the best of 2010

as the year draws to a close, and i spend a bored afternoon reading back my old blog posts, i'm drawn back into the year that was.

some of these posts are stories from my life, the rest of them were just inspired by it.

but i can say one thing for sure, some of them are better than others. in the sense that i'd love you to read them, and hopefully tell me what you think.

so here's my list, in reverse chronological order:

the nonchalance of being alive
my first mp3
feverish thoughts
happy
my big daddy
happy birthday
a night well spent
it's not okay.
the ghost
the perfect person
the loss of a dear one
happy good friday
residual awesomeness

and this one just about spills into 2009, but is about something that affected my 2010 to a large extent:

the indifferent happiness

merry ?mas

one of the weirdest things i've ever done on christmas, is to try and convince my friend that she shouldn't go for mass, when she was doing her best to make it.

and i wasn't exactly trying reverse psychology on her.

it's strange but true. if you do something without knowing why, you lose the point of it all. what's religion without that deep inner drive to apply someone else's inspiration to your own life? to me, it's nothing.

religion isn't the only way. belief in god isn't the only way. when you choose them, also make sure you choose to understand why.

else it's all just a waste of time.

merry christmas!

ps: she did go for christmas mass :)

the moment that couldn't be right

yesterday morning, i was heading home by train from my friend's place. surprisingly, bandra station was almost deserted for 8am, with no line for the tickets at all

i headed to the nearest counter, and dug in my pocket for change for the fare.

a beggar sitting below the window begged for a coin or two.

i shrugged him off.

and then dropped a coin, almost into his outstretched palm.

he offered to return it.

i shook my head. he kept it, expressionless.

my initial rationalization (at the moment i agreed to let him keep the coin) was that it was probably his luck or fate that caused me to drop the coin, so he kinda deserved it.

but then i realized that i also felt bad about taking money from a beggar.

as i walked away, i also felt i had been somehow disrespectful towards the beggar. it's one thing to give someone a coin (however misplaced the charity may be, as i believe, when it comes to beggars), but it's another to drop it on the ground and have him pick it up.

it felt as if i grudged the beggar his 1 buck.

i just don't know, i still can't think of anything i could have done, or any way to rationalize my course of action.

the nonchalance of being alive

I sat in a train after quite a while today. I was on my way to bandra, and i bumped into an old friend at the bus stop (yes, i was also in a bus after a long while...twice today!)

we were both heading in the same direction, and he was already late for work (however "late" a guy standing at a bus stand at 1 pm in bombay could possibly be), so he decided to forego a fast train to give me company on my journey (although I was rather keen on traveling at the footboard of a superfast train myself, he kinda dismissed the thought).

so there I was at borivli station, waiting for the 1:32 semi-fast, with my brother's school classmate's dad (which is how I initially got to know him many years ago, btw). as the train pulled in, old instincts kicked in and we jumped into the still-running train, and caught an almost-window seat in the direction of the breeze. we had almost settled in when the couple sitting at the window seat (in the direction of the breeze, mind you) vacated their seats after a cursory glance under it. seasoned rain travelers that we were, we waited for the guy during next to them to slide toward the window, and when he didn't, we quickly moved there.

we asked the guy there why he didn't want the window seat. he said it was because of an unclaimed black bag under it.

we shrugged and took his rightful place. a window seat was a window seat, even in a barely occupied coach.

a guy took his place opposite us. it was opposite the breeze, but a window seat nevertheless.

we say there in silence, till the announcer made the mandatory but cursory announcement that our safety depended on our vigilance and our identification of unclaimed baggage.

we shrugged it off again.

the guy opposite us didn't.

he reminded us that we were sitting above an unclaimed black bag.

the ensuing discussion (liberally translated from my understanding of street gujju interspersed with marathi and a bit of english) went along the lines that "it's a harmless looking black bag. there's nothing we can do about it. if it happens to be a bomb, we'll just assume our time has come and we've lived our lives". the guy opposite reminded us that people often survive bomb blasts and may end up human vegetables, but we reassured him that we were near enough to the bag to ensure we didn't survive any half-assed bomb attack, however crude it may have been.

I tweeted: "sitting above an unidentified black package in the 1:32 churchgate fast from borivli". nobody seemed to notice.

as the train started moving, we rationalized that "we don't know the day or time of our end anyway".

and that's it.

three 40-50 somethings, and me, a 20-something, admitting to each other that we didn't care.

at kandivali station, my friend nudged the package with his foot and declared that it felt like just cloth.

we discussed bikes and the good old 70s (okay, I'm not that old, but I can imagine). I eventually alighted at bandra. there were no frantic calls from home for another 12 hours ;) so I assume the package was as harmless as my friend assessed.

I will always remember that moment. if not the moment, then the feeling.

when four grown men in very different phases of life agreed there was nothing we really had to lose.

joke #fail

there's this guy who texts me random forwards, and till a few minutes ago, i didn't know who he was.

i remember one of the weird forwards i got from him:

Guys tmrw Party at Shivaji Park. Every1 invited. Kindly get a candle. Dress code blue or white. Enjoy.

it struck me as weird that someone is inviting me to a "party" at shivaji park. i'd always assumed the park was used for jogging, and political rallies on bad days :D

so in all seriousness, i replied that i may not be able to make it.

that's when he told me it was a joke.

i replied back with a sarcastic "very funny".

turns out it was indeed a joke that i didn't get. the "party" that he alluded to was the annual dalit rally that happens on ambedkar jayanti.

anyway, since it was about 3am, he then texted me asking how come i was still awake.

i told him i was trying to sleep, listening to the doors.

turns out he's never heard of the doors before. he thought i was listening to the doors of my house creaking :|

guess we're both kinda even now.

the bird that ruined my week.

last weekend was perfect. I rested well on sunday, something that I rarely get the chance to do.

monday morning started well enough. other than the fact that I realized when I reached office that my right palm had a we bit of a brownish, sticky mark.

anyway, I forgot all about it when I entered my floor and was greeted with a box of lindts and two boxes of mithai waiting at the cupboard next to my cubicle.

it all went downhill from there.

something fucked up with my code in production (okay, not exactly *my* code, but something I was kinda responsible for). emergency fix was required. the fix was tricky. and was required asap.

I thought that was why I had lost my appetite for lunch. but then, mom's lovingly packed prawn curry had to be relished. and I did eat it, eventually.

it was a long day at work. by the time I was ready to leave (because my brain had stopped functioning, not because my work was complete), I was feeling weak and extremely nauseous.

I somehow wobbled my bike home (yesh, I was actually feeling unsteady, but it didn't occur to my aforementioned dysfunctional brain that I could leave my bike and take the home drop, which I was officially entitled to), and was off to sleep before the lights were out.

woke up the next day with a terrible stomach upset. worked from home, all the way till 2 am. woke up feeling better, but things deteriorated after breakfast, and it was clear I hadn't recovered fully. another day of working from home.

in the evening, when I took the bike for a spin in the colony, i realized what happened on monday morning:

there was bird crap on my (normally spotless) bike seat.

I checked upward from my usual parking spot. and sure enough, I was 40 feet below a freshly built bird nest.

checked my handle carefully.

there was some brown stuff embedded in the grips.

on closer inspection, it was bird crap.

that's when I remembered the evil twist of fate: I didn't wash my hands before helping myself to the lindts. or the laddoos. or the barfi.

to continue the story, I felt better on thursday, and went to work. but there was so much piled up that I was in office till 2 am.

had a relapse of the upset stomach on friday, despite all precautions. worked from home again.

right now, it's early saturday morning, and I'm still sick.

yesh, that's what fate and a bird just did to me.

the backspace ban experiment

late one night, when i was feeling rather blah, i decided i was tired of correcting my typos.

so i declared the next 24 hours as my "zero correction" day.

everything i typed had to be posted. i was not allowed to rephrase or delete or replace anything i typed.

funny thing is, it looked (and indeed started off) easier than it actually was.

halfway through the day, i just gave up.

yesh, my experiment failed. but i might try again.

anyway, next experiment: 24 hours of only tweeting by retweeting and prepending "+1!" and "-1!".

realistically, i expect it to last 6 hours of tweeting, at max. less if it happens on a weekend and i need to use twitter as anything other than a frivolous pastime.

the girl in school

this dream is a few weeks old, but I remember it pretty well nevertheless:

I was in school, but it didn't look anything like mine. also, it was co-ed, while mine was not. anyway.

we were in school, but there was no class. also, we weren't wearing uniforms for some reason. and I felt like I was 5 or 6.

a (nameless, faceless) girl from my class wanted to use the loo. I realized I did too. so we walked together.

turns out the school was pretty huge. lots of buildings with plenty of open spaces between them, but petty evenly distributed around the place. also, there were some places where there was no way to go from one building to another, so we had to climb up and down walls, fire escapes, and even a tiled roof. three were some places that were to high to climb up alone, so the girl and I had to help each other. she was always the one to lead the way. I think I was scared of all the climbing.

we finally reached the restrooms. she went to the one for girls.

that's when I realized I wasn't wearing my shoes. and that I felt dirty to use the loo without footwear.

so I just waited outside the girls' loo for her. and I woke up while I was waiting.

my first mp3

we've come a long long way together...through the hard times, and the good. I have to  celebrate you baby...I have to praise you like I should!

okay, that wasn't it. but first, the story. and before that, thanks to @anishasharma10 for nudging me into this trip down memory lane :)

it was 1999. I was just out of school. I had never heard of mp3s before. and I had this cool, geeky friend joel who was ranting and raving about this awesome new thing called "napster". and consequently, music that was small enough to fit on my pc's (tiny) hard disk.

I'm not sure if the problem was that I couldn't believe him or that I couldn't understand him, but he took it upon himself to demonstrate what the hype was all about.

so one evening after our evening games of cricket (summer vacations were on), he brought his cpu over, and we sat down and figured out how to disconnect my pc's hard disk and connect it to his.

halfway through the adventure, there was a twist: my brother, who was fooling around with the electricals somewhere in the house (yesh, he was all of 12 years old, and messing with live wires. don't ask.) blew our mains fuse and plunged the entire house into darkness.

joel was kinda freaked out (he had taken his pc without permission, I'm sure :D), but my dad bypassed the fuse with some regular electrical wire, and we had light again.

so we then set about transferring stuff.

I remember, he was supposed to give me a c compiler and visual basic (I was interested in learning and vb), and finally my hard disk was almost completely full (I had a 500 mb hard disk back then!)

his parting gift was one mp3.

I didn't choose it.

I didn't even know which one it was till he left and I started browsing the stuff he gave me.

I know for sure that it didn't play the first time I tried loading it (my pic was below the minimum spec of most mp3 playing software).

but I do remember which one it was.

a live performance of eric clapton's "tears in heaven".

and that, ladies and gentlemen, was my first ever mp3.

five days

i've always had this weird problem with staying at home. forget weekends, i usually never take more than one sick day off, because i'd feel sicker the second day due to the sheer monotony of being at home. somehow office doesn't feel that way to me.

so my record so far is a a day and a half at home.

until last thursday.

wednesday was a holiday, that i actually spent at home cos i couldn't think of anything better to do, but thankfully, i did go to work on thursday morning, and only fell sick in the afternoon.

so there i was, high fever et al, under house arrest for atleast 2 days. followed by the weekend.

i thought i was cured, but it turned out i wasn't. and to top it all, it's been raining every evening (daily rain in november? it didn't rain this much in frikkin *JULY*!), so i haven't even been able to step out onto the terrace in the evenings.

and then i was still feeling weak and unwell on monday.

i've reached the point where, i'm scared that if i stay home for one more day, i will just lose the will to work, eat or do anything else. and just sleep myself to a deathly hibernation.

yes, that's how bad five days can be for me.

back to school

i had two recent dreams about being in school. one last week, and one today morning. today's had a lot more known people though.

cast: me, my brother, jeet, deepti, aditi, mrs lata.

to start off, i was in an examination hall. more like a classroom, actually. the desks and benches were exactly like those in my stats practicals (the terrace classrooms on xaviers, to be specific). sorting my stuff and all.

it was a science examination. i'm not sure which standard, but it was school. everyone looked like how they do right now though (i.e. in their late twenties :D). few familiar people in the class, one of them being deepti. (can't recall anyone else's face now)

the prof handed us our answer sheets and told us to start drawing margins, write our names and seat numbers, etc.

the prof also handed us an extra sheet, and drew a table full of text on the blackboard, and asked us to copy it down on the sheet. it wasn't anything related to my science exam.

when i protested that it wasn't part of the exam, she said that it was an assignment that she wanted us to do. no marks involved, but we couldn't start writing our exam till we finished. i took my time, did the table and wrote neatly, and finally submitted the assignment.

that's when i realized i needed to pee.

excused myself, went to the loo (what i thought was the guys loo, actually), and went in.

only to find that it was occupied by girls. who, strangely enough, were standing at the urinals.

they screamed when they saw me, and i ran out, embarrassed.

i swore in my dream that all the girls were using the guy's loo...after all, this is my school, and i know which one is the guy's loo!

anyway, i had to pee, so i went to the girls' loo. there was nobody there.

and just as i finished, a few girls entered the loo, led by aditi, and apologized, cos they realized they were in the wrong loo!

i passed jeet somewhere on the way back from the loo to the examination hall. told him which one to go to.

and then, was informed that i had to sit on a desk outside the hall as my seat had been taken while i was away.

so i had to write my exam at a desk under a tree, which somehow looked suspiciously like the tree that's in my building compound at home. sitting on a plastic chair that collapsed to half its height when i sat on it. and the desk was to be shared with my brother, who was also writing an exam.

anyway, once i sat and finished drawing margins, writing my name etc on the answer sheet, i realized i was hungry. and bro had carried lunch for both of us. so i fished out the lunchbox and had half the tiffin. bro wasn't too sure if the food was fresh because of "the way the curry leaves stuck to the potatoes", but i assured him it was.

lunch over, i asked bro the time, as i didn't have a watch. it was 12:28. i had spent an hour and a half without writing a word of my exam.

he started telling me what we could do to help me finish on time.

he said he could dictate the answers to me (he was probably solving the same paper as i was).

but while saying this, he started gesticulating rather visibly.

i told him he'll get caught for copying if he made signs or spoke audibly. showed him how to speak without moving his lips.

and then told him i'll just write fast, without caring about my handwriting. 6 minutes for every 10 marks worth is how i'll time myself. they won't cut marks for handwriting in a science exam.

that's when the invigilator (mrs. lata, my science teacher from school, btw) caught a guy at the next desk for copying.

and that's when the doorbell rang.

i woke up at the same moment as bro did. we were facing each other when we were asleep, so the first thing i saw when i woke up was him looking at me.

feverish thoughts

I had a rather bad fever till a few minutes ago. temperature nudging 104°F. extreme weakness.

the doctor gave me medicine that he said will get rid of the fever in 2 hours.

so I had a bowl of soup, and downed the tablets, praying for the best.

I was out like a light, in a deep sleep.

till I started dreaming. or rather, hallucinating.

I started feeling like multiple people. I felt like everyone. and I felt like I had to do strange things.

I had to clothe everyone. I had to feed everyone. then there were too many clothes. there were too many people. I just had to feed myself. and a few more people. I had to give them work. the people in me. they wanted to do something. they were feeling hot. they didn't like the work. they were me. I was sweating. then, I was feeling cold and they were feeling hot. I was uncomfortable but they were ok. they wanted me to sleep this way, I did not. we tossed and turned, trying to remove clothes, put them back on, gave ourselves work.

and then I woke up.

and thought to myself: what am I doing here?  what am I supposed to be doing here? who are these people? why are they unhappy?

and then I realized it's just me.

I opened facebook on my phone, and suddenly, I felt like myself again.

I shall go to sleep now. hope I wake up fine!

the sardar joke

there's this old sardar joke (okay, before i begin, i have nothing against sardars - and you will know why shortly) that i remembered recently:

a sardar entered a bus, and when the conductor asks him the destination for the ticket, he opened his bag to check his tiffin.

a co-passenger asked him what he was doing. he replied: "i'm checking if i'm going home or to work."

and i was reminded of the joke because...

last sunday, while showering, i was so lost in thought, that i had to smell my armpits to figure if i was starting or finishing with my shower.

ps: sunday holds the record for maximum number of times i've carefully smelled my armpits on any given day. and the number is two. but the rest of that story is for another post, another day :)

absence makes the heart grow unFonder

some time last week, i decided i'll stop tweeting till i speak to @bitchwanti. and since i wasn't really feeling like calling her, it was quite clear to me that i'll have to wait for her to call.

so there i was, off twitter. almost.

i must admit, the first day was kinda tough. i got a couple of @replies that i had to ignore, and it felt very alien to me.

by the second day, i didn't really feel like i was missing anything.

on the third day, @bitchwanti promised me she'll call.

she didn't, but i decided i might as well make my reappearance now. a promise is a promise, right? and besides, i was packing for a camping trip to kashid at that time, and i sure as hell didn't want to be breaking my twitter-break while lying under the stars and listening to the waves. didn't want to adulterate *that* sort of a trip.

so i decided to tweet.

frankly, i don't even remember what my first tweet was. only that @hiway happened to be online, and he incorrectly figured that @bitchwanti had called :D

other than that, there was no fanfare whatsoever. and that felt just about right with my perception of twitter.

the weekend at kashid was awesome. and i did speak to @bitchwanti while under the stars and listening to the waves. she didn't adulterate the experience much, thankfully :P

i got back two days later, on saturday night.

and on sunday afternoon, (i slept till 3pm :P), i realized that my thoughts don't fit into 140 characters any more.

which brings me back to my blog.

and which is why, i'm literally pouring blog post ideas out of my ears.

so ladies and gentlemen, here's my lesson: if you want to blog, stop tweeting for a while. let your brain get re-used to thinking big.

and thanks, bitchy! ;)

hi

found in my inbox. too epic to not do anything before trashing it. so here it is:

From: shobith mascarenhas <masky4you@gmail.com>
To: kristopher@*******.com
Subject: hi

Hi Ranjeeth, trust u guys hv settled in by now. All r well here. Had been to the bank yesterday. I have yr password and login name.
Login name: MERLYN , signon password: V%965666 , transaction password: M%557085. Before your a/c is activated, you will have to send a confirmation email to : mangal@bankofbaroda.com If you have any problems logging in, do let me know. I have the login instructions here, will scan and send it to you.
Regarding yr driving licence, I havent recieved the scanned copy. When you get the time you can resend it. Will be going to Delhi in a day or two regarding a proposal. To begin with, I was in Chennai when this proposal came up. The girl and her family are from Mangalore, but presently based in Delhi. They had come to Mangalore for a wedding. Mama, A. Loretta and Mrinal have met her and were quite positive in their feedback. Her name is Richa Pinto and works as a school teacher. ( B.Ed).
She is open to settling down in Mangalore. Ive spoken to her a couple of times. Nothing confirmed yet, will know in a week from now. Will keep you posted.
Convey our love and regards to Merlyn n Myra.

love
Shobith
(Master Mariner!!!!!!! :)

recent dreams

just noticed that i have a draft sitting in my gmail since september 5th.

and it contains an almost-forgotten dream.

and since i hate saving drafts that i'm never gonna send, i'm now gonna delete it.

i dreamed that me and around 200 people were the only surviving humans and we were stranded on 3 islands off the pacific coast of south america that were too tiny for farming and too few animals for us to survive more than a week.

we had modern technology but no electricity.

i also seduced a hot, intelligent, Caucasian chick. on an inflatable boat.

i still have no clue why i typed it in my mail and not my blog.

the dictionary

my teammate and me were having a random conversation a few days ago, when he was asking me the meanings of random english phrases and expressions. not sure where exactly he was getting his questions from (he was reading them off his phone), but he was astonished when i answered every single challenge (until he gave me some latin word, the botanical name of some plant, which i obviously didn't know).

he was surprised that i knew all these words and phrases, and was wondering how i learned them. i told him that i came across all of them while reading. which was true. he agreed that these meanings could be guessed from the context while reading, but was surprised that i could remember each and every one of them.

which is when i realized:

i have an eidetic memory for words.

in fact, while i'm terrible at pronunciation, i'm pretty good at spelling too. if there's a word i can't spell verbally, i'll certainly be able to point out the mistake when i see the word in print. something just won't look right to me.

which reminds me of a recent tweet:

manoeuvre. that's the first word i had to ask my mom the spelling of since I was 13. today. hmmm.

probably an exaggeration, but not by a long stretch.

the tip of the iceberg

my first blog post had exactly two readers on the day I posted it, if you allow me to count myself in the list.

three and a half years later, I have absolutely no clue how many people read the (usually) mindless drivel I write.

yeah, I do have hit counters and analytics and the like (although I rarely ever look at them), but I don't know how many of you just scroll past my posts without reading them (I have a terribly short attention span myself, so I know exactly what makes people do that!). the only clue I get is when i see comments from people when I can't figure how they got here.

so this is what I want you to do:

leave a comment here telling me how you got to this post. not how you initially found my blog, but just this post. things like feed readers, email subscriptions, buzz, google reader, facebook, friendfeed, twitter, a web search, technorati or any other site that hosts links to my blog/posts (I've lost track of those), my comments on someone's blog post, my blog landing up in your browser favorites...you get the drift.

let's see how many unique sources I get. i don't have much to offer in exchange, so I guess a linkback will have to suffice for now. maybe a beer, if you manage to collect it ;)

go on, make my day!

i can haz one black coffee?

for the past couple of weeks or so, i've been playing this game: asking @oneblackcoffee her phone number in as many funny ways possible. fun stuff. as long as she doesn't give in and give me her number, of course.

cut to thursday night.

i was asleep, and my phone woke me up with some sound.

unfortunately, i was so fast asleep that i couldn't tell what the sound was. so i held the phone up and squinted at it and tried to make sense of what was on the screen. new messages, new emails, new DMs.

i don't remember which of them i selected in my sleep induced haze.

but i remember seeing her number. it started with +91989...

i was so sleepy that i let the phone slip from my hand and fall onto the bed.

except that it missed or slipped off the bed and fell on the ground instead.

i was too sleepy to pick it up, figured i'd hear the alarm from wherever it was anyway.

woke up on friday morning, and eagerly checked my phone.

no new tweets. only new messages and emails, all recieved in the morning.

no DMs.

and no phone number.

i checked all the places i could: twitter on my comp, gmail's archives (i get a mail for every DM). nothing.

turns out i dreamed about getting her number.

but the phone falling off the bed part was real.

the modest, humble geek

i recently installed connectBot on my phone, and was trying to figure out how to type funny unix-y key combinations. when i found this nice comment on the connectBot project wiki, on a page where people were discussing all the keyboard shortcuts:



now that's a total *burn*, in the nicest way possible!

happy

I've always taken for granted that the aim of my life is to be happy. baring minor and major occasional acts of stupidity, everything I did was with that motive, ulterior or not.

I studied to be happy, I work to be happy, I travel to be happy, I met interesting people cos out makes me happy, I try to make the people around me to be happy because I'm happy when surrounded by happy people.

I eat because it makes me happy, I drink because it makes me happy, I listen to music because it makes me happy.

I pray because it makes me happy.

but I haven't thought about why I need to be happy.

maybe I don't need to.

maybe I don't need to be.

or maybe I just don't need to be happy.

3 am

you know what's the best thing about being awake at 3?

having friends you can call.

dissonance

people always agree with stuff i say. and if they don't actually agree, they try to state their contradictory point, and arrive at some sort of middle ground.

i don't remember the last time someone agreed to disagree with me. or go down insisting i was wrong.

other than my brother, of course.

the fight for my right to swype

when i brought my android phone half a year ago, one of the killer apps that i was dying to get my hands on was swype. when i tried using the crappy android default keyboard and the even crappier samsung keyboard, i decided that there was no alternative. i just had to get swype.

except for one catch: i couldn't.

swype is an OEM only product, and samsung wasn't one of the partner OEMs.

also, there was a limited beta going on, which was closed at that time.

i added myself to the announcement list.

no mail from them for a couple of months.

then one good day, i got the announcement. the beta is open again. i scrambled over to the site. signed up, created an account, waited patiently for the download link.

the link refused to download on my phone.

the page also did browser detection, so i couldn't open it on my pc either.

a month later, when i got wi-fi installed, i figured that might make the difference to my downloading problem.

except that it did not.

stranger than that, i got to know that a few of my friends were using swype painlessly on their phones. downloaded without a hitch.

tried everything they suggested. to no avail.

till yesterday afternoon.

here's what i did:

used a site to find my user agent string on my phone.

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1 update1; en-gb; GT-I5700 Build/ECLAIR) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

set firefox to use that user agent.

downloaded the swype installer and bluetooth'd it across to my phone.

ran the installer on my phone, and on the second try, downloaded and installed swype.

and 8 hours later, they announced that a new beta version (with a new installer) is out.

but hey, it's bliss.

times change

when i started blogging, i said a lot of nice things about a lot of nice people, knowing very well that they would never read them.

these days, i don't write nasty things about a lot of nasty people, cos I half expect them to read it.

promote niceness, discourage nastiness.

i make hypocrisy feel so noble.

my big daddy

while lying in bed after a long, tiring, and rather dry and sunny day, i heard the patter of raindrops, and a thought sprung to mind. and subsequently to twitter:

"and it's raining again! how awesome! love you god! *muaaah*"

and then a memory was refreshed. me as a kid. sitting in my dad's lap. me being everything a 3 year old kid could be expected to be, and my dad playing along affectionately, distracting me and then drawing my attention, making me giggle with laughter, and then cry with exasperation.

i closed my eyes and reached outward with my mind.

i still feel like that child.

and i know that even when i feel too old to be my dad's child, i can still be as childlike as I want to, in the lap of god.

my big daddy.

bottled creativity

over three years of this blog, i've had my fair share of writer's block.

not any more though.

these days, when i don't know what to write, i just check my twitter favourites.

about half the stuff in my favourites that are my own tweets are blog post ideas.

no kidding.

ps: this one wasn't. although it quite possibly could have been. must check favourites again.

invincible

a story i just read reminded me of this incident:

my friend was riding his bike, and got knocked down.

he didn't get injured at all.

so he stood up, shook his fist at the sky, and screamed out loud:

i'm fucking invincible!!!

he then picked up his bike and rode off.

yesterday's dream

i've started remembering my dreams again. i'm happy about it.

anyway, yesterday's dream:

i was back in college (xavier's, to be specific). i was on my way to attend a lecture in the multimedia room. it was a *religion* lecture (i was never taught religion in college, btw - the nearest was "PHV" - something and human values. in 11th.)

anyway. i was in college, walking to the MMR. i was almost late for the lecture.

on the corridor, i caught up with my friend (who btw, happened to be my lab partner when i was in college). in my dream, she was pretty thin, and about my height (in real life, she's kinda chubbier and shorter). and was wearing a green t-shirt and jeans. in fact, barring her face, she looked suspiciously similar to one of my recent crushes. hmmm.

anyway, she was carrying a cardboard box that was full of t-shirts.

apparently she'd been helping organize some musical event, and the t-shirts were branded with someone who played there.

i can describe the t-shirt, cos it looked rather cool:

it was an indigo cotton collared tee, with one white and blue stripe running the length of the seam from the armpit to the hem on the sides, and on the right side, midway through the stripe, the name of the band was printed in the same white and blue pattern, in the same thickness as the stripe.

anyway, in the dream, she gave me a t-shirt, but it was one size too small.

we then sat at the same desk in the MMR (in real life, the MMR didn't have desks, it had chairs that had one broad armrest that was broad enough to rest a writing pad or notebook).

because of the cardboard box, there wasn't enough room at the desk to take notes, so halfway through the presentation, we moved it from our desk to the floor at the front of the classroom.

also, for some reason, the guy conducting the lecture (a thin, tallish priest i didn't recognize), gave her the remote control that could control the presentation.

we were too busy talking during the presentation to see what it was about.

that's when i woke up.

45 minutes late for work.

birthday resolutions

10 days later, time for a review:

1. i won't drink, except on occasion. and i won't drink too much.

verdict:

so/so. i did drink a fair bit on friday night, but it was all social, and i didn't drink till i even got buzzed. i think that's fine.

2. i will go to church and pray often.

verdict:

failed. completely. let's see if i can pick up now.

3. i will exercise.

verdict:

not started yet. the cycle will be fixed tomorrow. once i start cycling to work five days a week, i can forgive the few days i've missed.

4. i will pick up my performance at work.

verdict:

work in progress. not much success yet. efforts are underway.

5. i will sort out my emotional baggage

verdict:

work in progress. although i'm not really sure if i will actually succeed or not. no game changing moves planned yet.

the bro code

the latest addition:

when your wasted girlfriend wants to give your best friend a rather intimate and long drawn hug and kiss, you hold onto his cigarette (and take a couple of drags so that *it* isn't entirely wasted), and wait for them to finish.

also, wait for one of her friends to pull them apart and shove her in your direction. eventually.

that's definitely a new one... I think.

happy birthday!

I wish I could quote pink floyd's "time".

another trip around the sun.

another world left undone.

a birthday is like jan 1st. a time to take stock, a time to think.

I don't want to take stock or think.

but I do know what I have.

I have people who love me. and I have me.

celebrate in my name. actually, never mind. just celebrate.

god loves you and me.  blessings.

I am a beautiful person.

My phone has this keyboard app installed, that looks at stuff i type and tries to predict the next few letters and words. it was probably trained with some text to begin with, so that users can start off directly. and i've only used it for 4 days now, so it's probably not got enough of my text to learn.

still, i never figured what fun it could be till tonight, when i plugged in my earphones after ages, and happened to be tweeting:

everything sounds better with good earphones. even typing on my phone sounds awesome.

and then discovered the sound the spacebar makes:

the spacebar packs some fuckin punch man! like DIDJHIK!!!

and then discovered what happens when i keep pressing space (it auto accepts the most likely word):

I am a beautiful person. I am a beautiful person. I am a beautiful person. I am a beautiful person. feck, my keyboard is mad.

and subsequently went crazy for about an hour. i would type the first word, and keep pressing space to let the phone complete it:

experiment with the word.

fuck, you read those articles too. I am a beautiful person.

what have you been been opened in a few days. I am a beautiful person.

you lasted so long to get to know that I have a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

chicken salami and cheese sandwiches @having :-P. I am a beautiful person.

did you get the chance to get to know that I have a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

to this email address is being a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

how are you going to be a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

haha I told him you wanted someone to push me off but I think it is a bit of a question about the whole thing was that the information.

The only thing that you are looking for a few days. I am a beautiful person.

looking forward to seeing you all the time. I am a beautiful person.

driving there is a bit of a question about the whole thing was that the information in this outgoing message. I am a beautiful person.

go down to the bottom of the day. I am a beautiful person.

mom has been a bit of a question about the whole thing was that the information in this outgoing message. I am a beautiful person.

on the road to recovery. I am a beautiful person.

fish puns boys, meaning that once you have any questions, please contact us at the moment. I am a beautiful person.

Doctor Who. I am a beautiful person.

dad, who is not a problem. I am a beautiful person.

eat some cake, and I will be a good idea to advertise your company slogan.

today I had a poke friend in office, and I will be a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

waiting for the train station. I am a beautiful person.

feeling of sheer number of people who are interested in the UK. I am a beautiful person.

twitter makes me feel so I can do. I am a beautiful person.

should have a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

boobies in green! I am a beautiful person.

facebook profile click here to enjoy the world. I am a beautiful person.

thanks for the nice idea! I am a beautiful person.

cracker of a question about the whole thing was that the information in this outgoing message. I am a beautiful person.

The only thing that is the first time I have a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

good to see you soon, love, and I will be a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

failing that, but I think it is a bit of a question about the whole thing was that the information in this outgoing message.

buy a new one. I am a beautiful person.

move on to the list. I am a beautiful person.

might have to be home by 2 :) http ://android-es. I am a beautiful person.

its got to go to the list. I am a beautiful person.

fuck, you read those articles too? I am a beautiful person.

arrgh, fuck! I am a beautiful person.

nooo! I am a beautiful person.

she is a bit of a question about the whole thing was that the information in this outgoing message. I am a beautiful person.

replacing the first time I have a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

i'll get back to you. I am a beautiful person.

free one of the reasons for this week. I am a beautiful person.

awrighty then! I am a beautiful person.

give me a ring on the web, go to the list. I am a beautiful person.

hi, no, I am a beautiful person.

he played for arsenal albeit an incredibly brief stint as a result of any viruses. I am a beautiful person.

change the way, I am a beautiful person.

riya vohra. I am a beautiful person.

watching and pointing. I am a beautiful person.

vodka cost of the day. I am a beautiful person.

cool, dry, and I will be a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

enough to be a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

three of the day. I am a beautiful person.

nope. I am a beautiful person.

technically and intellectually to handle the first time I have a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

very cool that you are looking for a few days. I am a beautiful person.

England and Wales, number of people who are interested in the UK. I am a beautiful person.

indeed, it is a bit of a question about the whole thing was that the information in this outgoing message. I am a beautiful person.

loads of great interest to you. I am a beautiful person.

shall we meet at the moment. I am a beautiful person.

Hurry up and down the road. I am a beautiful person.

i'm at home. I am a beautiful person.

omg, what happened to the bitchwanti in you? I am a beautiful person.

feck. I am a beautiful person.

uh, is my wisdom causing you some sorta pain? I am a beautiful person.

ahhh! I am a beautiful person.

ah bloody wait to see you soon, love, and I will be a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

listen to the list. I am a beautiful person.

girls, lock em in the UK. I am a beautiful person.

dude. I am a beautiful person.

question your future as a result of any viruses. I am a beautiful person.

free one of the reasons for this week. I am a beautiful person.

next next week week.. I am a beautiful person.

Nicky Hayden. I am a beautiful person.

Bunny. I am a beautiful person.

thought about it. I am a beautiful person.

as we are going to be a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

toy soldier. I am a beautiful person.

cars, seven police officers and I will be a good idea to advertise your company slogan. I am a beautiful person.

dear people to help you out. I am a beautiful person.

what have you been to a few days. I am a beautiful person.

okay, so shall we exchange pleasantries on facebook all day. I am a beautiful person.

you lasted so long to get to know that I have a good idea to advertise your company slogan.

and the final tweet, typed without accepting any suggestions:

chalo, experiment over.

how you doin'!

I used to think i'm a terrible flirt. in fact, I still do. I just get by because the rules have changed.

flirting as a sport is fun. but I find it weird to say things I kinda don't mean and then justify them in its name.

I don't like that thought.

Because sometimes it feels like hypocrisy. and at other times it feels like deceit.

and I don't like either.

It's hard to explain that "i love you" actually means "i like you".

guess I really need to sleep now.

save me from my madness

i touched cotton today because i wanted to unpack and set up my amp and speakers and ipod before i went to the 'room.

i had just transported the system via a rickshaw, a boat, a car, and another rickshaw, from my friend's farewell party at manori beach.

all for an awesome dump with a background score by dj tiesto, and the *doorframe* rattling with the bass.

The friend

All good things must come to an end, they say. This one will just come to a pause, I say.

Because I will miss you.

And you will come back.

Fare you well!

A night well spent

You know what's the best and worst thing about spending the evening with someone?

realizing you were so happy and yet that you weren't right.

it's sad but true. Sometimes things just aren't right.

Things aren't right. Cos it didn't feel like they were. Your world and mine. And a fine line in between. A line that shall stay. Because that's what we are and will be.

it's not okay.

i should stop saying it's okay when it's not okay. because right now i'm pissed with myself when i should be pissed with someone else.

- kristopher, one pissed saturday evening

midas' touch

there's been a sad twist to the last 3 years of my life.

every time i get close to a friend from office, he or she either leaves the city or the country.

it's been four friends and counting. two more to join them next month.

i'm very sad. and almost scared now.

i want my friends to be happy, but i don't want any more to go away.

my coolest dream (so far)

there are some standard stories from my life that i love to tell all my friends, because i think they're so awesome.

since the whole inception hype is doing the rounds, and since one of my favourite stories is (surprise, surprise!) a dream, i shall save it here for posterity :)

so this happened back in early 2004. my final year college exams were on. since my exams were late in the afternoon (3:30pm to be precise), i used to stay up studying all night, and sleep from 6am till noon or so, and then leave straight for my exams.

one of those days (i forgot which paper it was, but me being a maths major it definitely was maths :D), i overslept. when i woke up, it was bright and sunny outside, and the light was entering the room (which suggests it's way past noon - my room faces west).

i sleep in such a place, that if i look upwards while lying in bed, i can see the clock upside down.

i looked at the clock. it said 2:30pm.

college is an hour and a half long commute away.

i jumped up, freaking out.

and then dad said that it's just 10:30am, and i was looking at the clock upside down.

so i went back to sleep.

and as i closed my eyes, i realized it was a dream.

so i opened my eyes again.

the sun was still shining into the room.

i looked at the clock.

it said 2:30pm.

i freaked out, jumped out of the bed. dad was there.

he said it's still 10:30am.

i realized i was still dreaming.

i opened my eyes again.

this time, i just sat up and looked at the clock instead of looking at it upside down.

it was 10:30am.

dad wasn't there.

i called out to him and asked how many times i woke up before this.

he said: none.

i didn't dare go back to sleep again that day.

302?

a study reveals that 302 is the perfect number of facebook friends to have.

I'd find it hard to keep my facebook friend list down to even 500. it's currently at 750 and still going up. i'm not sure if i could be classified as a "needy" person, but i'm the sorta guy who's always interested in people. i find people fascinating. i find the things they do fascinating. i don't really "keep in touch" with a subset of my facebook friends. i just reed/see whatever pops up on my home page when i log in.

each of those 750 people are someone i either know in real life, or want to meet in real life.

i have around 20 close friends at any point of time in my life. 20 may seem like a large number, but most of them fall under 3 groups of friends who each hang out together. but each of my close friends that i'm no longer in touch with is still my friend, because i know them well, i trust them, and i enjoy being with them (except that i can't because i have to divide my time, and i can't handle any more friends). so i have around 100 friends who fall in this category. they're friends who i'm not in touch with, but at any time i could start spending more time with them and they'd be my close friend again.

ps: post started off as a comment here

the ghost

i've had strange dreams recently. i dreamed about my ex, a couple of hours before she called to say she was back in india after 3 years (and in fact, living 3 blocks away).

don't ask me what happened in that dream though ;)

anyway, a couple of days before that, i had a dream that actually changed the way i think about spirits.

i dreamed of my friend jeetu, who expired a couple of years ago (down to the month in fact! don't remember the date).

in the dream, jeetu, another friend jayasree (not sure how she landed there...she doesn't know any of the people in the dream other than me!) and me were walking together.

we were walking in a deserted old stone building (the stones were light grey, i remember), with wide corridors and lots of space, but no other people in sight. probably like a college when everyone is on vacation. it was late afternoon, judging by the shadows.

me and jeetu with our arms around each other's shoulders, the way we used to.

talking, joking, laughing.

till another friend, deepesh saw us.

he was scared.

he shook his head to say "get out of there", but not making a sound, so that jeetu didn't see him.

and then ran into a church.

that's when i realized i was walking with a ghost.

and i was suddenly afraid.

jayasree and me ran into the church too, and jeetu just stood outside, not protesting at all, as if he expected it.

and then i woke up.

and thought to myself, if jeetu's spirit visited me, i would sit with him and talk to him and not run away.

the ghost of a dear friend is still a dear friend.

miss you, jeetu.

Appearances are deceptive

I have a friend who I used to always have a nagging concern about. it always felt like he was living close to the edge, and if things went wayward, he may just fall off the cliff of life, with no rescue possible.

Till one drunken heart-to-heart conversation a few months later, when I realized that he wasn't near the edge at all.

And that I am the one living precariously. Not physically as much as mentally. Because I'm still not completely sure of the reason why I should live.

My mechanic's toDo

My mechanic has his job cut out this weekend:

Replace rear right signal light
Replace starter to gearbox cog
Replace rear brake hub
Fix gear pedal firmly
Fix fairing firmly, add damping
Straighten brake pedal
Make clutch smoother
Un jam idling screw
Un jam and oil accelerator cable
Top up engine oil
Fix rear brake to light connection
Fix starter to relay connection
Fix clutch sensor for starter
Laminate & stitch seat cover
Attach rain cover on tank

I hope I haven't missed anything from the list. And hope he doesn't either!

ps: this post is here because i wanted to send it somewhere (anywhere!), so that it gets saved in my gmail's sent folder. and the only email address i could think of was my blog's!

the way to go is always forward.

yesh. because every day is better, even though it's sometimes hard to tell.

i gotta thank a friend of mine who reminded me of why i am where i am when she said "i miss all my yesterdays".

and somehow reaffirmed why i live.

because it's better to miss your yesterdays than it is to miss your tomorrows.

A perfect person

Father's day was last Sunday. there was a splash of catchy titled stories in the papers. a few nice statuses on Facebook. But otherwise, life was pretty much as usual. except for my dad who knew the date well in advance, marked it on his mental calendar, and set about baking a cake, and even cut and served it for all of us on Sunday morning. before he could take the first bite.

And nobody even thought about it as something out of the blue.

Guess that's one thing about my dad. ever since he quit his job in his early 40s (he was going to be transferred to another city, but felt it was more important that he be around while we grew up), he's been half a mom to us too. mom, on the other hand, was the bread winner, working long hours and sleeping weekends, rationing out the allowances while dad nudged her in to giving us a little extra.

Dad is the one who always knew what I like to eat and what I don't, what time I slept each night and when should I be allowed to sleep late, what time my first lecture is on each day of the week, where I'm going, with whom I'm hanging out with, how many bunking warnings I've got from college, everything.

And then dad also did the typical dad stuff, like helping us take apart and "repair" everything from the bicycle to the walkman to the doorbell. handed us down his meccano, brought us lego, encouraged us to drop batteries into concentrated hydrochloric acid to see what happens, nudged us to go fishing for food for our pet tortoise, and one day, gave me a screwdriver and said it's time to check out what's inside our computer.

dad was the one who taught me that "if you pay enough attention to what you take apart, you can always put it back together", "don't ask what, ask why", and who answered every single question, sometimes with answers that weren't textbook, to say the least (remember the batteries and concentrated hydrochloric acid? That was in response to what happens to different metals in acid!)

As I grew up and grew independent, dad has been the first to let go. encouraged me to have my first drink (i didn't need further encouragement :P), go on my bike trips, everything. He sees my credit card statements, phone bills, knows when I've been drinking, and when I've been bluffing. But he's kept silent through it all. his worst reprimand has been "please don't do it again" (and I don't even remember the last time he said that!), and his strongest no has been "go ask mom".

And that's my dad. simple, unassuming, more world wise than my mom, although he prefers to keep silent unless asked. the man who has loved till it hurt, and then more. the man who has trusted (and still keeps trusting) human nature despite the most vile betrayals.

The man who gave up his career for his kids, although he insists he didn't give up anything.
It should be no surprise then, that I want to be exactly like my dad. because despite some of his obvious shortcomings, he is pretty much the best human I have ever known and been loved by.

I just wish he'd believe me if I told him so.

How to embarrass yourself in church

When the collection box comes to you, start digging out your wallet.

take your time, look through every compartment, but don't let the guy with the box go away.

When you have gained every surrounding person's attention, put your wallet away and declare that you aren't gonna male a contribution because you don't have any money.

(Yesh, this *is* a true story. happened last Sunday.)

521 days.

521 days. slightly under 500 twitpics. it's almost the story of my life in pictures.

check them out!

krist0ph3r's twitpics, and from the end, if you want to start with the good old stuff :)

the first rain (for me, this year)

i was in matheran yesterday. it rained for about 20 minutes, from 2am to 2:20am.

i woke up today morning, and the terrace was dry at 7:30am.

it was nice and cloudy when i left from home. i was happy to see my bike's headlight cast a beam as far as 50 feet away, even though it was past 9am.

and then the rain struck. first a drizzle, mild enough for me not to bother taking out my windcheater. till 5 minutes later, when i was navigating bumps in the road from memory.

needless to say, i was drenched when i entered office.

so drenched, that the security guard refused to xray my bag, even after i put it in the plastic tray.

so drenched, that i left puddles from the lobby to the restroom.

i squeezed my socks dry, emptied my shoes, wrung my pants. and then sat for my day long training session.

during our first break, i went to the coffee machine in the hope of getting something
niec and hot to combat my uncontrollable shivering bouts. and the machine was only spewing watery reconstituted milk no matter what button i pressed.

by lunch, most of my pants and shirt had dried, except for a section starting at my waist and ending 6 inches or so below.

my friend who hadn't seen me in the morning asked me how come my pants were wet in such a weird shape.

i had to explain to her in front of a couple of her teammates, that that was because my underwear hadn't dried yet from the morning's drenching (i didn't want to evade the question, since that would probably make them assume worse reasons :D)

anyway, i finally made it through the day, and was waiting for the reain to subside so i could make my hasty exit.

except that it didn't.

i took my time, rearranged my bag, put on my jacket, put all my important stuff in ziploc bags, and set off with some nice good house music blasting on my earphones at near-deafening volumes.

got caught in a traffic jam even before i could turn onto the main road.

inched my way through the rain.

realized the drops that were clouding my visor were now inside my helmet, not outside.

also realized that there was no traffic or pedestrians at the left side of the road.

but did not realize that it was because there was two feet of water all the way.

anyway, once i was drenched i was drenched, so i figured i might as well plow my way through, since i knew all the bumps in the road from memory anyway.

the only person i saw who was even more unprepared for the rain than i was, was this scooty riding girl, who was wearing such a flimsy white top that i almost managed to read the label on her bra while waiting behind her at the signal in malad.

knock knock

i used to be good at making up knock knock jokes. that was till my current dry spell, that's lasted about two years or so.

which is why i'm proud of my last one (which isn't strictly to the form, TBH), but did flow without much effort:

knock knock?
who's there?
hue's there!
hue who?
woo hoo, RT @inkv Awesome hues outside!

- krist0ph3r, one cloudy evening, on twitter

ps: i have an extremely strong tendency to type knock as "knowck". yes, it always happens. i made that mistake every single time i typed knock in this post. and that's despite being conscious of it, and making a mental note that this quirk should go in the post even!

pissed off.

today was my angriest day in months.

it's been building up for a while.

my bike has been dysfunctional for 10 days now, because the mechanic didn't fix it properly, despite 4 visits with the same two problems.

monday morning, i couldn't get a rickshaw, but hitched a ride halfway to work with a friend, and then had to walk for 20 minutes looking for a rickshaw, till i finally found a bus that went towards office. and reached late.

yesterday morning, i had to wait (nay, walk around!) for a rickshaw for *half a frikkin hour* in a downpour, because i couldn't find a rickshaw, and the few rickshaws didn't want to go to my office.

yesterday evening, i had to hard reset my phone, losing all my apps, text messages, settings, gps tracks, and other miscellaneous stuff, because my phone ran out of memory and uninstalling 30mb of apps didn't get me any of it back.

and finally, today evening, i had to walk for 20 minutes looking for a rickshaw because atleast 30 rickshaws refused to go towards my home, finally gave up and decided to take a bus, had to leave two buses because they were too packed, got a third bus, was slammed in my knee so hard by someone's briefcase that it actually bled, and finally, the bus didn't even stop where it had to, near my house. to top it all, i was bored sick all the way, because i wanted to rant and twitter was down for over 2 hours, foursquare was also down for a while, gprs was flaky, my bro made me get up from the computer for "five minutes" but didn't inform me when he was done, and i was forced to lie down in a corner of my house where there is no wi-fi, and blogger was giving 404 errors when i was trying to comment on people's blogs, and google reader on my phone refuses to hide posts after i've read them.

so in short, this is who/what i'm pissed off with, in ascending order:

• bro
• the guy who slammed my knee
• vodafone
• my mechanic
• twitter
• each of those 50+ rickshaw drivers who have turned me down over the past 3 days.

in fact, i think i would have killed a driver today if they weren't so quick to speed off when they hear where i want to go.

ps: bro should actually jump two places. i just realized the reason why all those 404 errors and half the twitter connection failures and all of the flaky wifi is because he was fucking around with the router.

ye olde facebook?

i do my share of translating for facebook when i have free time. my pet language is pirate.

most translation is rather mundane, involving up-voting and down-voting phrases, and occasionally picking between alternatives. i think i may have submitted a translation (or rather, got a chance to submit one) barely five times in as many months.

the mundanity (is that a word?) briefly abated when i was asked to decide whether i liked this one though:

Ye olde Facebook be a community sarvice that be lettin scurvy dogs keep up with their crew an' other scurvy dawgs who be doin' a manner of piratical things near them. Ye scurvy dawgs who be usin' facebook to be talkin' with other rogues an' hoist portraits, portals an' bewitched portraits, an' be studyin the crews and rogues that sail near them.

says it rather well, no?

the loss of a dear one

two of my relatives have expired in the last two weeks. both of terminal conditions (terminal old age and terminal cancer, to be precise).

the contrast was very apparent.

my grandaunt was a little over 80, and has lived to see her grandchildren, some of whom are working and pretty successful in life. when she expired, everyone just gave a collective sigh and moved on. the talk at the family get together after the funeral was more about work, studies, exchanging notes distant relatives, and more mundane day-to-day stuff. pretty much everybody was prepared for her passing away, and frankly, no one was unduly saddened by anything other than the fact that she spent her last few months in bed, unable to move and bearing a great deal of pain.

my aunt, on the other hand, was just past 50, had already lost her husband 10 years ago, and had two kids, one in school and one in college. the kids themselves put on brave faces and barely cried, but i could hardly imagine what it must have felt for them. it's moments like these where we sometimes question god's justice when it comes to handing out suffering, hardship and death. i'm almost 15 years older than the younger boy, and yet i can't bear to even imagine the loss of either of my parents, let alone both.

at the get together after the funeral, we pledged to all be their parents and brothers and sisters, but i know that it can never be the same for them. but i know one thing: god doesn't do anything that you can't deal with. i hope my cousins find that strength and will in him, and in the memory of their parents, and grow up to be great, loving people, as their parents would have wished.

tapering off...

two blog posts in the last month. i think people would have given up on my blog by now.

well, for those of you who haven't, i'm getting back to it with a vengeance.

see you around!

regrets

i don't make friends easily.
i don't lose friends easily.
but when i do, it just weighs me down.
this time, i know, it was all my fault.

i still haven't brought myself to say sorry though.

it shall come. soon.

pop culture is not the answer

i question the sanity of someone who derives his philosophy of life from movie quotes. it's like taking medical advice from a 2 year old, but actually, much, much, worse!

-kris, early on a friday morning.

choose your evil

The grass is greener on the other side...but that's because the muck is also deeper there :)

- kris, one afternoon, consoling a friend

my excuse

Relationships are complicated. Friendship is simple. I am lazy. Whatever.

-- kris, late on a tuesday afternoon, on twitter.

Murphy's law of shopping

If you go shopping, and look/check out a few things without looking at the price tags, the one you like will be the most expensive of the bunch.

My list so far: wine (and I'm a very uneducated taster), clothes (every single time), perfume, sunglasses...the list goes on!

un-survival instincts

i have this habit of keeping stuff in my bike's dashboard. tonight, it was a largish book that just about fit.

i was riding home from mich's place with the book jammed into the dash best i could. which actually seemed rather snugly jammed in, to be honest.

till i hit a bump and it flew out.

what happened next is beyond my comprehension.

i took both my hands off the handles, grabbed the book while braking with my foot pedal, and put the book back in. while the bike was still getting out of the bump.

i could have done it easily with just one hand.

the book was resting nicely on my lap, so i could have waited to get out of the bump and then some.

braking could have actually make things worse as the book would have a tendency to fly forward. not to mention the bike getting out of control.

thankfully, the bike didn't so much as waver in the slightest. i did freak out a nearby rickshaw driver though.

i really wonder where that reflex came from. because it certainly wasn't from the need for self preservation.

say what?

Had snip be bad. This tax high y b available tnibd.while coz I game.id ,les I gas r task. Wkaywvec

- kris, on twitter, at 5am, after half a bottle of scotch.

ps: i didn't even know i did this. it would have even slipped by unnoticed if it wasn't for an observant friend. the extreme incoherence is also partly because of the touchscreen and my huge thumbs :D

happy good friday

n is my friend from office, k is (as usual) me...conversation at 10pm yesterday, in office after the maundy thursday service :)

n: so, all set to enjoy the long weekend?
k: ummm...not exactly...it's more of a religious thing...
n: it's some sort of feast right?
k: well not exactly a "feast". just some very religous days. the last 3 days of jesus' life. we go to church and stuff. i was in church just now for like the last 2 hours. i'll be in church for like half of tomorrow.
n: oh, so what do you do in church...you actually pray for so long?
k: no, we don't just pray...it's sorta a re-enactment of jesus' last 3 days.
n: like a play?
k: no, not a play. just some symbolic stuff. like today we had the last supper and washing of the feet.
n: okay, but there is some feast right?
k: yeah, that's easter. on sunday, when jesus came back to life.
n: he came back to life?
k: yeah, pretty much so.
n: and he's still alive?
k: yeah, he stayed around for a few weeks or months and then went to heaven.
n: so did he just come off the cross?
k: oh no...he died and he was buried and stuff, and he came back to life after 3 days.
n: wow, he dug himself out?
k: okay, sorry, he wasn't exactly buried. he was put in something like a coffin and put in a cave.
n: they just left him in a cave?
k: oh no, it was actually a tomb that was like a cave. they closed it with a huge stone and all.
n: so what did he do?
k: he came to life and rolled aside the stone and waited for his disciples to come to see him.
n: wow, he came out of the coffin and opened the cave by himself?
k: yeah he did...
n: *incredulously* wow, really!!!
k: *shrugs* it's what we believe in.
n: cool!!!

ps: reproduced (and probably slightly altered in the process) without permission :D

a day in a train

I've never been too much of a long distance traveller. the longest journey I've ever embarked on took me 25 hours thanks to a 5 hour breakdown (it was a bus journey from bangalore to bombay, btw).

this one on the other hand is scheduled to take 29 hours. bombay to chennai.

I'm currently 23 hours and 4 states into the journey, and it's been okayish with a strong hint of boring. probably because of the company though.

the 25 hour bus journey was wit marj after all, and I do have a record breaking 7 hour phone conversation to set some sort of perspective to how well we get along.

unfortunately for me this time, my friend can sleep almost unlimited hours...and apparently so can the remaining 4 people we share our berths with. I was pretty surprised when I woke up at 7:30am to find everyone in my berth asleep, and everyone in the other berths with their curtains drawn, presumably also asleep. trudged to the loo expecting a long line and a 45 minute wait. but I didn't see a line, and the loo was spic and span, and there was no one waiting impatiently even after I took all of 15 minutes to do my business. in fact, the people who had preordered breakfast were woken up by the trays shoved onto their snoring faces (to be fair though he did perfunctorily try to wake them up).

I on the other hand had already brushed and was already feeling the pangs of post crap stomach emptiness. so far so good. but my friend fell asleep right after breakfast, and so did everyone else. some people just skipped breakfast and woke up straight for lunch. which was at noon btw. I slept quite well myself, probably more due to the fact that it was Sunday morning than anything else. everyone woke up for lunch and slept promptly after. I was bored out of my wits by the monotonies of reading, listening to music, and sleeping. i had just finished my book, and my friend was hungry, because we didn't quite comprehend the menu as it was being recited to us, and ordered just half a lunch. so we went to the pantry, two coaches away. which incidentally is the furthest I've walked in the last 24 hours. the train had stopped at a platform when we were done eating so we walked back on the platform. my only 120 seconds outside of the train today.

the train started as we reached our coach so we were forced back in. so I took out my diary, and after over 2 years of carrying it around on vacations, wrote a whole page in it.

unfortunately diaries are limited to a page a day, so I was back to reading. by 6pm I was bored enough to let myself the luxury of an hour of surfing on roaming charges with no charging point in sight. I was that bored. back to reading, this time arundhati roy's "god of small things", which I read till dinner at 8 and then lights out at 10.

I can't wait for the train to reach chennai. still 6 hours to go. and that's if it actually reaches in time, which trains rarely do.

and I'm still one hour short of a whole day in this train.

ps: first post typed on my new phone. woo hoo!

Stop staring!

If you look into people's eyes for long enough, you'll realize every frikkin human being is cross eyed.

-- kris, one evening, after waiting 20 minutes for a friend to turn up.

erase and rewind

i just love my head. there's never a moment when i don't know what i wanna listen to...because there's always something playing inside!

-- kris, one saturday morning, on waking up with meatloaf playing in his head

boredom

what do you do when your blog is on its way to looking like a cobweb on the www?

you change the colour scheme.

welcome to my green-tinted multicoloured cobweb.

divergent reality

last sunday, i happened to be passing through bandra at an earthly hour (namely, late morning), and so i decided to pay grandma a visit. unfortunately for me, i was rather exhausted, and dropped off to sleep within an hour or two.

i then woke up, went out without her noticing, met a couple of friends who happened to be lunching nearby, grabbed a bite myself, came back, and then announced that i'm now tired *AND* stuffed, and went back to sleep.

and woke up half an hour later.

and realized it was all a dream.

except that i'm still not sure if it was. or maybe that was reality, and i'm dreaming now. or maybe i fell asleep and haven't woken yet.

giving up

lent began a couple of weeks ago. a close friend of mine remarked a few days before ash wednesday, that since i derive most of my pleasure out of my weekend trips, i should give that up for lent.

for good measure, i decided to give up alcohol too.

i'm currently wondering whether there was any point to either.

because now that i'm in bombay, i've started enjoying my weekends spent here. meeting friends and family, getting pending work done, watching movies, visiting old hangouts and discovering new ones.

and now that i've stopped drinking, i'm back to foodie-ism with a vengeance.

bottomline is, i'm enjoying myself anyway. so what's the point of giving all this stuff up? i could even give up all the stuff i currently enjoy (off the top of my head: eating meat, listening to music, twitter, facebook...) and still be as good as ever.

so what's the point of all this "detachment" and pious giving up and all, really? all i'm left with are fleeting regrets, of things that i wanted to do but didn't. not that i care too much about them, but hey, they're there.

ps: don't bother telling me to start travelling and drinking again. that's decided, and i'm not gonna change my mind till easter dawns. i'm musing about the future here.

lost in (cyber)space

there was a time (starting about 10 years ago, when i started "collecting" jokes) when i had a photographic memory for jokes. if i read a joke once, i'd remember it for the rest of my life. maybe not well enough to narrate it again, but definitely well enough to tell, 5 years later, that i've heard that one before.

anyway, cut back to today.

someone posted some question on twitter, and that got me searching google for a post on my blog that answered it. unfortunately, my google-fu wasn't too good, and i couldn't find it. and randomly, somewhere on the results page, i clicked on one unrelated link that grabbed my attention.

i started reading about the top 10 things that are wrong with windows mobile. it was a nice and funny post, and mostly true too!

i was so engrossed in reading it, that i read the comments too. the last comment was especially cool, i thought:

i agree with all your points except pocket outlook, memory and performance:
on my last 2 phones (o2 zinc/sony x1) outlook worked like a charm, html, embedded pictures/tables, everything. lack of filters in outlook is no big deal if you have filters in exchange/imap (gmail in my case). lack of rich text in the composer is the only drawback, i guess.
as for memory, it’s not a memory leak at all. windows mobile 6 onwards has a cache (5 and before didn’t), so it keeps free mem to a minimum and uses the rest for a cache. it greatly improves speed and battery life. you can tell when the cache isn’t in action, as the battery starts getting warm and draining when the device is genuinely running low on memory.
as for performance, winMo6 is excellent!!! the only drawback is the lack of dedicated graphics hardware in most handsets, and corresponding software support for it. have you ever tried opening a folder with 100+ files in it in symbian? or doing a full text search on 2000+ texts in your inbox? winMo6 beats the rest by miles!!!

i read the comment and said to myself: wow, how awesome. someone who's used an o2 zinc too. that's pretty rare. and this comment was really good too. he said everything i wanted to say, and i actually couldn't think of anything more to add.

i thought i should post a comment saying that i 100% agree with the comment above. i scrolled a bit so that i could see the author's nickname, to use in my comment.

and almost choked on myself.

the comment was by me.

it was posted april 21st, 2009. about 10 months ago.

Farewell, my beloved stress ball :(

This is what my evil cubiclemates did to my poor stress ball when i wasn't around one evening.

Sick.

Mini interview for Metrotwin Mumbai

(cross posted from metrotwin mumbai's blog post)

Kris was born in Mumbai, and has lived in the city for most of his 26 years. He's a software engineer five days a week, a nomad on weekends, and a foodie-cum-geek all the time. A dedicated twitterer and follower of Metrotwin Mumbai, we thought we would pick his brains about his beloved city.

What are your favourite places  in Mumbai?

Restaurants: Pop Tate's and Five Spice are the best in terms of chain restaurants in Mumbai, but I also like Britannia, Paradise and Baghdadi in Colaba.

Pubs: For a good atmosphere, I recommend Toto's and Temptations in Bandra , but anyone visiting Mumbai should check out Leopold's and Mondegar in Colaba too.

Clubs: Boat Club and the Hawaiian Shack in Bandra are the best places to go for a big night out, and El Grotto in Malad is pretty cool too.

Hangout: Inorbit is great for shopping and chilling out , there is always loads going on on Marine Drive, and Carter Road has really come alive in the last few years with lots of good shops and restaurants opening.

When you are going to a new city -- and assuming you have some time to explore -- where do you go for advice on what to see and do?

I use social media basically - mainly Twitter, but I also contact my networks of friends/ex-colleagues/ex-classmates via Facebook.

What was your best urban discovery (restaurant, venue, etc) in 2009?

Maharashtra Nature Park in Dharavi  definitely - it's huge, and has amazing variety of trees, and despite its size, no one seems to know it exists.

In terms of restaurants, definitely the Britannia and Paradise, as I mentioned earlier - the latter made me fall in love with Parsi food!

Mohammed Ali Street during Ramadan was another amazing discovery -  I always wanted to go there for the amazing food, and finally made it last year.

Tell us somewhere you've never been in Mumbai and want to go.

The slums in Dharavi - I have heard so much about them, but have never had the courage to go and see for myself.

What is your favourite city smell?

The scent of the sea breeze on Marine Drive.

What is the one thing you miss most about Mumbai when you are away?

The city never sleeps!

If you had to sum up Mumbai in a sentence, what would you say?

Mumbai is the melting pot of India, greater than the sum of its parts - it's everything for everyone.

What is your favourite film/book set in Mumbai?

I'm not a big fan of local films. I love to read blogs about day to day life in Mumbai. I will probably read some books eventually, but haven't selected any yet.

Happy valentine's day!

nothing to get you to move on like a little nudge when you least expect it.

- krist0ph3r, while reading mail, at 9pm on valentine's day.

Keep up with me

You know a site is spamming you when it sends invitations from a friend who *died* a few months ago. Yesh, I'm talking about this one!

---

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: shyam haridas <...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 6:44 PM
Subject: Keep up with me


Note: This is a reminder email sent by Indyarocks.com on behalf of its member.


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You can send group SMS, explore movies, play multi-player games, watch cricket and listen to music with your online friends in real time.

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Residual awesomeness

your weekend should be so awesome that you enter office smiling on monday morning even if you're slightly sick, and traffic and the unwillingness of rickshaws to go anywhere near your office just made you miss an important meeting.

- krist0ph3r, on a monday morning. smiling.

Sailing on the high seas!

Never ever thought my dream of sailing would come true so quickly - all thanks to my friend anand :)