Merry Christmas to Everyone!

It’s that time of year again, with all the festivities and parties and decorations. The streets are beautiful in Geneva with all the lights, and snow. It’s easy to forget the real meaning of Christmas and get caught up in the festivities. We already attended around five Christmas parties organised by various friends! Television tells you that you have to give the most expensive gift you can find, to show that you care, and have the biggest Christmas tree and the prettiest decorations, but the real meaning of Christmas is lost in all this hustle and bustle… What is the meaning of Christmas? The humble birth of our saviour Jesus Christ, the beginning of Christianity, time to value friends and family and reflect on our own lives…


So this year hubby and I thought we will try to get closer to God during Christmas and spend it in Lourdes, France where mother Mary appeared to St Bernadette. It is such a lovely town and I remember when I went there last year I felt more in touch with my spiritual side (my previous visit is described here ). Also the humble life of St Bernadette reminds you of how humble Christmas really was all those years ago. So hopefully this year our stay in Lourdes will help us both become closer to God and each other and really understand the true meaning of Christmas.

This will be our first Christmas together and also my first Christmas without my parents and extended family. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I think this is specially so at Christmas… so I wrote this poem for my parents to wish them a Wonderful Christmas and New Year!

This card is sealed with lots of love
And coming from afar,
To let you know that at Christmas we’re with you in Spirit
Though physically in cold Geneva.

Although we’re now across the miles
It’s times like Christmas that reminds us…
To tell you that you’re always close in our hearts
And to appreciate all the wonderful things that a parent does

If we forgot to say Thank you
For every single thing you’ve done in past 30 years,
Or if we forgot to say I’m sorry
For the hurt we caused or for bringing tears.

This message is also to say Thank you for everything
And even if not mentioned, it is all carved in our hearts,
It is also to say we’re so sorry if we hurt you
Cos you are, of our lives a very important part.

We wish that God would bless you
With all his choicest blessings,
We wish that he would give you
Good health, happiness and days with sun shining

We are who we are, because of you
Every good thing we’ve done has been encouraged by you
So here’s wishing you both
A wonderful Christmas a happy year that’s new

I shall end this post wishing each of you and your families a Blessed Christmas and Wonderful New Year ahead.

Addicted to Success

At first glance you would think it’s great to be addicted to success, but what I realised recently is that there's two sides to it... the other side of the coin is the fear of failure. Personally I have found that my greatest fear is the fear of failure. This can hamper all aspects of life, from work to personal achievements to even relationships, as we have to take calculated risks if we ever want to get anywhere.
I was doing a part time project at a research organisation while I was on my 4 month break. While working there the Prof I was working with asked me, were you ranked first in class throughout in your school? I was pleasantly surprised and thought, wow he must be really impressed with my work to ask such a question! and replied yes, that I often was. To this he replied ‘Yes I thought so. You seem to have a fear of giving wrong answers.’ This conversation started while we were discussing some background information regarding the project and he had asked me to make some estimates, to which I said that it depended on many factors and that I needed more information before I could estimate. Then he told me, If you want to do research, you will have to get over this fear, as research is based on many assumptions, and hypothesis, and you have to just guess and then see if it is correct.

Then I also realised this fear was also one of the reasons I had a fear of speaking up at meetings and presentations... my fear of asking stupid questions, or giving wrong answers... difficulty I have in speaking French and making mistakes or speaking with a wrong accent, which I posted about earlier http://smileysuniverse.blogspot.com/2008/12/french-snow.html#links... This fear of making mistakes, or the addition to success literally cripples, and keeps me from trying new things.

Here is a really thought provoking article on success through failure from the Harvard Business Review blog http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/why_i_hire_people_who_fail.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

So my lesson of the day, you can’t always be right, or be sure of everything, sometimes you just have to take that leap of faith and just try...

I have not failed, I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work." – Thomas Edison

My big fat Sri Lankan Wedding

It’s been a very long time since I’ve blogged… Last time was before I left on my 4 month vacation to Sri Lanka… and now I;m back with my hubby in Geneva! Today is our 2 month wedding anniversary… can’t believe that 2 months have gone already since our wedding, feels like a few days ago we were rushing around getting everything ready and ofcourse the big day! As they say time flies when you’re having fun

These days we’re settling down in Geneva in my tiny apartment, trying to keep each other warm in these really really cold winter days! It was a major shock to both our systems coming from 30 degrees to -6 and layers and layers of snow!!! Sure it’s very pretty but only if you are snug and warm and inside can you admire the beauty… outside is freeeeeezing, they say global warming is happening, but to me feels more like global freezing. In all the time I’ve been in Geneva I’ve never seen a winter this cold, and even friends who’ve practically lived here all their lives complain that this is one of the coldest and it’s not even Jan yet!  In the last few weeks we both got sick too, but now recovering…

In the last few months there has been way too many things happening to put into a blog post, and the biggest of them was of course my wedding after months and months of preparation couldn’t believe when it was over within a few hours… but all in all, the wedding went really well; everything happened as planned; we had a lovely church ceremony celebrated by our family priest; and all our friends and family were there (couple of my friends even made it from places as far away as Spain, UK and India, especially for the wedding!)… Of course in the usual big (well medium in SL standards with around 300 guests) fat, Sri Lankan wedding style most of the guests were our parent’s friends and relatives of whom we only recognized a handful and we went from table to table with a big smile pretending we knew everyone and thanking for their wishes… I must say that at the end of the day, I think my mouth was numb from too much smiling!

The highlight of the day for me was when my usually shy hubby really surprised me with a really touching reply to the toast! Then we had our first dance to my all-time favourite song ‘Bed of Roses’, we choreographed it as we both love dancing and had a lot of fun.

Since writing about the wedding and the last few months of preparing for it would take forever, thought I’ll upload some pics instead! And there’s many more on my Picasa site http://picasaweb.google.com/roshanthi.lucas/WeddingRoshLakshi# After all they do say that a picture is worth a thousand words!

At church

With our wonderful parents

 The Bridal Retinue

 The happy couple

 With my maid of honour

I’ll end this post with the poem my best friend and maid of honour wrote for our wedding…

Like everything else,
My grandma once said
That marriage is a journey
Like one that of a river

So the river flows
Through even ground
Through brooks and fisherman's nets
To make graceful waterfalls

But it also flows through
Through broken beds of stone
Through rocks and currents
Towards sloppy and slanted earth

But the river flows
Despite the highs and lows
For the journey is good
For the journey noble

So the river flows
Till she finds her peace in the ocean
Her heart felt bosom friend
Her good old all that is

So this is my wish for you
My 2 dear friends
That you flow like a river
And grow and share life together