The Crazy Diamond

Over To Wordpress

2008-12-23T04:47:00.005+05:30

103 posts and 3 odd years since starting this blog,

I'm moving over to wordpress.

The new location for the blog is

http://etscientia.wordpress.com

and you shall be redirected there in 13 seconds.

see you on the flip side

Lighten Up

2008-12-19T22:46:00.000+05:30

Time for Change

2008-11-28T12:36:00.005+05:30

The last 2 days have been something that I can't currently explain. Am just dumping whatever has occured to me while frozen to my seat and Twitter this last 40 hours. will edit and refine it at a later date probably.

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Some Useful Links :

Mumbai Help @ Pinstorm

Mumbai Help @ Dina Mehta

Twitter Feed for #Mumbai

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My 101st post is about responsibility. Our responsibility

Yesterday, around 9 pm, terror struck my country. At it's heart, in full sight of everyone on all known forms of media. Consequently, I was glued to my computer for the nest 8 hours without respite. watching the chaos multiply. I did what seemed to me at that point, the best recourse. I offered my time on the net. Calling up or donating blood was not a feasible option. So I did best to post updates on Twitter. And judiciously help people in my little way. Am pretty proud of the way Twitter fared this last 18 hours. as a social medium. I can only hope that whatever I and all the others on Twitter retweeted continually through the night was of some help to those looking for it. And pray we didn't outdo ourselves and thwart the ongoing rescue attempts.That our efforts didn't bring any harm to any innocent bystander in any way. I remember repeating over and over again what can I do as a person.Now I am trying to make sense here of what has occured to me since then.

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People react instinctively to situations when in danger or shock. Only training helps us get the better of the survival instinct and avoid chaos. WE need an action plan. A fixed guideline of how to respond to any situation like this is the first thing we need to propagate on all forms of social media.

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@Vinu has a shining example of doing what you can. He managed to grab a ton of pics and upload them withing the hour of the start of the ordeal. @dina, @asfaq, @netra are just three of the many people to whom i have been tuned in and am in awe of, for their service. I mean it takes a hell lot more than just a feeling of resposibility to stay online and provide information in real time for 2 straight days. Kudos to you folks!

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Changes that I could Think of :

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Institutional changes take weeks and months to implement. Radical departures from one's routine can never be sustained for long, and die down with the hype and hysteria.

Terrorist Attacks are on the rise. While we do need to fight them and reduce them, let's start by first preparing to face them and reduce their impact.

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1.Awareness needs to be ramped up about what each of us ought to do in times like the last 40 hours. The Govt doesnt have to go and tell people what to do in the hour of need. We should be ready for that in advance. A large scale viral campaign using OOH & Social Media about a fixed point readiness bulletin seems like the most logical preparedness first-step.

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2.A central Information source, capable of sustaining massive web traffic needs to be setup. All the efforts seen over last 2 days point to this. We are not ready yet. but we are capable. so let's do something about it. If the government has difficulties managing relatively New techonologies, then let the Social Media proponents offer their help. Barcamps , Tweetups & blogmeets are ideal for us to offer and network our efforts to this end.

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3. We seriously need something like www.ready.gov I'm sure if we bloggers / Twitter folk make a dedicated effort, we can find a backing Public figure who is aware of the implications of Social Media trends to help us out and interface with the government.

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4.The biggest glaring fault that leaps to my eye regarding the #Mumbai attacks is the lack of centralisation. NSG is fully capable. as is ATS. Marine Commandos were swift in their response and are amongst our most elite teams. and yet, this ordeal has already spanned close to 40 hours. People need to figure how they can help the government unify the working of it's defence and police forces. I agree complete integration is impossible and unheard of anywhere. but we need to improve our response speed greatly.

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5. Lastly, our government needs it's Internet Task Force. #mumbai has shown the world that India is web-aware and online. we need to harness the social tools made available to us, and help our country's government function better.

Page No 56

2008-11-24T12:43:00.001+05:30

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

My line ??
"Memories, Harry, are somewhat like pencils."

Mobius Dick, by Andrew Crumey
Page # 56
Sentence # 5

What's Your discovery ?

With a little bit of luck

2008-11-11T17:07:00.002+05:30

The Lord above gave man an arm of iron
So he could do his job and never shirk
The Lord above gave man an arm of iron
But, with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
Someone else will do the blinkin' work
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of luck you'll never work)

The Lord above made liquor for temptation
To see if man could turn away from sin
The Lord above made liquor for temptation
But, with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
When temptation comes you'll give right in
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of luck you'll give right in)

Oh you can walk the straight and narrow
But with a little bit of luck you'll run amok

The gentle sex was made for man t'marry
To share his nest and see his food is cooked
The gentle sex was made for man t'marry
But, with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
You can have it all and not get hooked
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of luck you won't get hooked)
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of bloomin' luck)

The Lord above made man to help his neighbor
No matter where on land or sea or foam
The Lord above made man to help his neighbor
But, with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
WHEN HE COMES AROUND YOU WON'T BE HOME!!
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of luck you won't be home)

They're always throwing goodness at you
But, with a little bit of luck a man can duck

Oh it's a crime for man to go philanderin'
And fill his wife's poor heart with grief and doubt
Oh it's a crime for man to go philanderin'
But, with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
You can see the bloodhound don't find out
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of luck she won't find out)
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of bloomin' luck)

brief instrumental interlude

A man was made to help support his children
Which is the right and proper thing to do
A man was made to help support his children
But, with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
They'll go out and start supporting you
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of luck they'll work for you)

(He doesn't have a tuppence in his pocket)
(The poorest bloke you'll ever hope to meet)
(He doesn't have a tuppence in his pocket)
(But, with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck)
(He'll be movin' up to Easy Street)
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of luck I'm movin' up)
(With a little bit, with a little bit)
(With a little bit of bloomin' luck)

Alan Jay Learner - My Fair Lady

this is hyphen

2008-11-09T20:17:00.014+05:30

While going through my papers recently, I realised that as usual, the Shit Magnet had struck again. By the rather crude choice of words, I refer to how I continually manage to find myself in seemingly funny situations. Like getting issued a new passport with someone else's photo and signature in place of mine. or having the lace from my right sneaker stolen from outside of the auditorium where I happened to be attending a quiz. (It was at this really innovative place you see, where they have pretty comfortable woven mats & cushions laid out for a ground seating arrangement. Definitely worth a visit, but preferrably with cheaper footwear).

Coming back from the habitual deviation, I found my birth certificate. in place of a name, it simply says

" - "

Yes. I too think that resemble's a hyphen. So I ask my parents how I managed to pull off this feat, and am told that Daddy was in a hurry after my namegiving ceremony at my maternal grandparent's house, and consequently, no one ever got around to doing anything about my missing name. Mom, being her usual fun self, suggested that now I never need to think up a pseudonym.Instead, just translate the 'official' name into another language.

So, this is hyphen saying a big hi to the odd soul who managed to wander here. In case of a total lack of anything better to do, you could also call me any one of these wyrd names :

وصل بواصلة מקף maqaf minus dash bindestrich trait d'union guió тире crtica spojovník bindestreg koppelteken gitling yhdysviiva tanda trattino defise rašyti su brūkšneliu bindestrek łącznik hífen cratimă дефис цртица Črtica guión дефіс bindestreck gạch nối

Alternatively, go read Hyphen. And yes, I was bored and had plenty of time to spare.

Ten

2008-11-02T22:03:00.000+05:30

As the supposedly really important day draws closer, I find myself comparing my condition to the usual abject FUBAR state it has been doomed to end up in with the unavoidable advent of examination dates over the years. the huge amount of of difference that is thus noticed can only be attributed to :
Mom-made food
Lack of 40-hour days
lack of a caffeine-rich diet ( or presence of a caffeine-free diet perhaps)
only an hour of music a day

Yes. sixty minutes of listening. going for a walk or commuting doesn't count. so what has REALLY changed unlike anytime before is sinking into an ethereal free floating state while savouring the awesome food , while lying back n floating away to music. What this has also helped me do is finally get around to listening to the gynormous collection thats been flipping itself over on my hard drives all this while.

All that done and said, am still wondering what is taking the exam department so long to check the damn papers. It's been 2 months now without any news of results. Wait and Watch is all I get.sigh

Today's albums then, are Pearl Jam - Ten & Eddie Vedder - Into The Wild OST.
Reading : Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
Site of The Day : LOL god : Putting the fun back into religion

01-11

2008-11-01T01:09:00.002+05:30

Yes, I follow the dd-mm date style.

60 days to the new year
15 days to D-day
Aishwarya Rai Bacchan's Bday
World Vegan Day
The day the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala & Karnataka were formed
56th Anniversary of the First H-Bomb test (Operation Ivy)
John Adams started living at The White House (208 yrs ago, then called The Executive Mansion)
I'm bored witless at 1 am,in 2008, and putting off going to sleep for just a while loger.

caught between white tigers and other feline botherations,sitting here typing away my 42nd post this year, with truckloads of things to do, books to read, movies to watch, foods to try, and hours to while away, the only song that keeps playing over n over in my head, apart from Oh-Dae-Su's theme, is an Oasis track:

It's nine o'clock
I'm getting tired
I'm sick of all my records
And the clothes I bought today
Am I cracking up
Or just getting older?

Staying in
I can't be bothered
Making conversation
With the friends that I don't know
Am I cracking up
Or just getting older?

And I bet that this is how life
Turns out when you're finally grown
And you know if this my life
Sit around all day and I moan

I'm halfway up to the bottom
Of another bottle
Of my next best favourite friend
Am I cracking up
Or just getting older?

You're not cracking up
You're just getting older
We're not cracking up
We're just getting older

So, we get back to writing once again. Sense can find its way about the forests its lost in and return at leisure. Back to picking up the pieces, and locating one's towel. Here's to November.

May it be a lively month.

status quo

2008-10-23T20:43:00.002+05:30

Status quo is a Latin term meaning the present existing state of affairs, or "the state in which". To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they currently are. The related phrase status quo ante, means "the state of things as it was before."

Me:
a blank status message
wow
thats new
A:
lol
status quo
Me:
i never got the hang of that term
A:
lol
Me:
it seems like one of those obstruse ones to make the other person shut up n remember its meaning thereby establishing a silence that wud be too uncomfortable to break by now
all that from 2 puny words
A:
i know what you're talking abt
Me:
anything planned for the coming holidays?
A:
nope...maybe india, not sure
u?
Me:
living room mostly
dunno fer sure yet tho
A:
hmmm

story of my life

2008-10-23T18:40:00.000+05:30

Imagine if Messrs Hawking and Fry were locked in a room with the entire cast of Monty Python and forced to write a book which would subsequently be edited by Pink Floyd, then the result would need a lot of work before it could be cut from Douglas Adams' first draft. That would approximate it.

Neil Gaiman

2008-10-17T18:55:00.006+05:30

"Come on," said Vic. "It'll be great."

"No, it won't," I said, although I'd lost this fight hours ago, and I knew it.

"It'll be brilliant," said Vic, for the hundredth time. "Girls! Girls! Girls!" He grinned with white teeth.

We both attended an all-boys' school in south London. While it would be a lie to say that we had no experience with girls -- Vic seemed to have had many girlfriends, while I had kissed three of my sister's friends -- it would, I think, be perfectly true to say that we both chiefly spoke to, interacted with, and only truly understood, other boys. Well, I did, anyway. It's hard to speak for someone else, and I've not seen Vic for thirty years. I'm not sure that I would know what to say to him now if I did.

We were walking the backstreets that used to twine in a grimy maze behind East Croydon station -- a friend had told Vic about a party, and Vic was determined to go whether I liked it or not, and I didn't. But my parents were away that week at a conference, and I was Vic's guest at his house, so I was trailing along beside him.

"It'll be the same as it always is," I said. "After an hour you'll be off somewhere snogging the prettiest girl at the party, and I'll be in the kitchen listening to somebody's mum going on about politics or poetry or something."

"You just have to talk to them," he said. "I think it's probably that road at the end here." He gestured cheerfully, swinging the bag with the bottle in it.

"Don't you know?"

"Alison gave me directions and I wrote them on a bit of paper, but I left it on the hall table. S'okay. I can find it."

"How?" Hope welled slowly up inside me.

"We walk down the road," he said, as if speaking to an idiot child. "And we look for the party. Easy."

I looked, but saw no party: just narrow houses with rusting cars or bikes in their concreted front gardens; and the dusty glass fronts of newsagents, which smelled of alien spices and sold everything from birthday cards and secondhand comics to the kind of magazines that were so pornographic that they were sold already sealed in plastic bags. I had been there when Vic had slipped one of those magazines beneath his sweater, but the owner caught him on the pavement outside and made him give it back.

We reached the end of the road and turned into a narrow street of terraced houses. Everything looked very still and empty in the Summer's evening. "It's all right for you," I said. "They fancy you. You don't actually have to talk to them." It was true: one urchin grin from Vic and he could have his pick of the room.

"Nah. S'not like that. You've just got to talk."

The times I had kissed my sister's friends I had not spoken to them. They had been around while my sister was off doing something elsewhere, and they had drifted into my orbit, and so I had kissed them. I do not remember any talking. I did not know what to say to girls, and I told him so.

They're just girls," said Vic. "They don't come from another planet."

As we followed the curve of the road around, my hopes that the party would prove unfindable began to fade: a low pulsing noise, music muffled by walls and doors, could be heard from a house up ahead. It was eight in the evening, not that early if you aren't yet sixteen, and we weren't. Not quite.

I had parents who liked to know where I was, but I don't think Vic's parents cared that much. He was the youngest of five boys. That in itself seemed magical to me: I merely had two sisters, both younger than I was, and I felt both unique and lonely. I had wanted a brother as far back as I could remember. When I turned thirteen, I stopped wishing on falling stars or first stars, but back when I did, a brother was what I had wished for.

We went up the garden path, crazy paving leading us past a hedge and a solitary rosebush to a pebble- dashed facade. We rang the doorbell, and the door was opened by a girl. I could not have told you how old she was, which was one of the things about girls I had begun to hate: when you start out as kids you're just boys and girls, going through time at the same speed, and you're all five, or seven, or eleven, together. And then one day there's a lurch and the girls just sort of sprint off into the future ahead of you, and they know all about everything, and they have periods and breasts and makeup and God-only-knew-what-else -- for I certainly didn't. The diagrams in biology textbooks were no substitute for being, in a very real sense, young adults. And the girls of our age were.

Vic and I weren't young adults, and I was beginning to suspect that even when I started needing to shave every day, instead of once every couple of weeks, I would still be way behind.

The girl said, "Hello?"

Vic said, "We're friends of Alison's." We had met Alison, all freckles and orange hair and a wicked smile, in Hamburg, on a German exchange. The exchange organizers had sent some girls with us, from a local girls' school, to balance the sexes. The girls, our age, more or less, were raucous and funny, and had more or less adult boyfriends with cars and jobs and motorbikes and -- in the case of one girl with crooked teeth and a raccoon coat, who spoke to me about it sadly at the end of a party in Hamburg, in, of course, the kitchen -- a wife and kids.

"She isn't here," said the girl at the door. "No Alison."

"Not to worry," said Vic, with an easy grin. "I'm Vic. This is Enn." A beat, and then the girl smiled back at him. Vic had a bottle of white wine in a plastic bag, removed from his parents' kitchen cabinet. "Where should I put this, then?"

She stood out of the way, letting us enter. "There's a kitchen in the back," she said. "Put it on the table there, with the other bottles." She had golden, wavy hair, and she was very beautiful. The hall was dim in the twilight, but I could see that she was beautiful.

"What's your name, then?" said Vic.

She told him it was Stella, and he grinned his crooked white grin and told her that that had to be the prettiest name he had ever heard. Smooth bastard. And what was worse was that he said it like he meant it.

Vic headed back to drop off the wine in the kitchen, and I looked into the front room, where the music was coming from. There were people dancing in there. Stella walked in, and she started to dance, swaying to the music all alone, and I watched her.

This was during the early days of punk. On our own record players we would play the Adverts and the Jam, the Stranglers and the Clash and the Sex Pistols. At other people's parties you'd hear ELO or 10cc or even Roxy Music. Maybe some Bowie, if you were lucky. During the German exchange, the only LP that we had all been able to agree on was Neil Young's Harvest, and his song "Heart of Gold" had threaded through the trip like a refrain: I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold. . . .

The music playing in that front room wasn't anything I recognized.

It sounded a bit like a German electronic pop group called Kraftwerk, and a bit like an LP I'd been given for my last birthday, of strange sounds made by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The music had a beat, though, and the half- dozen girls in that room were moving gently to it, although I only looked at Stella. She shone.

Vic pushed past me, into the room. He was holding a can of lager. "There's booze back in the kitchen," he told me. He wandered over to Stella and he began to talk to her. I couldn't hear what they were saying over the music, but I knew that there was no room for me in that conversation.

I didn't like beer, not back then. I went off to see if there was something I wanted to drink. On the kitchen table stood a large bottle of Coca-Cola, and I poured myself a plastic tumblerful, and I didn't dare say anything to the pair of girls who were talking in the underlit kitchen. They were animated and utterly lovely. Each of them had very black skin and glossy hair and movie star clothes, and their accents were foreign, and each of them was out of my league.

I wandered, Coke in hand.

The house was deeper than it looked, larger and more complex than the two- up two- down model I had imagined. The rooms were underlit -- I doubt there was a bulb of more than 40 watts in the building -- and each room I went into was inhabited: in my memory, inhabited only by girls. I did not go upstairs.

A girl was the only occupant of the conservatory. Her hair was so fair it was white, and long, and straight, and she sat at the glass-topped table, her hands clasped together, staring at the garden outside, and the gathering dusk. She seemed wistful.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" I asked, gesturing with my cup. She shook her head, and then followed it up with a shrug, to indicate that it was all the same to her. I sat down.

Vic walked past the conservatory door. He was talking to Stella, but he looked in at me, sitting at the table, wrapped in shyness and awkwardness, and he opened and closed his hand in a parody of a speaking mouth. Talk. Right.

"Are you from around here?" I asked the girl.

She shook her head. She wore a low-cut silvery top, and I tried not to stare at the swell of her breasts.

I said, "What's your name? I'm Enn."

"Wain's Wain," she said, or something that sounded like it. "I'm a second."

"That's uh. That's a different name."

She fixed me with huge, liquid eyes. "It indicates that my progenitor was also Wain, and that I am obliged to report back to her. I may not breed."

"Ah. Well. Bit early for that anyway, isn't it?"

She unclasped her hands, raised them above the table, spread her fingers. "You see?" The little finger on her left hand was crooked, and it bifurcated at the top, splitting into two smaller fingertips. A minor deformity. "When I was finished a decision was needed. Would I be retained, or eliminated? I was fortunate that the decision was with me. Now, I travel, while my more perfect sisters remain at home in stasis. They were firsts. I am a second.

Soon I must return to Wain, and tell her all I have seen. All my impressions of this place of yours."

"I don't actually live in Croydon," I said. "I don't come from here." I wondered if she was American. I had no idea what she was talking about.

"As you say," she agreed, "neither of us comes from here." She folded her six- fingered left hand beneath her right, as if tucking it out of sight. "I had expected it to be bigger, and cleaner, and more colorful. But still, it is a jewel."

She yawned, covered her mouth with her right hand, only for a moment, before it was back on the table again. "I grow weary of the journeying, and I wish sometimes that it would end. On a street in Rio at Carnival, I saw them on a bridge, golden and tall and insect-eyed and winged, and elated I almost ran to greet them, before I saw that they were only people in costumes. I said to Hola Colt, 'Why do they try so hard to look like us?' and Hola Colt replied, 'Because they hate themselves, all shades of pink and brown, and so small.' It is what I experience, even me, and I am not grown. It is like a world of children, or of elves." Then she smiled, and said, "It was a good thing they could not any of them see Hola Colt."

"Um," I said, "do you want to dance?"

She shook her head immediately. "It is not permitted," she said. "I can do nothing that might cause damage to property. I am Wain's."

"Would you like something to drink, then?"

"Water," she said.

I went back to the kitchen and poured myself another Coke, and filled a cup with water from the tap. From the kitchen back to the hall, and from there into the conservatory, but now it was quite empty.

I wondered if the girl had gone to the toilet, and if she might change her mind about dancing later. I walked back to the front room and stared in. The place was filling up. There were more girls dancing, and several lads I didn't know, who looked a few years older than me and Vic. The lads and the girls all kept their distance, but Vic was holding Stella's hand as they danced, and when the song ended he put an arm around her, casually, almost proprietorially, to make sure that nobody else cut in.

I wondered if the girl I had been talking to in the conservatory was now upstairs, as she did not appear to be on the ground floor.

I walked into the living room, which was across the hall from the room where the people were dancing, and I sat down on the sofa. There was a girl sitting there already. She had dark hair, cut short and spiky, and a nervous manner.

Talk, I thought. "Um, this mug of water's going spare," I told her, "if you want it?"

She nodded, and reached out her hand and took the mug, extremely carefully, as if she were unused to taking things, as if she could trust neither her vision nor her hands.

"I love being a tourist," she said, and smiled hesitantly. She had a gap between her two front teeth, and she sipped the tap water as if she were an adult sipping a fine wine. "The last tour, we went to sun, and we swam in sunfire pools with the whales. We heard their histories and we shivered in the chill of the outer places, then we swam deepward where the heat churned and comforted us.

I wanted to go back. This time, I wanted it. There was so much I had not seen. Instead we came to world. Do you like it?"

"Like what?"

She gestured vaguely to the room -- the sofa, the armchairs, the curtains, the unused gas fire.

"It's all right, I suppose."

"I told them I did not wish to visit world," she said. "My parent-teacher was unimpressed. 'You will have much to learn,' it told me. I said, 'I could learn more in sun, again. Or in the deeps. Jessa spun webs between galaxies. I want to do that.'

"But there was no reasoning with it, and I came to world. Parent-teacher engulfed me, and I was here, embodied in a decaying lump of meat hanging on a frame of calcium. As I incarnated I felt things deep inside me, fluttering and pumping and squishing. It was my first experience with pushing air through the mouth, vibrating the vocal cords on the way, and I used it to tell parent-teacher that I wished that I would die, which it acknowledged was the inevitable exit strategy from world."

There were black worry beads wrapped around her wrist, and she fiddled with them as she spoke. "But knowledge is there, in the meat," she said, "and I am resolved to learn from it."

We were sitting close at the center of the sofa now. I decided I should put an arm around her, but casually. I would extend my arm along the back of the sofa and eventually sort of creep it down, almost imperceptibly, until it was touching her. She said, "The thing with the liquid in the eyes, when the world blurs. Nobody told me, and I still do not understand. I have touched the folds of the Whisper and pulsed and flown with the tachyon swans, and I still do not understand."

She wasn't the prettiest girl there, but she seemed nice enough, and she was a girl, anyway. I let my arm slide down a little, tentatively, so that it made contact with her back, and she did not tell me to take it away.

Vic called to me then, from the doorway. He was standing with his arm around Stella, protectively, waving at me. I tried to let him know, by shaking my head, that I was onto something, but he called my name and, reluctantly, I got up from the sofa and walked over to the door. "What?"

"Er. Look. The party," said Vic, apologetically. "It's not the one I thought it was. I've been talking to Stella and I figured it out. Well, she sort of explained it to me. We're at a different party."

"Christ. Are we in trouble? Do we have to go?"

Stella shook her head. He leaned down and kissed her, gently, on the lips. "You're just happy to have me here, aren't you darlin'?"

"You know I am," she told him.

He looked from her back to me, and he smiled his white smile: roguish, lovable, a little bit Artful Dodger, a little bit wide- boy Prince Charming. "Don't worry. They're all tourists here anyway. It's a foreign exchange thing, innit? Like when we all went to Germany."

"It is?"

"Enn. You got to talk to them. And that means you got to listen to them, too. You understand?"

"I did. I already talked to a couple of them."

"You getting anywhere?"

"I was till you called me over."

"Sorry about that. Look, I just wanted to fill you in. Right?"

And he patted my arm and he walked away with Stella. Then, together, the two of them went up the stairs.

Understand me, all the girls at that party, in the twilight, were lovely; they all had perfect faces but, more important than that, they had whatever strangeness of proportion, of oddness or humanity it is that makes a beauty something more than a shop window dummy.

Stella was the most lovely of any of them, but she, of course, was Vic's, and they were going upstairs together, and that was just how things would always be.

There were several people now sitting on the sofa, talking to the gap- toothed girl. Someone told a joke, and they all laughed. I would have had to push my way in there to sit next to her again, and it didn't look like she was expecting me back, or cared that I had gone, so I wandered out into the hall. I glanced in at the dancers, and found myself wondering where the music was coming from. I couldn't see a record player or speakers.

From the hall I walked back to the kitchen.

Kitchens are good at parties. You never need an excuse to be there, and, on the good side, at this party I couldn't see any signs of someone's mum. I inspected the various bottles and cans on the kitchen table, then I poured a half an inch of Pernod into the bottom of my plastic cup, which I filled to the top with Coke. I dropped in a couple of ice cubes and took a sip, relishing the sweet-shop tang of the drink.

"What's that you're drinking?" A girl's voice.

"It's Pernod," I told her. "It tastes like aniseed balls, only it's alcoholic." I didn't say that I only tried it because I'd heard someone in the crowd ask for a Pernod on a live Velvet Underground LP.

"Can I have one?" I poured another Pernod, topped it off with Coke, passed it to her. Her hair was a coppery auburn, and it tumbled around her head in ringlets. It's not a hair style you see much now, but you saw it a lot back then.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Triolet," she said.

"Pretty name," I told her, although I wasn't sure that it was. She was pretty, though.

"It's a verse form," she said, proudly. "Like me."

"You're a poem?"

She smiled, and looked down and away, perhaps bashfully. Her profile was almost flat -- a perfect Grecian nose that came down from her forehead in a straight line. We did Antigone in the school theater the previous year. I was the messenger who brings Creon the news of Antigone's death. We wore half-masks that made us look like that. I thought of that play, looking at her face, in the kitchen, and I thought of Barry Smith's drawings of women in the Conan comics: five years later I would have thought of the Pre-Raphaelites, of Jane Morris and Lizzie Siddall. But I was only fifteen then.

"You're a poem?" I repeated.

She chewed her lower lip. "If you want. I am a poem, or I am a pattern, or a race of people whose world was swallowed by the sea."

"Isn't it hard to be three things at the same time?"

"What's your name?"

"Enn."

"So you are Enn," she said. "And you are a male. And you are a biped. Is it hard to be three things at the same time?"

"But they aren't different things. I mean, they aren't contradictory." It was a word I had read many times but never said aloud before that night, and I put the stresses in the wrong places. Contradictory.

She wore a thin dress made of a white, silky fabric. Her eyes were a pale green, a color that would now make me think of tinted contact lenses; but this was thirty years ago; things were different then. I remember wondering about Vic and Stella, upstairs. By now, I was sure that they were in one of the bedrooms, and I envied Vic so much it almost hurt.

Still, I was talking to this girl, even if we were talking nonsense, even if her name wasn't really Triolet (my generation had not been given hippie names: all the Rainbows and the Sunshines and the Moons, they were only six, seven, eight years old back then). She said, "We knew that it would soon be over, and so we put it all into a poem, to tell the universe who we were, and why we were here, and what we said and did and thought and dreamed and yearned for. We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable. Then we sent the poem as a pattern of flux, to wait in the heart of a star, beaming out its message in pulses and bursts and fuzzes across the electromagnetic spectrum, until the time when, on worlds a thousand sun systems distant, the pattern would be decoded and read, and it would become a poem once again."

"And then what happened?"

She looked at me with her green eyes, and it was as if she stared out at me from her own Antigone half-mask; but as if her pale green eyes were just a different, deeper, part of the mask. "You cannot hear a poem without it changing you," she told me. "They heard it, and it colonized them. It inherited them and it inhabited them, its rhythms becoming part of the way that they thought; its images permanently transmuting their metaphors; its verses, its outlook, its aspirations becoming their lives. Within a generation their children would be born already knowing the poem, and, sooner rather than later, as these things go, there were no more children born. There was no need for them, not any longer. There was only a poem, which took flesh and walked and spread itself across the vastness of the known."

I edged closer to her, so I could feel my leg pressing against hers.

She seemed to welcome it: she put her hand on my arm, affectionately, and I felt a smile spreading across my face.

"There are places that we are welcomed," said Triolet, "and places where we are regarded as a noxious weed, or as a disease, something immediately to be quarantined and eliminated. But where does contagion end and art begin?"

"I don't know," I said, still smiling. I could hear the unfamiliar music as it pulsed and scattered and boomed in the front room.

She leaned into me then and -- I suppose it was a kiss. . . . I suppose. She pressed her lips to my lips, anyway, and then, satisfied, she pulled back, as if she had now marked me as her own.

"Would you like to hear it?" she asked, and I nodded, unsure what she was offering me, but certain that I needed anything she was willing to give me.

She began to whisper something in my ear. It's the strangest thing about poetry -- you can tell it's poetry, even if you don't speak the language. You can hear Homer's Greek without understanding a word, and you still know it's poetry. I've heard Polish poetry, and Inuit poetry, and I knew what it was without knowing. Her whisper was like that. I didn't know the language, but her words washed through me, perfect, and in my mind's eye I saw towers of glass and diamond; and people with eyes of the palest green; and, unstoppable, beneath every syllable, I could feel the relentless advance of the ocean.

Perhaps I kissed her properly. I don't remember. I know I wanted to.

And then Vic was shaking me violently. "Come on!" he was shouting. "Quickly. Come on!"

In my head I began to come back from a thousand miles away.

"Idiot. Come on. Just get a move on," he said, and he swore at me. There was fury in his voice.

For the first time that evening I recognized one of the songs being played in the front room. A sad saxophone wail followed by a cascade of liquid chords, a man's voice singing cut-up lyrics about the sons of the silent age. I wanted to stay and hear the song.

She said, "I am not finished. There is yet more of me."

"Sorry love," said Vic, but he wasn't smiling any longer. "There'll be another time," and he grabbed me by the elbow and he twisted and pulled, forcing me from the room. I did not resist. I knew from experience that Vic could beat the stuffing out me if he got it into his head to do so. He wouldn't do it unless he was upset or angry, but he was angry now.

Out into the front hall. As Vic pulled open the door, I looked back one last time, over my shoulder, hoping to see Triolet in the doorway to the kitchen, but she was not there. I saw Stella, though, at the top of the stairs. She was staring down at Vic, and I saw her face.

This all happened thirty years ago. I have forgotten much, and I will forget more, and in the end I will forget everything; yet, if I have any certainty of life beyond death, it is all wrapped up not in psalms or hymns, but in this one thing alone: I cannot believe that I will ever forget that moment, or forget the expression on Stella's face as she watched Vic hurrying away from her. Even in death I shall remember that.

Her clothes were in disarray, and there was makeup smudged across her face, and her eyes --

You wouldn't want to make a universe angry. I bet an angry universe would look at you with eyes like that.

We ran then, me and Vic, away from the party and the tourists and the twilight, ran as if a lightning storm was on our heels, a mad helter-skelter dash down the confusion of streets, threading through the maze, and we did not look back, and we did not stop until we could not breathe; and then we stopped and panted, unable to run any longer. We were in pain. I held on to a wall, and Vic threw up, hard and long, into the gutter.

He wiped his mouth.

"She wasn't a--" He stopped.

He shook his head.

Then he said, "You know . . . I think there's a thing. When you've gone as far as you dare. And if you go any further, you wouldn't be you anymore? You'd be the person who'd done that? The places you just can't go. . . . I think that happened to me tonight."

I thought I knew what he was saying. "Screw her, you mean?" I said.

He rammed a knuckle hard against my temple, and twisted it violently. I wondered if I was going to have to fight him -- and lose -- but after a moment he lowered his hand and moved away from me, making a low, gulping noise.

I looked at him curiously, and I realized that he was crying: his face was scarlet; snot and tears ran down his cheeks. Vic was sobbing in the street, as unselfconsciously and heartbreakingly as a little boy.

He walked away from me then, shoulders heaving, and he hurried down the road so he was in front of me and I could no longer see his face. I wondered what had occurred in that upstairs room to make him behave like that, to scare him so, and I could not even begin to guess.

The streetlights came on, one by one; Vic stumbled on ahead, while I trudged down the street behind him in the dusk, my feet treading out the measure of a poem that, try as I might, I could not properly remember and would never be able to repeat.

* * *
Listen To Audio Version

Any Given Sunday

2008-10-08T02:13:00.001+05:30

I don’t know what to say really.
Three minutes
to the biggest battle of our professional lives
all comes down to today.
Either
we heal
as a team
or we are going to crumble.
Inch by inch
play by play
till we’re finished.
We are in hell right now, gentlemen
believe me
and
we can stay here
and get the shit kicked out of us
or
we can fight our way
back into the light.
We can climb out of hell.
One inch, at a time.

Now I can’t do it for you.
I’m too old.
I look around and I see these young faces
and I think
I mean
I made every wrong choice a middle age man could make.
I uh….
I pissed away all my money
believe it or not.
I chased off
anyone who has ever loved me.
And lately,
I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror.

You know when you get old in life
things get taken from you.
That’s, that’s part of life.
But,
you only learn that when you start losing stuff.
You find out that life is just a game of inches.
So is football.
Because in either game
life or football
the margin for error is so small.
I mean
one half step too late or to early
you don’t quite make it.
One half second too slow or too fast
and you don’t quite catch it.
The inches we need are everywhere around us.
They are in ever break of the game
every minute, every second.

On this team, we fight for that inch
On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us
to pieces for that inch.
We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch.
Cause we know
when we add up all those inches
that’s going to make the fucking difference
between WINNING and LOSING
between LIVING and DYING.

I’ll tell you this
in any fight
it is the guy who is willing to die
who is going to win that inch.
And I know
if I am going to have any life anymore
it is because, I am still willing to fight, and die for that inch
because that is what LIVING is.
The six inches in front of your face.

Now I can’t make you do it.
You gotta look at the guy next to you.
Look into his eyes.
Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you.
You are going to see a guy
who will sacrifice himself for this team
because he knows when it comes down to it,
you are gonna do the same thing for him.

That’s a team, gentlemen
and either we heal now, as a team,
or we will die as individuals.
That’s football guys.
That’s all it is.
Now, whattaya gonna do?

Tony D'Amato

American Gods

2008-09-29T16:48:00.003+05:30

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen-I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Neil Gaiman

The Passenger

2008-09-26T21:36:00.001+05:30

I am a passenger
And I ride and I ride
I ride through the city's backside
I see the stars come out of the sky
Yeah, they're bright in a hollow sky
You know it looks so good tonight

I am a passenger
I stay under glass
I look through my window so bright
I see the stars come out tonight
I see the bright and hollow sky
Over the city's a rip in the sky
And everything looks good tonight

Singin' la la la la la-la-la la
La la la la la-la-la la
La la la la la-la-la la la-la

Get into the car
We'll be the passenger
We'll ride through the city tonight
See the city's ripped insides
We'll see the bright and hollow sky
We'll see the stars that shine so bright
The sky was made for us tonight

Oh the passenger
How how he rides
Oh the passenger
He rides and he rides
He looks through his window
What does he see?
He sees the sided hollow sky
He see the stars come out tonight
He sees the city's ripped backsides
He sees the winding ocean drive
And everything was made for you and me
All of it was made for you and me
'cause it just belongs to you and me
So let's take a ride and see what's mine

Singing...

Oh, the passenger
He rides and he rides
He sees things from under glass
He looks through his window's eye
He sees the things he knows are his
He sees the bright and hollow sky
He sees the city asleep at night
He sees the stars are out tonight
And all of it is yours and mine
And all of it is yours and mine
Oh, let's ride and ride and ride and ride...

Singing..

Iggy Pop

a fortnight gone, 3 remain

2008-09-24T12:42:00.013+05:30

A fortnight ago, I left my hostel, for good. After 5 years in the same college, for the same 4 year course. It has been something that I can never forget. Neither do I wish to. Since then, I managed to spend an even 42 hours at Mumbai, and came back to my parent's place in Ahmedabad. I was just happy to be out of the place and going back at long last, without the slightest premonition idea of how to go about doing whatever it was that lay ahead of me. I was moving, and that seemed a good enough start. Then, after the homecoming, the euphoria gradually wore off, and the body recovered from the shock of four good home-cooked meals a day. Now, the final decision arrived.

Am I Ready?

Can I Do It?

(I swear the Capital Letters came themselves and are not of my invention)

So, the usual hullabaloo started. what test series to join, what material to use, what to do, what not to do. as expected, every person on my contact list with the slightest connection to the word MBA - past, present & future - seemed like a possible lighthouse in the sea of chaos where I was floating like the massive leviathan that I am. finally I settled on a single institution on whom I decided to unload the burden of my unpreparedness. In one of the classes that followed last weekend, it went something like this :

A : So how long have you been preparing for an MBA Entrance Exam?
N: It's my first day sir.
A: So you have given CAT before?
N: No.
A: Well, have you ever given any management acumen test before ?
N: No.
A: And you intend to give CAT this year?
N: Yes.
A: With the aim of seeking admission into one of the ...
N: IIM's.
A: Ok. (pause)
N: (pause)
A: You do realise I cant take any payment from you. (Long story behind this bit)
N: erm... not really (inaudible)
A: So I guess we have to give you a Zero-Prep Test to measure your level of CAT Crack-ablity.
N: Sure. When do I give it?
-- After 150 minutes --
N: well? what do you say?
A: hmmm. this is good. 100/300. and you are easily getting past all the individual cut-offs too. What we need to change your strategy .....

this was followed by a good 15 minutes of advice, that can only be judged in the light of the events to happen on the 16th of November, 2008. hence, for now I shall reserve judgement.

Finally, as we sit here, the story so far is that 52 days remain. A month ago, Xonix & I were debating the possibility of acing an examination with last than 8 weeks of preparation that most graduates of the country spent 8 months slogging over. A lot remains to be seen.

All that I can say right now is now feels nice. let's go with that and see what happens.

#214

2008-09-22T23:12:00.000+05:30

We confuse naming a thing with knowing it. For instance, how does one know a chair? Well, what is a chair? Is it the word? The sound, "chair?" The image in your mind of four legs, a seat and a back? Or is it wood from a tree that sprouted into existence from a seed that has travelled from tree to tree for millions of years, each tree's survival dependent upon a fragile ecological balance, a perfect blend of minerals, sunlight, weather, and, ultimately, sub-atomic particles that have been zipping around since the birth of the universe? Add to that the billions of years and infinite forces essential to creating the conditions needed for human beings to exist, cut down the tree, haul it to a mill, carve it into smaller pieces, send it to a chair factory, shape it into a chair, ship it to a store, purchase it, stick it in an SUV and drive it home so that an equally complex ass can sit on it, and you begin to know a chair. In other words, when we truly look deeply into the one thing, we see it is, in fact, the all, and, of course, contained within the all, is the one thing. Which is why I never get upset about winning or losing an Emmy. How can I? I am an Emmy. Right now Tina Fey is sitting at home clutching me to her relatively ample bosom. Feels good.

Chuck Lorre

i sit here

2008-08-26T10:38:00.001+05:30

I sit here in a dark room listening to Freddie Mercury sing about love and death and excess. I sit here remembering, or at least trying to, the days gone by. I sit here trying to rid myself of this god-awful headache that refuses to leave me alone, the remnant of three days of an excruciatingly irritating sniveling cold that wont lemme study, sleep or read anything of consequence. That has me eyes savaged into dull orbs that look more pink than white or a murky shade of brown. The small victory in managing without coffee seems to be hollow. I sit here. And wonder, nodding my head to the beats of the song that fills the room, repeatedly using the backspace to correct typos thanks to not bothering with looking at the keyboard. Which just happens to be rather pointless in the dark of the room.
It has been long. Really really long, since I felt so, hmmm. How do you say this , vacant?
I sit here, only to realise that i had fallen asleep on my computer again while writing the last few lines, and today apparently a new day. I sit here, having finally succumbed to my cravings, enjoying a tumbler of hot joe, along with melted dark chocolate from Flury's (thanks to a kind junior). I sit here listen to Roger Waters wail from the bottom of his heart on one of the Bootleg Tapes. I sit here, having just heard my mom cry tears of joy, upon receiving the gifts I have sent her and dad. I sit here, enjoying my day, with about 3 odd hours to go before the NC Examinations commence, and I get grilled to a rare crisp. Oh Well, what the hell, like a give a banana about that anyway. this is now, and now feels good. :)

bottom

2008-08-09T01:32:00.001+05:30

Hitting bottom is not a weekend-retreat, it's not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying controlling everything and just let go. Let go!

Tyler Durden, Fight Club

wordpower

2008-08-08T09:28:00.000+05:30

life

2008-07-27T02:58:00.002+05:30

goes on

Zindagi migzara

hands & destiny

2008-07-23T21:26:00.000+05:30

The left hand is what the gods give you, the right is what you do with it.

Karan Bajaj, Keep Off The Grass

beautiful day

2008-07-02T10:30:00.001+05:30

austria-hungary. schengenland. hows that for a waking thought. destination europe.time period 380 days. the rest of the details, they ain't fuzzy. they just don't exist. plain and simple. waking life is a dream controlled i guess. haven't had a good morning for quite sometime now. guess when you manage to hit rock-bottom for a long stretch everything has to start looking up after a certain point. like how you can see the stars even in daytime from the bottom of a really deep well. or so they see. i have not yet managed to land myself at the bottom of one, and swear to get back and report if its true. time for the coffee, and bryan adams. i think the last time i heard that in the morning was over 5 years.good times.also it's time i shut down my laptop for a while. cuker has been running this whole last week.

i got my motor running,
famous driving,
i never planned to stay,
getaway.
you know its now or never getaway.
nobody lives for ever.
we're only waiting just to make our getaway.

----------------

Thought

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. Plutarch

Track

Temple of The Sun, Rainbow

Decaf Poopacino

2008-07-01T12:00:00.001+05:30

By DAVE BARRY

I have exciting news for anybody who would like to pay a lot of money for coffee that has passed all the way through an animal's digestive tract.

And you just know there are plenty of people who would. Specialty coffees are very popular these days, attracting millions of consumers, every single one of whom is standing in line ahead of me whenever I go to the coffee place at the airport to grab a quick cup on my way to catch a plane. These consumers are always ordering mutant beverages with names like ``mocha-almond-honey-vinaigrette lattespressacino,'' beverages that must be made one at a time via a lengthy and complex process involving approximately one coffee bean, three quarts of dairy products and what appears to be a small nuclear reactor.

Meanwhile, back in the line, there is growing impatience among those of us who just want a plain old cup of coffee so that our brains will start working and we can remember what our full names are and why we are catching an airplane. We want to strike the lattespressacino people with our carry-on baggage and scream ``GET OUT OF OUR WAY, YOU TREND GEEKS, AND LET US HAVE OUR COFFEE!'' But of course we couldn't do anything that active until we've had our coffee.

It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity. I bet this kind of thing does not happen to heroin addicts. I bet that when serious heroin addicts go to purchase their heroin, they do not tolerate waiting in line while some dilettante in front of them orders a hazelnut smack-a-cino with cinnamon sprinkles.

The reason some of us need coffee is that it contains caffeine, which makes us alert. Of course it is very important to remember that caffeine is a drug, and, like any drug, it is a lot of fun.

No! Wait! What I meant to say is: Like any drug, caffeine can have serious side effects if we ingest too much. This fact was first noticed in ancient Egypt when a group of workers, who were supposed to be making a birdbath, began drinking Egyptian coffee, which is very trong, and wound up constructing the pyramids.

I myself developed the coffee habit in my early 20s, when, as a ``cub'' reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa., I had to stay awake while writing phenomenally boring stories about municipal government. I got my coffee from a vending machine that also sold hot chocolate and chicken-noodle soup; all three liquids squirted out of a single tube,and they tasted pretty much the same. But I came to need that coffee, and even today I can do nothing useful before I've had several cups. (I can't do anything useful afterward, either; that's why I'm a columnist.)

But here's my point: This specialty-coffee craze has gone too far. I say this in light of a letter I got recently from alert reader Bo Bishop. He sent me an invitation he received from a local company to a ``private tasting of the highly prized Luwak coffee,'' which ``at $300 a pound . . . is one of the most expensive drinks in the world.'' The invitation states that this coffee is named for the luwak, a ``member of the weasel family'' that lives on the Island of Java and eats coffee berries; as the berries pass through the luwak, a ``natural fermentation'' takes place, and the berry seeds -- the coffee beans -- come out of the luwak intact. The beans are then gathered, washed, roasted and sold to coffee connoisseurs.

The invitation states: ``We wish to pass along this once in a lifetime opportunity to taste such a rarity.''

Or, as Bo Bishop put it: ``They're selling processed weasel doodoo for $300 a pound.''

I first thought this was a clever hoax designed to ridicule the coffee craze. Tragically, it is not. There really is a Luwak coffee. I know because I bought some from a specialty-coffee company in Atlanta. I paid $37.50 for two ounces of beans. I was expecting the beans to look exotic, considering where they'd been, but they looked like regular coffee beans. In fact, for a moment I was afraid that they were just regular beans, and that I was being ripped off.

Then I thought: What kind of world is this when you worry that people might be ripping you off by selling you coffee that was NOT pooped out by a weasel?

So anyway, I ground the beans up and brewed the coffee and drank some. You know how sometimes, when you're really skeptical about something, but then you finally try it, you discover that it's really good, way better than you would have thought possible? This is not the case with Luwak coffee. Luwak coffee, in my opinion, tastes like somebody washed a dead cat in it.

But I predict it's going to be popular anyway, because it's expensive. One of these days, the people in front of me at the airport coffee place are going to be ordering decaf poopacino. I'm thinking of switching to heroin.

Life Experience

2008-06-24T17:59:00.001+05:30

Thou hast seen nothing yet.
Miguel de Cervantes
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
A nice movie after a really long time. saw 21 today. while trying to recover from stomach cramps and with two pending half done assignments. life experience. amen. what does ones life count for ultimately if not for the experience? i mean, given you can earn a shitload of cash or none at all, or just get on by, making ends meet. but isnt it the quality of life that you lead that counts, irrespective of the spending power you roll on, consumerism and capitalism be damned, what matters at the end of the road is the ride, just the ride. few people get to the end of the line anyway, so better enjoy the ride, and go out with guns blazing.having lived. on your terms atleast. so mark those regrets and do something about getting around to doing something about them. cause no matter how young or old you are, you aint got a lotta time if you live only once.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Life is an ice cream. enjoy it while it lasts.
Debraj Sahai, Black

sleep

2008-06-23T01:06:00.003+05:30

when it gets too much to handle, lay down,
pull back those covers over your head and go back.
back to wonderland.

Hear your heartbeat
Beat a frantic pace
And it's not even seven am
You're feeling the rush of anguish settling
You cannot help showing them in
Hurry up then
Or you'll fall behind and
They will take control of you
And you need to heal the hurt behind your eyes
Fickle words crowding your mind

So

Sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in
Like waves of sweet fire, you're safe within
Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in
And carry you over to a new morning

Try as you might
You try to give it up
Seems to be holding on fast
It's hand in your hand
A shadow over you
A beggar for soul in your face
Still it don't mater if you won't listen
If you won't let them follow you
You just need to heal
Make good all your lies
Move on and don't look behind

So

Sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in
Like waves of sweet fire, you're safe within
Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in
And carry you over to a new morning

Day after day
Fickle visions messing with your head
Fickle, vicious
Sleeping in your bed
Messing with your head
Fickle visions
Fickle, vicious:

Sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in
Like waves of sweet fire, you're safe within
Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in
And carry you over to a new morning

Poets of The Fall, Sleep

name

2008-06-21T22:56:00.001+05:30

the search for a new name has begun. ahem. now, why would you want a new name for a persona of yours that is supposed to be a mask for you albeit online? i mean, there is definitely something fishy there. walked a bit today. i mean really. more than enough to digest the extra heavy meal at Khalsa, while managing to have more than an unfair share of professors and other assorted amusing creatures stare at me and the fellow walker who was walking beside me to the highway. again, rings a bell somewhere. why am i here again? can't seem to remember. something hazy about karmic imbalance or stuff in the background. waiting to get my hands on Keep off the Grass. let's see when the promised copies reach the campus. have pretty much migrated to flock for a while, laying off FF2 completely, somehow in two minds about FF3, still feels like a Release Candidate ver3 only. when are they ever gonna take care of the memory leaks? what does one do about beetles the size of a fist. i mean really, when they keep banging against your door in the dead of the night and manage to rouse you from your half dead state continually? or about bats that cling to the wall right above your door? thankfully they are much smaller than the beetles, but still, they present a more scarier scene if you really think about it. hmm. wonder what porky did about the bat yesterday. only time will tell i suppose.this post is officially too messy a thread to follow now. Time to go. Time for getting back to the muzic collexion. adios.

access denied

2008-06-20T03:51:00.000+05:30

funny shit happens. way too much,
way too often to even start mentioning here.
so just thought i'll leave a random assimilation
of pictures for today. cheerio. :)

Mesra Morning

2008-06-09T06:15:00.001+05:30

True, its a drag getting gout of bed. Especially when you just closed your eyes when the clock read 2 am. 5.30 am is not supposed to be a good time for people with nocturnal habits. Good time to go to bed bad. Bad time to get out of it. Nevertheless, considering the water scarcity, its better to get your daily affairs down while wter is still flowing from the tap. And it has it rewards. Getting up early, not the other bit I mean. Well of course that has it salient features to but I'm not going into that here.

Sitting on the terrace, the warm sun warming my face and soothing my twice dead eyes. Watching majestic raptors swoop around on the lower lawns. Seven of them. It's like the group decide to put on an early morning air-show. I ain't quite sure if they are kites or eagles, but I'll hazard a guess they are the former. One retires every now and then to go sit atop the spire on the main dome of the Institute. The bird's antics, together with the lush green lawns that are soaked n fresh from the last two day's downpour make getting up totally worth it. Now for some coffee to make it perfect. If only the Hoggers were here to go to an early morning breakfast with, it would have be Heaven itself. Funny, that the best times we had have had were spent thinking of the outside and now that they are on the outside, they pine away for this place. The Rabbi put it nicely, when he said something to the effect that he lives on the fence, thus having access to both sides and finds both side green. No need for comparison et al.hmmm.

The same old story everywhere. Rang De Basanti. DJ quipping to Sue about how the world danced to his tune inside of the campus walls, and how he would be dancing to the world's tune outside. Hence the preference to stay in. Tim Lakh Lakh Tim Tim Lakh Lakh.

Well, the birds have taken off, and while I don't exactly come in their weight category, I must try and do the same. Time to fly.

The Eagles are coming

The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

Uncertainity

2008-06-09T01:24:00.002+05:30

As I lie here, awake, unable to sleep, eat, read, study or do anything else seemingly useful, I think. Seems a bit paradoxical somehow. Being reduced to watching bugs spiral endlessly around the cool white light, bumping repetitively into it, nothing becoming of them or their efforts. Seems like a metaphor for so much. Just read The 3 Mistakes of My Life, by Chetan Bhagat. It's cover proclaims the author to be 'The biggest selling English-language novelist in India's History' as New York Times puts it. It all makes you think. The successful investment banker, product of the premier Engineering & Management Institutions of this country, IIT-D & IIM-A, working hard to produce a best-selling novelevery two years, apparently all based on true incidents. Irrelevant. The Big Indian Dream. Totally relevant. Wanting to make it big in life, wanting that job security, that plush apartment with great decor, that smooth sports car, that envy-inspiring wife. Isn't it every other guy's dream today? How to go about it is altogether a near impossible question, leave aside figuring out the answer to it. So like the mindless hordes that we constitute, we all fall in step with whatever is thrown our way. We expect others to make decisions for us, and then live those decisions, complaining and cribbing that we never got to make our own true choices. The fact that we didn't want, or couldn't to is somehow always forgotten. I am one to speak cause I am totally aware of being one of those very sheep that I speak of, participating in the mass delusion. It started somewhere in standard 8,and continued for the next 5 years. The mad rush to prepare for the country's best engineering college. What did I want to be?

Engineer or Doctor? It's that simple. A binary choice. And I had it easy, with my parents to back me up. But I had no idea of my own accord. A few weeks back, when an engineering aspirant asked me which branch she ought to take, it set the clocks whirring again. I simply asked her to go visit the engineering college, interact with the professors, use the internet a bit and decide herself. Of course, help was at hand if needed, but the decision was her to make. Both the aspirant and her mother stared at me, as if I was suggesting she go take a year off exploring the Bahamas or something like that. I mean, it keeps coming up every now and then in every other conversation. What after graduating? Are you going to stick with the job you have managed to land, or move to a better one? What next? A masters degree surely, but when? MBA or MS? Or is it going to be the Civil Services? I honestly am clueless.

I mean, I have taken it easy. Really really easy. Cool as can be. That's the fact of the matter. Lebowski says Fuck it, Let's go bowling. Been there, done that. OK, so I ended up reaching the end of a four year degree in five years. OK, so I have got placed in a mass-recruiting IT firm that hires by the hundreds. So what. I have dreamt out plans before, down to every last teeny-weeny irrelevant detail. And managed to have them amount to naught. So now, if I'm playing it by the year, why all the fuss? Why can't I be just another guy, sitting here idly, listening to Floyd at midnight, minus the prescribed joint, sleep deprived yes, food deprived yes, eyes shot to hell from having watched 3 movies, read two novels and studied a weeks worth of course material in a single day. I find turning off my laptop an irritating task, I like to use idle processor time to hunt for extra-terrestrials and spinning pulsars. I reach out to check my mail the moment I open my eyes from whatever little sleep I manage to get. I talk inexplicably long hours on the phone about nothing at all. I feel sleepy whenever I have coffee that has any amount of milk in it. I spend more time figuring out Erewhonian universes than the one I happen to be stuck in. I make unfathomable and alarmingly regular references to a singular tome in all my conversations and writings .I have no clue about what I'm gonna do in life. I still read upon on the latest research in the field of high Energy physics with very little chance of being affected or contributing to it in any fashion. No shall not go on to win the noble prize or propound a earth-shattering theory in any discipline. I don't see myself as the head of a corporation or a country shaping millions of lives with my work. I do however wish to be the man, who can have his indulgences satiated once in a while. That is what the 20lpa dream is about. The means seem irrelevant, as long as they are legal and conscientious, but that's more of a convenience and precaution really. I really can't think of anything that I cannot do or see myself being incapable of achieving, provided its reasonable enough. These times, these idyllic moments are sure to come back to me later. I doubt many get to experience what I have got. Learn by stumbling and falling. And after falling, lying back and wondering at length about everything before you pick yourself up and get on with clambering back up. Getting to use that grey muscle located up there on the top, that most of us are too busy to bother with. But from what I can make out, you can either ponder and think and question, or be happy. The two seem mutually exclusive somehow. Like the question and it's answer. Everything comes back to it as always. Guess there's a reason for that. Life like everything in it is cyclic, and tends more often than not to come full circle. Like a wave travelling around a circle, complete with ups and downs, going on ad infinitum.

"I'm afraid," he said at last, "that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about the same universe."

He paused again. Disappointment crept into Arthur's face and snuggled down into its accustomed place.

"Except," said Prak, struggling to sort a thought out, "if it happened, it seems that the Question and the Answer would just cancel each other out and take the Universe with them, which would then be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. It is possible that this has already happened," he added with a weak smile, "but there is a certain amount of Uncertainty about it."

Life, The Universe And Everything, Douglas Adams

Kansas City Shuffle

2008-06-07T00:25:00.000+05:30

just emptying out all those muzings et al.

---------------------------------------------------------
I am stable most of the time : 3 am musings : MPB
---------------------------------------------------------

It has been a long time since i actually got to sit down and write sumthing. had been planning to blog on the last two trips, but all the flights and trains turned out to be ones that didnt favour my wish. or so it seems to me atleast.add to that a general feeling of Lebowski-ness.
Have learnt a few lessons tho. No matter how much you know, there is still a lot that you don't. and this fact should and ought to make you a much more humble person for it.
anyway, back to the present. have to write to fatash.it's been a while since i was in touch with her. honestly. the last time we talked/chatted/cursed each other, i remember her suggesting that i should get medical insurance before going to NUS.i mean honestly.medical insurance.a chap who aint telling his folks about a trip abroad,who is stone broke to shop for himself on the trip. such a chap actually going and getting medical cover for a 40 hour stay. so not happening. so so not happening. when you actually come to think of it, it does seem that life has become easy on the whole. true, it aint exactly fabolouso, but still is rather heavy on the take-it-as-it-comes-why-bother-getting-up sorta side of life.
---------------------------------------------------------
smiling away so many stirred senses upto a point of desperation turning into a weird sublime literary outcomes hovering in a undefinable region between sanity and insanity from a mundane perspective?

(what the hell is that???)

---------------------------------------------------------

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. Had the caveman known how to laugh, history would have been different.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

---------------------------------------------------------

(the snowflakes) the endless repetition of an ordinary miracle.

Snow, Orhan Pamuk

---------------------------------------------------------

A Kansas City Shuffle is when everybody looks right, you go left.

Lucky Number Slevin, Mr.Goodkat

---------------------------------------------------------
Mom : Computer = Time Wasting Activity.
Me : well, i'm gonna be paid for that soon.
Mom : hmmm. no wonder they gave you a job after you spent the morning reading Calvin & Hobbes.
Me : boing boing

a recollection of the last fortnight

2008-06-06T21:10:00.006+05:30

enough lamenting and putting off the inevitable. you gotta do what you gotta do. so atleast let's get on with clearing the cache of drafts that were, well, drafted. so enough time spent staring at the picture of that simply great tasting half litre drink in front of you.cause it aint available for within a range of thousand miles and 90000 seconds from here and now. so, as i was aptly saying. let's get on with it.

this was written before arriving in the state of Jharkhand, aboard that wonderous thing that shuttles me between the national and state capital in one piece with amazing regularity every 3 or so odd months
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Bought two books, which i aint supposed to. Thus the hiatus from buying books is finally ended. Funny that the books should be The Everest Hotel & The 3 Mistakes of My Life.

Have a runny nose, have had enough fluids, sadly they have been all ice cold.

Have also released enough fluids through my epidermis for the entire week's worth.

Have enjoyed talking nonchalantly as I orbited CP thrice with nothing to do. Thank network providers for bringing STD and roaming into the comfy zone at long last.

Read Corridor by Sarnath Banerjee. This is where Digital Dutta apparently is introduced into this universe. Need to go and find the Jehangir Rangoonwala, the bookseller who sits in CP and tokes up, and is knowledgeable of all things inane. Moving to delhi, even if only for the two months of training, seems to have its prospects seeming nice right now.

Made these random notes on the way:

Tom Holt / The Split Infinitive / Digital Dutta / Jehangir Rangoonwala / Ibn Batuta

Alex Steinwess : The inventor of cover art for recorded music : 1938

Saw the Jhoomo ad for the Delhi Metro Citi card. Liked it.

Screw Spicjet for splitting the seam on my bag, and screw me for not checking it before exiting the airport. now i gotta haul the overloaded bag around clutching it to my chest like im a goddamn idiot looking for a place to blow up.

cut to the next day, after a long night spent in a train coach with the most overzealous AC i have ever encountered.

cramped on the side upper berth. if you have sumone you want to lovingly release your angst upon, and have some cash to spare, book em on one of these seats on a train journey thats over 2 days long. justice shall be served.cold and cramped. oh and its especially recommended for all species that reach 180 cm or more from ground level. so. another train journey behind me. spent discussing the aesthetics of movies, downloading blah blah blah. The usual stuff, only overlaid with a very serious dose of graphic novels etc.

MPB says I was headed down the path to doomed destruction anyway. She just happened along and speeded the journey up ever so slightly. Like the very useful sister in the sandman, appearing on cue, working perfectly by suggestion, then disappearing instatnly, leaving behind only the sound of her wings. Departing.

anyway, spent most of the time back home running around to get a BSNL line installed and broadband up and running on it.
(as of noon, June 6th 2008, it works!) that, and getting my broken laptop back into one single piece, and fiddling around with the other phones and the virgin ThinkPad. am i a spoilt brat? the answer is irrelevant. hmmm.
dunno why Adrian Veldt just popped into my mind. that's a darn funny idea. from here to there. what would it take to become Ozymandias? wonder wonder wonder. have spent more time studying this week than i have done for the rest of the year that's gone past. guess there's some justice in that, all things said and done.

one thing i dont get tho :

why isn't TCS good enough for anyone? why the what next question everytime? why why why?
whatever happened to revelling in mediocrity? is that still legal?

all things inane and more

2008-06-05T22:34:00.004+05:30

the 10 websites i visit on the internet

being listed here as a consequence of being tagged as Paji by the curly haired boy

(you can tell Arvind. please do. curious to see how that works out for cats in general)

Sites 1-10 in no particular order, conscious or otherwise

* X K C D : http://www.xkcd.com

* Unread GMail: https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/is%3Aunread

* /. : http://slashdot.org

* Applegeeks : http://www.applegeeks.com/lite/

* Google Suggest : http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

* daily dose of imagery : http://wvs.topleftpixel.com

* boing boing : http://www.boingboing.net

* Ars Technica : http://arstechnica.com

* Facebook : http://www.facebook.com

* Apple : http://www.apple.com

so there. 10 rufilicious websites visited on the net.there is also the ever popular search result page from the Wikipedia Search built into Firefox, and the forums et al, but then that is no longer strictly the website sense of frequenting.

also, lately, my online time seems to be at the mercy of garguantan mosquitoes that ensure that my feet stay pink from all their feasting for a long while after i have stepped into my room and out of their feeding grounds, that are funnily enough wi-fi enabled,luck, eh?

well, so long then. time to go die for tax reasons.

42

2008-05-28T20:58:00.001+05:30

We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves.
The algorithm is banned in China. The algorithm is from Jersey. The algorithm constantly finds Jesus.
This is not the algorithm. This is close.

This is 42.

We are sorry for the inconvenience.
--
Nikhil Kumar Verma
I Am.

Camera Kit

2008-05-21T18:45:00.000+05:30

Camera
Nikon M90
Nikon Lens Series E 50 MM 1:1.8
No.2745453
Made in Japan
Zoom Lens
Vivitar 80 200
MM 1:4.0
Macro Focusing Zoom MC
No. 7703589
Phi 55
MM
Made in Japan
Flashlight
National PE205
No.9247964
Made in Japan

i have no clue why i was supposed to put this up and what follows.. until then...

#212

2008-05-19T23:12:00.000+05:30

I believe that the voices of fear, both from without and within, can only be dispelled by trusting the voice that comes from the heart, Be still and listen to it. If it speaks of love and compassion for others, for the world itself, it just might be the voice of God -- or a reasonable facsimile. If, however, it snarls with fear of the unknown, fear of losing what you have or of not getting what you want, then it just might be the voice of Rupert Murdoch -- or a reasonable facsimile.

Chuck Lorre

#210

2008-05-12T23:12:00.000+05:30

I believe that in order to walk through grief, fear, loneliness, despair, confusion and anger without recourse to drugs, alcohol, over-eating, over-sexing, or the endless mind-numbing distractions provided by Western culture, one must become a spiritual warrior. I further believe that the pay-off for enduring suffering, for soberly embracing the inevitable bouts of emotional pain that life brings, is wisdom and serenity in the face of calamity. But make no mistake here, the path of the warrior is treacherous and cannot be walked alone. To survive, he must have brothers and sisters-in-arms to carry him when he buckles. When we lived and died in small tribes, this principle of mutually supporting one another through the trials of life was deeply woven into the fabric of the group mind. With the advent of towns and cities we were forced to live with the daily dilemma of being desperately alone and yet desperately needing one another. Which is why we are, by design, always seeking new tribes. With that in mind, I humbly offer a simple guideline to evaluate the efficacy of any tribe you might encounter on your path to becoming a spiritual warrior: if they ask for your money or access to your crotch, run away. If they ask for your money, smile unceasingly, never blink, and guarantee to make you a demi-god, running away will not suffice. Change your mailing address and briefly reconsider drugs, alcohol, food, sex and TV.

Chuck Lorre

Mess Eating Disorder : Behavioural Pattern

2008-05-10T22:16:00.002+05:30

what happens when you eat mess food everyday without fail for four continuous years in HELL

prayer

2008-05-10T15:36:00.001+05:30

Our program, who art in
Memory,
Hello World be thy name.
Thy operating system come,
thy commands be done,
at the Printer as they are
on the Screen.

Give us this day our daily
data,
and forgive us our I/O errors
as we forgive those
whose logic circuits are
faulty.

Lead us not into Frustration,
and deliver us from Power
Surges.
For thyne is the Algorithm,
the Application,
and the Solution,
looping for ever and ever.

Return.

Question

2008-05-09T01:40:00.003+05:30

How would you feel about life if Death was your older sister?

Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness.

Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.

Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream,
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.

Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive.

---A forgotten poet

----------------
Listening to: Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part I - V)

love

2008-05-04T01:29:00.001+05:30

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."

neil gaiman

Asda Supermarket Sells £5 Cellphone

2008-04-29T19:34:00.001+05:30

UK supermarket chain Asda has started selling cellphones for a fiver ($10). The handsets are pay-as-you-go and available on the Virgin, T-Mobile and Orange networks, with tariffs starting at 12p (24¢) per minute. Available models include the decidedly low-tech Nokia 1112 and the Sagem my220x.

The Sagem has actually been on sale as a pre-pay phone in the UK for a while: Last year it retailed for £15, but the Wal Mart subsidiary's £5 pricepoint takes these handsets firmly into disposable territory: Speaking to the Daily Mail, an Asda spokesman said that

You can just grab one off the shelf, use it once and throw it away if you wanted [...] It's great for people whose regular mobile phone is perhaps broken or they want a back up, or those who have come to this country for just a few weeks.

Of course, the spokesman forgot to mention the true market for these burners: Drug dealers.

sibling rivalry

2008-04-27T12:32:00.003+05:30

----------------
Listening to: Puccini - Track 19

whats up

2008-04-03T02:10:00.002+05:30

i have no clue. that's in answer to the title. honestly. it's 2 am, or sumthing like that.
i'm not in my room. the owner of the room is dead on his bed, with the lights on, resigned to me being stuck to the computer screen.literally.trying to figure out what to do for two upcoming dates in April. trying to make this dull throbbing 10 pound monster in my head work. Lesson Number One: do not play Diablo AND Diablo II in a single go and miss 4 consecutive meals in the process. Lesson Number Two : the fact that i have to spell this out means i aint gonna bother following it. Lesson Number Three : get your espresso machine back, or get caffeine pills(yes they exist.)

just a thought: i am actually sleep deprived, food deprived, eyes bloodshot, still recovering from watching AVP 2 (i dunno why i did that, i just did.) not to mention the last 4 days of marathon five-movie-a-day session. i might be going nuts. finally. at long last. five years in this place and it's finally happening. I dont give a rat's ass any more. not that i ever did, but this is new. this rambling at length with no sense whatsoever. i shall desist now. (desist. is that a word, even?)
dk dc lc.

shall continue rambling in a more lucid state of mind.

February & March's Dose

2008-03-28T02:20:00.003+05:30

February 10, 2008
B - American Khichdi - Sunil Lala

February 11, 2008
M - Eastern Promises

February 12, 2008
M - Goodbye Lenin

February 13, 2008
M - Charlie Wilson's War

February 14, 2008
M - The Kingdom

February 15, 2008
M - No Country For Old Men

February 16, 2008
M - The Kite Runnner

February 17, 2008
M - The Game Plan

February 18, 2008
B - The Department of Denials - Anurag Mathur

February 19, 2008
M - Old Boy
B - The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers - Sarnath Banerjee
M - Stardust

February 20, 2008
M - Chameli

February 21, 2008
M - Bill Hicks - It's Just A Ride - Revelations

February 23, 2008
P - Video

February 26, 2008
M - War

February 29, 2008
M - Casanova

March 3, 2008
M - Eye of the Dolphin

March 4, 2008
M - Autumn Sonata

March 6, 2008
M - Juno

March 7, 2008
M - John Rambo

March 8, 2008
M - Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

March 9, 2008
M - Little Terrorist

March 10, 2008
M - Big

March 11, 2008
M - Little Miss Sunshine

March 12, 2008
M - The Bicycle Thief

March 13, 2008
M - Day Night Day Night

March 14, 2008
M - The Man Who Loved Women

March 15, 2008
M - Rebecca

March 16, 2008
B - Kafka On The Shore - Haruki Murakami

March 17, 2008
M - American Gangster

March 18, 2008
M - Johnny Gadaar

March 19, 2008
M - Epic Movie

March 22, 2008
M - Closely Watched Trains

March 23, 2008
M - My Fair Lady

March 24, 2008
M - Flavours

March 25, 2008
M - Meet The Spartans

March 26, 2008
M - Shoot Em Up
B - Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami

March 27, 2008
M - Wild Hogs
M - Bottle Rocket

March 28, 2008
T - Stash 16 thru 22
M - The Short Films of David Lynch

March 29, 2008
M - Flushed Away
M - Eraser
M - Monster House
T - Big Bang Theory - Episode 10

March 30, 2008
M - Thank You For Smoking

solo

2008-02-02T15:01:00.000+05:30

Each man and all men together--is alone in his loneliness and no one is entitled to individual loneliness, and all men lumped together make up a "lonely mass" without names and without heroes.

Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum

---------------------------------------------------------
No man is an island,
No man stands alone,
Each man's joy is joy to me,
Each man's grief is my own.

We need one another,
So I will defend,
Each man as my brother,
Each man as my friend.

I saw the people gather,
I heard the music start,
The song that they were singing,
Is ringing in my heart.

No man is an island,
Way out in the blue,
We all look to the one above,
For our strength to renew.

When I help my brother,
Then I know that I,
Plant the seed of friendship,
That will never die.

Joan Baez : No Man Is an Island

---------------------------------------------------------

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne (1572-1631) : Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII

---------------------------------------------------------

Things come to pass, and sometimes they pass you by.
You feel cold and lonely and alone, and yet you go on.
Heck you don't really have a choice now do you?
---------------------------------------------------------

--- not much left for me to say after all this i guess ---

---------------------------------------------------------
Listening to: The Who - Behind Blue Eyes

january's dose

2008-01-24T02:03:00.000+05:30

where is the world headed to?
straight to hell.

here is january's dose of my listlessness details, for lack of better stuff

January 01, 2008
M - Punch Drunk Love

January 02, 2008
M - Bratz

January 03, 2008
M - Hitman

January 04, 2008
M - The Golden Compass

January 05, 2008
T - The Big Bang Theory - Season 1

January 06, 2008
B - Sin City - Sin City (Epi.1) - Frank Miller

January 07, 2008
M - The Big Lebowski

January 08, 2008
M - Beowulf

January 09, 2008
M - Persepolis

January 10, 2008
M - About A Boy
M - American Pie 6

January 11, 2008
B - Sin City - A Dame To Kill For (Epi.2) - Frank Miller

January 12, 2008
B - Sin City - The Big Fat Kill (Epi.3) - Frank Miller
M - Goodfellas

January 13, 2008
M - Outsourced
M - The Benchwarmers
M - Fever Pitch
M - Bad Santa

January 14, 2008
M - code 46

January 15, 2008
M - In The Name of Father

January 16, 2008
M - Being John Malkovich

January 21, 2008
B - Good Omens - Terry Pratchet & Neil Gaiman

January 22, 2008
M - Syriana
M - A History of Violence

January 23, 2008
M - I Am Sam

January 24, 2003
M - Babel

January 28, 2008
M - Layer Cake

January 30, 2008
M - Monster

January 31, 2008
M - The Matador
----------------
Listening to: Dire Straits - Walk Of Life

hell

2008-01-09T02:19:00.001+05:30

"Hell? You don't know what hell is. None of you people do. Hell isn't getting beat up or cut up or hauled in front of some faggot jury. Hell is waking up every god damn morning and not knowing why you're even here.Why you're even breathing."

Marv, Episode 3, Sin City
Frank Miller

happyness @ 20 lpa

2008-01-05T01:13:00.000+05:30

Der Verrückte Diamant. The Crazy Diamond. seems like its a bit hazy these days.

A thin invisible veil seems to be stretched across my vision. it seems to affect everything. how things seem to be, how they feel. like a slow poison seeping in through my very skin albeit really slowly. i am supposed to be doing a little soul searching due certain recent events, namely, the extension of my stay at my alma mater till the end of calendar year 2008.

i am told i need to be fearless.to find my dashed self confidence again, and start believing in myself again. i need to become the guy i was again. i need to start thinking again.as i was telling Snowy earlier today, this bit came to me earleir on,during my trip back to hostel.

Me, a simple guy, with a simple uncomplicated needs. enough money. books.music.movies.computer games and a good gaming rig.a gal.time for wasting on all of above.a not too frustrating job.there. i dont need perfection. the above will do. i see at the very least 5 years before i get them all to my satisfaction.now, given my slight understanding of how things go around in this duniya, (& how i end up paying for phone services i don't subscribe to) i come to the conclusion, that in terms of the standard of living today, the above defined 'Happyness' translates to a pay packet of 20 lakh big ones a year. INR.that takes care of all the tax issues et al. yes, i am challenged when it comes to sizes. clothing, eating and thinking. Large, Xtra Large & Jumbo only. can't help it.anyway.this is the part where the bulb lights up in my head.

20 lpa, to use the current day job-market lingo.point is, what the hell makes ME worth the 20 huge ones? right now. right here.what do i have to offer? would i pay myself that much in my own firm, given where i stand and what i am today? this is where the soul searching effectively starts (and ends).

technically, this is the closest i guess i have come to resolving something at the beginning of the year, for the entire year's duration. it's wake the effing hell up, smell the coffee, chug it down, and send a dark chocolate to check up on it.thus, being sufficiently roused, clear up all the pending mess that is lying around you.the flab.think.the papers.the books.the music.the movies.the prep material.the quizzes.get it over with.THEN, start something. can't get simpler than that. let's get to work.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you:
not as the world giveth, give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
John 14:27

goodnight kiddo.

----------------
Listening to: Yann Tiersen - Sur Le Fil

eyes wide open

2008-01-04T00:52:00.000+05:30

written sometime during the brief winter vacation at ahmedabad

i remember. i remember being scandalised to learn that kunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi is still running.i mean, heck, i was in school when that used to come on the telly.i was seated,somehow in the front seat of my maruti 800, and heard something in the passing on the radio to the soap opera. dad confirmed this shocking news, with a laugh at my shocked face, mouth hanging open n all. only to jerk out of his reverie a moment later as an oncoming guy on a motorcycle was tackled headon by a pair of sheep chasing each other on the street. talk about shaken but not stirred. the guy literally quivered, looked around, and continued talking on his phone and drove off, one hand on the steering and the other holding the phone.people. had a nice peaceful night yesternight.after a pot of pasta, eaten with chopsticks to make sure i don;t gobble it down, and a nice mug of evening joe, i launched myself off to bed a mere 2 hours after sundown. looks like i'm never gonna be able to finish reading Snow at this rate.woke up at 3 and went walking / running / jogging / panting / walking in that specific order.then, sat down to a movie, tea & biscuits at 4 am, till 6 when bed tea was served to mom & dad. waiting for dad to wake up and hand me the keys to the poor car so that i can go trash it. just been waiting 5 hours now.god save the pedestrians.poor souls.which reminds me. what is one supposed to do when strangers mail you asking for guidance and help, without ever alluding to the details of why they seek your counsel?as i said earlier, people.

----------------
Listening to: Poets Of The Fall - Sleep

december's dose

2007-12-31T21:05:00.000+05:30

December 05, 2007
M - Amelie
M - Sound of Music
T - My Big Fat Geek Wedding - Simpsons
M - Chocolat

December 06, 2007
M - Billy Madison
M - Zoolander
M - Elf

December 07, 2007
M - Rang De Basanti

December 08, 2007
B - Fight Club - Chuck Palahaniuk

December 09, 2007
M - Rang De Basanti

December 10, 2007
M - Amelie

December 11, 2007
M - Varsity Blues
M - I now pronounce you Chuck & Larry
B - Rant - Chuck Palahniuk

December 12, 2007
M - Suicide Club
M - Amelie
M - The Great Dictator

December 13, 2007
B - Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

December 14, 2007
M - Yuva

December 15, 2007
M - Gangajal

December 16, 2007
B - The Little Prince - Antoine Saint de Exupery

December 17, 2007
B - The Old Man & The Sea - Ernest Hemingway

December 18, 2007
B - Siddhartha - Herman Hesse

December 19, 2007
M - Lucky Number Slevin

December 20, 2007
M - The Big Lebowski

December 21, 2007
M - The Royal Tenenbaums

December 22, 2007
M - The Heartbreak Kid
M - Welcome

December 23, 2007
B - Enki Bilal - Heavy Metal Gear
B - Enki Bilal - The City That Never Was
B- Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

December 24, 2007
B - LXG Vol.1 No.1 - Alan Moore
B - LXG Vol.1 No.2 - Alan Moore

December 25, 2007
B - LXG Vol.1 No.3 - Alan Moore
B - LXG Vol.1 No.4 - Alan Moore

December 26, 2007
M - Flight of Fury
B - LXG Vol.1 No.5 - Alan Moore
B - LXG Vol.1 No.6 - Alan Moore
M - Disturbia

December 27, 2007
M - The Contract
M - 1408

December 28, 2007
B - LXG Vol.2 No.1-6 - Alan Moore

December 29, 2007
M - Superman Returns
M - Shark Tale

December 30, 2007
B - Snow - Orhan Pamuk
M - Taare Zameen Par

December 31, 2007
M - Garden State

----------------
Listening to: The Who - Behind Blue Eyes

if

2007-12-28T20:45:00.001+05:30

If I were a beginning, I would be: 42
If I were a month, I would be: July
If I were a day of the week, I would be: Thursday
If I were a time of day, I would be: Three
If I were a planet, I would be: Jupiter
If I were a season, I would be: Winter
If I were a sea animal, I would be: Whale
If I were a direction, I would be: North
Its what my name means : Complete
If I were a piece of furniture, I would be: A Rocking Chair
If I were a sin, I would be: Sloth
If I were a liquid, I would be: Water
If I were a fraud/scare, I would be: The Kansas City Shuffle
If I were a gem, I would be: Emerald
If I were a tree, I would be: Cocunut Tree
If I were a tool, I would be: A Hammer
If I were a flower/plant, I would be: Mimosa
If I were a kind of weather, I would be: Rainstorm
If I were a musical instrument, I would be: Bagpipes
If I were an animal, I would be: Elephant
If I were an emotion, I would be: Bliss
If I were a vegetable, I would be: Potato
If I were a sound, I would be: The Sound of Silence
If I were an element, I would be: Water
If I were a car, I would be: Aston Martin Vanquish
If I were a song, I would be: Heaven
If I were a food, I would be: Pav Bhaji
If I were a place, I would be: An Indian Railway Station
If I were a material, I would be: Sand
If I were a taste, I would be: Bitter
If I were a scent, I would be: The smell of the first rains upon the earth
If I were a religion, I would be: Agnoticism
If I were a sentence, I would be: The End.
If I were a body part, I would be: The Eyes
If I were a facial expression, I would be: A Smile
If I were a subject in college, I would be: Organic Chemistry
If I were a shape, I would be: Circle
If I were a quantity, I would be: Infinity
If I were a colour, I would be: White
If I were a thing, I would be: A Ball
If I were a landmass, I would be: Antartica
If I were a book, I would be: The Little Prince
If I were a monument, I would be: The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
If I were an artist, I would be: nobody
If I were a collection of poems, I would be: words on the wind
If I were a landscape, I would be: the perfect storm
If I were a watch, I would be: ticking
If I were God, I would be: smiling
If I were a vowel, I would be: i
If I were a consonant, I would be: z
If I were a formula, I would be: Chemical X
If I were a Science, I would be: Chemistry
If I were a theory, I would be: obsolete
If I were a famous person, I would be: Me
If I were an electronic equipment, I would be: a transistor
If I were sport, I would be: mind games :P
If I were a movie, I would be: Alegria
If I were a cartoon, I would be: Calvin
If I were an explorer, I would be: wandering
If I were a scientist, I would be: a physicist
If I were a relation, I would be: committed
If I were a river, I would be: Beas
If I were intoxication, I would be: high on life
If I were alone, I would be: me
If I were a question, then I would be: why not?
If I were a hobby, I would be: thinking
If I were a habit, I would be: procastination
If I were in an atom, I would be: a quark
If I were an end, I would be: 42
If I were you, I would be: just another person

a long overdue update

2007-12-24T19:28:00.000+05:30

you can think every which way you want about any possible thing, but thinking about what to do with your own life is the biggest waste of time cause you end up questioning every little decision before it can ever be made and end up doing nothing at all. or something to that effect.
*************
No battles lost till you give up
Even if defeats in your face
The only way that you can lose
Is if you fall from your own grace
Never give up on your beliefs
Even if you're all alone
'Cos victory isn't about winning
It's about the faith you own
Never fear the setting sun,
It will arise anew.
Never hold the darkness dear,
It hides yourself from you!
Don't pretend to understand
In what you don't believe
Don't be the silent hand
Be prepared to lead!
When you dream, go live them too!
Or sigh not in despair
Your destiny is for you to choose,
The path you have to dare!
For at the time of reckoning
You have no one to answer
When the spirit is beckoning
Your life is in itself the answer!
*************
06-09-07 : 10:21 am
So much to do, so much to know, so much to learn
And Still we think, still we wonder, still we yearn
For what, if not naught, are our ramblings and confusions...
*************
cal to mumbai

was really thinking of what this life is meant for. morning today. sitting in the congested traffic in the yellow calcutta cab. yo realise that there are only two ways of dealing with everything in life. the right way. and your way. the breakfast at flurry's. the smile on your face as you enter the tea table- t3. the amazing way you feel as you walk around. as your shoe sole comes off and starts flapping like the robe of a witch doing 170 on a firebolt. the very honouring offer of writing something that makes not such a small difference to many a people.
sitting here in the departure lobby listening to Sparks resound through your earphones, longing for a bit more of juice for your poor system's batteries, you slowly begin to realise the meaning of the small pleasure that god grants some of us. if we are lucky. and the true meaning of lucky emerges. for your sake. not for the sake of clarification. for understanding, not explanation.
*************
mumbai to ahmedabad

journeying once again. the situation changes and yet it remains exactly the same. im lying down rather than peacefully reclining in a lounge or sitting ramrod straight in the over crowded aisles. this might have sumthing to do with thte fact that im already far more used to travelling in this fashion rather than the other. but then again it tells nothing truly. the basic facts of life remain constant. one still longs for the same old things. a lil more battery life. a slightly wam drink to make you smile. ah the pleasures of suburbia.
*************
I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity.
*************
"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition."
*************
Razors pain you, rivers are damp, acid stains you, drugs cause cramps, guns aren't lawful, nooses give, gas smells ugly. you might as well live.
*************
Travel Travails : The search continues...
After almost half an year, a meeting with an old friend sparks off memories that lay long forgotten. another friends asks me to write down such memories, lest the wonderful details that seem etched in our memories semipermanently. every journey seems to teach a new lesson.now be it one of stupidity, humility, fun, anger or just plain disgust sometimes. it brings you closer to realization of the exact kind of people that share our world. the people who inhabit the space we call our home. not in the literal familial sense of the term. but a looser definition that seems to include our planet and our species on the whole. sometimes, all those seemingly ridiculous theories of wiping the slate clean and beginning all over again seem to make much more sense than the daily hulabaloo of our life.

anyways, noah's ark n other assorted stories apart... i must say that there is nothing comparable to the pleasure of finding an available power outlet in the train. and having unlimited charge capacity. oh boy... the black coffee has already keyed me wide... the humour of charlie chaplin, only helped the mood set in.. now its time for some quality gaming time, from an upper berth in an air conditioned three tier... while people bawl their heads out below demanding an impossible service and clean bedsheets. sigh. when will they ever learn. never i suppose. they find it easy to soil their sheets, and easier still to demand service that they couldnt imagine to afford paying for.and to top it all is their exalted ego. sweet. peace out people.
*************
Steppenwolf Page 79
Imagine a garden with a hundred kinds of trees, a thousand kinds of trees, a thousand kinds of flowers, a hundred kinds of fruits and vegeables. Suppose, then, that the gardener of this garden knew no other distinction than between edible and inedible, nine-tenths of this garden would be useless to him. He would pull up the most enchanting flowers and hew down the noblest trees and even regard them with a loathing and envious eye. This is what the Steppenwolf does with the thousand flowers of his soul. what does not stand classified as either man or wolf he does nor see at all. And consider all that he imputes to 'man'! All that is cowardly and apish, stupid and mean - while to wolf, only because he has not succeeded in making himself its master, is set foen all that is strong and noble

Steppenwolf Page 1777
You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must perish. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easy-going and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead fo business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours ---

~ ~ ~
Typed in the central park at connaught after having comfortably finished reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse.Comfortably albeit having the digits on my fingers freezing off with the cold. comfortable albeit listening to the blaring music in my earphones. watching the sun slowly go down and disappera over Hamiltion House and the huge sign proclaiming the location of The India Today Group's Office, or its existence, or whatever in connaught place. hmmm. time to head out for a coffee n deforst these phalanges. just wanna see the sun rise in the same spot now. for posterity,s sake, lemme state that i sit right now about 10 feet from a nice black pole, facing the exactly hamilton house,on the nice though cold grass as you come off from the path leading off from the exit into the park from the Rajiv Chowk Metro station underneath this park. Statesman House lies on my left shoulder and a McD is visible to my right. that's where i'm headed now i guess. cheerio.
*************
hmmm, talk about an overdose of caffeine. Is start off with a normal cup at the station from BM. then have one in the evening aboard the train. nice n black, straight up. luckily spared myself the third cuppa black after dinner thanks to having taken my shoes off and climbed up to my berth, and being a lazy dotard by nature, oh well what the hell i just chose to cover n n drift off.. then two cups in the morning, followed by a strong cappucino with buaji, a cold one at caventers, then a hot glass of espresso americano in the evening after freezing my fingers typing the previous piece in the park a few minutes past sunset, which sadly occurs not around 6 as i was told, but around 5ish pm. a wee bit too early if u ask me, but then no one is asking so baklawa to that.anyway, i continue walking around, then go n indulge myself at the Oriental Fruit Mart. Remember this for sure now. it is in the mid section leading off to barakhambe road, next to the petrol pump opposite the adidas showroom side. was told that i seriously need to get my brain checked for havinig given Costas coffee a miss, and head over there for sure the next time i happen to visit the general area. one thing that remains to be done, two actually is to practice typing with gloves on and then actually try doing it early morning in central park and watch the sun rise there.though i doubt that any train can reach on time and make me catch the sunrise there in the upcoming dreary winter weather. most probably i'll end up being there on 30th december,which oughta fall in the week of no sunshine that hits the national capital aorund new year's ever every year. all thsi is secondary of course to the fact that i have stupidly left my gloves in the safety of my aluminium trunk in my room at my hostel in my college in the far reaches of Jharkhand. so the question of practising typing with gloves on is rested till new years eve for sure. we could try it out on new years eve tho and tyoe away from the roof top. alas for that wi-fi router... i could have enjoyed sumthign there. hmmm. so what should i go for this new year? no more no quizzing resloves ever again, that bit is sure. what with taking home the durgapur shields this time, mom is sure to pass a decreee of that sort. but one semeser of abstinence is good enough for this mortal soul. more such laws n promises i can definitely do without thank you very much.Kafka on the shore & Norwegian Wood awaits me in kolkatta in January 2008. let's see when i get around to acquiring , reading and returning them. not to mention the tradeoff from my own collection too.will have to make a list of the ones i plan to leave home and check up with those, to save myself from unnecessary banter.
*************
Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged
By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. If you find it inconceivable that an invention of genius should be abandoned among ruins, and that a philosopher should wish to work as a cook in a diner-check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
*************
I swear by my life and my love for it that I will not live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine
*************
Definition Of Age:
Dus Bacchon Ka Baap : NG (by M)
Dus Baapon Ka Baccha : NG (by I)
*************
Whatever you buy/get/possess soon becomes an integral part of you body, and is seen attached to it most of the times
(Anil on me and my devices)
*************
Since the time he has got his own laptop, he seems to have forged a permanent bond with the bench in front of the R&D dept.
(some junior passing by)
*************
always observing, always watching, you see more when you are not being seen. there is a point to this. what i do not know, i can only try to wonder about it with an amazing sense of incredulity that is very doubtful to turn into comprehension at any point in the future.
one thing i have noticed about me and computers. apart from the symbiotic relationship we share, that is me and my machines, it seems the only place i can ever get any work done on a computer is outside my desginated working space, the place where i am actually supposed to work out whatever problems that i have asigned to be worked out at the place. seriously, all i ever end up doing on my desktop is endlessly shuffling through the thousands of e-books on the hard drive, or trying to figure out a new more efficient manner of file organization for my milion or so file on the poor wreck of a hard drive that i have left on the desktop.
(long long ago)
*************
Our Linus, Who art in Tux Land,Hallowed be Thy Operating System.Thy Kingdom come.Thy Will be done, on Desktop as it is on Servers.Give us this day our daily kernel.And forgive us our dependencies,as we forgive those who Ubuntu against us.And lead us not into Apple,but deliver us from Vista.

Debian.
*************
"The draconian civil engineering department of sxc wont allow our humble economics department to continue its peaceful functioning. Hence you all have my leave to disperse."
MM @ SXC - Eco
src - Snowy
*************
you can know everything about something or something about everything. the choice may not seem like much, but it means everything. The choice lies our hands.always. It is ours to make, and ours to live with.
*************
"More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."
Truman Capote
*************
"The higher you are, the farther u fall;
the longer the walk, the farther you crawl."
Metallica
*************
"Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend...we were all equal in the end."
Roger Waters
*************
Peter forebore once more to put a period to the rottenest life in the rottenest den in the rottenest borough in the rottenest city in all the rottenest world."
Stephen Fry - The Liar
*************
Ezekiel 25:17
"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who,in the name of charity and goodwill,shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness,for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers! And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee !"
*************
"And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fireand thunder upon them. For the beast had beenreborn with its strength renewed, and thefollowers of Mammon cowered in horror. "
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
*************
sorry about that sudden departure. my system folded itself into a foetal form n banished itself; that is to say, it crashed. n burned. and is now reborn from it's ashes.

clueless

2007-12-24T07:50:00.000+05:30

What is is that we seek? why do we have to be so frustrated with life and everything we come across in it? why? all the time, we keep adjusting, planning saving up for some future day. i do not have the wisdom of several decades behind me to stand and pontificate on this, but the 22 years of my life, of which i can consciously think and recollect some 15 odd years lead me to arrive at the above mentioned conclusion. there is no reason for happiness and sadness from before or after. just the present. just now. why i choose to smile or laugh or cry or mourn or die is upto me and how i perceive my current moment to be. WE are the masters of our own destiny, and whenever i feel that a nerve in my head is gonna explode i end up ranting here. but this is what i think this is what i feel. uncut. unpolished. raw.its like that three panel comic i saw sometime ago. this woman working in the most god-awful place doing a forsaken job, and yet smiling. why? cause if she takes even the slightest amount of stress she'll suffer from an aneurysm. a vein in her head shall puncture, and she'll die a silent gruesome death as blood floods her brain.so she smiles on. she has a choice. she makes it. smile or die.try making lie simpler than that. was just reading the little prince. it really puts you in place. teaches you perspective. why is it that the most profound truth's and lessons are to be found in childhood. we break down things to their barest simplest constituents and spare the unnecessary layers of eye-candy and sham-gloss that end up coatting everything in our lives n distorting things in a fashion that they bear no relation whatsoever to what they really are. all i get is that i have to fucking up all these years. i get a feeling that everything i have done is a mistake.all my decisions and choices were massive blunders that the world could do without. all my tastes, my passions, my interests are classified as meaningless vagrancies that i should bother with.that my so called interest in the arts is ridiculous to say the least. that i hardly seem to be an engineering student.who decides that? how are they my interests if i dont get to pick them? i see no solution on the table. only images of fingers pointing at me, hailing me as a misfit, labeling me as wrong. where do i turn? how do i find release? when does the soul searching and this running away from myself end? the funny thing is i ain't happy or sad. just sitting, wondering & waiting. clueless.

----------------
Listening to: Pink Floyd - Echoes

Times

2007-12-22T01:23:00.000+05:30

There are the times when i sit and slowly let off the steam, give vent to that cold anger writhing instead of me like a twisted serpents. there are times like that. and there are times like these. when i sit and smile. and bask in the glory of my happiness. like when i come home to a simple hot lunch made by mom. like when i meet dad after a long time. like when i take a nice long walk in the cold listening to a track i adore. like when i see a kid smiling. like when i sit in a bookstore with a dumb smile on my face.yes.this is one of those times. I Smile.It's been a while since i wrote about what has been going on inside of this cramped space people refer to as my head.time enough. the year's almost ended. a new one stands at the door beckoning. with promises of surprises and hope. and i sit here at 1 am, after having watched another of my midnight movies wondering about it. thinking abou the things that make me happy and how much they matter to me.honestly, the world can go climb a tree for all i care at the moment. while this lasts, itfeels good. it feels right. it feels like home.and yes, i am enjoying at home.this is a vacation. and calvin is living it, and loving it. boing boing.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

2007-10-07T20:05:00.001+05:30

Sabbath seems to be the most tiring day recently. lets see what transpired these last 3 weekends:
2 weeks past : a really long breakfast trip that i already covered in English yesterday.
1 week past : a lone wolf quiz in the college that i had to conduct
today : a 7 km stroll that lasted 6 hours n culminated in an aching ear, hoarse throat, a honey gobbling spree & the possible beginning of a sunday morning quiz league named The Roosters, that is to roost at 6 am every sunday at the Outer Canteen of BIT Mesra.

anyway, apart from the irrevocable brain damage caused, today's trip got a conversation started that one of the involved parties was kind enuf to forward, n i'm bored enough to print here. so here's to Sunday Bloody Sunday.

The conversation was between Zlogrian : Z and His Hugeness : HH. the two other beings mentioned in the conversation are my not so humble self : referred to as Hathi and another morning stroller/jogger/quizzer : Shrill.btw, the count stands at 37 officially now. thats the number of people who have asked the question.

Why does His Hugeness call you Hathi?

why indeed? any answers my dear friend? anyway. on to the conversation.

8:41 PM HH: so i hear you and hathi are planning morning quiz club meetings!

8:42 PM Z: yes, and where did you hear that from?

8:43 PM the rooster quiz, in tribute to the rooster that sat on the oc fence this morning and screeched as we hatched the idea. bless his soul for he is now mess dinner. 8:47 PM HH: i have my sources

and that reminds me

i forgot to take the dinner coupon

damn!

8:49 PM Z: tehehehe

8:50 PM sources... you some secret agent?

8:51 PM HH: not everybody who has sources is a secret agent dearie

its called cultivationg the right contacts to get the right info

8:52 PM Z: wow! BIT sure has taught you to be wily

anyway, would you be game for something like that?

8:54 PM HH: actually i was always wily

a veritable snake in the grass

8:55 PM as for me...i wont be able to attend any of the meetings as sunday mornings for me mean mock CAT tests

but you guys can go ahead with it

8:56 PM Z: we are talking early mornings, and cat gets over sometime in november, after which you dont have an excuse

HH : a very commendable initiative from a self avowed non quizzer (as you told me some 5 times during the lone wolf quiz)

8:57 PM actually the mba entrance tests are till january

Z: yes, im not a quizzer, but one league is better than no league, and BIT is not likely to see many leagues

HH: after which i would certainkly like to come

Z: ok, go ahead, managerhead of the future

you will be welcome anytime

8:58 PM after all, who is a better quizzer than you?

HH: but then again i would,as a voice of reason,like to advise you to chose a less inhospitable time than sunday mornings

8:59 PM that has a very simple answer- hathi

9:01 PM but then again if hathi and you are organising it voices of reason would tend to be drowned out

;)

6 minutes

9:08 PM Z: 3 alarm clocks and you wont have a problem with sunday mornings

HH: trust me I will

9:09 PM american idiot playing on my comp has trouble waking me

but anyways thats yr call

Z: well, Shrill, Hathi and I met at the oc today, and we think its a fine idea

9:10 PM HH: and it is

all i have a beef with is the timing

Z: thank you, and you are welcome anytime

tehehe, suggest a better time then?

9:11 PM HH : as i said sunday mornings are a horrible time to be doing anything(and that includes quizzing or for that matter taking mock cats)

saturday aftrenoons perhaps?

9:12 PM Z : its the best time, everyone is free, weather is fine,

HH: or sunday afternoons for that matter

Z: people are too busy then

will tell the others to consider that

HH: well then keep it a bit late

Z: but what if people want to go to town? then afternoons is out of the question

HH: certainly not early mornings

9:13 PM well you cant please everybody

Z: haha, you need to get into a health regime, start now

HH: as i said its hardly a prob with me - as it i wont be coming till next semester

9:14 PM but you've gotta think about the majority

and the majority don't go for early mornings jogs (or turn vegan!)

so there

9:16 PM Z: ok, will reconsider, but bit shortens my day considerably, as of now, sunday morning remains free

9:20 PM you leave for the mock cat at 9, the rooster quiz is at 6-7

5 minutes

9:26 PM HH: 6!

you expect me to get up at 5 :30 on a sunday morning!

9:27 PM you vile woman

Z: dont get up

HH: god will punish you for dishonoring th day of sabbath

9:28 PM dont get up?

how else do you propose i come for the 'rooster quizzers'?

Z: yes, you dont want to

HH : see i again go back to the point

i want to

9:29 PM but not at those godforsaken times

anyways its your, shrill's and hathi's call

so make a decision

and publicise it

i'll help however i can

9:30 PM i kinda gotta go now

so ta ta

Z: thank you, great altruism on your part

tata!

9:31 PM HH : i know...i've been a real good chap at heart for quite a long time now

anyways cya
hmmm.
let's see what ultimately transpires of this idea.
and i promised a cousin ill post the questions to the lone wolf on my blog. so here : Prelims
PS: For some reason Z's system is on GMT+8... hence the time is weird.. coz i'm typing this at 2000 hrs.
----------------
Now playing:
Antonio Vivaldi - Adagio molto - The Four Seasons - Autumn

Breakfast Travel Logged

2007-10-06T07:40:00.001+05:30

"the lads who went forth - 23rd September 2007 "

"A day of days'" is seeming to become the ubiquitous title for most of my days theses days. may be its just something in the wind. or in the water. or maybe the windy rains. whatever. seems like its getting harder to er dampen my spirits in this wet weather. maybe thats what they mean by being in you element. the travel travail being described here is one helluva long walking affair. about 7 kms of walking in 5 or so hours, combined with a sumptous meal and a dash of hedonistic pleasure. actually, it was just a trip to the only '_-star' hotel in the town/ city/ whatever ranchi is to be called, for the sole purpose of a breakfast buffet. the plan was hatched rather unexpectedly while enjoying a nice cup of hot chocolate fudge in the comfort of my room, and teasing another less unfortunate individual by telling her exactly what it was that she was missing. breakfast buffet at capitol hill on sunday morning. one innocent line. and our doom pronounced.

so it is to be. seven hours, two lemon teas and another cup of hot fudge later, we are two clean bathed dressed up gentlemen on our way to a nice sunday breakfast. at 0530 hrs. at 2 km walk followed, all the way to NH-33 which managed to get us the amazing experience of being driven forward by the wind blowing into our umbrellas. i mean it has to be something if it can account for the propulsion of a heavily clad pachyderm. about half an hour of walking and having your jeans completely drenched does get your digestive juices flowing rather well.

so at 6 am,we managed to hitch a ride on a passing interstate bus to the theater located in the town where we got off the bus without loosing any significant appendages. from there it was another ridiculous walk against the raging wind n rain to the destination for which we had set out. at 6:50 am, we entered the lobby of the hotel. one pair of jeans, one thick cotton jacket and my sweatshirt completely soaked. did i mention my socks were already squishy? and to top it all, we were early. it turns out that afraid to end up late for the buffet n miss it altogether, we had ended up arriving before they were ready for us.

so 15 minutes were spent taking photographs in the fashion of tourists of the place which we have frequented one time too many.this coupled with conjectures concerning the kind of reaction the trip might provoke from the faint hearted company known to inhabit our neighbouring rooms in the hostels helped count away those agonising minutes without succumbing to the raging digestive juice currents n the belly growls.time for a little recapitulation before launching away at the buffet table. it was a sunday. no one in their right minds got up on a sunday. so we had observed that honourable hostel tradition. by not sleeping.buffet breakfast consists of real, appetizing food. that actually had a taste of its own. and hence is reverrred by us hostel-vasis. respect. hence a day of fasting had been observed to make sure that the slightly over priced meal turned out to be value for money for the perenially broke students.

and the finishing touch to the details.there was a statewide bandh declared by the MCC(not the Malgudi Cricket Club), an organisation which got away with pretty much what it wanted in east india. the occasion was supposed to be something we didnt try bothering to understand.back to the table now. 0730 to 0930 was spent enjoying the first meal in the last 36 hours. you see breakfast at the hostel is normally skipped for the infinitely more pleasurable extra 15 minutes of slumber before heading to the daily drudgery of daily lectures. if we manage to get aware of the time before lunchtime that is. i'll save myself from more unnecessarily hurled objects from the readers by skipping the fine details of the meal.

now came the second goal of the journey. the complete details of this secondary goal are left to the readers interest (which is doubtable considering the title of the story : The Underwear Escapade). since the shops in ranchi only open at about 10:30 am on sundays, we had another hour to kill before we can be on our way again. so off to the hair salon for a much needed haircut and a much sought head massage. my partner in crime, after about 3 whole minutes of convincing and cajoling gives into to getting the same package. at the end of 30 minutes, two beaming creatures resembling civilized humans, totally unlike the one who had entered the establishment leave it with a look of relaxed contentment writ large across their features.

a solemn pledge is taken to repeat this ritual at fortnightly intervals, followed by a lengthy discussion pertaining to why females enjoy combining salon visits with their shopping adventures. however, the detour has still not completely met our expectations. the two guys are reduced to standing outside the entrance of the only half decent store,taking a headcount of the employees as they arrive for the weekend's share of shovelling around with dumb faces in the store, with no clue as to where the object you are seeking might be. at 10:45, we are finally allowed in, our now dry umbrellas and backpacks checked into the baggage area. now starts fulfillment of goal, which shall not be detailed here, to save content for another separate parallel tale.the adventure at the shop is completed with only 3 individual embarassments, and a trip to the nike store in the nighbouring arcade. at 11:30, we headed down the main road again, on to the trekker stand to the only available transport back to the college.now,this was supposed to be the part where we sat back and enjoyed digesting the meal. alas, it was not to be.

what the trekker trip ended up being was a 16 km trip that took over an hour while learning the art of packing two dozen human beings into an amazing configuration in a vehicle that is meant to carry 10 people and possibly some luggage.and this is discounting the people who just grapple on the rear and the overhead-rack travellers. finally, at noon, two things stumble out of this marvel of engineering and wait for circulation to resume to the leg-like appendages sticking out of our torsos. that took 10 long minutes and a ridiculous and stupid looking dance routine.after making complete nincompoops of themselves, the two morons walked the three odd km back to the confines of their hostel rooms. soaked to the last garment they wore, they showered & changed (in that order) and retreated to a nice peaceful slumber.

That's about it - an average weekend breakfast trip for this zogland-er, who has been certified unanimously as a clinical case. albiet one who happens to be a certified foodie.

cheers.

...

2007-10-05T00:50:00.001+05:30

the Zlogrian wrote :

cocoa, spice, tea and coffee,
let us eat and drink to peace,
not of world or boundaries drawn,
but to us who sleep not but yawn!

its 3 am . . .

2007-10-04T03:09:00.000+05:30

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

Alexander Pope

blessed are the forgetful: for they "get the better" even of their blunders.

Nietzsche

moving. thats the only word i could think of.

ok.

thats all you can say to things sometimes.
take em as they come.
face em. embrace em.
take em on.take em along
----------------------------------------------

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
new police story
two weeks notice
hard candy
finding neverland

five movies. insomnia. loss of appetite.what next?
----------------------------------------------
listening to too much love will kill you by queen at 3 am. remembering the first time i heard.sitting in the front of a Tata sumo headed for school in 11th.Irritated, confused,frustrated.no idea why.6 years ago.places, people,situations change.and the song remains the same.it still makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
----------------------------------------------
watching.gazing at that majestic bird as it sits and preens its wings. as it spreads them and feels the wind, and looks every which way with such grace as if it hardly cares.and then coming back 15 minutes later and trying to find the that lordly raptor again.

smiling as i follow the lovely mynah as it struts on forward on the path ahead of me.now walking with gaeity, now hopping along like a bird, now turning around n staring like a child.
----------------------------------------------
wonder what it is that really changes.am realizing very simple obvious things in these last few days.friends. future. goals. being a 6 year old.smiling to myself as i lie back and watch the stars.feeling the wind. feeling the morsels of food go done slowly. savouring that warm feeling in my stomach. as TS puts it, this feels good.waking up to life. one realization at a time.
------------------------------------------------
what was it that i said.a true friend will always be there for you no matter how much you or circumstances might happen to push them away.they will be there.be it days or decades later that you may take to realize that.its a fact.
----------------------------------------------
just created a Slashdot party for this saturday. let's see how many people end up actually finding out about it.
----------------
Now playing:
Queen - Too Much Love Will Kill You

hmmm

2007-10-04T01:29:00.000+05:30

quote unquote

2007-09-22T23:57:00.001+05:30

I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long.
If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night.

Calvin

sanity@4pm

2007-09-20T21:14:00.001+05:30

i remember being awake at 4 am on the 18th cause i had a paper that day.
the next thing i remember is getting into bed at 4 am today morning as the alarm clock rang.and then the alarm clock ringing and waking me up.
12 hours of sleep.
no dreams no sensation no tiredness no bodyache no wery bloated eyes no longing for slumber.nothing.
cant remember the last time i felt this alive.
hmmm. talk about doing things weridly.

i think i had last woken up on the 16th evening at about 4 pm.so that ought to make this 84 hour non stop. 3 and a half days. followed by half a day fo sleep.that approximates to about 3 hours of sleep daily for four days.the obvious disadvantage might be the almost dead zombie mode you end up in after walking around sleep deprived after about 72 hours of sleep deprivation.and if you happen to be a chap like me, who can sleep in doubledigit hour bursts with unnerving regularity, then you have the undead mode for you. zombie just aint good enough.its the stoned undead ghost who walks.

ok so maybe all this funny stuff has addled whatever there is inside my head. hmmm.let's see what effect it has had on my crappy (absent) gaming skills. adios.

16:20 hours
20/09/07
listening to the sound of the fan whirring real fast

Behind Blue Eyes

2007-09-20T01:49:00.001+05:30

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it's like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you

No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

----------------
Now playing:
The Who - Behind Blue Eyes

A chance to really shoot for the stars

2007-09-20T01:45:00.001+05:30

Sept. 19, 2007, 2:14PM
A chance to really shoot for the stars
NASA looking to hire 10 to 15 new astronauts

By MARK CARREAU
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

ASTRONAUT JOB REQUIREMENTS
• Must be a U.S . citizen between 5-foot-2 and 6-foot-3 in height (to squeeze into Russia's three-passenger Soyuz capsule).
• At least a bachelor's degree in engineering, a biological or physical science, or mathematics; and three years of relevant professional experience.
• Vision correctable to
20/20. For the first time, the space agency will consider applicants who have undergone successful refractive eye surgery.
Source: NASA

NASA posted a hiring notice for new astronauts Tuesday, seeking for the first time in almost 30 years men and women to fly aboard spacecraft other than the shuttle.

The pilots, scientists, engineers and educators that NASA recruits will train primarily for three- to six-month missions aboard the international space station. However, some could be among those who stroll on the surface of the moon as part of NASA's plan to return human explorers to the lunar surface by 2020 aboard the shuttle fleet's successor spacecraft.

"Yes, I think it's quite likely," said Ellen Ochoa, who supervises NASA's astronaut corps as the director of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The space agency's help-wanted notice for 10 to 15 new space fliers was posted Tuesday on www.usajobs.com, the federal government's employment Web site.

Several thousand people are expected to apply by the July 1 deadline. They will join a similar number who've applied to NASA in previous years and now must update their applications and convert them from paper to the new electronic format.

After four spaceflights herself, Ochoa, a former electrical engineer, knows the appeal.

"Something that deals with exploration, that is trying to push not only our country but the world in a direction that it has not been before, that looks beyond yourself and your own community, is very appealing," Ochoa said. "Then there is just the experience of being in space, of looking down at the Earth and experiencing weightlessness — that is just a very special experience."

NASA offers a starting annual salary of $59,493 to $130,257, depending on qualifications and experience.

With the shuttle fleet headed for retirement in 2010, the newest astronauts will train to travel on Russian Soyuz capsules for missions to the space station. Astronauts have been doing so since the mid-1990s, when the U.S. began collaborating with the Russians.

The U.S.-led space station international partnership intends to increase to six from three the number of astronauts living aboard the outpost in 2009, creating more flight opportunities.

New shuttle in the works

NASA's new Orion moon ship, the shuttle's replacement, will not be ready for space station flights until 2015, unless the White House and Congress change funding levels.

Orion is considered a centerpiece of a lunar initiative announced by President Bush three years ago. He directed NASA to lead an international effort to reprise and expand on the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early '70s by establishing a permanently staffed lunar base. The base would serve as a training ground for missions to Mars and other deep space destinations.

NASA's astronaut corps includes 91 people considered eligible for flight assignments. Fifteen have not flown or been assigned to upcoming shuttle and station missions.

Some corps members are expected to leave the program because there will be fewer chances to fly after the shuttle fleet is mothballed and before the first Orion missions.

Other current astronauts are expected to remain past 2010 in hopes of drawing a moon mission or to participate in the development of Orion and a yet-to-be funded lunar lander.

Announcement in 2009

The decision to hire 10 to 15 new astronauts was based on NASA's best estimate of the attrition rate and funding, spokeswoman Kylie Clem said.

After the application deadline, the agency will invite the best job candidates to Houston for interviews with a selection panel and medical screening.

NASA is reassessing its psychological screening process to address concerns raised by incidents this year involving the astronaut corps.

One involved the arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak at the Orlando, Fla., airport. She was charged after a confrontation with another woman over the affections of astronaut Bill Oefelein. In response to the widely publicized incident, NASA asked an outside panel of behavioral health experts to examine astronaut behavior.

The newest astronauts are to be announced in spring 2009 and report to the JSC the following August to begin two years of training.

NASA is seeking pilots and crewmembers such as scientists, engineers and teachers. Pilot applicants must have at 1,000 hours at the controls of a fighter jet or in command of a larger jet aircraft. Military test pilots will have an advantage.

After two years of basic training, the new astronauts will become eligible for assignment to a mission. But past practice indicates they will first draw assignments supporting more senior astronauts and face at least another year of mission-specific training before they head for the launch pad.

--
Nikhil Kumar Verma
I Am.

insanity@4am

2007-09-18T04:09:00.001+05:30

sometimes all you need to wake up to things around is a rude awakening
such as being asked what you have really achieved.
forcing you into trying to find the bright side of your history as it is.
making sense of what has gone by and seeing it for what its worth in light of the lessons learnt, and things lost and gained.

now this push that i speak of.it can help you over the edge of the cliff.
however,what happens after that is totally upto you.
whether you soar out into the open skies, to fly like you always did.
missing the ground as Zaphod puts it.
or rushing headlong to meet it and end it all.
a hair's breadth of difference.
the most delicate balance.
like all things amazing and beautiful, chaos and destruction lies just yonder of order and creation.

and yet the choice has to be made. running, hiding, walking on the razor's edge, no matter how exhilarating, is not an option.
time to take control.
funny that it should today of all days.

a day of days
september 18

what do you care what others think.
know thyself.
it's about time.
---------------------------------------
4 am on a tuesday morning, two days away from last waking disorientation, and i'm finding news to be funny. i mean, if i were to really get plugged in to the internet, and start writing everything that i think and feel about whats going, i'd soon be sprouting roots and branches (in the strictly non computer sense. or maybe not).

How Computers Transformed Baby Boomers

"Newsweek's Steven Levy takes a look at how the baby boomer generation formed our tech landscape . Many of the realities boomers grew up with are today's metaphors, including cut-and-paste, the origin of which the 56-year-old Levy had to explain to 20-something Google employees. Levy cites two texts as crucial in pushing the boomers' vision toward power-to-the-people computing — Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines, which inspired Mitch Kapor, and the January 1975 Popular Electronics, which got Bill Gates jazzed. You kids might want to check out Dad's bookshelf — used copies of Computer Lib are going for $130-$225 at Amazon."

so this is what got william henry gates the third all buzzed.and they call me a nerd. not that i dislike that.

these on the other hand seem much more interesting somehow.
----------------
Now playing:
The Killers - Mr. Brightside

The Killers - Mr. Brightside

2007-09-17T21:44:00.001+05:30

I'm coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all
It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss
Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his-chest
Now, he takes off her dress
Now, letting me go

And I just can't look its killing me
And taking control
Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
'Cause I'm Mr Brightside

I'm coming out of my cage
And I've been doing just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all
It started out with a kiss
How did it end up like this
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss
Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
While he's having a smoke
And she's taking a drag
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his-chest
Now, he takes off her dress
Now, letting me go

Cause I just can't look its killing me
And taking control
Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
'Cause I'm Mr Brightside

I never...
I never...
I never...
I never...

----------------
Now playing:
The Killers - Mr. Brightside

PoMo

2007-09-13T22:47:00.001+05:30

The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, ''I love you madly,'' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, ''As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.''"

Post Modernism according to a friend addicted to using

shades of grey

2007-09-13T20:32:00.001+05:30

hours.days.weeks even.
they stream past like a jet of hot water steaming past your head in the shower.
gone before you know it.
and you just stand there watching.

a grey veil seems to hang over everything.
maybe its the diabetes taking over. maybe there are cobwebs on my window. maybe i have been thinking too much.
maybe.

people. people i know.they spend their time looking forward to things. small things.tiny things. like catching that last bus home every weekend. like heavy parcels of food and love every month. like running off to their home everytime there is 2 day leave period.like going to town to splurge and spoil yourself silly.

It does seem funny though. Don't really long for those things anymore.when the urge strikes, I just up and go as i feel. maybe thats it.the longing. the aspiration.maybe thats what is the real giver of the spark in all things mundane.

i ask myself : what is that tiny inconsequential thing that makes no sense at all, that you look forward to doing every now and then, that gives you true bliss?

good question.no idea. better luck next time.

remembering and forgetting.
looking in the mirror and searching for that light that once was there. or was it? was there ever a fire burning?

lying on the rooftop gazing at the stars debating issues with no head or tail.

these seem to be the incoherent ramblings of an anguished mind.

a child who cant be one, who refuses to grow up and take stock of the situation, who keeps trying to run away from it all to the only place he really can. nianem.his own utopia.

holden, is it?

time to go study.
time to get out of basin city.

09:47 hours    13th September '07
Listening to
Tears for Fears - Mad World

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Somehow that feeling of emptiness comes true, so damn true, despite the fact that when you sit down and think about it there really isnt any need for it to.at all.But I got nowhere to fly to...

15:34 hrs    13th September '07
Listening to
Pink Floyd - Nobody Home

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Life goes on... i ain't alone under this orange sky

18:12 hrs    13th September '07
Listening to
Clint Mansell - Requiem for A Dream

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

maybe this is the way things are supposed to be.

sitting atop your hostel roof, listening to a rather somber song that gets close to expressing what you truly feel inside at

that partivular moment as the cool cool wind sweeps off your back gently taking away whatever it is that seems to be

buggering you, binding you holding you down in a treacherous web of discomfort.

is it really that bad you ask yourself. who cares.
the wind is fresh. cool. swift.

it relaxes you. the music seems to take away the pent up aggression inside of you.mom said that music is the best escape for

emotion. now, i am slowly beginning to comprehend what she might have meant by those words.
its like you end up looking for someone to talk to , someone to offload the things in your heart to.
writing it down in a journal isnt good enough.
your thinking speed overtook your brain light years ago and only leaves your hand aching and dazed.

this sumhow comes closer to the point i guess.anguished flow of feelings emotions and a vast dark cloud pouring out through

your fingertips into yet another machine.

is this fear? if yes then of what really? what is it that im trying to escape here?

i know that i have stopped caring abput others long long ago.
true, i regard their feelings and emotions and views with more respect than ever before, thinking many times, or even

avoiding being judgemental.
but as Suchintya once said, i cannot control everything that influences me and my life.consequentially,bothering myself into

forming opinionated standpoints about these things seems meaningless.

2 days ago,at this very spot, i was spouting my heart's content over the phone.
trying to undrestand the swirling mists of thoughts inside my head by giving vent to them.
the entire concept of am i really meant to bend down and conform to this meaningless and abject system laid in place by

society? or is it in fact in place for that very reason - to make me realize its failings and futility and thus step forth

and break free and take over the reins.

maybe this imagination of mine is on its reckless crashing rollercoaster ride as it whips through unknown possiblities...
i seem to be a mindless zombie, just pushing myself without intention or thought or goals through time..
and yet i end up asking myself this, if i can just go on, numb with sleeping in my bed and playing those mundane games and

typing these inane statements, then why o why cant i continue doing in the very same fashion the simple task of attending the

classes, muggin up crap and giving examinations like everyone else. to whom am i trying to prove myself? what the hell am i

trying to do..

why am i at a loss for words. not to babble incoherently, but to try and grasp my true essence and purpose.

19:11 hours    13 September '07
Listening To
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmmm.
another day of thinking. another day of wondering. and yet. i persist.
funny.
it never really changes anything while affecting everything at the same time.
and still. and still.
i am.
Yukon Ho, Here I Come!

20:32 hours    13 September '07
Listening To
Staind - It's Been A While

W O W

2007-09-12T01:11:00.001+05:30

talk about two of your favourite works of fiction coming together.
mindblowing.
combine that with sleep deprivation, and a dull mood and running out of coffee and food at midnight during an all nighter.
that, my dear friends, is a
W O W
that's what happened when i saw this: (apart from losing any sleepiness my eyeballs hard managed to accumulate over the last 60 hours)

Fight Club : The Return of Hobbes

Fight Club

The Return of Hobbes

Hobbes is reborn as Tyler to save "Jack" (a grown-up Calvin) from the slough of un-comic despair.

::: Galvin P. Chow

In the film Fight Club, the real name of the protagonist (Ed Norton's character) is never revealed. Many believe the reason behind this anonymity is to give "Jack" more of an everyman quality. Do not be deceived. "Jack" is really Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. It's true. Norton portrays the grown-up version of Calvin, while Brad Pitt plays his imaginary pal, Hobbes, reincarnated as Tyler Durden.

Part I: The Hobbes-Tyler Connection

Picture this: a hyper, self-absorbed child initially concocts an imaginary friend as the ideal playmate, to whom more realistic qualities soon become attributed. This phantasm becomes a completely separate personality, with his own likes, dislikes, and temperament—and the imaginer and the imagined clash and argue constantly, though remaining fast friends. This pattern continues to the point where the child begins to perceive what was originally mere fantasy to be reality.

Just as Calvin has an imaginary jungle-animal friend named Hobbes, whom everyone else believes to be nothing but a stuffed toy, "Jack" in Fight Club has an imaginary cool-guy friend named Tyler, whom no one but Jack can see.

In both cases, the entity that began as the ideal companion soon took on a more realistic, three-dimensional quality. In other words, they became real. This is evident in that both Hobbes and Tyler also began to function as scapegoats for their creators. For instance, consider that Calvin often blames broken lamps and other assorted household mischief on Hobbes, and that Jack is inclined to believe that Fight Club and other various anti-society mischief is brought about by Tyler, not himself. Calvin claims Hobbes pounces on him every day after school; Jack believes Tyler beats him up next to 40 kilotons of nitroglycerin in a parking garage—the list goes on and on. The relationships between the two sets of friends are the exact same. Is this mere coincidence?

"There are eight rules of Fight Club."

Filling in the time-gap between Calvin and Jack, we can imagine the story as something like this: Once Calvin reaches the hostile environment known as the seventh grade, the constant teasing from the other students and the frustrated concern of his parents finally becomes too much, and a reluctant, disillusioned Calvin is finally forced to grow up, or at least begin to. This decision is sealed by one of the hardest things young Calvin will ever have to do in his life: un-imagine Hobbes, an act which to Calvin is essentially no different from murder. After being Calvin's best friend for over a decade, Hobbes is packed away in a box, or tossed carelessly into a garbage bag, perhaps even stuffed under the same bed that once contained so many monsters. This is all, of course, very painful for Calvin, so much so that he represses it all in shame. Little does Calvin suspect that while he is busy growing up, deciding what "dinette set defines him as a person," Hobbes is also maturing in the recesses of his mind, waiting to be unleashed at an appropriate time.

It's worth noting that during these twenty or so years, Hobbes never bears a grudge against Calvin nor wishes any ill upon him. Hobbes, remembering the depth of their past friendship, does not hate Calvin but rather hates the society that made Calvin put him away. Hobbes, residing in Calvin's mind, sees and experiences all that Calvin does—and truly despises all of it. He witnesses a bright, superbly imaginative kid (with a genius-level vocabulary) reduced to nothing more than another nameless cog. Fighting off the tears wept for his conventionalized pal, Hobbes resolves to set Calvin free, paying special attention when Calvin idly looks up homemade-napalm recipes on the Internet.

Flash forward to the timeframe depicted in Fight Club. Calvin/Jack has reached an all-time low. He has done everything society has told him to do but is completely void of happiness. Hobbes, newly adjusted as "Tyler Durden" (after all, grown-up Calvin would no longer accept a jungle animal walking, talking, and eating canned tuna), re-enters Calvin/Jack's life, determined to show Calvin everything he's done wrong, whether he likes it or not.

Tyler to Jack: "I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I'm smart, capable, and most importantly, I'm free in all the ways you wish you could be."

Calvin has always idolized Hobbes. In Weirdos From Another Planet, he dresses up like a tiger and attempts to live in the woods. Like Hobbes, Tyler is cool, collected, and incredibly cerebral. Given this evidence, one can conclude that Tyler is Hobbes, reincarnated after being trapped inside Calvin/Jack's brain for so many years. Just as Calvin is Jack, Hobbes is Tyler.

Part II: Marla Singer—Avatar of Susie Derkins?

Somewhere between the end of high school and beginning of college, uptight, grade-obsessed Susie Derkins lost her way. The pressure to get good grades, the pressure to succeed, simply became too much for her, and she snapped.

Marla remembers the girl she used to be.

Free from the protective bonds of her parents' guidance and the bland safety of her suburban home, Susie loses her moral bearings entirely and sinks into a dark, seamy, grim world of sex, drugs, and eccentric Albert-Einstein-like hair. Her transformation is so complete that she no longer even remotely resembles the upright citizen that her parents and society wanted her to be: thus, she changes her name.

Like Calvin, Susie has become a misfit, one of society's lost lambs. It is for this reason that she soon finds herself frequenting support groups such as "Remaining Men Together." Fate has brought her back to Calvin, whom she probably spurned back in junior high. But the two have changed so much that they no longer recognize each other!

The pink dress Marla wears in one scene slightly resembles something that "Binky Betsy," Susie's favorite childhood doll, once wore: the doll that Calvin stole and attempted to ransom. While Calvin and Susie mostly teased and tortured each other, Hobbes was infatuated with the raven-haired beauty. Accordingly, Jack despises Marla, whereas Tyler takes an *ahem* sort of interest in her (definitely inappropriate for the Sunday Funnies).

When we are first introduced to Marla, she is but a tumor on Jack's slowly deteriorating world. She is disenfranchised, morbid, socially apathetic—and Jack despises her because she is a mirror image of himself, his own female double. On the other hand, Calvin hates Susie because she is his exact opposite: Bright, obedient, demure—the unruly Calvin has every reason to hate her. However, certain strips definitely infer that Calvin has somewhat of a crush on Susie, and some even imply that Susie shares these latent feelings. But as a cootie-fearing grade-schooler, Calvin may only express these strange feelings through attention-getting antagonisms such as constant snowballs to the head, ransoming her dolls—and through his separate, conveniently more mature other personality—Hobbes.

Unlike Calvin, Hobbes has never been bashful about showing his affection for Susie. Calvin's imaginary tiger-friend has called her a "cutie," worn swim jams to impress her ("Girls flip for guys in jams"), and even claimed he would betray their club's secret code if she gave him a tummy rub (which is one of the key differences between Tyler and Hobbes). Naturally, all of this confuses and frustrates Calvin beyond words, even though Hobbes is really nothing more than a product of his own mind! And though Hobbes and Susie never consummated their love for each other (he's a stuffed tiger and she's a kid, you sicko!) this is, of course, the exact same deranged love-triangle that is shared between Jack, Tyler, and Marla, or at least a natural progression thereof. Perhaps Marla puts up with Jack/Tyler's apparent nonsense for so long, because it's the sort of thing she became used to as a child? And perhaps, in the end, Jack finds solace in Marla because it's the exact same connection he should've made long ago, in his suburban youth. A connection that may have saved them both.

Part III: GROSS—Precursor of Fight Club

In a scene eerily reminiscent of Fight Club, Hobbes blithely informs a sulking Calvin that he decides his own level of involvement in G.R.O.S.S.

When you boil it down, the Fight Club that Jack and Tyler start is really just an odd sort of boys' club—no ovaries allowed—where men can be men, and the so-called stronger of the sexes can take solace in the fact that, even in our politically correct times, some exclusivities of manhood still remain. (As a side note, imagine how much more controversy the movie would have generated if it involved scenes of men fighting women on equal ground!)

And clubs like this, of course, have their beginnings in backyards, tree houses, and garages all over America. Not surprisingly, Calvin started such a club when he was six years old. Little did anyone realize that he would construct another one much later in his life, again with the aid of an imaginary friend. For just as Calvin, Hobbes, and Susie have dark future versions in Jack, Tyler, and Marla respectively, G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS) has the same in Fight Club.

G.R.O.S.S. shares the following characteristics with Fight Club:

Both have catchy names (although the "slimy" part of G.R.O.S.S. is redundant, otherwise it doesn't spell anything).
Both are co-run by a friendless male and his imaginary companion (Calvin is Tyrant and Dictator-for-Life; Hobbes is President and First Tiger).
Both are exclusively male organizations, although Fight Club's membership is considerably larger.
Along with that, all members of both organizations are very loyal.
The leaders of both organizations constantly engage in fisticuffs (but only in G.R.O.S.S. does a member receive a demerit for biting).
And in said fights, in both organizations, there is only one fight at a time!
Both are supposedly very secretive (though Jack never tells his mother about Fight Club).
At least one leader of both organizations is fond of giving speeches (though Calvin never uses the term "space monkey").

G.R.O.S.S. and Fight Club both wreak havoc on their respective neighborhoods (G.R.O.S.S.'s target is considerably more focused, i.e., Susie). Clearly, the roots of Fight Club can be seen in G.R.O.S.S. Calvin shows his penchant for such male-oriented, destructive organizations. Also, just like cardboard-box-time-machines and water-gun-transmogrifiers, G.R.O.S.S. was likely created as an escape, a release—as, of course, was Fight Club.

Part IV: Moe Develops Karmic Bitch-Tits

Moe secretly seeks atonement for past sins.

Robert "Moe" Paulson, Calvin's grade-school bully, becomes a six-time weight-lifting champion, and somewhere along the line develops large man-boobs as a result of testicular cancer. This of course leads him to his support group, where he is shocked to find Calvin.

Moe greatly regrets his bullying days, but, too ashamed to reveal his true identity to Calvin, he instead offers his ample bosom for him to cry on, as a measure of retribution.

Part V: The Root of Evil

Although we've already learned of the fates of Hobbes, Susie, and Moe, there are a couple of other people important to Calvin that are missing. People that are even more integral to his development than (arguably) Hobbes: his parents. Mr . . . uhm . . . , and Mrs . . . uh. . . . Okay, so they don't have names. But then again, there is no need to know them. Because in the comic strip, they're not supposed to be important characters in their own right. They only matter in regards to how Calvin is directly effected by them; an effect which, by the time of the film, doesn't seem to have been very positive. From what "Jack" mentions, he's not exactly close to his parents, particularly his dad, on whom he seems to pin many of his problems. And this matches perfectly with the relationship depicted in the comic, as well as with what happened afterwards (in Part I).

Calvin's dad seems to have done quite a number on his son. As stated, it was probably at his urging that Calvin "grew up," that is, finally started to conform to society's rules, which was the death of Hobbes. Of course, his father wasn't without his playful side—good-naturedly teasing Calvin at every opportunity—but perhaps this is why "Jack" resents him so much. Maybe after Jack reached the end of his dutiful journey, only to find emptiness, he thought back to the day his father told him that the sun sets down somewhere in Arizona every night. "Maybe," thought Calvin, "maybe ALL of it's been just another one of Dad's cruel jokes."

In the "bathtub" scene of Fight Club, "Jack" and Tyler discuss their woeful parents. In this scene, crucial information is revealed, as well as some inconsistencies. "Jack" claims his father left when he was six, an age when Calvin's dad was obviously still around, but this statement is contradicted soon after, when Tyler mentions his own dad telling him to get married when he was thirty, to which "Jack" responds, "mine said that too." The self-pitying "Jack" is most likely seeking to garner additional sympathy from his newfound friend by making his childhood sound worse than it actually was.

But even more interesting is Tyler's hostility towards his father: when "Jack" asks him who he would fight, if he could fight anyone, he answers, "I'd fight my father." But, since Tyler is only a figment of Jack's imagination, we can only assume he's referring to Jack's father. And while this hatred would only make sense given that the two are sharing the same brain, why is it that Tyler seems to hate Jack's father even more vividly than "Jack" himself does? Maybe it's because Tyler hasn't forgotten who's ultimately responsible for the un-imagining that took place years before . . . maybe he's still not too happy about it . . . and maybe he's got some pretty good ideas for revenge.

The role of Calvin's father in all of this is no small one. Other than to "save" Calvin, it's entirely possible that Tyler's real motivation for taking down civilization is simply to get back at Calvin's father. For by destroying the society that forced Calvin into repressing Hobbes, he's also destroying the society that Calvin's father, after all, epitomizes. And this of course allows Hobbes an indirect measure of revenge.

Part VI: Calvin—"I Am Jack's Lost Youth"

Although the personality differences between Calvin in the comic strip and Calvin in the movie are pretty large, it can be explained as easily as taking Id and introducing him to Superego ("Jack" actually seems to have sort of a Super-Superego). Nearly all people go through the same thing when first confronted with the crushing grind of reality. But, as they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall—and in terms of imagination and dreams, Calvin was a giant.

Still, it's not as though common traits between Calvin-Calvin and Jack-Calvin can't be identified at all. Besides a preference for imaginary friends over real ones, and an inability to express affection for girls, Calvin has never done well when forced to play by any sort of rules. Take, for instance, his utter inability in any sort of organized sport, compared to his unbridled joy while playing the make-it-up-as-you-go-along "Calvinball." Furthermore, even at age 6 Calvin never exactly thrived in stifling, authoritarian establishments (i.e., school), and he's always had clashes with authority figures since the strip began (his parents, the doctor, his teacher, Rosalyn)—which actually may have initially planted the seeds for Tyler. Beyond that, his excellent vocabulary and way with words are still with him in the voice-over narration of Fight Club, and his rampant materialism that started with mail-order propeller-beanies ends with yin-yang shaped tables. As for the differences, they can be credited to the demoralizing effect of reality.

In the end, Calvin's involvement with Fight Club and return of Hobbes can be boiled down to two words: "Personal Responsibility." For although Fight Club and Project Mayhem were both mostly Tyler's doing, by the end of the movie, Jack readily accepts his own part of the blame, as Tyler is his creation. And by doing so, he also accepts responsibility for the undesirable condition of his own life—his father may have pushed him, but Calvin himself was the one who chose to obey. It is through this newfound self-accountability that Calvin/Jack is able to take control of his own life at last. As skyscrapers flash and crumble in the background, and blood oozes from the bullet hole in his head, Calvin says that he is "okay." And we are apt to believe him.

Part VII: Conclusion

Calvin's world in the comic strip is pure, romanticized idealism, whereas in the movie, he lives in gray, bleak reality. Within the safety of the panel, Calvin is perpetually six years old, terrible things can never happen, and no matter how crazy a stunt he pulls, everything always returns to status quo. Because of this, our hero is free to do as he wishes, free to chase his dreams as wildly as he desires, never having to worry about tomorrow because there essentially will never be one—unless it's part of a continuing storyline. This makes the reality of Fight Club all the bleaker, because it depicts what happens when you take someone weaned on dreams and limitless possibilities and jam him into a cramped cage confined by rules and regulations. It probably only took poor Calvin a few years in the adult world (or growing-up world) to fully make the sad change.

This transition from gleeful Calvin to dull "Jack" is not uncommon. Little Nemo became a banker, Peter Pan became a lawyer, and Garfield was caught and butchered by the chef of a Chinese restaurant. (One exception is Charlie Brown, who from all indications was mentally middle-aged at the time of his birth.)

The moral of the story is that reality bites, kiddies. Calvin and Hobbes in Fight Club are proof of this sad, sad truth.

Discussion Questions:

1. In the film, Calvin and Hobbes actually reversed many personality traits as Jack and Tyler. Is it possible that Calvin is the personality that got repressed and Hobbes is the one that did the "growing up"? Discuss.

2. Tyler wears a fur coat near the end of the movie. What is the significance of this garment, given his past incarnation as a jungle animal? Discuss.

3. If Calvin really wanted to change things, why didn't he just dust off his old cardboard-box time machine and hop in? Discuss.

4. After the end of Fight Club, when Calvin realizes he's effectively killed Hobbes twice now, do you really think he'll still be "okay"? Discuss.

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Now playing:
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Ouverture Solennelle (1812 Overture)
--
Nikhil Kumar Verma
I Am.

random perturbations

2007-09-11T23:57:00.001+05:30

Am currently locked out of Blogger thanks to an imperfectly working Filtering solution at my college...
which is banning Youtube as porn but letting me access this link on Playboy. (lucky for me i'm afoot to nothing bad)
talk about a sense of humour.
as a result i have to mail my posts to blogger with little or no hope of editing them for a while now...

something a friend said a lil while ago, as in a few minutes ago... felt like jotting it down.

Peace i leave with you,
My peace i give unto you
Not as the world giveth
I give unto you
Let Not your heart be troubled,
Neither let it be afraid
---
felt a sort of disappointed epiphany tonight.
carpe diem.
seen in a new light.
albeit thanks to Dilbert's Law, which is already semi-hallowed to me.
let's see where this leads.
to seeing things in a new light of hope.
or wallowing in a new darkness of despair.
am sounding too frim.
guess that sugar high is wearing off.
time to finish The Golem's Eye

c ya arnd
----------------
Now playing:
Norther - Last Breath
--
Nikhil Kumar Verma
I Am.

hmmm . . .

2007-08-28T03:21:00.000+05:30

I had once resolved some point in the distant past never to start posts with non-sensical titles. like this one.
well, that resolution comes to an end.

It's been an interesting few days...

being zoinked from sleep deprivation for three days + no caffeine intake in the last week...
going bonkers with a digicam...
shopping with sumone else pushing the cart in a supermart (way 2 good man)...
living out the six year old in my head. his views, his actions, his choices...
seeking dumb lil pleasures in dumb lil tasks...
switching to fruits for a midnight snack
(in place of the regular peanut butter-jelly altercations)...
hearing my mom smile over the phone as i chat away with her at midnight...
remembering my favourite dish at home
(basmati rice+arhar dal+sliced onion salad)...
chatting for hours about nothing at all in general...
remembering what hedonism is all about n why i'm a proponent...
giving an acquaintance a nice few hours of hell
(by speculating over a few questionable pics) ...
wondering why (sh)it always happens around me...
taking long walks in the rain...
shooting mint adverts in moving vehicles using transmogrifiers...
reading a book under a streetlamp waiting for a bus...
juggling between three handsets, none of which work properly...
wondering aloud at 03:21 hours...

boy, i almost feel alive again...

hmmm . . .

----------------
Now playing:
Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture

Welcome to The Machine

2007-08-26T20:52:00.000+05:30

the lyrics say it all:

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
Where have you been?
It's alright we know where you've been.
You've been in the pipeline, filling in time,
Provided with toys and 'Scouting for Boys'.
You brought a guitar to punish your ma,
And you didn't like school, and you
know you're nobody's fool,
So welcome to the machine.

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream?
It's alright we told you what to dream.
You dreamed of a big star,
He played a mean gituar,
He always ate in the Steak Bar.
He loved to drive in his Jaguar.
So welcome to the Machine.

----------------
Now playing:
Pink Floyd - Welcome To The Machine

Finally!!!

2007-08-18T17:07:00.000+05:30

Finally got all my affairs in order....
back to blogging after a long time, or rather finally blogging on a regular basis, after many abortive attempts.
Got my schedules sorted out, my overdue sleep compensated, my semester's quota of sleeping and missing classes...
at long last, have my website up on the LAN...
and am finally reading all those mails in my inbox BEFORE archiving them away.
now all that remains is putting away all these books that make up most of my the landscaping in my room.
and of course, the inescapable fate of watching my brain mutate n shrivel n die regularly for infinite 50 minute intervals (my take on attending classes).
enough crapping. time to get back to counter strike. have'nt killed for a long long time :-)

wonder whether there's a smiley for an evil grin...

anyone?

If

2007-08-17T16:26:00.000+05:30

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings - not lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

The Road Not Taken

2007-08-17T15:00:00.000+05:30

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

I Should Write This

2007-08-17T02:15:00.000+05:30

Something tells me that I should not bother writing this.
Someone just told me otherwise.

Oh Well, What The Hell.

It's Been a Hard Day's Night alright.That much is for sure.
Woke up at 6 am, to see how The Sikander Ansari Episode develops.
Reached the passport office after half an hour of torturous waiting in the rain for the morning bus, and 6 (YES, SIX!) changes of transportation. only to wait there and find that I'm too early at 9:30 am. Got frustrated and started logging the entry times of the staff at the office.
(only staffers were allowed to enter)
<did i just call them staffers?>
It went something like this:

09:38 Two guys on a bike
09:48 The Passport Officer arrives in his Amby
09:52 Another Guy on a bike
09:54 A Ma'am walks in
09:58 Yet another guy on a bike
10:03 A Guy on a scooter
10:04 A Guy on an Atlas Bicycle
10:05 A Ma'am on a moped
10:07 Two Guys walk in
10:09 A guy walks in, walks out, then in again
10:15 The Doors open for us commoners

Note that the security guard was actually unchaining and chaining the gate every single time until now.

10:30 I am allowed into the Passport Officer's Office.

He takes one perfunctory look at my passport, another at me, then drones to the peon: mumble gumble jumble slurmble gagzooka bleargh. Next, he asks me to give an application as if it is just another compliant. I mean no reaction, nothing. Like it's everyday that he has an application for a mismatched passport with someone else's photo n sign on it. Nevertheless, I comply and jot down an application, and ask him for some form of acknowledgment receipt that he has accepted the surrendered passport. He looks at me like i have uttered a curse in Swahili (which I havent btw) and asks, simply - "Acknowledgement? for what? U have the receipt of the application form right? You never got YOUR passport. We'll correct it and send it in a week MOST LIKELY." Those two words. not good. still, i thank him n leave.

11:00 Exit Passport office

On to the regular joint for a sandwich n burger-like substance on my way back to college via the noon bus. on the way to the bus, I manage to acquire from my (again) regular book-nook, ten books weighing in at just over 3 kilo's, which have no distant relation with the scrap of paper our professors refer to as syllabus.

13:00 Get Off The Bus

Sorry, I missed the part about the13 sad deaths I died while sleeping standing up in the way-too-overcrowded bus. Reach college 15 minutes too late for a lecture that I haven't attended this month. At all.
Exchange pleasantries and curses with a friend in Hyderabad over the phone while draining the Gatorade bottle that's supposed to be my lunch.

Now comes the fun part.
I go for the second lecture, only this time I miss the roll call amongst the chatter that indicates my general location in a class. I stand up to request attendance , and when asked why I didn't answer the first time, I simply quip that he wasn't audible back here where i was sitting. That's it. somehow that's very funny, and the class loses it's calm demeanour and I, my attendance. sigh. Have to skip the next lecture for a chore I needed to run. The errande stretches to 4:30 pm, and I manage to squeeze in half a dozen trips to the canteen area and a nice long debate on "Atrociousness" into this period while waiting.

17:00 Errand deferred to next working day

Next thing I now, I'm helping some friends to set up the Personal Adress System for no good reason that I can think of, followed by addressing a batch of freshers about the pro's and con's of joining a technical club. all this gets too much for both the near-100 strong fresher's group and me, so i start off an impromptu quiz. soon, it's past the girl's in-time (18:30 hours) and I still going on about god-knows-what shoe brand started by a Czech that had a near monopoly over the Indian Shoe market for quite some time in the past .
(BATA, if you must know)

20:00 Evicted from the lecture hall

The peon in-charge of closing up the lecture made up his mind and did the needful at 8 sharp and we moved en masse to the coffee stall at the Inner Co-Op stores(IC for short). Juniors leave, realizing they missed snacks and are now starving.More bakar with the guy who had got the thing together, which continues into a discussion about everything and ends an hour later in the hostel.

21:00 Drift off to H IV

Not the virus, the hostel where I used to stay until recently, when they decided that my bathing schedule (daily) was in violation of the hostel average (weekly/monthly). hang around playing cs, chatting up, and drifting off to sleep waiting for midnight to arrive so that I can wish a friend happy birthday.

Doze off, wake up, wish the guy, inhale way too much secondary smoke, head out to my hostel to clear my head, call up a second new born 24 yr old in cal, wish him happy birthday.

01:00 Reach my Hostel

Call up a 19-yr month old and chat to the end of my phone's credit limit, ending in a hazy good night.

02:00 Blogger : The Crazy Diamond - Create Post : I Should Write This

Type this thoroughly pointless post, still wondering why I'm up at 2 am typing gibberish when I have a lecture in 7 hours.

Hmmm. I do have a point there.

Good night and Good luck.
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Now playing: Poets of the Fall - Late Goodbye

I Am Sikander Ansari

2007-08-14T22:00:00.000+05:30

Seems like Mr.Murphy has way too much of an affinity for me...

I get my passport, without ever having the pre-requisite CID verification, only 6 months to the day I applied for it, while the supposed duration for the process is supposed to be 60 days.
Nevertheless, the best part of the story was :
Finding the Photograph and Signature of a certain unknown Sikander Ansari in place of my rightful photograph and signature.

The Visual Proof (PDF)

As they say, wherever I'm concerned, life is always
As FUBAR As It Gets...

Sonnet XVII

2007-08-12T23:56:00.000+05:30

Was reminded of this from Patch Adams...
remember hearing it in parts but never as a whole

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Pablo Neruda
Sonnet XVII from 100 Love Sonnets
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Now playing:
Don McLean - Vincent

η κ ν - the origin

2007-07-07T07:07:00.000+05:30

eta kappa nu

η κ ν

that's me. not literally. more of a high school joke really.

you know all the silly stuff we do back in the school days n all.

so I ended making this logo out of my initials.

n k v written as eta kappa nu. simply.

coz it sorta resembled it.

clubbed into one character. the logo above

voila! I had a symbol of my own.

it was much later that I heard of the fraternity, and realized that

eta kappa nu translates to hkn

oh well.what the hell!

as it is written so shall it be done.

Could You Pass 8th Grade Science?

2007-06-29T14:24:00.000+05:30

I think that means i passed

My Creed

2007-06-24T21:32:00.000+05:30

Wow.
A whole year since my last post.
talk about time flying by.
guess the poster pretty much defines me by now.
or maybe not.
Who knows.

Oh Well, What The Hell.

One More Thing :
I wish there were 13 points rather than the aforementioned 14.
But never-you-mind.

Drummer Hodge

2007-06-12T03:00:00.000+05:30

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew
Fresh from his Wessex home
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
His stars eternally.

Thomas Hardy

Shantaram

2007-06-10T22:04:00.000+05:30

I am not a joiner. I never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it.

Gregory David Roberts

I wonder

2007-05-05T13:15:00.000+05:30

I wonder what it would be like, to watch your life as an outsider.

I keep saying over and over to myself : What Do You Care What Others Think ?

but I've never taken a moment aside to sit down and consider what I think.
And how it would look to me from a distant perspective.

Now that would be something.

To see what your life looks like to a fly on the wall...

Immense

2007-05-02T21:51:00.000+05:30

that same old theme occurs to me again. and again. and again.

when I see something unbound and seemingly vast/huge/infinite, am I supposed to cover & fall to my feet in awe, shocked by its relative magnitude in proportion to me, or simply feel renewed vigour and enthusiasm in face of my existence inspite of it...

I know not what I'm trying to say here, just thinking aloud...

The Reason

2007-04-23T12:32:00.000+05:30

I couldn't hate you if i tried. I don kno about caring but i'd never want u to hurt yourself, or anything bad should happen to u. Its not like i think u don care.. I kno that u don. A lot of time has gone by nikhil. In another time n place, i may forget ab this..But here n now it stil hurts like hell.

sans sleep

2007-04-14T13:49:00.000+05:30

The feeling

O that heavenly feeling.

Two days straight without sleep, a dead tired screaming body, a lost dazed floating sensation. That displaced removed experience.

And here comes the coffee...

Hi n Dri

2007-04-13T14:51:00.000+05:30

I must be the only guy i know, who doesnt do grass, ciggs, or alcohol n is still buzzed, still high all the time, and keeps getting the constant drunk/hungover from whatever.

why?
----------------
Now playing:
Pink Floyd - Welcome To The Machine

cheers

2007-04-12T08:45:00.000+05:30

The THiNK Drink

Stupidity

2007-04-03T22:46:00.000+05:30

Eric : My head hurts.
Red : That's your brain trying to comprehend it's own stupidity.

That 70's Show

10 Great Indian Novels

2007-01-30T11:53:00.000+05:30

according to Reader's Digest

Londonstani - Gautam Malkani
No God in Sight - Altaf Tyrewala
Cuckold - Kiran Nagarkar
Afternoon Raga - Amit Chaudhari
Hangman's Journal - Shashi Warrier
The Golden Gate - Vikram Seth
All About H. Haterr - G.V. Desani
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Hungry Tide - Amitava Ghosh
The Everest Hotel - I. Allan Sealy

i

2007-01-27T11:20:00.000+05:30

only as high as i reach can i grow
only as far as i seek can i go
only as deep as i look can i see
only as much as i dream can i be

Transmission

2006-12-11T19:09:00.000+05:30

The Future is happening Today, and in today's fast-moving future the worst place to do business is the past. I strive to add value by surfing the wave of innovation. I will succeed.

Hari Kunzru

Why is the Fire Engine Red in color?

2006-11-07T17:54:00.000+05:30

Answer

The Fire Engine has a Ladder.
A Ladder has Steps.
These Steps are a Foot apart.
A Foot is measured by a Ruler.
A Ruler can be a King or a Queen.
A Queen of England was named Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was also the name of a Ship.
Ships float on Sea-Water.
Sea-Water has Fish.
Fish have Fins.
Fins are the people of Finland.
The flag of Finland is Red in color.

Hence,The Fire Engine is Red in color.

A Thousand Desires Such As These

2006-10-15T08:12:00.000+05:30

A thousand desires such as these
A thousand moments to set this night on fire
Reach out and you can touch them
You can touch them with your silences
You can reach them with your lust
Rivers mountains rain
Rain against a torrid hill’s cape
A thousand
A thousand desires such as these

I loved rain as a child
As a lost young man
Empty landscapes
Bleached by a tired sun
And then
And then suddenly it came
Like a dark unknown women
Her eyes scorched my silences
Her body wrapped itself around me
Like a summer without end

Pause me hold me reach me
Where no man has gone
Crossing the seven seas
With the wings of fire
I fly towards nowhere
And you
Rivers mountains rain
Rain against a scorched landscape of pain

A thousand desires such as these
A thousand moments to set this night on fire
Reach out and you can touch them
You can touch them with your silences
You can reach them with your lust
Rivers mountains rain
Rain against the torrid hill’s cape
A thousand,
A thousand desires such as these

wondering, blundering

2006-10-05T10:16:00.000+05:30

i wonder why,
i wonder why i blunder,
i wonder why i wonder why i blunder,
i blunder while i wonder why i wonder why i blunder,
i am still wondering why i blunder while i wonder why i wonder why i blunder,
and all this wondering has left me blundering in its wake about the wonder that was me.

i wonder if thats life.

Aging

2006-06-23T14:12:00.000+05:30

Aging

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.

"How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

"How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . . YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50
and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I Was JUST 92."

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"
May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!

HOW TO STAY YOUNG
1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay "them "

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. "An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person, who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9 Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, even to the next county; to a foreign country but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every o pportunity.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

And if you don't send this to at least 8 people - who cares? But do share this with someone. We all need to live life to its fullest each day!!

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming Whoo what a ride".

Steve Job's Quotes

2006-06-22T04:55:00.000+05:30

By Owen Linzmayer

02:00 AM Mar, 29, 2006

One of the great things about Steve Jobs is what comes out of his mouth.

The CEO of Apple Computer is a master of hype, hyperbole and the catchy phrase. Even when he's trying to talk normally, brilliant verbiage comes tumbling out.

Here's a selection of some of the most insanely great things the man has said, organized by topic: innovation and design, fixing Apple, his greatest sales pitches, life's lessons, taking the fight to the enemy and Pixar.

On Innovation and Design:

"It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing."
-- At age 29, in Playboy, February 1985

"I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do."
-- BusinessWeek Online, Oct. 12, 2004

"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."
-- Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
-- BusinessWeek, May 25 1998

"It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much."
-- BusinessWeek Online, Oct. 12, 2004

"(Miele) really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years."
-- Wired magazine, February 1996

On Fixing Apple:

"The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!"
-- On Gil Amelio's lackluster reign, in BusinessWeek, July 1997

"The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament."
-- Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company, by Owen W. Linzmayer

"If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."
-- Fortune, Feb. 19, 1996

"You know, I've got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can't say any more than that it's the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me."
-- Fortune, Sept. 18, 1995

"Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could -- I'm searching for the right word -- could, could die."
-- On his return as interim CEO, in Time, Aug. 18, 1997

"It wasn't that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it's that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That's Apple's problem: Their differentiation evaporated."

-- Apple Confidential 2.0

"The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade."
-- Wired magazine, February 1996

"Nobody has tried to swallow us since I've been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste."
-- Apple shareholder meeting, April 22, 1998

Greatest Sales Lines Ever:

"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"
-- The line he used to lure John Sculley as Apple's CEO, according to Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, by John Sculley and John Byrne

"We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."
-- Jobs, on Mac OS X's Aqua user interface (Fortune, Jan. 24, 2000)

"There are sneakers that cost more than an iPod."
-- On the iPod's $300 price tag, Newsweek, Oct. 27, 2003

"It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can't overestimate it!"
-- On the iTunes Music Store (iTMS), Fortune, May 12, 2003

"What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the internet."
-- On how he sold iTMS to the music industry, Rolling Stone, Dec. 3, 2003

"IMac is next year's computer for $1,299, not last year's computer for $999."
-- iMac introduction in Cupertino, Calif., May 6, 1998

"The G4 Cube is simply the coolest computer ever. An entirely new class of computer, it marries the Pentium-crushing performance of the Power Mac G4 with the miniaturization, silent operation and elegant desktop design of the iMac. It is an amazing engineering and design feat, and we're thrilled to finally unveil it to our customers."
-- Macworld Expo, July 19, 2000

"It'll make your jaw drop."
-- On the first NeXT Computer, in The New York Times, Nov. 8, 1989

"We believe it's the biggest advance in animation since Walt Disney started it all with the release of Snow White 50 years ago."
-- On Toy Story, Fortune, Sept. 18, 1995

On Life's Lessons:

"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
-- Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple

"I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I'm only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I've got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that."
-- Playboy, September 1987

"I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year.... It's very character-building."
-- Apple Confidential 2.0

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
-- Stanford University commencement address, June 12, 2005

Taking the Fight to the Enemy:

"John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place -- which was making great computers for people to use."
--The Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program oral history, April 20, 1995

"It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans."
-- On Apple's lawsuit following his resignation to form NeXT (Newsweek, Sept. 30, 1985)

"My opinion is that the only two computer companies that are software-driven are Apple and NeXT, and I wonder about Apple."
-- Fortune, Aug. 26, 1991

"Why would I ever want to run Disney? Wouldn't it make more sense just to sell them Pixar and retire?"
-- Fortune, Feb. 23, 2004

"The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful."
-- Rolling Stone, Dec. 3, 2003

"The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They're just like dead fish washing up on the shores."
-- Playboy, February 1985

On Pixar:

"They're babes in the woods. I think I can help turn Alvy and Ed into businessmen."
-- On Pixar co-founders Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull, in Time, Sept. 1, 1986

"If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt if I would have bought the company."
-- Fortune, Sept. 18, 1995

"I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney -- not replace Disney -- but be the next Disney."
-- BusinessWeek, Nov. 23, 1998

Owen W. Linzmayer (owenink@owenink.com) is author of Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company (No Starch Press, 2004, ISBN 1-59327-010-0).

Inspirations, Reflections, Muzings

2006-06-22T03:46:00.000+05:30

When ur really down n out, u feel like u need to be inspired.
like u need to look up, and see an image of you as you see yourself, as you want to be.
i see a guy called Steve Jobs.
once going thru google i came upon's Steve's resume .
and later his address to the graduating class of 2005 at Stanford University.
Which a Hummer driving senior of mine, who preaches that
he knows not how to pretend (No se fingir) reminded me off at 3 in the morning.
Timing ,eh?
Still felt like these things deserve a place here.
like when u see some quote and really feel what it means, the urge strikes you to note it down inyour diary or something so that u can relish that feeling again.
maybe its reassuarance.
maybe comprehension.
maybe an epiphany.
or maybe its the pathetic dal fry the mess guy screwed up.
whatever it is, its more than a gut feeling.
its like accounting for your actions and feelings to the only person worth answering to - yourself.

Suchintya, while he was here recently mentioned an idea that he (& now, I) incorporated as a new habit.
Termed a Reader's Shelf, it consists of buying a book that you have read or may not ahave read, and keeping it on your shelf.NOT lending it to the milling crowds that swarm thru ur door incessantly begging for movies/songs/books to borrow, and probably never return.
nada. not this time folks. The purpose of this shelf is to have the books there when u want to read them for exactly the reason u bought them in the first place. because you like to read them.

there was another quote i saw on the fms brochure which goes like

every morning a gazelle wakes up , it knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion
every morning a lion wales up, it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle
but no matter who you are
when the dawn breaks , you better be running.

(thanks for the original quote to kkkishore)

now, thanks to the reservation issues, i wonder if there is any reservation for the general category.

I remember the gist of what Alfred P. Dolittle says in My Fair Lady when he turns up at Professor Higgin's house try to coax a few pounds out of the man.it went something like being a part of the undeserving minority.a part of that hapless crowd who dont have voice's demanding justice for them in the courts.the undeserving minority, who have every right to everything as anone else, but dont get anthing, whether or not they work for it, being a different metaphysical issue altogether.
hmm. sometimes, thinking over things can make ideas come out looking completely different. renewed, reprocessed and presented from a totally different perspective.

Well, whatever.

There's this thing i have been trying to comprehend. bout phrases that stick to the roof of your mouth and launch themselves at unwary people at the least expected moment. as for reasons, let's not start on that issue, shall we?

Like
Don't Know Don't Care.
Apparently.
Oh Well! What The Hell!
You talking to me?
Perhaps.Perhaps.Perhaps.
Cogito Ergo Sum
T H i N K
Comet Nosce.
What Do You Care What Other's Think?
Et Scientia

and the biggest one....

n i a n e m.
that's one word that keeps convoluting itself transfroming, vanishing and reappearing in various mutilated forms in my head all the time.

maybe it's sorta hangover or something. like stuff u read or see that just get sleft behind. chewing gum found under the cinema seat.Unexplicable. unavoidable. unreasonable.

hmmm.what to say..
except perhaps,

Who is John Galt?

You've got to find what you love

2006-06-22T03:31:00.000+05:30

You've got to find what you love(Text)

You've got to find what you love(Audio)

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

*********************

Who Am I

2006-03-31T21:20:00.000+05:30

Who am I? Where did I come from?
The philosophical quest continues...

(A beautiful verse from Rig Veda that tries to analyze creation so rationally and humbly that it doesn't contradict science even to this day.)

In the beginning
There was neither existence nor nonexistence,
Neither sky nor heaven beyond …

That One breathed, without breath,
By his own breathless power.

The first born was the Creative Will,
The primordial seed of the mind.
All else followed.
The sages, searching for the truth within themselves,
Discovered the eternal bond between the seen and unseen.
This bond was an endless line stretched across the heavens.
What was above?
What was below?
Primal seeds were sprouting, mighty forces were moving;
Pulsation from below, pure energy above.

Who here knows? Who can say for sure? …
When it began and from where it came-this creation?
The gods came afterwards
So who really knows?

From where this creation came,
By what means it was formed,
Only He who watches from the highest heaven knows
or perhaps even He does not know!

[quote(s) / poem(s) n° 3007: Rig Veda [presentation], most ancient of the Vedic collections of hymns, considered the Hindus most sacred scripture., Hinduism

Rig Veda, Book X, 129]

The Crazy Diamond

Over To Wordpress

Lighten Up

Time for Change

Page No 56

With a little bit of luck

this is hyphen

Ten

01-11

status quo

story of my life

Neil Gaiman

Any Given Sunday

American Gods

The Passenger

a fortnight gone, 3 remain

#214

i sit here

bottom

wordpower

life

hands & destiny

beautiful day

Decaf Poopacino

Life Experience

sleep

name

access denied

Mesra Morning

Uncertainity

Kansas City Shuffle

a recollection of the last fortnight

all things inane and more

42

We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves. The algorithm is banned in China. The algorithm is from Jersey. The algorithm constantly finds Jesus.This is not the algorithm. This is close.

Camera Kit

#212

#210

Mess Eating Disorder : Behavioural Pattern

prayer

Question

love

Asda Supermarket Sells £5 Cellphone

sibling rivalry

whats up

February & March's Dose

solo

january's dose

hell

happyness @ 20 lpa

eyes wide open

december's dose

if

a long overdue update

clueless

Times

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Breakfast Travel Logged

...

its 3 am . . .

hmmm

quote unquote

sanity@4pm

Behind Blue Eyes

A chance to really shoot for the stars

ASTRONAUT JOB REQUIREMENTS

New shuttle in the works

Announcement in 2009

insanity@4am

How Computers Transformed Baby Boomers

The Killers - Mr. Brightside

PoMo

shades of grey

W O W

Fight Club : The Return of Hobbes

Fight Club

The Return of Hobbes

Hobbes is reborn as Tyler to save "Jack" (a grown-up Calvin) from the slough of un-comic despair.

Part I: The Hobbes-Tyler Connection

Part II: Marla Singer—Avatar of Susie Derkins?

We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves.
The algorithm is banned in China. The algorithm is from Jersey. The algorithm constantly finds Jesus.
This is not the algorithm. This is close.