I should blog..

..especially since I have so much work that I really can't afford any long breaks. But then what's the fun in whiling away time that doesn't have several claims on it. It is also Friday and hence the weekend feel-good factor has kicked in. This factor essentially fools you into believing that everything is manageable, you think that you have two completely free days to wrap up any pending work/household chores and come Monday you'll be back in control of your life, in the driving seat, raring to go ... Unfortunately, this takes the edge off the work related urgency, leading to a very high probability that you'll spend the entire weekend doing absolutely nothing. This particular weekend for me, is going to be different from past several weekends, in the sense that I have fewer distractions and practically no plans. Maybe I'll really get some work done.

It likes me not!

I have a recently developed theory that inanimate objects can hear us and that my laptop does not like me too much. Its been playing fast and loose with me for quite some time, acting all innocent whenever I send it over to get fixed, and coming up with innovative ways to stall my work as soon as I get it back. I have a brand new one now though and this one hasn't had time to start disliking me yet. I'll have to take extra pains to be nice to my new laptop, four laptops in eight months is slightly above the company average I think. My car meanwhile had a close shave today, it still likes me so it just gave me a scare by twisting its mirror, and didn't throw a real tantrum by actually breaking it. I think I should clean it up sometime soon.

Superman is the most boring superhero of all times. Reference being the forgettable Superman movie and this collection of Superman Sunday strips from the very beginning which I recently acquired. A typical strip goes like this - first frame - alterego by day, Superman whenever he feels like it, second frame - Superman/Clark Kent observes bad guys doing something shady, third - Superman has cool powers, describe them, fourth to tenth - Superman uses cool powers to foil shady plans, final frame - Superman and Clark Kent look alike! Naah, its not a possibility worth considering. Multiple iterations of this extremely interesting plot got a little tedious and I had to give up on the collection. Currently, I'm reading 'Dune'. I like it, I expected to, so no surprises there. The extremely prolific Alexander McCall Smith is out with the 8th book in the No. 1 series and that has obviously jumped to the top spot in the 'To Read' queue (I'm wondering how much longer before the books start to loose their charm). 'To watch' queue has Pirates of the Caribbean-I (I never watched it), since II was much more fun than I expected.

Deciphering conversation subtexts would be a very useful super power to have.

The Big Picture

I've known for quite some time now that I suffer from chronic scatterbrain-ism.

Infact now that I think about it, I was probably born with it. I've never been able to remember birthdays and my poor name face mapping abilities are quite notorious. And then there's always been the amazing ease with which I can miss the most obvious details unless they are pointed out to me. What's made my particular case much more severe is the additional complication of sidetracked-ness. In the middle of a perfectly logical conversation, I can launch into a complete tangent. This coupled with the unfortunate neediness of trying to see the funny side of (almost) everything can lead to some very irritating humor. Many thanks for the fact that puns don't come easily to me. I've noticed that the most common symptom of scatterbrain-ism and sidetracked-ness together is briefly exploring a million and a half options in every case but never sticking to anything long enough to see a result. I wish blogs were more private or that I had chosen an anonymous identity. Its difficult to rant uninhibitedly if you know that its going to be read by people who know you. This because I was trying to get somewhere with all that jazz about getting sidetracked but now I don't think I'll go there afterall.

I tried writing a short story recently. Unfortunately it went nowhere because somewhere in the middle of talking about a beautiful princess who lived in a land far far away, I got stuck with describing the social hierarchy in that kingdom, what crops they grew, what seasons they had, how they elected their king and since it was a very small kingdom with traded with lots of other such small kingdoms, I absolutely had to talk about how exactly that trade was carried out. Meanwhile the princess grew old and died, and I decided to return to reading. So, I finally went ahead and bought Eragon which I wasn't surprised to find out is written by a 17 year old, who I guess is a big Tolkien fan and has read enough fantasy books to pick all the ideas he liked, add some of his own (not sure about this, but there were some which atleast I hadn't read earlier), and come up with a somewhat interesting book. I smartly bought both books one and two together (I realized recently that I'm shallow enough to read and watch everything hyped. Except 5 point someone. I drew the line there), so now I'm onto part 2. Its not that bad though. I'm just in one of my more critical moods.

Slow Friday

This is one of those weird afternoons at work where everything seems to happen in slow motion. With most of the people out for an extended weekend its unusually quiet, I don't have all that much work, nothing very urgent atleast, I'm very sleepy and coffee isn't helping much. I've spent the last hour reading wikipedia which is a fairly interesting way of killing time on the net but I've done enough of that for today. I usually move next to the window with my computer when I'm falling asleep at my desk but its raining today and the overcast sky outside inspires gloomy thoughts. I could take-off early and go home but there's a book waiting there for me which I don't want to finish. I started it a couple of days ago, got hooked to it yesterday, let my curiosity win when I was about three quarters through and read how it ended. It doesn't end unhappily but rather it ends indecisively, with a vague and most probably unfulfilled expectation of something, and well, that's not one of my favorite ways of ending stories. Fiction should not be so realistic, not when you don't want it to atleast. I guess this is why I read so much fantasy.

On a different note I saw an opera recently and if I haven't told you this in person already, they're not that bad. Yes, I didn't expect to enjoy it. I thought it'll be a little too much artsy but then again I wasn't paying attention to the singing since I was busy reading the supertitles. The next time I end up watching an opera, I hope its in english.

Chal Chaiyya Chaiyya

Watch Inside Man, if only for the titles. Its quite an entertaining movie in itself and Chaiyya Chaiyya more than pays for the ticket price anyways. Wonder if its some kind of a new trend. I've resolved to sit through the titles of all movies I watch from now on as you never know what music they'll play. Already I regret missing the end titles in V for Vendetta. While on movies, I'm also exceptionally proud of myself for spotting that the dialogues for 'Water' were translated from English to Hindi. As I said then, nobody talks in such a to-the-point manner in Hindi.

Its scary how fast time flies! Five minutes ago I was still studying, worrying (not really, but it used to prey on some remote corner of my mind) about labs and endsems and now its already been some 5 months since I've been in US and in another few minutes I would've completed an year here. Being stuck in a routine has never agreed with me and this is the longest I've followed a routine of any kind. I need a vacation now or a change of any kind to get my mind off this stuff.

A Trip to a Museum

While friends went road-tripping this weekend to Florida, I stayed behind and explored Richmond instead. Explore, though, is stretching it a little. I did drive around much more than I've driven on any other day but most of the places I went to were ones I'm already familiar with. Going downtown to the Edgar Allan Poe museum, however, was new and interesting. The museum exists in the oldest standing building in Richmond, complete with a garden which you instantly recognize as straight out of a 'Poeish' story. Not very surprising given that its design is based on a poem (To One in Paradise) by him. Fresh from that trip I'm steeped in Poe trivia and eager to share it with the world. There are all kinds of anecdotes about about Poe's unfortunate childhood, his hostile foster father, a lost-regained-lost love he first met at the age of 15, a successful military career he deliberately court-martialled from, a wife half his age who was also his first cousin and to top it all his very mysterious death which remains unsolved to this date.
People back then had such interesting lives. Or maybe its just the writer folks who (then and now) have interesting lives. Maybe you end up writing if you have an interesting life in the first place.

Stop, Do Not Pass

Unusually for me I'm finding it extremely difficult to finish a book these days. I'm in the middle of 3 different books right now and since I just bought a couple of other books, this list is probably only going to grow. Or maybe I'll find one of these 2 interesting enough to read from cover-to-cover and snap out of the general state of limbo I've been in of late. The suspense keeps me enthralled.
One of the 2 books I ordered is Ptolemy's Gate, the third and final book in Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeous Trilogy. After Histrionix raved about it, I decided that on second thoughts Amulet of Samarkand was fairly enjoyable and decided to check out the second book. It did not disappoint and was also the last book I actually managed to finish reading. All good signs.

Decorating your room can be loads of fun (and work) as I've been discovering. I've only done a half-baked job at it so far but I'm enjoying the cosiness of the everything-on-the-floor setup, which incidentally was forced on me when the roof of the old townhome I've moved into decided to deny queen sized box-springs access up the stairs. But now my bean bag is at the same height as my mattress and it all seems to fit. Funny how things work out.

Aargh more entries in the list of my car woes! I managed to discharge my car battery again sometime back and today I broke my rearview mirror while coming out of the garage. My poor car even got some scratches.

Kyunki Dil Hai Hindustani

I said to a friend earlier today - "I feel like doing very Indian things today. I feel like dressing up in dhinch Indian clothes, listening to Bhangra music and attending some Indian wedding." This was with 'Mahi Ve' from 'Kal Ho Na Ho' playing in the background, and having made that statement I proceeded to sing out aloud with it with great fervor, completely undeterred by my absolute tunelessness. I topped this off with renting and subsequently attempting to watch a fairly painful Hindi movie, '71/2 Phere', and guess what's it all about! An overly dramatic Indian wedding. I guess it has hit me finally - the missing home syndrome. I should have seen it coming though. Last week I saw a girl in office dressed in a salwar kameez and spent some time wondering why exactly it had struck me as odd. Until I remembered that it was certainly uncommon and pretty cool as well. Unfortunately the only salwar kameezes I brought along are dressy ones - shining colors, golden threadwork and so on. Not quite business casual, our suggested dress-code here. Yesterday I had an enthusiastic discussion on 'Mughal Indian architecture and languages' with a team-mate. Yesterday, thus was also when I referred back to my school history lessons in a long long time. Its surprising how easily I can remember arbitrary details that interest me when I have such a tough time remembering names, faces, roads, even conversations (usually work related ones).

All this sudden appearance of 'missing India' could also be the oft predicted culture shock finally kicking in. So far I've been blatantly refusing to acknowledge its existence. In a certain round of introductions for a class, an American woman talked about how she is experiencing a culture shock after returning home from a several years long stay in Australia. Another guy spoke about the culture shock he experienced after moving to Richmond from some other city he was studying in but when after my introduction I was sympathetically asked - 'So you must be experiencing something similar', I happily quipped - 'Not really'. I think the answer disappointed most people there. Maybe I haven't been defining culture shock right.

Just a clarification - I wrote most of this post, especially the first paragraph, on saturday. I couldn't finish it because I had started watching 'Kal Ho Na Ho' with some friends, so finally putting it up today.

Somethings I know ... and some I don't

I like New York. Its big. Its crowded. You can find people walking on the streets late in the night. It has public transport.
I was hanging around with friends from college and it felt so much like being back in Bombay again. Strangely though I enjoyed getting lost on the subway and walking around times square with people in crazy hats, shopping off roadsides and people watching a lot more than all the big NY attractions we checked out. That was fun too. But more than anything I was soaking in how alive the city felt.

Sometime back I told a friend that I have become fairly uncompetitive lately in life and that worries me a little. Not that I don't care about doing things well or that I don't enjoy it when I do better or much better than average but I really couldn't be bothered to take it to a personal level. And all this coupled with all the 'I don't know what my long-term goals are's, 'I don't know where I want to be five years from now's, can scare you at times. But then clever people have said that some of the best of us never find out what they want out of life.

The last book I read was 'A feast for crows' by GRRM. It took me a lot longer than the other three books in the series to finish. That was partly because I was spending less time than usual reading and partly because the book simply crawls for the greatest part. The climax however makes up for almost everything and its all the more bugging that I'll have to wait for not one but two books to find out what happens next.

I have quite a bit of work at work now and I'm quite enjoying it. I hope that lasts. Good to end the first post of the new year on a positive note.