They say that expectations kill relationships. But you can't have a relationship without expectations, can you? The same holds true for friendships, and that's one of the things that distinguishes friends from acquaintances.
I expect someone I consider a friend to be there for me when I need him/her, and I would do the same for them. But 31 years and I still err when it comes to separating my friends from acquaintances.
The key is to remember that there IS a reason why you aren't "friends" with someone you may have casually known for some time. People who're meant to be friends click at the first go. If you didn't - or it didn't occur to you both to take things to the next level - it's a sign that you should invest your emotions, time and energy elsewhere. If you pursue something that's not meant to be, you WILL be disappointed sooner rather than later.
I'm very lucky and blessed to have the friends that I do - friends who are there for me when I'm going through a rough time, who stick by me through thick or thin, who lift my spirits when I'm low, and who know when they need to put me before themselves because my need at that time may be greater than theirs. I try to be there for my friends as much as I can. And that is how the cookie crumbles.
Showing posts with label Friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friends. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Monday, June 7, 2010
My Mini-Vacation is Over :(
Pizza slices and lamb stew at Pali Village Cafe...
Baked Philly cheesecake, chocolate "sin" cake and white chocolate latte at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf...
Bacon, ham, salami pizza and cheesy pasta with chicken & mushrooms at Pizzaria...
Baked Philly cheesecake and mango cheesecake from Moshe's...
Soba noodles with bacon & orange zest in a creamy sauce, pan seared chicken with porcini, caramelized onion sauce & roasted potatoes and Baked Philly cheesecake at Salt Water Cafe...
A box of yummilicious chocolate eclairs and brownie cheesecakes from Sante brought by a wonderful friend...
Two foodies, dessert lovers, shopaholics and BFF enjoying a weekend off together...
The Knife trying his best to make a disgusted face...
And my chubby face and chubby arms having made it to a celebrity food blogger's blog (isn't that just delightful!)
I had the most fun mini-vacation! More on it coming up soon...
What you did over the weekend?
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Rendezvous at Flurys
What do you do when you get an unexpected half day off work and that day happens to be a Friday?
You make the most of the early weekend!! You do girly stuff like shop (if you’re a girl that is), and then set off to meet a friend for coffee & desserts. Now, that sounds like a plan!!
Honestly, I had no clue what to expect when I set off to meet The Knife on Friday evening. He’s fairly senior to me professionally (though he's part of the same organization as I), and I know him mainly through his blogs & a couple of face-to-face meetings that lasted all of five minutes. I didn’t know if we would find enough things to talk about for an entire evening.
Well, as it turned out, we did!!
In a quest to find a coffee shop that is different from the staid ambience, lukewarm coffee, and clueless & often rude waiters of Barista & CCD, we settled on Flury’s.
Flury’s, a cakes & pastry shop that the generation before ours that grew up in Calcutta swore by, has seen a dramatic fall from grace and glory since the 70s-80s. As a result of which most Calcuttans today are quite anti-Flury’s. Their stuff isn’t so good anymore but is fairly expensive. Other chains such as Kookie Jar & Cakes have taken over the desserts domain since then but the few things that are still good at Flury’s are it’s Chocolate Cubes (a simple, unassuming chocolate pastry), rum ball (rich but delicious) and as I discovered during this visit, the almost-neon-pink Strawberry Cube!
(The one thing that absolutely ticks me off with Flury’s is that if you visit during lunch/dinner hours & want only a cup of coffee and/or desserts rather than their food items, they refuse to let you sit on one of the tables. Instead you have to drink your coffee/have your pastry standing at the bar. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a bar stool.)
The Knife was pretty nostalgic about Flury’s and ordered a chocolate cube, a rum ball & a strawberry cube that I crinkled my nose at first, and even resisted eating due to it’s bright plastic pink color! Well, one bite of it & I couldn’t stop myself from taking many more. It wasn’t until when there was about one-fourths of it left that it struck me that it was actually The Knife (and not me!) who had called for the Strawberry Cube & I was being rude by gobbling it up. That didn’t stop me from polishing off the rest of it too, but at least I kept asking him to eat it as well.
We spoke about a lot of things – his market research papers (Kalyan, I think you should be a culinary expert rather than a Market Researcher, I really do!) that take him to exotic locales such as Switzerland frequently, Candies, our shared love for Bandra & loathing for coffee shops serving lukewarm coffee, books, blogging, Calcutta food & restaurants, the Calcutta Metro & many other things. It was mildly amusing to see him get excited over the word ‘Sprugli’ used in conjunction with coffee (he has just returned from a trip to Switzerland)....he was being very hopeful.
Two brewed coffees (for him), two Mochas (for me) & 3 pastries later, we headed to a roll shop where we had….guess what?....a roll each that was stuffed with chicken/mutton and deep friend in oil. A Calcutta original. I kept staring in horror at the amount of oil leaking out of the roll while he happily ignored me & chomped on his mutton roll. (I’ve got to give it to you, you really know your food. The fried onions in the roll, instead of the raw ones, did make a world of difference to the roll).
We didn’t run out of things to talk about even after 3 hours of hanging out. But I must admit one thing – if you read each other’s blogs (and blogs being an integral part of the lives of bloggers, we do put a lot of us & our lives out there), it’s strange when the other person says, “Yeah I read about this on your blog”, or you’re saying something & they finish your sentence for you because they’ve read it on your blog already. It’s a strange feeling but is it nice?
You tell me.
You make the most of the early weekend!! You do girly stuff like shop (if you’re a girl that is), and then set off to meet a friend for coffee & desserts. Now, that sounds like a plan!!
Honestly, I had no clue what to expect when I set off to meet The Knife on Friday evening. He’s fairly senior to me professionally (though he's part of the same organization as I), and I know him mainly through his blogs & a couple of face-to-face meetings that lasted all of five minutes. I didn’t know if we would find enough things to talk about for an entire evening.
Well, as it turned out, we did!!
In a quest to find a coffee shop that is different from the staid ambience, lukewarm coffee, and clueless & often rude waiters of Barista & CCD, we settled on Flury’s.
Flury’s, a cakes & pastry shop that the generation before ours that grew up in Calcutta swore by, has seen a dramatic fall from grace and glory since the 70s-80s. As a result of which most Calcuttans today are quite anti-Flury’s. Their stuff isn’t so good anymore but is fairly expensive. Other chains such as Kookie Jar & Cakes have taken over the desserts domain since then but the few things that are still good at Flury’s are it’s Chocolate Cubes (a simple, unassuming chocolate pastry), rum ball (rich but delicious) and as I discovered during this visit, the almost-neon-pink Strawberry Cube!
(The one thing that absolutely ticks me off with Flury’s is that if you visit during lunch/dinner hours & want only a cup of coffee and/or desserts rather than their food items, they refuse to let you sit on one of the tables. Instead you have to drink your coffee/have your pastry standing at the bar. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a bar stool.)
The Knife was pretty nostalgic about Flury’s and ordered a chocolate cube, a rum ball & a strawberry cube that I crinkled my nose at first, and even resisted eating due to it’s bright plastic pink color! Well, one bite of it & I couldn’t stop myself from taking many more. It wasn’t until when there was about one-fourths of it left that it struck me that it was actually The Knife (and not me!) who had called for the Strawberry Cube & I was being rude by gobbling it up. That didn’t stop me from polishing off the rest of it too, but at least I kept asking him to eat it as well.
We spoke about a lot of things – his market research papers (Kalyan, I think you should be a culinary expert rather than a Market Researcher, I really do!) that take him to exotic locales such as Switzerland frequently, Candies, our shared love for Bandra & loathing for coffee shops serving lukewarm coffee, books, blogging, Calcutta food & restaurants, the Calcutta Metro & many other things. It was mildly amusing to see him get excited over the word ‘Sprugli’ used in conjunction with coffee (he has just returned from a trip to Switzerland)....he was being very hopeful.
Two brewed coffees (for him), two Mochas (for me) & 3 pastries later, we headed to a roll shop where we had….guess what?....a roll each that was stuffed with chicken/mutton and deep friend in oil. A Calcutta original. I kept staring in horror at the amount of oil leaking out of the roll while he happily ignored me & chomped on his mutton roll. (I’ve got to give it to you, you really know your food. The fried onions in the roll, instead of the raw ones, did make a world of difference to the roll).
We didn’t run out of things to talk about even after 3 hours of hanging out. But I must admit one thing – if you read each other’s blogs (and blogs being an integral part of the lives of bloggers, we do put a lot of us & our lives out there), it’s strange when the other person says, “Yeah I read about this on your blog”, or you’re saying something & they finish your sentence for you because they’ve read it on your blog already. It’s a strange feeling but is it nice?
You tell me.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Sometimes, All It Takes to Make Your Day...
...is a text from a long lost best friend saying that he's thinking about you & missing you. And just wanted to check you're doing well.
I love you too A. And I do miss you a lot...
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Things Fall Apart
All the time in relationships & friendships. Due to misunderstandings, unmet expectations, misplaced accusations, incriminations, people making a judgment about something you might have said or done - or not!
Sometimes your closest friends fail to understand you. Sometimes they are quick to form conclusions. Sometimes they are so blinded by expectations, they can’t bring themselves to respect the way you are and accept you for it. You try and explain it to them a few times, make it up to them, take the (misplaced) blame even, just so you can preserve a friendship that means something to you. But you do reach a point when the only thing you can do is let go. For how long can you keep acting the way people expect you to act?
I don’t understand why people expect you to act a particular way in the first place, and get offended & upset when you don’t! Is that fair? Agreed, there has to be some level of expectations in relationships & close friendships, but the beauty of a friendship over a relationship is that you’re not supposed to prosecute a friend over unmet expectations. Friendships lose their meaning the moment they become binding.
Especially for free-spirited people like me. I dislike being tied down just as I detest tying others down. You will not find me holding grudges against friends who forget to call back or do not call back for whatever reason. If I want to talk to them badly enough, I call them back. I don't sulk when a friend cancels. It's okay...things can come up. The world isn't about to end, and neither is our friendship. I do not expect people to act one way or the other, I do not hold them to what I think they should do! I give them their space when I feel they need it, they do not need to spell it out.
Similarly, I need my friends to not expect me to act in a certain way & get upset when I don't. If you can't understand this bit about me even though you claim to know me so well, our friendship had a chance in hell to begin with!
Unfortunately, as I have learnt the hard way many times over, not acting the way your friends expect you to act can often be misconstrued as not caring enough, not being committed enough to the friendship or not valuing it enough. Apparently, bonding over brownies & cheesecakes & shopping for shoes isn't enough to seal friendships. Is anything?
Friendships thrive when there is a willingness to accept the other person the way they are.
They are meant to be fun zones, not an element of life that stresses you out & ties you down. That’s what relationships are for! Sometimes, your closest friends fail to realize this, and you wake up to this realization only after things have fallen apart. Completely.
P.S.: Title of the post borrowed from Chinua Achebe. Feeling expressed - heartfelt.
Sometimes your closest friends fail to understand you. Sometimes they are quick to form conclusions. Sometimes they are so blinded by expectations, they can’t bring themselves to respect the way you are and accept you for it. You try and explain it to them a few times, make it up to them, take the (misplaced) blame even, just so you can preserve a friendship that means something to you. But you do reach a point when the only thing you can do is let go. For how long can you keep acting the way people expect you to act?
I don’t understand why people expect you to act a particular way in the first place, and get offended & upset when you don’t! Is that fair? Agreed, there has to be some level of expectations in relationships & close friendships, but the beauty of a friendship over a relationship is that you’re not supposed to prosecute a friend over unmet expectations. Friendships lose their meaning the moment they become binding.
Especially for free-spirited people like me. I dislike being tied down just as I detest tying others down. You will not find me holding grudges against friends who forget to call back or do not call back for whatever reason. If I want to talk to them badly enough, I call them back. I don't sulk when a friend cancels. It's okay...things can come up. The world isn't about to end, and neither is our friendship. I do not expect people to act one way or the other, I do not hold them to what I think they should do! I give them their space when I feel they need it, they do not need to spell it out.
Similarly, I need my friends to not expect me to act in a certain way & get upset when I don't. If you can't understand this bit about me even though you claim to know me so well, our friendship had a chance in hell to begin with!
Unfortunately, as I have learnt the hard way many times over, not acting the way your friends expect you to act can often be misconstrued as not caring enough, not being committed enough to the friendship or not valuing it enough. Apparently, bonding over brownies & cheesecakes & shopping for shoes isn't enough to seal friendships. Is anything?
Friendships thrive when there is a willingness to accept the other person the way they are.
They are meant to be fun zones, not an element of life that stresses you out & ties you down. That’s what relationships are for! Sometimes, your closest friends fail to realize this, and you wake up to this realization only after things have fallen apart. Completely.
P.S.: Title of the post borrowed from Chinua Achebe. Feeling expressed - heartfelt.
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