Bounty from the garden !

There is a tree in the backyard of my house that bears lovely red berries. I dont know what these fruits are called in English. Cos' there are some things even Google can’t tell you. Unless you know the right keywords to search with, of course. Yeah, so in Malayalam, they are called 'Love-lolikka's'. Since Google failed me, I conjured the audacity to christen them 'Love-berries'.

Our tree bears bunches and bunches of these lovely berries. My Amma is a farmer who does adventure farming, the kind that involves adventures like climbing up ladders to pluck lovelolikka, muringakka, sheema-chakka, pomegranates etc. Yes, we cultivate all these exotic fruits in our garden. And I don’t care if muringakka doesn't sound exotic to anyone. So here are some fabulous pictures I clicked of a handful of the lovely berries we picked this morning.

After the photo-session, the lovely Lolikka's were transformed from good-looking models to yummy pickle. No mercy !

The hysterical happy dance !

( I take great care to keep my act together and never behave in ways not befitting my age and killer looks. But today is a rare exception. Lo, behold.)

Yayyy!! Yayyy! Yayyyyyyyy!

* doing hysteric happy dance *

 

I passed Cert CII.

For the uninitiated, I passed the exam for Certificate in Insurance from THE Chartered Insurance Institute and that’s BIG DEAL for anyone working in the insurance industry. One whole year, three huge-ish study modules, a lot of reading and highlighting and three OMR sheets of darkened bubbles later, I made it!

* doing final steps of hysteric happy dance before fainting from happiness *

On a wider perspective, this is just the tip of the Insurance iceberg. But for me, who started out blissfully ignorant about insurance, who didn’t even know what premium meant, this is a fabulous achievement that will add a lot of value to my CV and place me one good notch up the ladder. And it’s more the sense of accomplishment than the actual pass that’s got me high! If that wasn't enough, I didn’t have to pay a penny for the course. Hell yeah ! This was on the ‘You pass We pay’ scheme driven by the company. Some good things do come free so there's still hope left in this world.

My sincerest thanks to the Great place to work. Without you, this wouldn’t be. And now that I passed, you better go pay !

*drinking some water before getting back to next round of hysteric happy dance*