April 2019 Updates

Wow! Has April been an action-packed month or what? The month just seemed to whiz by at supersonic speed. Usually, this happens to me when there is a lot of work. But surprisingly, it wasn’t work that consumed me so much this month, but a lot of other life stress, and also a whole lot of fun.

Read on to know what went down in April.

I read a lot of fun and light books this month. Nothing too memorable though. My favorite books this month were Angels, Shanghai Girls, and Marley and Me.

And oh yes, I embarked on The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. I first heard of this Three Body trilogy when Ash posted about wanting to read it. I started it this month, and it’s been a bit heavy going. This is hard SF, full of lengthy passages of technical exposition about everything from quantum mechanics to artificial intelligence. But I am liking reading a book that challenges my brain cells a bit after my light reads earlier this month.

So, this was a decent to good reading month, but was an awesome movie/show watching month.

An old favorite came on the horizon this month – the final season of Game of Thrones. I’ve felt that the last couple of seasons have been a bit too simplistic, and I still feel that way (especially after the massive Battle of Winterfell). However, I can’t deny that this is still epic entertainment, and to my mind one of the best shows ever!

And then of course, there was Avengers: Endgame. I watched this in 3D with my daughter to celebrate completing her final exams. I found it a bit overlong, but loved the bitter-sweet ending, and the action-packed finale battle.

Some other movies I saw: Gully Boy on Amazon Prime (loved, loved, loved), Hush (a random thriller from the 90s memorable only for how pretty Jessica Lange and Gwyneth Paltrow looked), Crazy Rich Asians (again on Amazon Prime, and just as much fun as the book).

I also started on a series – Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists, but I am not too into it as yet, and I may be dropping it soon. Somehow, I don’t see this series continuing beyond a season.

I blogged about our weekend away at Forsyth Lodge in Madhya Pradesh. I also did some book reviews. But overall April wasn’t a great month for blogging. I was just too occupied having fun with the kiddos and generally chilling back and relaxing.

I didn’t do too many blogger events, the most memorable one was the IPL menu tasting at Monkey Bar. This menu is a fun riff on the IPL matches playing in India with quirky dishes like Chicken 65 not out, Captain Keema, Murgh of the Match, and plenty more. Review on this experience coming soon.

April started with a bit of a shocker with an email from the IT people requesting for more clarifications on my IT returns. Considering I started off this month near broke after paying hefty taxes, I was stunned to see the email asking for more clarifications and payments.

I spoke to a tax consultant and responded as quickly as possible and then spent a couple of weeks nervously wondering what would happen next.

I was also anxiously waiting for one more thing. At the end of March, I had sent all the paperwork required for getting a visa to the Chinese embassy, only to not hear from them until the last week of April.

All my friends who’ve visited China told me getting a Chinese visa was a no-brainer. It would be granted within a day, blah, blah, blah. I guess I was unlucky because it took almost a month for us to get the visa. Just thanking my stars I had kick-started this process early.

My earlier visa experiences (even US and UK visas) were a piece of cake, so this was my first time having to deal with such a delay. What added to my nervousness was that I had purchased non-refundable flight tickets (they were going dirt-cheap), and I was terrified that I’d lose all that money because of visa issues.

Thankfully everything came through in the end! Even my IT returns got accepted, and I may even be due for a refund!

I guess now I understand why April whizzed by so fast for me 😀.

How was April for you?