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.


Hi
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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.

Try the below link to keep up with me.
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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.