In my earlier blog, I had listed out the top 5 things that I disliked. But as I mentioned, I do have my favorites. It took me quite some time to narrow it down to my “Top Five”

Number 1: Reading, reading, and more reading….

Reading fiction holds the topmost rank in my list of hobbies. I have a vast collection of books from which I read EVERY SINGLE DAY! My mother gets extremely annoyed when I read late into the night or sneak to read in the morning while they are asleep. Rain or shine, I must read. My love for reading was inculcated in me by my Kindergarten teacher, Miss. P. She was the first person to introduce me to the wonderful world of storybooks. I mostly enjoy genres like mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, and suspense. I have loved reading “The Young Elites”, “ Harry Potter”, “Percy Jackson, “The Trials of Apollo”, “Nancy Drew”, “ Agatha Christie”, “Hardy Boys”, “The Spider Wick Chronicles”, “The Dragon Pearl”, few works of  William Shakespeare, etc, etc, etc. (The list is endless, so I better pause here).  J.K Rowling is my favorite author and a big inspiration. Someday, I wish to create a magical world of my own with my writing.

I also enjoy reading “Encyclopedia”, “The Animal Kingdom” and…..let me think! Wait, I just realized that I do not read non-fiction enough ☹

Number 2: Pets

Ooh! I adore furry animals (Even a jumbo bear!). I love puppies, kittens, bunnies, quokkas (I read somewhere that the quokka is the world’s happiest animal), hamsters, koalas, pandas to name a few. If provided an option, I would pet them all. My friend has a puppy named Cookie, with big eyes and dangling ears.  Whenever I see it in the playground, it will run towards me, wagging his giant bushy tail. Initially, I used to run away, screaming at the top of my voice and that poor soul would look at me in despair. Now, that pup has become my best friend.

My Mum, presently is not in favor of pets. No matter how much I convince her, she says she needs time to decide. Nowadays, I have started cajoling my father for the same, hoping that someday he would give in to my demand and convince Mum for a pet.

Number 3: Family Swimming sessions

I often swim with my friends but a swimming session with my family doesn’t happen very often. When we go, it is a world of fun. For example, when my dad goes into the swimming pool, he’ll just lie log flat floating in the water and pretend to be asleep. Em (my little sister) becomes extremely annoyed and starts splashing water on him. She makes a pig face at the fellow swimmers staring at her and continues spritzing water at everyone. She swims around in her floaters, waddling like a duck and her hair sticks out like a porcupine. My Mum has a hard time controlling Em, who becomes unmanageable once in the pool.

I learned swimming for two years. My swimming coach left no stone unturned in making me grasp the swimming techniques and motivating me to practice 15-20 laps every day. I’m grateful to him because I enjoy swimming and it is an important life skill. Swimming helps me relax and I look forward to it every time.

Number 4: Together with Em

Most of the time, we end up squabbling and blame each other for ruining the game, but still, I immensely enjoy playing with Em. Her funny antics crack me up every time. She comes up with a pile of weird ideas to make the event more interesting.

Em usually plays treasure hunts with me and it is no less than a disaster with the whole house turning into pandemonium. Last week, two of my friends came over for a playdate. We had organized a treasure hunt and my team won, just because Em (who was in my opponent’s team) kept providing hints so that we could solve the clues to find the treasure. It was after a good thirty minutes that she realized that she WASN’T supposed to assist her opponents. The same experience was repeated on Father’s Day (Yay! HAPPY FATHER’S DAY !)

When we start painting something together, it is always a colorful mess. However, when she is cooperative {which is seldom}, she does play board games with me. It becomes unusually quiet and boring when she is not around. I’m never going to regret playing with her.

Number 5: CHEEEEESSSSSEEEEEE

And finally! Doesn’t everything taste delicious with CHEESE !! Once, my Auntie put cheese on a spinach veggie (she keeps experimenting so that I eat some vegetables). My reluctance to consume spinach immediately disappeared and I wolfed it down! Only because there was cheese in it! So much that I could hardly spot the greens.

Be it Mac and Cheese or cheese quesadillas, pizza or cheese fingers, cheese omelet, or simply bread cheese, I could devour everything and not feel bad at all for overstuffing myself with cheese. Drool! However, now my cheese intake has been rationed and I am guilty of sneakily grabbing a cheese slice once in a while from the refrigerator. No! I do not endorse this behavior because dear readers “health is of supreme importance”. I just heard my Mum say that, again !!

What are the things that you like? And do you relate to a few that I mentioned?

Signing off…..