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.