Days 296 - 301 : Of Film Festivals, Visas, Running and That Beautiful Trip to the Zoo!

So am clearly lagging behind in blogging these days. Oh well!

Anyway another 6 days have passed and they have been great! And am gonna give 6 reasons why.

1) Mom has come down for a visit after a really long time, bringing with her some of my favourite food items. Koorka, guruvayur pappadom, chakka varattiyathu and what not!

2) I got the Bangladesh and Brussels visas! As an Indian, that is always an exciting thing. My Bangladesh visa process was interesting. They sent me emails saying that the visa has been rejected. Not once, twice! I called them up to understand why and they are like "Sorry, our system does that by default." How sweet. Anyway both are ready and that means I am all set for the next two festivals!

3) We got into 3 more festivals - Panchajanyam International Film Festival in Palakkad Kerala, Golden Triangle Bhubaneshwar International Film Festival in Orissa and Darbhanga International Film Festival in Bihar! That makes it a total of 25 film festivals! Who would have thought?!

4) I completed writing one new episode for our sitcom Athazham. There are plans to bring it back, and that's exciting!

5) As per my Runkeeper app, I made my best time in running in both the 3km and 5km marks! How awesome!

6) Last but definitely the most important one of the lot, the husband was on a work trip, so Madam and I went on a trip to the zoo, together with our helper. And it was such great fun! Madam walked pretty much everywhere in that humungous zoo, studying her map intently throughout and of course, talking non stop. It was such a great outing and I was so thankful that we could put everything else that happened behind us and behave like regular families that go to the zoo!

There you go... it is all good. Six wonderful reasons, six wonderful days.

199 more to go.

Days 271 - 273 : Festivals, 5K and a Script!

In midst of everything else, here are some other awesome things that happened too...

- I have managed to complete my first ever Malayalam commercial feature film script! I had been stuck at about 70% for a long time but thanks to the thinking time I had while travelling to and from Guwahati, I managed to figure out the remaining 30% of the screenplay. Writing it down then was just a matter of few hours, so that was easily done. So there! Another full length script! I have no idea what will come of this because the last feature script in Tamil is still lying around after four years since I completed it. But any writing is good, so am happy about this!

- I did my first 5K run in a very, very long time! I am not at all a runner at heart, but I had been following a personalized plan on RunKeeper over the last few weeks and I finally hit 5K. Actually more than hitting 5K, I was happy at how my stamina has been built over these few weeks. I realized that when my co-producer and I had to run quite a distance at the Delhi airport to catch our flight to Guwahati. While he was quite beat by the unexpected run, I wasn't too affected, which made me realize that my stamina must have improved. That felt good.

- Last but not the least, I think the last time I updated, Pularum Iniyum Naalekal had been officially selected to 17 festivals. Am so, so, so happy to share that the count is now at 21! Notably we are part of the Elles Tournent Dames Draaein Brussels Female Film Festival 2017 and we have been Nominated for the Best Regional Film Awards at the massive Kalyan International Film Festival in Mumbai! How very, very awesome!

227 more to go.

Day 226: Run!

It's been ages since I've gone running. My last many months had been focused on yoga or dance or Fitness Blender workout videos at home. But I decided that I need to run - you know, be out in the nature, away from screens, all that stuff.

So I downloaded Runkeeper again, bought myself a customized running plan and started to run.

At the end of the run, Runkeeper asks you whether you felt bad, good or great. And I felt absolutely "GREAT"!

274 more to go. 

Days 180 - 187 : From Flu to Food to Festivals!

Well, what can I say. Just like that, another week whizzes past and am happily seven blog posts behind. So I am just going to stop pretending that I am going to continue this consistently for 500 days. As a famous Malayalam saying goes, "Nadannaal nadannu." or "If it happens, it happens."

So, let's see how it goes.

But I think I have a good excuse for the latest bout of procrastination.

After a really long time, I had caught a massive flu. Like the type that makes you want to do nothing but sleep, sleep and sleep. So clearly, blogging was the last thing on my mind.

But several awesome things did happen - so here you go.

1) I got notified that "Pularum Iniyum Naalekal" is officially selected for the online Cinema World Fest Awards. Next step is for them to announce the awards and post which the best of the fest will be screened publicly in early 2017 in Canada. So that's the 7th festival we have managed to get in!

2) I was stuck at home with the flu, so I used some of the time to write 50% of a feature film script. Yes, that's 51 pages of fresh, fresh writing of a brand new Malayalam feature! How exciting! I had been developing this idea for a while... I had a lot of situations super clear in the head but not the entire storyline. As I was nursing my running nose, somehow things fell into place and now all that's left is writing the whole script! (And of course, then making the film, but first things first).

3) We re-visited Lakshmi Narasimhan, my favourite haunt for several years but one that I had not been frequenting as much, and I got to relive the joy of an Andhra dosa (and of medhu vada and filter coffee... bliss!). Not once, but twice over the last few days. That was enough pampering for my flu-ey self.

4) I also enjoyed some amazing home made Sri Lankan Chicken Biriyani and Fish  Curry, which was nicely packed for me because I missed a party at a friend's place, again thanks to my flu. So there I was, digging away at some really good biriyani and curry at 1am!

5) Madam has a recent fetish for locking doors as she walks out. It's fine if one of us is inside the room, otherwise it's a bit problematic getting locked out. When she did it once, I scolded her, even though the husband was inside the room and we weren't technically locked out. But the husband readily defended her, thereby completely undermining my effort to make her realize it is the wrong thing to do. After a while he went out to a friend's place, and she locked another door. And this time, we were indeed locked out. Given the husband had such a strong opinion that locking people out wasn't a crime, I called him to ask for a solution. The conversation went like this :
He : Oh, you are locked out?
Me : Yes
He : Oh
Me : What do you suggest we do now?
He : Hmmm
Me : Well?
He : Oh I know!!! Get a knife...
Me : Excuse me?
He : Get a knife and poke it in, twist the lock and it will open.

Yup. My man, very earnestly suggested getting a knife and breaking in. As if this is a talent I am born with.

You may wonder what this particular point is doing here, but it astonished me so much (and later cracked me up so much) that I thought it should be here for posterity. And no, I didn't get a knife. I had anticipated this particular situation, so my super awesome self had already put spare keys in different accessible rooms.

6) But this amazing man also appeared on CNBC talking about his company Teamie, and completely rocked it! So proud!

7) For the first time ever, I actually completed a full round of a fitness program. OK, so it was easiest one maybe - the 4 week low impact Fitness Blender fitness program. I didn't do it 4 weeks straight, but mixed it up with yoga and dance in between, but at least am through with it, which is oh so awesome!

8) And last but not the least, Madam drew this!

The Fish

313 more to go.

Day 151 : Tae Bo!

Am back home from China and I couldn't wait to start again on some normal workouts. It's been long - other than some yoga - since I got anything intensive done and I was feeling pretty unfit. Yet, I couldn't figure what I should do - everything felt a bit... meh.

And then I remembered Tae Bo! A mixture of Taekwondo and Kickboxing developed by Billy Banks, I had practiced it a few times many months ago and had since completely forgotten about it.

So yes, I did 40 minutes of kickass Tae Bo and felt oh-so-awesome! Definitely something to be done more frequently!

349 more to go.