Let's have a Party! Wait..what?!?

Hello again to all you lovely people :)
So....some of you might find this awkward to read. "Oh, why would it be awkward?" you may ask. Well, because I'm going to be talking about the infamous "Puberty Ceremony" (Saamathiya veedu/Poopunitha Neeratu Vizha, or some other long-ass tamil name for it!)
So those of you that aren't Tamil or familiar with this concept, it's basically when you have a party to celebrate a girl getting her first period...it makes me cringe just writing that! WHY!?! Who thought this would be a good idea?!
From what I understand, back in the olden days, this was done as a way of saying "Hey, my daughter's healthy and fertile, and she's ready to be married." Correct me if I'm wrong, but living in London in this day and age,  I feel that this is unnecessary, and dare I say, a bit inappropriate, especially considering the fact that most girls are like 13 when they start nowadays!
I don't even know where to begin...
There are different scales that you can do these ceremonies: there are the simple ones where it's just at your house, or there are the over the top ones with like 300 people, where you hire out a venue, just for the occasion. (Yup 300 people, sometimes there are more tamil people celebrating a girl's first period, than the total amount of guests at a non-tamil wedding).  It's become customary to give the guests a little present, kind of like a party favour, to say thanks for coming. Which I think is pretty sweet. But some of the people with the OTT ceremonies, feel like they have to compete with these gifts, I've heard stories of golden traditional lamps (kutthuvizhaku for all you tamils) being given out to each and every guest. Do you seriously have that much cash to blow...if so, just let me know, and I'll happily hand over my bank details to you.

So, what does the poor girl herself have to endure on this day? Well, she gets dressed in a saree, usually for the first time in her life. The perfect time really to be walking around in a saree and tripping to fall on your face; in front of a few hundred people. Oh and the moment will be caught on camera, because we record every single second of this shit. Oh just a question by the way, does anyone know why the camera man feels the need to record you eating? It's not like he's fucking filming a documentary to show the future generations a "how to eat" video, I really don't see the need for this. There's a picture in my puberty ceremony album (yey!) (not) where I'm eating, and I'm just glaring at whoever was behind the camera...If I wanted to publicly humiliate myself, I'd put that picture here, but I'm not that brave, so I'm going to put up a tamil meme I found on facebook instead:

Before someone comes at me with a wooden spoon, I don't own this picture, the amazing people at tamil memes on facebook do. Go check them out, they have me laughing for hours with all the randomness that comes with being a tamil.

So leading on nicely from the above meme, we're made to ridiculous poses such as  the above, but also others including sitting on the floor with the saree fanned out around us in a circle, and if you're unfortunate enough to go to India and have a ceremony there, the infamous peeking out from behind a tree. Coz that's fucking normal. I don't know why our families spend so much money on these photos and videos, because I personally ensure that these pictures never see the light of day. They are embarrassing, and thank god I had mine back in the days when DVDs were too expensive to burn onto, so I had 2 Video tapes and one burnt onto DVD I think, so seeing as no one really owns a VCR anymore, I'm hoping someone's lost the remaining DVD and I'm safe from ever having to see it again. I can only hope.

What else? Oh yeh, people congratulate you for getting your first period. Like you worked hard for it, and you should be proud of it. What the heck? You're pissed off and want these people to leave and they're like "well done"...thanks?! It's not even just close family, I had a family friend from Norway call, and they're like "gratulerer" (congratulations)..I don't feel like being congratulated right now..I want to go to bed and stay there until all these people leave, but no, I have to deal with all these randomers telling me how happy they are and here you are fucking congratulating me. Trust me, if you went up to a white girl you didn't know very well and said "congratulations, I'm so glad you started your period", you'd be locked up...either in an asylum or prison.

And this isn't the only thing you have to put up with. There's the part where everyone that comes to this "party" comes into the bathroom, where you're sitting in the bath fully clothed, and they all dump some water, with rose petals and other things, on your head, one by one. They record this too. Coz I mean everyone looks super attractive fully clothed and soaking wet. Right? nope, not unless you're these guys...

*ahem* Anyway, moving on from these pictures. Nowadays, a bath just doesn't cut it, so you put a frigging paddling pool with rose petals and shit in the middle of the living room instead. If on a random day, I decided I wanted to put a paddling pool in the middle of the house, and sat in it for hours, my mum would go ballistic! But when there's dozens (or hundreds- depending on which scale you're doing this) of people around the house with cameras, that's perfectly acceptable.

There's just so much wrong with these puberty ceremonies that I'm certain I've missed out some things. If any of you can think of anything, comment below, or drop me an email, I'd love to hear from you guys. Also, I recently got twitter, so follow me @amisiva. I'm still getting the hang of it, but I'm slowly but surely becoming addicted to it!

Well before I go, seeing as this was quite a "tamil" post, I'd like to suggest 3 tamil related twitterers (I was going to say twits, but I don't see how anyone would want to be described as a twit :/) you should follow: @tamilmemes, @101_TamilDating and @PeoplesTamil. I like reading their tweets, and if you enjoyed this post, I hope you enjoy them too :) (See..I'm a bit like the bit on twitter that suggests people to follow based on who you already follow....no? wow I need to go to sleep)

So before I say anything else that doesn't make sense, I'm off. Hope you all have a wonderful, puberty ceremony free day. 

Bye xx 

Exams are over tomorrow....Oh wait.....

Do you remember how in my last post, I was saying how I had exams in less than a week and that I was looking forward to them being over in 3 weeks? Well it's been nearly 3 weeks since that post, and I haven't done a single exam. How comes, you may be thinking? Did she just bunk and not go to them?
Nope. My appendix decided it was the right time to become inflamed and be on the verge of exploding. And so they had to remove my appendix 3 days before my first exam. Not the best timing in the world. To make things worse, the pain killers they gave me were so strong, that I was awake for like 4 hours a day, long enough to eat a meal, take the medication (it was tramadol for those of you wondering) and then sleep til the next meal time. Not exactly in the right frame of mind to be doing any work at all, especially since I could barely sit upright without being in pain :( I don't know if I have a ridiculously low pain threshold (I don't think so!) or if it's just taking ages to heal, but it's been exactly 2 weeks since I've been out of hospital, and I still feel pretty rough.
I went to the GP last week and they gave me another painkiller, that doesn't really help with the pain and still makes me drowsy, so I don't see the point in taking them.
I'm so fed up that I haven't done my exams. I know that there are soo many people that say "but you're so lucky, you have longer to revise". No, because now I have to spend the whole summer waiting for the exams, whereas you can just have fun. And that's if the university lets me retake them in the summer, uncapped. I'm still waiting to hear back from them, and I'm pretty nervous, even though considering the fact that I was in hospital for 4 days before the first exam and had to have surgery, I feel like I definitely qualify for mitigating circumstances. I mean, in the letter it says they'll normally accept medical problems that could not be foreseen and requires hospitalisation. So I should qualify right? The appendix is the  most useless thing in our body and can just decide to go pop whenever it wants. It's hardly my fault. Argh, this waiting is driving me insane.
There's a Facebook group for our course and I actually read a post where someone was asking another student to run them over/beat them up so that they could qualify for mitigating circumstances. I am certain they were joking, but I'd just like to point out that it doesn't seem that easy to get them to accept the cases.
Well my last exam would've been tomorrow and I would've had a huge drink up to celebrate and gone out and had fun, but instead I'm back at my parent's house, sleeping most of the day and waiting to hear back from my university.
I'm drafting the post about the trip away. That should be up in the next few days hopefully :) I'm also planning to do a couple posts about Tamil things that are just fucking weird. Two words: puberty ceremonies. "huh, what?" you're obviously not Tamil if you've not come across this phenomenon. All shall be explained very soon!
I hope you all are having betters days than I am, and for those of you doing exams, hope it went well :)

Bye for now xx

So...I have exams in a little over a week

I know I said I'd do a post on our little holiday to France, but truth is, I'm going to need a long time to write that post.. many things happened on that trip, that I just don't have the time to recount it all in the hilariousness it deserves. But I will post it, at some point :)
So back to now. I have my first exam next Thursday. And I am nowhere near ready! CRAP! I feel like I do this every single year! I leave everything to the last minute, and then panic and have many sleepless nights cramming whole textbooks.
For those of you that don't know me personally (hi!), I was on a placement last summer at the Anna Freud Centre, and therefore was out of full time education for the longest period (8months) since....well, since I was 4! Whilst I was on my placement, I quite missed the routine of school/uni and thought that when I started in January, I'd keep on top of all my work, and I'd be uber-prepared come exam season.
But lo and behold, I'm not! I didn't even attempt to keep on top of all my reading! *sigh* For those doing or considering doing a reading heavy subject like Psychology, a word of advice: listen to the lecturers and actually do the reading when its set! I have to say though, I love reading, I can devour whole books in a couple of days and start another straight after. But unfortunately psychology text books aren't exactly what you'd call light reading.
It's ok though. I'm used to this last minute rush. Yes, I'll feel like quitting. Yes, I'll be on the verge of madness. And I may even break down and cry a little. But in just over 3 weeks, it'll be over. And I just need to find the motivation to keep going until then. So hey, if any of you lovely people have any motivational advice, or just something to stop me from going insane, please leave a comment or send me a message, I'd love to hear from you :) And feel free to tell me what you think of the blog so far :)
Well that's it for now. I'm going to go back and continue revising face recognition, which is actually quite interesting. Another question, would you like me to post psychology related things too? I recently stumbled upon a blog by a fellow psychology student called Pavlovscouch. I found it very interesting and laugh out loud funny! Head over and have a look! (By the way, this person and I have never spoken to each other, I've seen him in lectures, therefore that was a completely unbiased recommendation, I only found out about the blog on the psychology revision page on fb..which I should probably get back to now!)
Bye for now xx

Pre-ferry banter

So even before we've left this conversation happened.
Brother had just worked out how far Lourdes was (a ten hour drive from Calais).
Bro: mum!! Why are we going there again? It's so far away!
Uncle: whats she supposed to with a child like you?
Bro: urm, what you tryna insinuate? Have you seen your son?

This just made me laugh! Obviously the uncle and son in question was Ray and Darren. Let the fun begin!

Xx

We are going on a summer holiday....ok not quite!

Hey world, it's been a while.
Mostly because I've been busy with uni stuff, I.e not going to lectures, not doing much work and idling time away watching way too many movies on Netflix! I kept meaning to but just kept putting it off.
That, however, does not mean that I have not had rants to rant about. I have. Way too many than I'd like to admit but I just haven't posted about them for some unknown reason.
Anyway, getting back to today. As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in a minibus with 14 other Tamils!! On my way to France! So I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to kickstart my blog with many Tamil related stories :)
I've just realised I probably won't be able to post the blogs when I'm actually in France but I'll save them and do a mass post when I'm back in England :)
Hope you all have a good Easter weekend xx

hello people of the blogging world!
yes, I am still alive, I just haven't been upto enough to blog about :(
You'd be happy to know that I did infact finish my coursework on time. At 3am on the day it was due in.... but hey atleast its done now.
ok, i've just realised that I do have a rant that I should tell you about, but i'm typing this on a tablet and it's too fiddly to do capital letters and apostrophes, hence the reason why its a bit messed up. So i shall continue this on my laptop in a bit.
bye for now people :)
xx

Yo dudes and dudettes

Yo people!
So I'm pretty drunk right now. And my good friend Mary is here too! (She's just as pissed.)
So we want to talk about fucking tamils and how annoying they are.
We were saying how all tamils should get really drunk atleast once in their lives and share their true feelings with each other. For example, remember that cousin I was telling you about, the one that should get a divorce? This is probably how the guy's conversation would go:

"You are fucking annoying. And you have the personality of a doorknob. Actually. you know what? That's being offensive to a doorknob, that has more of a personality than you do. You're fucking ugly and retarded. I don't normally judge by looks but seeing as you have nothing else to go by, I have no choice. And by the way, I am well glad we have no kids together, I wouldn't want to spread your genes even if someone paid me, you fucked up piece of shit". 

Wouldn't the world be so much better if everyone was honest about how they felt?  I definitely think it would be :)

And here's Mary's view on life at this precise moment in time:

"I love being drunk and not being so tamil. And I hate tamils that tell me I'm fat so that they make me feel uncomfortable in my own skin including my own family and friends. I fucking hate people with an attitude, regardless of race. Noone owes you anything in life, you have to earn it. Don't act like you have to be treated better than other people just because you're another race. That's it at the moment."

So, there you have my first drunken post. Oh just remembered something from Mary's bit: If I don't like you, it has nothing to with your race, it's about your fucked up attitude. So i'm not being racist. I'm being attitudist. (Thats not a word, but fuck it!) I'm quite impressed with my spelling when drunk :)

Bye for now xx