Ever since we moved, I had been tasked with completing household chores. The umpteen lectures on “responsibility” and “independence” were finally being put into practice. As our new house needed cleaning, and “everyone needed to do their part” (Guess who said THAT☹), I was very unjustly coaxed, convinced, and cajoled into vacuuming with promises of free time soon, which graduated into later, which metamorphosed into the next day, and then I stopped asking altogether.

The two best days of school, the first and the last.

Who would’ve thought? On October 31^st, 2022, I left the school I’d spent 5 years in, with my oldest friends, teachers, and memories.

I would begin a new life in January, not in a new school, but a new country.

The last time I had ever visited Bintan, it had been with all our closest friends, when I was around 7 years old. This time, to my utter excitement, we planned to visit Bintan again with all our friends. AT THE SAME RESORT TOO! And since I had loved “Cassia Bintan” the last time we had stayed there for a week or so, I was incredibly excited to return. I was slightly disappointed as we would only have a sojourn of 1 and a half days. Nevertheless, I was eager to spend time with my friends and family at a scenic, beautiful place like Bintan. It was a break from the hustle-bustle of the city, and we would all get to relax in the sea and the swimming pool😊.

So, a few days back, I decided to attempt making chocolate-chip cookies. I had baked cakes, brownies, and cupcakes before, but never cookies, either because my so-called “cookie dough” would slowly transition into cake batter or because I didn’t find baking cookies as interesting as the other aspects of baking.

For those who haven’t read the prequel to this story, here is the link-(The Box In The Attic (Part 1) | Mili’s Mindscape (miliscape.com))

Enjoy!

A few days. A few hours. That’s how less it can take to completely change you. It’s almost amusing, when your life seems normal, you’re on your daily routine, grabbing a cup of coffee, running for the bus because you’ll be late to school or work, birthdays, Christmas, a happy, picturesque, maybe monotonous, sometimes boring, typical week. Restart. Repeat. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Sundays, stretching on and on and on. Nothing extraordinary or abnormal…right?

I had submitted this piece of writing to the Ocean Awareness Writing Contest a few months back. Hope you enjoy reading it!

The mother glances fondly at her children, a pod of three slate-grey, white-patterned teenage whales, a smile materializing on her snout. Her smile fades though, as she contemplates their skinny bodies and starved faces. Their eyes are devoid of joy, and any happiness that they had blissfully enjoyed before had simply disappeared like those times had never existed.

Well, I’m sure that all of you have at least ONCE IN A WHILE been sandwiched into a situation (UNINTENTIONALLY!) where your mom has one opinion on a certain matter and your dad has another. The result of this dissonance- Yeah! A chaotic mirth. And that’s exactly what today’s post is about.

These tiny experiences do lighten me up. But it also leads me to wonder an unfathomable question, how did these two people, one from the North Pole and one from the South Pole end up together? It’s quite a valid question if you think about it…and I still haven’t found the answer I was looking for.

Anyways, enjoy!

Well! Every person, when they first get their phone, it comes along with the usual parental controls, restrictions and lectures(http://miliscape.com/phone-cied/). Of course, I was no exception to this universal rule. Well, I was, up until a certain point.

With the easing of the pandemic restrictions, our school was back with the competitions that we had missed out on for the past two years. Our science teacher organized a “Science Fair”, and we were tasked with designing a product or presenting research to solve any real-life problem, big or small. We were allowed to select our group members (THANKFULLY!!). It was part of our science enrichment program, so me and my team members cut to the chase and began to brainstorm.