What happened to you?

My sister is here for the weekend. She’s visiting from India. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since April. So, you know how it is, I wanted to make a good impression. This must be why the gods saw fit to bless me with conjunctivitis in both eyes. They were hideously bloodshot but, on the plus side that wasn’t very visible because my eyes were mostly obscured by under eye puffiness. The icing on the cake came when Michael decided to head butt me in the eye, thereby giving my right eye puffiness a range of exciting colours. We had a number of Christmas parties this weekend where the first inevitable question was what happened to you? Even the beggars outside the church asked me what happened to me. Alas.

In other sister news, she brought an avalanche of presents, cooked us dinner, minded our children and was generally wonderful. Ah, the joys of outsourcing our childcare to India. She’s finally growing to love India despite her best efforts and, to my utter amazement, she’s thinking of buying a flat near Chandigarh.

She also brought a number of brochures to explain what she does to our mother when she goes on to Cork. These were a source of immense amusement. My sister works for a well-known company that makes a well-know confectionary item which I am sure you have all tasted; let’s pretend it’s called Yummy. She is in charge of a project to bring a particular computer system to the Indian branches of Yummy.  This is how the project logo is described in the newsletter:

“The logo has the colors of the Indian flag (orange, white and green). These are arranged like 3 rivers meeting the Yummy globe. Sangam is a Sanskrit word and signifies the confulence of three most sacred river in India – The holy Ganges, the Ymuna and the mythical Saraswati. This is represented in the logo. Sangam not only signifies the meeting of holy rivers, it also signifies the meeting of millions of people, of ideas and of ancient wisdom.

Sangam also marks the confulence of Yummy India with the rest of the Yummy world, binding the two organisations together with the same culture, processes, policies or in one single religion viz the Yummy way. By virtue of this great objective, this project assumes the same paramount importance for the Yummy world as Sangam for Hindus and hence the title.”

If you ask me, that’s hoping for a lot from sweeties.

And finally, I forgot to mention, my third blogging anniversary passed earlier in the month. Who’d have thought I had the staying power? This must make me a blogging grandmother.