An Outlet

10 June, 2017.

Today I met my cousin Amanda (my mom's sister's daughter) and another cousin after a really long time.

After getting into a light hearted argument about which mall to visit (we all live in different sides of the city),  we finally came to a concesus.

Amanda came to my house first and we along with Alex left for the mall. We reached there amidst a lot of traffic and waited for our other cousin to arrive. After she came, we did a lot of window shopping after which Amanda finally bought her birthday outfit.

Following that, we went for bowling. Boy, the place had changed since the last time I'd been there. To be fair, it was two years ago so... but the change is evident. I feel that the managers must have realised that bowling is quite popular among youngsters here and decided to design the place in a way which suited the 'youth culture'.

First of all, they had shifted the entire bowling area to the upper floor and they had added atleast 7 more bowling lanes. The entite place was lit up using blue/UV light to give it a club-like feel, complete with lounge sofas. I think they had their own food service as well. So yeah, major transformation.

There were already two big group of youngsters occupying two of the lanes. Under normal circumstances, that would have made me insecure as hell but today it didn't. Why insecure you ask? Cause I'm TERRIBLE at bowling. I'll be happy even if I strike two pins in one go. That's how bad I am. Regardless, I enjoyed myself.

After bowling, we went to the food court and hogged on some Pasta and wraps.

After that, we lounged around for a while and decided to leave. We bid adieu to other cousin and Alex, Amanda and I headed to my house. Since I've been trying to cut cost wherever I can, we decided to take the bus. We spent a good half an hour trying to find the right bus stop. Then another half waiting for our bus to arrive. Alex somehow got into a conversation with an elderly man sitting beside him on the bus. I don't know how he manages to do that. We could hear their entire conversation throughout the bus journey.

When we reached near my house, dad called us up and asked us if we wanted to go to the supermarket with them. So we went to the supermarket with them.

While shopping, Amanda got a bad news. Last year, she was staying in her college hostel. But this year, she and her friend decided to shift into an apartment. They had finalised the apartment they wanted but because of communication issues, couldn't convey that to the broker. The broker in turn sold the apartment to someone else.

This is a pretty big issue. I mean, you just lost an apartment you thought you were going to shift into. But I'm pleasantly surprised by how maturely Amanda handled the situation. Yes, she was upset but she tried to calm her mother down, who felt thoroughly decieved and angry on hearing the news. I don't even want to think about what I would have done in such a situation.

We all convinced Amanda to stay at our place despite the bad news. She and her mom agreed.

We came home, ate dinner, played card games and everything is settled now.