Saturday, November 26, 2005

Taggicted

So as Priyanka suggested, I've decided to create a book tag, which very likely will run through three people. Since I'm the creator and also the first responder, I intend to create this tag with fewer questions and do away with strong adjectives like most, favorite, best, adore, hate, since they will making deciding between books so much more difficult.


Two books you like (and preferably also state why)

1. A Suitable Boy.
Its a huge huge book and I did find it to drag in places, but I think I managed to read it in pretty good time. Its the first Vikram Seth I read and I enjoyed the way he seems to like all his characters. I also liked the unembarassed Indian-ness of the book.

2. Pride and prejudice.
I can imagine people going 'Bleh' on reading his. I've read and re-read this book quite a few times. I don't like Mister Darcy, I think Elizabeth Bennet is not so smart either, the other characters are nuts, but I still like the book. Must be the same reason I watch all romantic comedies although I never fail to find them dumb and trite later.


Two books you've read which you think are unusual for some reason.

1. The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth, because its all in verse and yet it doesn't get tiresome.

2. Angela's Ashes, because nothing nice ever happens to Frank McCourt and yet the book is strangely not depressing.


Two authors you like

1. Vikram Seth.
I've read three books by him so far and I've liked them all.

2. George R R Martin.
I'm quite sold on his Song of Fire and Ice series. He creates elaborate characters and kills them off in a jiffy. I was wondering in the middle of the first book if there'll be any characters left for the series to continue. Lots more have died since.


Two books you don't like so much

1. Bourne Identity.
I honestly tried. I couldn't read it.

2. Pollyanna.
I usually like all these feel-good books like Heidi, Anne of green gables etc., but Pollyanna was a little too much sweetness.


Two books you own and are fond of

1. The Secret Garden.
Its one of my childhood favorites. I got it as a birthday present. Its tattered and moth-eaten now, but I still treasure it (I don't take good care of it though, apparently).

2. Great Expectations.
It was a prize I won in school. I found it tiresome to read at first, but have read it multiple times since.


Two books you'd like to buy

1. Two Lives
The new autobiographical book by Vikram Seth. Its only available in hardcover right now and costs quite a bit.

2. The complete Calvin and Hobbes set.
Costs a whole lot again, and I'm not patient enough to collect them one by one (Actually each one costs quite a bit as well).


So I'll pass on the tag to Histrionix and Kray, and that completes my 3 people set.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Tagged

Since Kray tagged me, I have to answer all kinds of shady questions. There are some advantages to this though. For one it makes for an effortless blog. Besides I never really do self-analysis of this kind. I know some very vague things about myself, but if someone was to ask me, whats my favorite movie and who's my favorite actor and such stuff, I'll have a tough time answering.

Anyways so here goes

Seven things I would like to do before I die (not in any order)

1. Own a dog. The type of dog keeps changing from time to time, but its going to be a big, furry dog.

2. Travel through Europe (not one of those organized tours).

3. Get married and have babies. One atleast should be a girl.

4. Fly a plane (I'm figuring out how to drive a car currently).

5. Have something to do with literature apart from reading it, maybe write a book, or just become a publisher, or start a magazine or something.

6. Learn how to swim.

7. Try out something like bungee-jumping/sky-diving, although I'll need somebody to force me to do it.


Seven things I can do

1. Get jokes, am usually quick at that.

2. Understand what people are feeling, am usually fairly perceptive. I might not always hang around to listen to them, but I sympathize.

3. Spend a whole day all by myself (with books and a TV at my disposal) quite contentedly (more than one day get tough).

4. Be a good listener (if and when I feel like it).

5. Be loyal (or rather that I usually am loyal to people and things I like, and not easily swayed).

6. Write long pointless mails to people. This is a newly acquired skill, not too long back the max length of my mails used to vary from 5-10 sentences.

7. Always find time to do the things I want to do. Its possibly because I do fewer things, but I've noticed that I can always create as much free time as I want to.


Seven things I cannot do

.. this should be quite easy

1. Find my way to any place, follow maps, differentiate between left and right.

2. Fake niceness/interest/enjoyment or lie. If I do it, I do it with great difficulty.

3. Make up my mind about anything.

4. Take the initiative in getting to know people.

5. Read Frederick Forsyth.

6. Write neatly.

7. Be patient.


Seven things I say the most (Not in any order)

1. Hmm/Hmph

2. I guess

3. Thank You

4. Cool/Nice

5. Anyways

6. Basically

7. Yeah


Seven things that attract me to the opposite sex. (Not in any order)

1. Bright eyes.

2. Short thick hair.

3. Smile or rather the grin.

4. Idealism.

5. Genuine-ness (is that a word?).

6. Attentiveness, when shown towards me.

7. Intelligence, sense of humor.


Seven celebrity crushes (not necessarily current crushes and again in no order)

1. Sachin Tendulkar (of the days past).

2. Rahul Dravid for his idealism.

3. Tom Hanks for the charm and magnetism.

4. George Clooney for the smile (and the hands).

5. Hugh Grant for the accent and the sense of humor.

6. Amir Khan (when I was growing up).

7. Rupert Everett for the voice.


Hm, after the first 2 questions, it was relatively peaceful, and not as bad as I expected. Kray was right, I am extremely lukkha.
I'll tag Histrionix next. Have fun (muhahahaha!)

Monday, November 14, 2005

Touchy, aren't we.

So for a while because of various reasons, I've been pondering over a question - How much sarcasm is humorous, and when does it start getting caustic and simply cruel. I guess it varies from person to person. Some people, its said, have a lower tolerance for sarcastic humor than others. It also depends on who's being sarcastic, if you are expecting somebody to be nice to you, sarcasm coming from them cuts a lot deeper. I tend to be fairly sarcastic myself, I do try to stay on the nice side of sarcastic humor though, especially if its addressed directly to somebody. However, the person concerned may not always think so kindly of the humor, when the joke is on them. In such situations I end up feeling quite guilty eventually. I'm not all that comfortable with excessive sarcasm myself, if it is directed towards me. Double standards?

Histrionix was talking about wish-lists, and I commented on that saying that I can't come up with one for myself. Here's an update - I have a number one wish right now. I want to be able to drive well, and soon. Its such a necessity here! I had been informed that it'll be like this, but I wish the point had been driven home with a lot more stress. I might even have re-considered my job choice.

Coming back to sarcastic humor, I just spent a whole weekend teasing some friends about their new relationships. It was a whole lot of fun, but I hope they still love me.
Before I started typing this blog, I googled for poems on sarcasm, these two seem to fit the theme :D


Caught in the Undertow

Colin, worshipping some frail,
By self-deception sways her:
Calls himself unworthy male,
Hardly even fit to praise her.

But this tactic insincere
In the upshot greatly grieves him
When he finds the lovely dear
Quite implicitly believes him.

-- Christopher Morley


Unfortunate Coincidence

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

-- Dorothy Parker

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Here today, Gone ... (?)

I've been in US for about a week now and I think I should be writing something about that. Sadly though, I don't really have any big insights or observations to mention about leaving the country, coming to a new one or problems of a 'legal alien entitled to work'; so I'll just have to do with some riff-raff.

My first observation about a foreign country, made from an airborne view of the city of Milan (which is all I saw of it, apart from its airport), was that everything was amazingly geometrical. Fields were perfect rectangles, houses made neat patterns, roads either ran in a straight line or curved in perfect circles or arcs, all in sharp contrast to the chaos of any Indian landscape. The next thing which struck me, once I got to US, was the huge amount of space everywhere - in cars, on roads, besides the roads, in houses, everything is big and roomy. Even the vegetables are supersize! I've been lucky in that I've had a fairly smooth transition so far, I guess its an advantage of working - the company pays for everything. There are also lots of very nice and helpful people around, infact all the people I've come across so far are just extremely polite, and punctual!

Another highlight of the one week here so far has been the trip to DC and the sighting of a giant panda in the national park there. There wasn't really anything very exciting about it, since the pandas were just lazily walking around and they weren't even pristine white as I imagined them (their behinds, which were all I got to see, had become a muddy brown from sitting on their bums all the time), but I'm just glad I got to see a panda. I also saw a giraffe which had to stoop with great difficulty everytime to eat, because for some weird reason all the trees in its enclosure, tall enough for it to reach comfortably, had been fenced in. I think I must've been less than 10 years old, the last time I went to a zoo in India. Of more grown-up interest was the jewellery display in the Natural History Museum. I'm not much of a jewellery person, but I could tell that those were some fine pieces.

I haven't been able to read much since I got here. I did borrow a book by Kurt Vonnegut and it seems to be the more common type of science fiction, in contrast to the other books by him I've read so far. Its one of his earlier books I think. Hopefully, will finish it this weekend and move on to something else.