Title Less Entry :P

After being a mother for a year and half, I felt that, this is the hardest job in the world. I always thought I will be able to deal with it, I will have some routine, fix things and will be able to focus on myself a bit. Everything will be in my control! But turns out, its not as simple as I thought. Everyday I have a new challenge. Every hour I am consumed with what to do next for my son, Elon. Food? Change? Bath? Play? Take him out?? and off course many questions in the mind all the time: am I doing things right? Is he eating enough? Are these healthy food? Is he getting enough outside exposure? Am I teaching him the right way?? blah blah….this constant questions and responsibilities has made my life so busy that I rarely get time for myself. And I think it is very important to find time for myself. An exhausted soul can’t be productive, so to spend quality time with Elon (not quantity only) I should have breaks for myself. I should spend some relaxing time….very hard to do, but I will have to find a way..in the mean time I have to manage time to study..so that I don’t loose touch with programming…

Well, this post was a break time for me that I was able to manage some today 😉 I think I will use my breaks for reading, writing blogs etc. That will be a nice use of it 🙂

Quote: “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. – Jimmy Dean”

Me – a Mother!

Yesterday was mother’s day, a wonderful day to celebrate one of the most important person of our life. With some exceptions, we all dearly love our mothers. And interestingly, when we become parent we realize it even more. Specially as a girl we realize what path exactly a mother had to choose to raise us, what sacrifices she had to make and how hard it was.

I am a mother now 🙂 I became a mother on July 28, 2013. My 9 month pregnancy journey was not very bad, I was eagerly waiting for the day to see my son, read all kind of articles about delivery, watched all kind of videos to know what to expect.

So, when the day came (delivery day), I didn’t panic. I calmly went to the hospital, got checked by the docs and was waiting. But when the labor pain started I realized – boy oh boy… nothing can calm me now, whatever I did, nothing helped! The pain is so excruciating as everyone describe it, tehre is no escape from it if you have a normal delivery   After about 9 hours in labor, my son ‘Elon’ was born at 10.22 AM. In so much pain I forgot everything and felt like crying out of love and happiness. When I first hold him, he bent his  lips and cried like snobby kid ..as if he was telling me where were u so long 🙂 And all the pain for last 9 hours disappeared after holding him and looking at him 🙂

Nine months has passed since then 🙂 he’s a crawler now, trying to stand/walk, blabbering once in a while.

Life is extremely stressful now. Me and my husband had no clue how hard it would be to take care of a baby, we are overwhelmed with all the responsibilities…sleepless nights….rarely any breaks for ourselves….and still aren’t used to all these….but every time I look at him..crawling..crying for me to hold him…smiling…playing…hugging me tight when he sees me after long time…all the pain seems totally worth it..it is the most wonderful thing that happened to me, people always used to talk about unconditional love for children, I have learned this after Elon came to my life. Everyday is a surprise, he’s doing something new, everyday is a blessing, its extremely stressful and pain at times, but still its so amazing!

Jeff Atwood, a software developer and blogger once wrote in his blog (http://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/) that:

“Children are 49% incredible pain in the ass, and 51% most sublime joy you have ever felt”

(I surely can feel what Jeff meant :))

Well, the motherhood journey has just barely started actually, still a long way to go, but every day pass by, I realized how hard it was for my mother to raise me, how painful it was, specially we have so many built in systems, which she didn’t, it must have been so hard. Each day my love and respect for her keeps growing and I feel so grateful for having a wonderful mother like her!

Here is a picture of my baby Elon and my beautiful mother 🙂

 

My mother and my 6 month old son 🙂

My 9 month old son

Ada Lovelace Day!

Interesting! Today is ‘Ada Lovelace Day’! I am ashamed that being a women of science and technology, I never heard of this before 😦

As always, I must say: better late than never 🙂 So here are few info from the wiki:

Ada Lovelace Day” is an annual event celebrated on October 16th whose goal is to “raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths”. The Ada Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the involvement of women in the free culture and open source movements.

It is named after Ava Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; thanks to this, she is sometimes considered the world’s first computer programmer.

The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Ada Lovelace.

Photographing – Alphabets :)

The new camera I got, it turns out that using it just by reading few tutorial online,was not as easy as I thought! So, I started taking Photography I class at photouno. The instructor was amazing, I get to learn so many things about my camera, and how I should take pictures. A lot about exposures, light and frames. I feel much more comfortable taking pics now. I still have to continue taking more and more pictures to become a pro, but I am happy to at least know the basics. One of the best thing about the class was homework 🙂 I know homeworks almost never sounds fun, but in this case it was! One of the homework was to take pictures of alphabets in the nature, not the actual alphabet, but the representation of it around us! It was hard to find all of them, and I tried to get as many as I could! Here are some of them 🙂 I wish I had more time to take more of them, but its much better than taking none 🙂

Facebook – How It Impacts Me

I have been thinking about my perspective on usage of Facebook. I have had mixed feeling of how I feel, sometimes I was over excited, sometimes over emotional, sometimes angry but recently I also noticed its changing my thought process, the way I see life, my expectations are changing, my future plans are changing even my personality type is impacted by FB.

The part that bugs me most is confusion! Each of my friends and families live in a certain way, and each of them express their feelings, preferences, the way they live their life through pictures, statuses in their own way – sometimes off course the sole purpose is showing the world 😛

Sometimes it really confuses me (personally), cause sometimes an expression by someone looks so alluring that even if my personality will never would agree on such things, I lean towards those ideas! Seeing people living in a certain way sometimes makes me feel ‘Am I living the right way? Should I be doing that or this?’ I want and try my best to be an observer on FB and try to be less interactive, I do not want to be influenced by something which probably has no value in my personal practical life, I do not want to change my priorities just because some one said something cool and I think I should do the same leaving everything else.

I am a human being and not perfect at all, everyday I give my best shots to improve myself in the things I believe I should be better, but last few months I have noticed, I am losing my track, and the more I was confused the more I realized a big catalyst has been FB! I got drifted apart in so many ways from my original thoughts and plans to some random ones just because in the social world of FB it looked cooler/facinating 🙂

It may all sound very weird and confusing to some readers, but if anyone is in the same place as me, will understand what I am trying to express. Everybody is different, so I do not expect anyone to agree with me, these are purely my personal thoughts and how I am disturbed by the presence of FB. Nonetheless, I must agree, there are things I do love about FB, and that is why I do not want to just deactivate and disappear! Rather, I feel from now on I should try even more harder to be an observer and be strong at what I stand for in my personal/professional life. I can grab the ideas/concepts by others I really admire and that matches my personality but I surely have to be careful with my usage of Facebook for my own benefit 🙂

Welness Retreat II – A Changed Lipna!

The three days(Sept 3 – Sept 6) at Birchcreek Retreat Center has been a whole different experience of my life! Three days living on juice only!!

A typical day there was like:

• Wake up around 8.30 PM
• Have a Berley shot
• Walk for 1.5 hours in the beautiful jungle and lakes
• Have a juice for breakfast
• Around 11 either do workouts or yoga depending on the treat you chose.
• Around 12.30 lunch, smoothie
• Around 2PM, again either do workouts or yoga depending on the treat you
• Break between 3-4ish.
• Around 4/4.30 again either do workouts or yoga depending on the treat you
• Then 6PM, dinner, juice again
• Whole day drink water!

We (all the guests) used to talk and hang out after the walk or lunch or dinner. We used to talk about how our life came to a stage where we can’t take it anymore and committed to make a change, we finally want to take care of ourselves, improve ourselves. All of these weer very helpful for me, talking constructive and being productive!

I loved the kick boxing we did for the work out training, also loved the yoga where she taught me different yoga practices, poses and was more focused on my relaxation, which I needed most 🙂

It was only 3 days for me, losing only 4lb, not at all visible, but I feel something has changed inside me, I feel more stronger and more controlled. I am not sure if it is temporary or what, but so far it feels so good, I feel so much energized than before, I feel so active and strong. 3 days isn’t a big time to make all these changes, but something inside me is strongly hit and changed a big part of me in a good way. This time I feel I am not going to lose myself, and damn it feels good to be back to the person I always wanted to be 🙂

Welness Retreat I – Escape!

Written on: September 03, 2012 – First Day on Birchcreek Retreat Center

I have been thinking about this for a while and then in a spike of an emotional moment I ended up reserving this place at Birchcreek Retreat Center for three days – to escape, to think and to explore myself! I am sure three days can’t change my life, but I just needed to do it! I have been telling about it almost every single day for last few years!

So, in the spark of a moment, I booked the ticket at midnight(Sept 2nd) for the next day without any confirmation! Next day woke up and called the center to confirm the reservation! Then went to Port Authority to get to the bus to Pine Hills! I was supposed to be on an Eid event of a friends, hanging out eating good foods with good friends, instead I was in the bus on my way to a place I have no clue of, hoping to surprise myself!

Well, the four hour ride has been really good! Even though it was cloudy the whole day, yet I didn’t get tired of the scenic view of upstate.

Finally I reached pine hill, a small suburb if Ulster. A staff member of the retreat was there to pick me up.  When I reached there, I didn’t see anybody. After official check ins, she showed me around the place and then I got into my room, its a sweet small lovely room on 3rd floor, i could see the jungles and the water flow in the creek from the windows, exactly the kind of place I am looking for 🙂 far far away from the city, from everyone, unreachable …I am in a peaceful place! It is so silent there that my ear would start hearing a ‘zzzzzzzzzzz’ sound!

So far loving it, only thing is it doesn’t feel like it should be that expensive, but anyway, let’s see how it goes. I finally have what I wanted, at least now I will not be complaining about it anymore!

First Time Camping @Lake George, NY!

This is the first time in my life I went camping, we were a group of 16 people! I was nervous at the beginning, thought of leaving my comfort zone and being with a group in some jungle site, what food I may have and whether I would be able to sleep nice…or damn the restrooms 😛

But, I was wrong. It was a wonderful trip. Very organized camp site at Lake George.
On Friday when we reached the camp around 6ish, some of our very active and hardworking friend set up 5 tents for the group. When we reached we just made sure the bed is ready inside the tent when we want to sleep 🙂 The food were marinated and kept in the cooler, and in the evening, we grilled, actually two/three friends did. I was mostly busy taking pictures, listening to the silence of the nature, chiliing out an eating. At night, two of our friends started singing! It was so nice….in the middle of jungle….listening to some old song..so nostalgic…so far away form the busy city life…..so much fun at the same time so much calm!

The next morning we woke up…had breakfast and went to Jet-Ski! My first time ever! I was so nervous but when it started, oh God! I realized, what have I missed so far! It was unbelievable! How could I never do that. I didn’t drive, since I don’t’ know how to swim and a bit scared, my hubby did, and we went in the middle of the lake and it was like heaven….we finished the jet-ski with an extreme excitement and feeling so content.

When we came back to camp site after our jet-ski adventure, another adventure was waiting for me. There was a lake and me, and my friends started learning how to swim, we both scared to death at water, yet something happened that day, we were free……lost in the nature, a bit wild may be…..gave my best shots to give it a try and for the first time I was able to swim…..it was for less than a min, but for me it was a lot!!!!!

Night started with more grilling and eating and dancing with music….I also did another small adventure of walking alobe in the jungle to go to the restroom 😀 we generally go as a group after 11, since its about 10/12 min away in the dark….but I went without turning on my torch light 🙂 I felt I was walking in my village in Bangladesh, no sound….pin drop silence…little bit scared….but more adventurous 🙂 it was a different kind of fun!

Everything has to end and so did those amazing two days. I brought so much memories with me. It was not only jet ski or swimming, it was also the people. We had a very interesting diverse group, I can’t think of doing it without any one of them! Each of them contributed to the fun in their own way……I feel very lucky to experience this. It was one my bucket list thing 🙂

Photography!

This has been in my mind for few years, I was always excited and happy when I used to see other people taking nice pics, the color, the effect has always inspired me to do some photography. But as always, I either didn’t have time or was too lazy to start.
Now I felt its the perfect time to learn something different and new 🙂
So, as a first step I bought the camera: Nikon D7000! Heard so much about it! I am still very new, and mostly taking pics in auto mode. But whenever I get chance, am trying to learn the techniques of taking quality pics. This link is a nice place where I took a tutorial tour for the basics. Also looking into this for basic understanding of ISP, Shutter Speed and Aperture!

I am pretty excited and hope to take some nice shots! Looking forward to sharing some digital creativity!!!

 

New Career & New Begining

A break for three months wasn’t bad! However, I did realize how hard it is to stay home 🙂 So, slowly I started looking for jobs and ended up accepting the offer from NYPL (New York Public Library).

One of the main reason I chose it because of the work life balance it offers. I wanted to work at a place where I can learn and grow without any pressure, and this is exactly the place! I am so happy. The other interesting thing is, since its a library I finally could force myself to visit the library once in a while and READ(though I worked as a Software Developer in an IT department, almost every office/branch is connected to one library :))! Yesterday, I made a library card and was walking around the book aisles, without even knowing what I want. And I ended up collecting 3 books, in fact I started reading one of them and loving it!

This is exactly the kind of life I was looking forward to: enough work to keep myself busy but not overwhelming, enough time to learn new technologies and grow, and enough time to keep in touch with friends and family!

Peace is what giving me most happiness right now. I hope to utilize this wonderful opportunity to do the things I always wanted to. For now, I want to finish two books this month, and the best part is I finished almost half of both books so far, so I see good chances of achieving what I plan already 😉

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Heaven On Earth – Grand Bahamas!

After quitting my job I went for a vacation, it was not planned that I would leave my job and go for vacation, in fact this was scheduled last year, but its a coincidence it was happening at the perfect time! This was my first time in a cruise and in Bahamas. I was not sure what to expect, I heard its going to be a great experience but wasn’t sure how much. And, as you can guess, there is no surprise that, I had one of the most amazing time of life. Those 3 days went like a snap of a finger! I was mesmerized by the beauty! Sometimes, looking at the ocean and the sky in front of me while sipping the coconut drink, I almost felt it can’t be true, this amazing moment can’t happening in real, specially not in this messy earth 😛

So, here is how everything went in short summary, we started our cruise from West Palm Beach, Florida at 6PM, the cabin we had was a ocean view cabin (not too fancy), but you could see the sea while sleeping 🙂 There were unlimited food in the cruise with all different kind of snacks! They even had a midnight buffet! To my surprise, food was great!!! I wasn’t expecting that much from the cruise, specially didn’t expect simple appetizer could be so tasty and yummy!!! The cruise had different shows, like playing Bingo, magic shows, comedy shows, aerobatic shows etc. They had a casino which off course was my place after 11pm, and Roulette is the only thing I can play 😉 As a whole, the cruise was like another world where you have food, movies, shows, drinks, clubbing and a room to sleep 🙂

After the fun night at the cruise, next morning around 9AM, we reached The Bahamas (Freeport), a bus took us to Grand Lucaya Resort and when we reached there I couldn’t speak for a while, what I was experiencing was heavenly beautiful nature!!! The ocean in front of the resort, so peaceful, so blue….so serene..I really can’t express this beauty in words, and unfortunately I also didn’t have a good camera to capture even a small part of what it seems!

Well, the checking in took a while and then in the evening we went to enjoy Bonfire. The first Bonfire of my life, under the sky, just in front of the ocean, and guess what? Full Moon!! What else you can expect to have if you were in heaven, it was heavenly for me…..then the organizers of Bonfire had some shows, like fire shows, couple competitions, music, dance etc.

Next day we went to attend the Dolphin Show! They are one wonderful creature! So cute! Had so much watching them playing different tricks and moves, touching them and kissed by the dolphins 🙂

Then we came back to enjoy the beach finally, unfortunately I don’t know how to swim but I was able to go to the water till my shoulder and loved it. I was jumping and lying in the water as long as I could, the temperature was so perfect!

There was a small market across the street from resort, so I bought some show pieces with Bahamas icon in it 🙂 The food there was good as well.

At night we watched movie lying down around the pool, the roaring ocean on the left and the full moon on right….I wish that moment never ended!! But it did, we came back next day. I wanted it to last forever, I was sad thinking why I never went to such place ever before, but I was also very happy to find out at least I did this time…it has been a great experience! Even though the moments did not last forever, I brought back those memories, everytime, now, when I think of the ocean, I smile, I cherish every second I had there!

I wish and hope, from now on I plan most of my vacation somewhere like this – where I can experience heaven on this earth 🙂

Flipped The Coin of Life!!!

Collected From Here

Finally, I flipped the coin of my life!

Everything was going smooth, at least that’s what it seemed from outside, but from inside, I was devastated, too much pressure at work, too many personal responsibilities, everything was messed up, everyday I used to wake up lost, had no clue where am I and what the hell I am doing with this life, I was loosing myself. I tried my best, but then I realized, I had to take the decision! Either one of the best or one of the most stupidest one – but I had to do it, and I did – I quit my job. My very well paid and very respectable job, I just quit, without any plan so far ahead of me I just did it. It was a weird feeling: free, sad, nervous, restless, peaceful – all at the same time!!
I am not sure whether I was more sad or more peaceful, but I do know for sure, I loved myself for doing that, it made me realize that I still have that spark left in me – am not scared!!

The rules of society and life threaten us in every decision we make, we are scared to do things which we feel will not go with the flow of society or comfort. I denied to live in that fear and did what I felt right for me! May be, it will not end up as nicely as I want it to, but I don’t think I will ever regret doing this, because I know myself, and I know how much I believe in respecting my own will 🙂

So, cheers to my bold decision and (hopefully) to a promising future ahead 🙂

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

Cooking!

I thought I hate cooking. But I noticed, when I start cooking I start humming, I play some nice songs, I feel like I am about to start something I like, but at the end of the cooking I feel so exhausted that I end up thinking I hate cooking 🙂 The interesting thing is that, when people eat what I cook, and can’t stop eating since they like it so much, I am so happy, my heart is content, its like – it was worth doing all these cooking stuff 🙂

I cooked shrimp today for the second time in my life (along with chicken curry, fish fry and lentils), as usual, I was very exhausted and tired at the end. But when hubby and sister were eating those and their face expressed that they had a small tour of heaven, once again, that moment made worth those 3 or 4 hours of process! I now have to admit, I do love cooking, I wish I had more time, so I could experience different foods, try different ingredients, different recipes for same dish, and not be stressed out at the end. I think I will love doing that, only if I had some. Sigh! Time is something I don’t have these days. The work is getting stressful everyday, every time I finish a project and think its going to be relaxing this time, its even a bigger stressful project! I know, I know, that’s how corporate world works, that’s how things work, when you want to grow in this competitive world, but sometimes I just wonder how much its worth spending all these stressful hours and end up not getting time to do things you would rather love doing!!

Anyway, it was a good day today with some spicy tasty cooking and loving people to appreciate it 🙂

And Here I Am – Finally Writing!

My last post was on August 2010! OMG! I didn’t even write a single piece in 2011! Have I stopped writing forever? Its not like I used to write very important stuffs, but at least I had a presence in the web where I was sharing things I like or dislike or articles/poetry I read! But now, it seems I have nothing to talk about. Where did that Lipna go? I don’t know! The possible reason is I really don’t get much time for myself these days. I am either working, or meeting friends/relatives (much much less frequently), or cooking, or doing laundry or watching movies exhausted and tired!! I rarely get a time just for myself! Time when I am doing nothing, no chores needs to be done, no task needs to be completed, just some relaxing time when I can pause for a moment, look at my life, thinking about what am I doing, what is my destination, what’s happening around me? If I could manage to have the time to ponder on these thoughts, I would have wrote and shared some of these. I don’t want to stop writing, I know, I am not a good writer, but that doesn’t mean I can not try to be one. I shall try! I want to start writing again!!!

Anyway, it snowed only thrice I guess here in NY City this winter so far. Yesterday (theoretically today :), I was out at 2.00 AM, and it was snowing, my hair, hands filled with little snow flurries and I looked up in the sky and loved it! I felt connected to the nature again after a long long time. My roller coaster speedy life paused for a moment last night, and I enjoyed every bit of it 🙂 I want more pauses in my life like this for myself, I don’t want to live like a robot, eat, sleep, work, watch a movie, meet friends and eat again without really being connected to them I want a life which provides more than that, I want to be more connected to the nature, I want to be connected with my friends and family with heartfelt love and care, not just meeting once in a blue moon and disappeared for the rest times, I want to be part of something creative, may be painting, may be writing….I want to live a life which will make me smile when I leave this world not disappointed!! At least I know what I want from my life. I hope I will work towards full filling them!

Well, it feels good writing after so long! Hope all the readers are doing great and having a good time. Till the next post, Adios people!!!!

Its never too late to come back to blogging :)

Its been a while I am away from the blog. I guess, unless you are into something which you regularly intent to write, it’s kinda a hard to keep blogging/writing.

Last few months have been really hectic. Some of my dreams came true!! I moved to New York!! I got a job I like, my hubby (FINALLY!) moved to NY with me too, so no more long distance relationship.  New job, new place, new friends….very much loving it! And all these absorbs me so much that sometimes I just don’t get time for myself.

When I first moved, finding an apartment in NY (a livable one!!!!) was one of the most difficult  job I have ever had to do, and then setting up the furniture was another pain in the neck. New job was very hectic too when I joined.  I cant imagine how last 5 months went….its like just yesterday I moved here! It was hell lot of pressure..stress!

Now things  kind of getting easier with time. All my colleagues are wonderful at work and am learning so much!!! Not only things related to work, am learning about new culture, new foods…I feel blessed to get the chance to experience all these diversity which would have been really hard in any other place other than NY 🙂

Also, now that hubby is with me, I don’t have to wait for someone to plan some thing 🙂 So many things are here to enjoy…Broadway Shows, Clubs, Music, Parties, Cruising…and so many more! We just decide and go!!

With time, the more I am settling down, I feel I have made one of the best decisions in my life to move to NY. Now all I need is focus to reach my life’s goals. Everything else is set for me now, I reached a point of my life that now, I need focus for the things I have always wanted to be able to do. I hope I can, I have to and I will!!!

Til the next post, adios from me 🙂