Smithafied!

Yep - that's right - Smithafied!!!

To all of those who're wondering - what the heck is that - well, it's not much. It's just a meshing together of two lives that God brought together... More specifically, it's the state that Dan is in since God brought Smitha into his life. He's been Smitha-fied......

JC-fying life has always been a top prerogative. But without realising it, Smithafying my life has also taken a good precedence over the other things in my life. And so, to pay tribute to all some of the good stuff that my darling babe has brought into my life, I registered the www.Smithafied.com domain name with Google. That's a Valentine's Day gift for my sweetheart.

It's something that touched her heart, and warmed several others. Made me grin like an idiot. ;)

Thank God for all He's given me. Love Him!!!

Trip Up North - Part 3: Mehsana, the dust town

Early on the morning of the 23rd of December (the day after we met the parents),  both my parents, Smitha and I left for Mehsana from Baroda. We had hired an Indica to take us there. The trip was nice. We slept for the most time and mum kept complaining that she couldn't see a single peacock. Smitha made the mistake of mentioning that peacocks were extremely common along the highways in Gujarat (atleast, near Ahmedabad) and this made my mum desire to see a few. Smitha and I could spot a few, but by the time mum turned 'round, we'd crossed those ever-elusive birds. Finally, though, mum caught sight of a few birds just before we rolled into Mehsana.

At Mehsana, I was all set to see my cousin and her two kids, all three of whom I haven't laid eyes on since May 2005. If you think that's bad, I've not set eyes on my cousin's hubby for way way longer - so long that I've forgotten how long it has been! So it was with a bit of surprise that I realised that both my niece and nephew (extended!) had grown up. The dude's 15 and the gal's 14. It was a little awkward at first, since we really had never spent time together... But after a while it was real fun. Of course, Dad took out his super-duper-dark-shattering camera and started clicking away... Only to be ousted by me. I mean, where Smitha is, I'm there with a camera, folks! ;-)

My nephew (15) and my niece (14) trying to not-smile

Smitha was sitting next to me, looking soooo sweet that I went opposite her and clicked these...

Doesn't she look sooo sweet?!?!

My cousin and her hubby

My Dad, getting in touch with his keys

Tuning the untuned

We all had a fun time at their house. My cousin apparently believes in stuffing guests to the brim with all sorts of food and things. She spent sooo much time in the kitchen for us! Whew!

Uncle Herbert (Mr. Herbert Samuel, a.k.a. my Dad) took up a guitar, then went to the keyboard - he was all on full throttle. :-) Me, I was happy to find the two youngsters grown up and knowing our praise and worship songs (Hey! Last time I met them they were into action songs' performances) We had a really enjoyable time of singing and stuff. Smitha and I even made sure that we attempted to crack all glass artefacts in the place with a stunning (really!) duet........ of Shout to the Lord.... Well, the song title should've been more specific. Lol.

A greatly enjoyable time, of getting to know people all over again. And a wonderful pleasure to have Smitha with the all of us. Mehsana was real good. Would love to visit again.... According to my cousin, if I don't visit again ......... then God knows what course of action she may take. :)

Praise God for all the wonderful-ness that He keeps pouring into our lives.

Trip Up North - Part 2: Meet The Parents

For the uninformed, the entire trip up north to Gujarat this past Christmas week was so that my parents could meet up with Smitha's parents. None of us were really expecting anything much to happen - it was supposed to be a simple spend time together thingy.

So after that decent train journey, I landed in Baroda at around 05.15 on Monday, the 22nd of December, 2008. I caught an auto (with the help of RM's dad, since I don't know Hindi or Gujarati) to the hotel where my parents were put up. They were waiting up for me and we had a nice lil reunion early in the morning. I then set off to wake up ma sweetie.

I entered Smitha's house, and aunty is like "Smitha!!! Wake up, wake up wake up!" while I was like "Nooooooooo!!!! Let her sleep, please!!!!" :) I just simply love watching her sleep. She looks soooo beautiful and peaceful. Here, take a look.

My own sleeping beauty

I just sat there for some time, watching her sleep. After she woke up and we had some breakfast, she got dressed so that we could go to the hotel and bring my parents over. Again, she looked so beautiful that I clicked a few snaps while she was trying to get me out of the house. Hence, the angry look. :)

Dan, are you gonna put down that camera and come, or not??????

Anyways, so we went and got my parents (finally!!!) and they came over and we all just sat around. Then, my parents gifted Smitha a saree! She was totally taken aback. In a good way. (grin) (grin)

I convinced her to wear it and come, so that all of us would be able to sit around formally dressed (while secretly wishing that I could take 200+ million photos of her) and she gracefully obliged, like the sweet darling that she is.

So then, we had a lil photo shoot. The most important photos are posted all over ma orkut profile and ma Facebook profile, so check 'em out there. I'll just give out a few goodies here.

Ma darling sweetheart and I

My parents, her parents, and the two of us...

My BiL 2 (The younger of Smitha's two younger brothers, duh!)

So what exactly did we discuss? Nothing much. Really. It was like an ice-breaking session between the two sets of parents. We spoke of how we would need to fit in the wedding and the engagement to suit Enoch's (my BiL 1) army schedule... We also spoke of the location of the wedding/engagement.... But nothing was made certain or finalised. Looking back, I really like that. Cos God's not yet shown us exactly when, what and how things are to be done. When He does move, He's gonna rock the show. So be prepared, yo!

All said and done, it was a very nice time of getting to know each other's families a little bit. Smitha's parents were extremely hospitable... They went out of this universe to make all of us comfortable. The fact that my bro, Sam, and Smitha's other bro, Enoch, were not present and they were missed.

EDIT: I forgot to mention an important nice-ty. Smitha and I jointly presented our parents with some Christmas gifts. I've not taken photos of them, sorry. We gave the two fathers two formal ties and the mums received handloom shawls. Smitha also got my mum a hand-made file folder carrying thingy. Our parents were all-round well-pleased. Grin grin grin. :D

Trip Up North - Part 1: The Train Journey

This entire Christmas season has been sortofa blur... But an amazing and an awesome one at that. So I'm gonna blog about it in parts..............

On December 22nd, my parents were to meet up with Smitha's parents at their place in Baroda. So I decided to make my way up there directly from Bangalore, while my parents were trudging up there from Chennai.

I caught the train at 21.50 hrs on Saturday, the 20th of December from the main station in Bangalore, Bangalore Central. It seemed like it was going to be another one of those long, boring journeys. So I was armed with another Star Wars book (Tyran't Test, one I hadn't yet read) and a copy of Billy Graham's biography. The last was a Christmas present given to me at church and I was looking forward to reading it during the trip up north. I had also copied some fresh MP3 tracks to my phone (WOW Worship red, WOW Worship green, WOW Worship yellow, Sandi Patty's 2008 release, Songs for the Journey) and I was determined to make the most of the 30+ hours that I was to spend on the train.

Soon as I got into my seat, I noticed a guy being spoken to in Malayalam, sitting in one of the side berths. I was like Yet another Mallu? Wow. Nothing wrong with mallus - I know plenty of 'em and many of my good-est friends are mallu. Just that it never ceases to surprise me that they're there everywhere! And I mean, EVERYWHERE!!! Anyways, there was also this young gal sitting opposite me, looking totally scared and lost and alone. Since I seldom make conversation with strangers while travelling, I let both the other youngsters in my coupe keep to themselves and plugged in to some nice music on my phone. An uneventful evening came to an end with me pushing off to bed, underneath the cover of my favourite comforter. (Yep - I brought that along for the trip!)

The next morning, when I was a little bugged, I began the Billy Graham biography. It was decent reading, although not very captivating in its writing style cos it's written for Young Readers... Me, I like a little more meat on the bones, if you know what I mean. I kept overhearing snatches of conversation between this guy and the gal, but nothing seemed very interesting. Up until the gal went off somewhere and I saw the book that she had been reading - a fantasy novel. Now, if you know me at all, you'd know that the Fantasy genre is my favourite. The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Rift War Saga, The Inheritance Cycle, The Harry Potter series, The Black Magician Trilogy..... all top the list of my favourite book series' of all time. This being the case, I was interested in finding out what this new fantasy novel was all about. When the girl returned, we started chatting. Truly speaking, the rest was history.

I found out that the girl, RM, studies at the Christ College in Bangalore, and this was one of her first times on a train. Imagine that. The guy, AP, was working for Vodafone in Bangalore as an engineer. Both were mallus, though they were settled outside. We had a decent time of chatting and sharing our interests, likes, and dislikes. Books (AP doesn't read!), music, movies, life... I told them about Smitha. AP told us about his girl, while RM said she doesn't want a guy in her life for quite some time. :)

All in all, God brought together three virtually unknown people so that a normally mundane and boring train journey turned into something more. Not too much, just a little bit more. We kept on chatting late into the night and finally decided to call it quits when RM kept falling asleep during conversation-lulls. Lol. Of course, we exchanged our orkut account details and stuff like that. :-)

One thing we did do more - we all got off the train at Pune since RM had never been off the train and was dying to get out. We spent considerable time walking 'round on the platform. I then pulled out my phone to snap up some pics of those historic moments (historic since it would never happen again!) and this is what we got:

AP and RM

RM and moi

Then AP took out his N-series phone and snapped a couple, too. We got these, then:

RM and moi

AP and RM

I really don't know exactly how I should categorise the train journey. Happy? Satisfying? Enjoyable? Something like that. Basically, when you're gonna be all-bored-out on a 30+ hour journey, it helps to make friends and chat 'em up.

Thank you, God. You really are marvellous and amazing!

Update

So ... I never really bought the iPhone. Should be obvious, considering that it's priced at Rs. 31,000.

My life is going on pretty great, right now. Had an awesome Birthday weekend at Baroda. I've got the recently launched Motorola ZN200 slider phone. It's pretty decent. Rs. 6000 and works for me.

God's been drawing me closer to Him. I'm beginning to rediscover truths about Him, life and the way we're meant to be. It's simply awesome. Yaiy!

That's about it for now, I guess. Will try blogging more later. :) Oh right, and I'm trying to re-kickstart two of my other blogs - Dan's Desirables and Living Momentum. Go ahead. Check them out.

Peace out, bros.

iPhone 3G - Vodafone price

Vodafone has just released a statement on their website http://www.vodafone.in/iphone which states that the 8 GB model would cost 31k and the 16 GB model would cost 36k. This is way too much for the iPhone.... popular speculation held that the iPhone would cost anywhere between 15k - 25k in India, when released on August 22nd. This itself is higher than the subsidized price in the US, where the 8 GB model sells for around 8k while the 16GB models sell for around 12k.

My personal estimate was anywhere between 18k to 21k. But if this is the price of the iPhone, I won't be buying it. No no, sorry. It's way too costly for me right now. Hopefully, Airtel would come up with some sort of subsidized scheme... I'm crossing my fingers and praying. The giver of good things hasn't let me down. Whatever He does, He does it for my good. Always.

Band in the Air

Looks like the band (that has been a looooong time in coming) could become a reality pretty soon... Bina Mathew (my bosom pal from CSI CE) hooked me up with a school pal of hers - Renu Kotian, who's supposed to have this awesome, sultry voice, and who's apparently dying to sing in a rock band.

A lil bit of chatting with the Kotian cleared up preliminary fears and encouraged me to meet up with her. She's like this perfect fit for the kinda band that I've had in my head. So that's one.... Now, if only we could get a guitarist, drummer, pianist.... that would be lover-ly.........

Currently, we're calling it the Band in the Air or BITA for an acronym. This is a temporary name - it could become permanent. We'll see what our Lord wants.

The band's gotta be for Christ, and the ppl have to be all out for Christ. We need to focus on personal purity and communal harmony. Dedication to such things would help us go a long way.

God help us and show us all how!