Once upon a summer..

There is a certain allure to being a tourist in Europe. To having a checklist of must-see places and getting a grin of satisfaction on your face as you tick them off.Today I was a whole new different kind of tourist in Europe. The spontaneous one.All we knew in the morning was that we had to go see the Rhine falls. We surprisingly left on time and managed to land up in Schauffausen. We had no clue which direction to head in and managed to reach a place with 500 different sign boards all saying Rhine falls. We decided to walk in one particular direction we felt fondly towards and walked up a slightly inclined road. We could hear it first. Then we took a turn and saw the falls in all its glory. Out came our cameras and our tourist-ness. We photographed anything and everything that looked remotely pretty.We ate a typical European lunch (quick and not satisfying) at a picturesque restaurant overlooking the falls. We then took a boat ride which led us straight to a steep flight of stairs which gave us the most spectacular and breathtaking views of the falls. Then we got ourselves a bottle of coke and two glasses and headed to spot in a park under the shade of a tree. We sat and drank our cokes in states of complete contentment looking at the river flowing and the mountains in the background.We found our way to the station and decided that we had enough time to stop at Zurich for a while. Both of us had not even a remote clue of what to see or where to go. We took the safe way out. We asked for the closest water body and headed straight to Bellevue. My first point on the agenda was to get some ice cream in that heat. With ice cream cones in hand we walked along the bridge enjoying the view and people watching more than anything else. We found a small colourful fair and I insisted that we had to take a giant wheel ride. As the wheel moved higher and higher, the city just got prettier and prettier. All the colours of the boats, the people on the shores, the tulips, the solid, old churches were too much to take all at once.
A little stroll across the shore. An impromptu concert. A Jim Morrison sound alike. Pictures with a painted golden man. A cold can of beer. Window shopping. And we had somehow reached the station again.
We noticed a little park tucked away just before the station and entered it almost on impulse. One of us chose to tuck her jacket around her and lie down on the grass and look at the blue sky while the other chose to take his camera and take pictures of everything around us.
We both go back home with memories of a different kind of Europe. It wasn't special only because of the places we saw, it was the sheer joy of discovering bits and pieces that we didn't know existed.

The top 10 invaluable life lessons I learnt as a child

• Be a little more caring and loving towards your grandmother lest one day a wolf impersonates her and you don’t even notice.
• If you think you are likely to get lost, put more reliable markers along the way apart from food in a forest full of hungry birds.
• When you plan on breaking into a bear’s house, be a little careful with the evidence. Half eaten bowls of porridge, broken furniture and sleeping on their beds after a heavy meal is a strict no-no.
• If your head is an egg then it is highly suggested that you do not sit on precarious walls.
• When you have seven dwarfs as friends, it is advisable to keep one or two at home as body guards, especially when you have evil step mothers with poisoned apples lurking about.
• When your fairy godmother appears in front of you, ask to marry the prince himself rather than asking for shiny shoes and a carriage and then wait for the prince to find your feet.
• Never, ever, put a baby in a cradle on a tree top.
• If you have been cursed and find yourself trapped in a castle, either grow your hair long enough or sleep till your Prince charming comes along.
• A pea under ten mattresses can be very uncomfortable to sleep on.
• No matter how regal an emperor you are, be smart enough to realise the difference between wearing good clothes and no clothes at all.

Alphabet Soup!

Always. Silence. Comfortable.
Remembrance. Affection. Evident.
Closure. Romance. Undercurrent.
Hearty. Avaricious. Time.
Immense. New. Dreams.
Tender. Abduction. Thoughts.
Her. Tangle. Emotions.
Always. Half. Better.

First words together...

Muse: Finani

10 easy steps to completing an assignment in corporate finance

Step 1:
Receive mail about assignment. Look around for more people to crib to about the incessant workload. Mark it as starred and promise yourself to look at it soon.

Step 2:
Morning of the day before the assignment is due, talk to people and nod along when they say 'It is going to be a long night today. It is quite difficult'. Promise to start by afternoon itself so you can sleep early in the night.

Step 3:
Wake up from your long afternoon nap and tell yourself that you needed the sleep to be alert and work on the assignment all night.Get yourself some snacks. Afterall, you need the energy to work all night. Chat for a while over coffee.

Step 4:
Read the assignment once and exclaim loudly to no one in particular that the analysis needs to be done for your peer company too. Feel free to add expletives of your choice to this step.

Step 5:
Read class notes furiously and try to see if any familiar words correspond between yours and his.
Try to interpret your sleepy handwriting to figure out what exactly you meant when you wrote those words.

Step 6:
Officially give up on figuring out the assignment on your own and start pinging everyone on your gtalk furiously to figure out if they have figured out what to do. Ideally in this step, there will always be a few souls who have figured it out and will tell you what to do.

Step 7:
Start the assignment with all intentions of doing it properly and pore over annual reports hoping that the necessary question is irrelevant to your company

Step 8:
When sick of Step 7 [hint: words will start blurring in front of you and Microsoft word will be a distant white haze], start writing random answers and somehow aim to complete the assignment.

Step 9:
Send shoddily done assignment and hope your roll number is not picked by the random number generator. As you go to sleep, Promise to start early next time and do full justice to the assignment.

Step 10:
Next assignment arrives in your mailbox. Repeat Steps 1 through 9.