with Galimard for this workshop (and you can of course buy some of their signature perfumes :P).

The Effect of All the Scents on my poor Nose :P

OOOhhhhhh Perfume Maker Thingies 

Our Perfumes :D

Galimard Website: http://www.galimard.com/

The Most Ridonculous of All Moments!

My DOG!!!!!!! Yes I love him and yes he is the cutest and smartest thing in this world....perhaps too smart. He drives me up the wall and marvels me with his intelligence. But, today all he did was give me a mini heart attack for a few minutes and then had me feeling very amused and scared at the same time. 

So M. Hendrix has discovered how to open my hand bag!!!! He has been stealing things like lighters and and an occasional hair band from it for the past 2-3 days and so I did not pay that much attention except for scolding him. Today I came out of the shower and found him, very proudly, munching away on my Birth Control Pills! Yep, you heard it right - my dog ate my birth control pills. Needless to say I panicked like a fool...called the boyfriend, the vet and searched the internet- all in 10 mins flat. Turns out a small quantity like 3-5 pills is ok and nothing will happen to him. So, with the scary part of it over - well....I started laughing because it is damn funny :P And now I have learnt my lesson and will keep all such things at a very safe distance since today it was something that will have no real side effects on him but tomorrow it might be something lethal! 

Like I said OH MY DOG!

Good Girl gone Wild Or….?

It was the summer solstice, the world was beautiful and Paris even more so. On the longest day of the year what do Parisians do? – Dance and sing on the streets – but of course! And who was I to deny myself the pleasure of joining in :P

So, I take poor Fabrice and convince him to drive into Paris (a very good decision as we later found out). A very sober quiet evening commenced with a strange restaurant (read: walk into a large place where you are the only customer and you WILL be served bad food) and vinegary wine! Two glasses of wine later we were out of the door and on our way to Bastille when we came across a really nice band and decided to stick around. Jump to 10 minutes later and I asked Fabrice with all the innocence of a day old kitten why was it that everyone was drinking alcohol but us? Well of course then we had to go and buy a bottle of rhum and a can of beer for Fabrice!

And from there it was hop from band to band, sit on park benches and drink out of a bottle in a bag. a quarter of a bottle of alcohol had me wondering why am I not eating ice cream? Then of course it was off to buy ice cream…we walked out of the ice cream store and spotted a strange procession – a marching band doing what it does best – playing music and marching and people doing what they do best – following the marching band! So we proceeded to do what we do best – join the procession!! And then there were Fabrice and I running and dancing across the city, swigging from the bottle of rhum and giggling like fools when we found ourselves somewhere near the Notre Dame and decided to quit following the band and make our way back to the car – for some reason we wanted to go back early and sleep (oh yeah we were hung-over from the night before).  But of course on the way back Fabrice had to stop and listen to some DJs and I had to spot a Haribo stand :/ a liter of alcohol and then smurfs and smurfettes and lollipops that turned my tongue blue and sugar that turned up the crazy!!!

Well, we finally left the DJs and tried to make our way back when I saw the cutest little puppy tied to a strange Afro-American with luscious long hair and grey eyes and I stopped to play with the puppy. The man touches my hair and tells me OMG you have the most amazing hair – please let me ‘sculpt’ it!!! And the lil high me says hey why not? And there I was standing in the middle of the street (soon surrounded by a crowd of spectators with cameras – seriously tourists film anything) and getting my hair sculpted (read: cut – and yes after a haircut last week I got high and got my hair cut again). We were soon all ‘sculpted’ out and Fabrice was all laughed out and then we tried yet again to make our way to the car, this time stopping at the Pompidou to drink some more and put to rest my lil freaked head about the hair (I had not seen it yet). And then off we went – trying to get to the car and finally succeeding without any distractions (well there was that little elephant graffiti that I stopped to look at).

Guess what happened the next morning – No, I did not get scared (hah!) – I woke up with – OMG what the hell did I do last night? Trust me it was worse that waking up in a strange bed and wondering – OMG who the hell did I do last night!

Hair Raising Tales

After a lot of trepidation yours truly decided to hop and skip her way to Republique and get a new haircut (Yaayyy!!!) and thus the adventure commenced in a car without a GPS! As they say a good driver never asks for directions – and ask I did not…landed myself in some strange parking lot (luckily) after cursing half of Paris and their poodles…and made my way over to all time favorite hair stylist – BTW Dom rocks (He compared my shampoo sud filled ear to a champagne flute :P)

Anyway, after the haircut and a couple of kiss faced pictures we headed out to buy shoes – Epic fail – its disturbing that I can barely find shoes my size L , especially on a day I have convinced myself that 200 Euros for a pair of shoes is a good deal. And just when I was about to give up on the idea of having any kind of luck beyond a good haircut a very good friend decided that taking me out for an impulsive dinner is a good idea (I might add its one of the better ideas he has had :P). So I got to discover some amazing, spicy Chinese food and drove back to HEC sans GPS – this time without cursing fluffy dogs or old women.

Back home I decided ta new haircut calls for a celebration (and well there should be at least one day in the week when there is a real reason to drink)!  To cut a long story short – I got wasted and went to sleep without drama (GASP!!!). woke up today to a beautiful rainy day (not) and lay in bed chatting to people about random things…got out of bed to brush my teeth and got a little heart attack when I looked in the mirror – My hair was soooooooo weird :/ And then there was that moment of clarity – I got it cut the night before! Yes, I forgot that I had a haircut and got scared when I looked in the mirror the next day. Moral of the story? After a new haircut I should write on my mirror that I got a new haircut :P (Did you think I would say I should not drink???!!!!).

Panic In The Streets of JOUY!

The past two days have been – well – panic filled – the kind that pumps you with so much adrenaline that you can’t sleep or eat or breathe sometimes – a lot like falling in love without the commitment.

Aside from the huge huge ‘MBAT 2012’, which seems to be driving all of us up the wall, there has been intense drama regarding my French Visa renewal process (Student services conveniently leaves out details) and I managed to drop my phone (read lifeline) in the toilet (we will not discuss details) just before the damn MBAT!!!

Long story cut short I ‘fished’ the phone out of the toilet bowl AND managed to dry the phone out by keeping it in a bowl of rice for 24 hours – this works really well for the iPhone since it even beat the water damage sensor – got the phone working only to find out that the fall had damaged the chip holder. I took out an hour from a crazy $#@&%* schedule to go to the apple store and found a (cute) dude hanging out in a black staff T-shirt who looked like he had absolutely nothing to do. So, I pulled my cutest kitten-in-distress look and asked him ‘parlez vous anglez?’ and well took it on to a complete lost/innocent flirt level – let’s just say that I came away with a new phone (despite water damage which rice grains cured) and the phone number of a cute guy :P BTW it turned out he looked like he had nothing to do because he is the business head of the area lol. So, ladies next time you drop your iPhone in water try rice grains and if that does not work try flirting with a bored looking business manager :P

As for Visa renewal – that’s coming along – after all the wonderful confusion and delays I did manage to get the documents! And as for the MBAT – well Ready. Set. Game On!!!!!!!!!!