Birthday Girl!

I wish I could say that I was the subject of this post, but unfortunately my birthday isn't till September. This post is going to be solely dedicated to our favourite Poodle. It is her birthday tomorrow and she has decided to become into a full fledged adult. She has finally turned 18, which means that now she can legally watch R-rated movies, have sex and drink in this country without feeling guilty for breaking the law (we all know that the law and not the lack of opportunity was the only thing that was keeping her from indulging in these activities)

Even though we have been going to the same school for about four years now, we have only been friends for about a year and a half because well, we had different social circles in school. Alright, who am I kidding, TPF was a bitch for two years, until she finally decided to start being nice to me. It is rather strange that in a grade of 47 people and a school of less than 250 people that we did not become friends straight away. Predictably enough, the first normal conversation we had was on books and ahem... fanfiction. We have been close friends ever since. There is nothing better than Harry Potter bonding to bring people together.

To say that both of us fight a lot would be an understatement, but to say that we both get along would also be one too. I judge how much I care for a person by their ability to get on my nerves. This is a strange parameter to measure love by, but I've found it particularly useful. I think the only person how can get on my nerves as much as my mum happens to be TPF.

In less than a month, we're leaving for university and it's going to be very frightening not to have her here with me living fifteen minutes away from my house or going to the same school as me. I'll miss spending all day together only to get home and talk to her on phone while finding myself emailing her the same evening for absolutely no reason. I think, I'm even going to miss our adorable arguments.

Sample Argument
TPF: 'Is my hair looking okay from the back?'
Pan: 'Do I look like I care?'
TPF: *sulks*
Pan: 'Alright, I'm sorry, it's looking fine, really!'
TPF: *sulks*
Pan: 'Oh my god, do you have to over react for the silliest things?'
TPF: 'Oh look whose talking!'
Pan: 'What is that supposed to mean?'
TPF: 'You think I'm touchy, have you seen yourself?'
Pan: *sulks*
And so the vicious cycle continues for 2 whole minutes till Pan and TPF are either tired of sulking or have forgotten why they were mad at each other in the first place

As Harry once put it , on an average we fight for about 30 minutes a day. (Oh god, we do sound like a married couple, don't we? We remind me of my mum and dad and that is definitely not a good sign).

I'm not even going to try wishing her the very best in life, because I know that she doesn't need luck. She happens to be the most intelligent person I've ever had the opportunity to meet in my short and insignificant lifetime. I love her very much and all I can say is that she's the bestest! As I've told her so many times, I only love her because she's so intelligent, funny and pretty. Now on the other hand, if she was stupid, boring and not to mention horribly ugly, I wouldn't have bothered with her at all. Its the blond hair, green eyes and the pretty dimples that keep me in her company.

Aww, our very own Poodle is finally legal now and all I can do is get teary eyed and go: "They grow up fast, don't they?" and reminiscence on how I've just spent the best two years of my life with her.

Football Fever

I've never been much of a sports fan. But I can well understand why it means so much to a lot of people. I am moderately fond of cricket because I'm Indian and any self respecting Indian is supposed to love cricket.

I also quite enjoy watching football, but only with my dad or TPF because all through the match they're always giving me random and not to mention useless factual information about the players. They only do this because they know how much of a sucker I am for useless and random facts. Therefore as you can see, I'm not overly testostrony about football like most of the people I know, but I have to say the World Cup is a completely different issue.

I like football mainly because I get to watch overly cute men running around in shorts for 90 whole minutes. Additionally, I like it because the teams sing their national anthems before every match and that for some reason makes me cry. Superficiality apart, I'm also in it for the sportsmanship, team spirit, also obviously for an opportunity to watch a good game and blah blah blah.

TPF and I had been following the first round of the World Cup rather badly because we were in India when it began. This does not mean that we don't have television in India or that one can't watch football in India, but means that we were invariable not at home when the matches were aired. So we almost missed most of the first few matches, including Italy's first match against Ghana. But we've been religiously following the rest of the World Cup ever since we've gotten back, ahem...well except from the Portugal-Netherlands match because that evening Harry and I thought it would be a good idea to go swimming in the sea at 11 at night without towels when were were staying at her grandparents house near Genova (But that's a different adventure which shall be put up here in due course)

As I said, even though the World Cup fever was not lost on me, I was still unprepared for what I saw last Sunday at the finals. The Italy-Germany semi finals match was great. Michael Ballack (he's the German captain) looked so ahem... hot when he was crying after the match that Germany lost, that I almost want to re-watch that match only to see him crying at the end of it all over again. Alright, I agree, I'm a horrible person, but he is rather pretty.

Sometimes I forget I live in Italy because I'm rather absentminded and not to mention unaware of the world around me. But ever since Italy became the World Cup finalists, the fact that I'm actually living here has been brought to my notice with celebratory screams and these horns that are so loud that you jump every time somebody blows them, around the city for a few days before the actual match.

The frenzy in Milan right before the match was absolutely crazy. There were more than 10 thousand people in the city centre who had come to watch the match on a tiny screen that had been put up there. Most of these 10 thousand people had flags with them, which they found necessary to wave around wildly all the time. This also meant that whatever little one's view was of that tiny screen was completely obstructed.

As you may have already noticed from the picture at the side which was taken by Pan before the match started that she was one of these 10 thousand idiots at the main square along with her dad and TPF. Thankfully we thought it prudent to return home for the second half of the match and watch it like civilized people in front of our flat screen television. This has to be one of the smartest decisions that Pan and her father might have actually made together in their entire lifetime.

Anyways, I did spend most of the second half and the extra time with my head into a cushion on my couch because I just couldn't bear to see what was happening. I was too nervous to watch most of the match. But surprisingly enough I gathered my courage and watched all the penalty kicks. Normally, as a principle I don't watch penalties, but this was with World Cup finals with Italy playing, so I just couldn't have missed that.

My dearest wish for the outcome of the match was wanting Italy to win, but also wanting Zidane (the captain of the French side, who also happens to be my favourite football player in the whole world and mind you, extremely attractive too) to score. And score he did on a penalty kick. Anyways I'm never going to forgive Materazzi for for being an asshole and making Zidane headbutt him. No, nothing anyone says is going to convince me otherwise. Zidane is like Eric Clapton, he's God!

After the match we went out to the main city centre. After all, that was where about 10 thousand people saw the match. By 'we' I mean, Pan's mum, Pan's dad, TPF, TPF's 10 euro Italian flag (which was completely worth it) and your fabulous and extremely modest narrator, Pan. The pictures posted up here are all taken from my Dad's exceedingly old cell phone and so they don't portray even half the atmosphere or emotions in the air before and after the match. Although, you can see from the picture below, there were naked people dancing around in the city's main fountain, which was just plain ewww because I suspect that the water in those fountains is slimy and unclean. For once, even your prissy narrator, Pan looked upon these barbaric people with a fond eye because Italy had won the World Cup after all and certain allowances had to be made for the night. Of course, Pan did get wild when the dirty fountain water was splashed by fat, naked guy on her beautiful shiny tresses reminding her of the wild night where there was a lot of cocktail throwing in the air and her hair had gotten stuck in the cross fire.

It was a great match and Italy deserved to win, not because they were a better team, but because Pan supported them and because they were prettier than the French side.

Back from the Dead with a Big Bang!

Look who's back. It's me, everyone's favourite drama queen back from the dead, although I wasn't exactly dead; so the title of my post sounds rather silly, but I've always wanted to use that phrase at least once in my life and right now seemed to be an opportune moment.

So at this moment the reader might be wondering where the heck has Pan been for so long. My answer to that question would be a shameful 'here and there'. Alright, I admit it, I've been guilty of procrastination and haven't been on any website apart from my email and mugglenet for more than a month now. Although, I have been busy doing other things like attending various 'social events' (in normal teenage terminology 'social events' means decadent, debauched, alcohol ridden parties). Additionally, there was the Graduation Day ceremony last week where Pan almost tripped on the flag of her own country because she couldn't control the sari that TPF had forced her to wear. Pan was also forced by mean teacher to give a speech and be a model nerdy student, which she certainly is, to a bunch of parents, most of whom don't understand a word of English on Graduation Day. And how can I not mention the fateful and depressing thing called examination results that we got a few days ago.

I can never make up my mind about examination results. They always depress me for some strange reason however well or badly I may have done in them. Maybe it could be because there is so much hype building up before the marks are given out, one can't help but feel a bit let down when one finally gets them after a long wait.

Results aside what else has Pan been doing because it has been almost a month since she came back from India. Well, I can't resist it anymore, I have to bring the second part of the post title into motion. Last night, Pan and TPF went to the Rolling Stones concert. It was their first concert in Europe of their 'A Bigger Bang' tour. The concert began at nine in the evening but Pan and TPF were there since seven listening to crappy introducing band (called Feeder) and socialising with creepy, old man next to us. Alright, I'm lying here. TPF was the one talking to old man next to us, while Pan just looked the other way and pretended that she doesn't understand Italian and know either of them.

No, we didn't see Mick from that close. That's ahem... the picture of the screen. We did have the cheapest tickets (which were not cheap under any circumstances, we bought them for 50 euro), so we were the furthermost away from the stage. There were about 60 thousand people there, so one can only imagine how full the stadium was. Needless to say, the concert was fabulous. It involved the most varied age group of people I've ever seen. There were people from age 16 to age 70. I am now the proud owner of a Rolling Stones t-shirt and a band poster. Of all the strangest people to bump into at a concert with 60 thousand people, we bumped into Mags and her sister (Hopefully some of you might remember TPF's friend and drug addict extraordinaire, Mags who has made several drunk appearances on TPF's blog)

Pan almost cried when Mick sang, 'I can get no satisfaction'. It was also the exact moment of her life that Pan realized that she was born in the wrong times. Pan's not meant for the 21st century, but for the good ol' sixties and seventies. I mean, if I was 18 in the sixties I wouldn't be sitting in front of a computer updating my blog. Pan from the sixties would have been half way around the globe on a trek to Katmandu listening to Cream cassettes on her cool, new walkman. But no, she's dumped against her wishes into the 21st century, where she is forced to listen to Cream and The Rolling Stones on her ipod instead.

But as usual I digress. Coming back to the concert, Mick Jagger looks as hot as ever. My god, he's in his sixties and I'm crushing on him, I should really stop. Keith Richards looks like he's going to drop dead any second. TPF and I were really afraid that we were going to be a witness to Keith Richards' death. I also have a minor crush on Keith, which is just plain scary, and so I don't like thinking about it. On top of it all, we also saw Materazzi and Del Piero at the concert (to all those ignorant people who don't know who I'm talking about, they are famous Italian football players). This just reminds me of the subject of my next post which is going to be football. As everyone may know, Italy just won the World Cup last week. (If you didn't know this, please stop reading my blog right now and go and get an update on current world news).

So there you go, you've just got an update on Pan's social life. It is rather strange that after a four year slump my social life has been on an all time high these days. But after all this is the longest holiday I'm ever going to have in my life unless I'm unemployed in the future, so I might as well enjoy myself. Although I must admit, it feels odd to be happy all the time. I mean, I'm one of those teen angsting people who gets depressed and morose rather easily. Poor TPF, you should ask her about it because she's the one who has to put up with my mood swings. Although, we are married and everything, so I'm not sure if I'm supposed to feel guilty about it. But as I said, it's been really great these days. I shall post the photos of our Bombay pictures next week, so that everyone has something to look forward to.