Kitty Quest

Note : This is an old post which I half-wrote and then abandoned.

I like animals.

You would recognize this for the understatement it is, if you saw the virtual zoo of stuffed animals, I house in my apartment. At last count I had a donkey, a monkey, a giant bear, a giraffe, a cat, two dogs, a hippo, an elephant, a sea lion, a lion, a lamb, and a deer. As a natural progression of this fascination with soft, furry creatures, I decided to adopt a pet.

Ideally my first pet would have been a dog, a nice big one at that (Or not, because though I like the idea of having a big dog, its the small furry one's with hair falling all over their face, that reduce me to a puddle of mush). Dogs, however, come with a lot of responsibility, financial and otherwise, especially in this country. They have to be walked twice a day, unless you enjoy cleaning dog poo off your carpet. They need exercise, run up vet bills, and can't be left alone overnight. I'm not saying this is not how it should be, but its a huge commitment, one which I would love to make when I'm in a more settled situation. Enter simpler solution - Cat, and thus began the kitty quest.

I started off with considering adopting from a shelter. But I didn't want to rescue an animal and return it if things didn't work out. I spent weeks drooling over cute kittens and cats on craigslist waiting for a perfect older gentle cat to be put up for adoption, whose owners wouldn't mind taking him or her back if I decided to move and couldn't take him along. Quite a wish-list and one which was obviously impossible - why would anyone give away their cat only to take it back later. Anyways, I did contact a couple of people and while they were very interested in the beginning, they either changed their mind about giving up their pet or stopped responding. I was irritated by this at the time, but I now realize its perfectly natural to not want to part with your pet even though it seems the logical thing to do.

So back to shelter it was. In the course of my search, I had also realized that if I adopted an older cat, it would be not only difficult for her to adjust to the new situation, moving to India would probably end up being too much disruption for her. And if for some reason I had to find another home for her before I left, it would be so much more difficult.

So that made it a young cat from a shelter. How young? I first contacted someone for a 6 month old kitten. He had already been adopted, but the lady also mentioned that it would probably not be a good idea to adopt such a young cat with my work/commute schedule. Next up I found this beautiful tuxedo cat, about a year old. However, I was going to be of town for a couple of days and when I did get back, the tuxedo was still at the shelter, but the lady I had been talking to had this 9 month old cream and white (as she put it) kitty, whom the shelter folks had loved so much, they had sent him ahead of schedule. I decided to see this cat and she brought him over. He was sitting huddled up in his carrier but once he came out, he started purring loudly and wanted to climb on everyone's shoulders.

And that's how Kittu came home.

He's now been around for 10 months and I think he likes it here. He sleeps, eats cat food and cheese, purrs, stretches, grooms, runs around wildly, fetches paper balls, greets me at the door, snuggles and then sleeps some more. Apparently cats don't really miss their owners if they leave, but I sure would miss him, so its next stop India for both of us.

A Vegeterian Guide to Eating-Out in Hawaii

I turned vegeterian 2 years ago, and since then barring a few bad experiences I've had mostly smooth sailing. I eat out a LOT, and anyone who's lived in US for any length of time would know that veggie options apart from the ubiquitous garden salad are hard to come by in most restaurants. However, with a little adjustment, a little lowering of expectatations and a little creative ordering, eating out can still be a lot of fun. Indian restaurants ofcourse don't need any of these but since we eat Indian food at home, when eating out we like to try something different.

Getting to the title of the post, we recently vacationed in Hawaii and like most first-times to Hawaii went to two islands - Oahu and Maui. The vacation was amazing and I was bowled over by both the islands except for one glitch - Hawaii happends to be not so vegeterian friendly. The local cuisine is almost exclusively barbecued meat and seafood. Surprisingly, finding veggie food was a much bigger problem in Oahu although it is much more populous than Maui and has a downtown which is as close to any city in mainland USA as it gets. For blogging purposes I have identified 2 main reasons for this -
a) We were unprepared. The first couple of days we kept trying to find a fancy restaurant with local falvor etc. which would give us something to eat. Not a very good idea. Recommendation 1 - If you're a vegetarian, stick to known turf in Oahu for food- Italian, Indian (there is only one in all of Hawaii as far as we could find), P F Chang's version of Chinese. Go to fancy places but stick to drinks and chips(/appetizers) as we did on one ocassion.
b) We were unprepared for the north shore. Which btw is stunning (as seen through a car window). We spent most of our day at the polynesian center which is very fancy and popular and everything but has zero, and I mean it, absolutely nothing for vegetarians when it comes to food. Given that you're expected to spend half a day or more there, this was a killer. Recommendation 2 - Pack food for the north shore or stop at the small village which falls on the way and eat at one of the many pizzerias we saw.

Now we come to Maui. We struck lucky on our very first night when we found this AMAZING stir fried tofu with rice, and flatbread on our resort's room service menu. I really wanted to eat that tofu again but we never ordered room service after that and they don't serve it in any of their restaurants - weird! Breakfasts were great on all days - resort buffet on 3 days and longhi's (I'll come back to it) on one. Our second night was our worst food experience in Maui. We went to the resort's restaurant called the Mala Lounge but once we took a look at the menu, we figured we won't find anything to eat there. We politely apologized to our waitress and were about to leave when this artsy looking old man on the table next to us got up and started telling us how good that restaurant is for veggies. He mentioned that his wife is vegan/vegetarian and likes this restaurant by far the best. Our waitress chimes in and says she could customize a bunch of stuff for us blah blah. To cut it short, we order and its awful. We eat nothing and when the waitress comes to pick up the check (by this time the artsy gentleman has left), she looks at our untouched plates and says - 'You should really try Longhi's. I was vegetarian for many years and they're really great. The man who convinced you to stay owns this restaurant, so.. (shrug)'.

So we did try Longhi's and its a great place for veggies. They actually have a lot of vegetable entrees on the menu and not just pasta. Infact the one we tried was sooooo good that my mouth waters thinking of it. Recommendation 3 - Eat at Longhi's. I think that chain exists in Oahu as well. When eating there, try their cauliflower fried a little in olive oil and served with chillies and olives - wonderful.

Another Maui gem. You find absolutely nothing to eat (except fruit stalls and guavas falling off trees everywhere) on the road to Hana. However, Paia where the road to Hana starts is a good place to grab something. We had lunch at this small cafe called the Moana surfrider and they served us a wonderful pasta. I remember seeing other veggie stuff on the menu as well and thai stuff for dinner. Wanted to go again but didn't get round to it. Recommendation 4 - Eat at this cafe or possibly check out other places in Paia as well. We didn't have time as we had started late.

All in all we found great food in Maui except that one time. One last thing, which I have to mention when talking about eating out in Hawaii. Food is expensive there! So be prepared for that if you're going there anytime.

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.

Getting there

Here's why I don't get along with cars.

They're unpredictable. Drive over a couple of curbs and you end up with a flat tire. If you are lucky enough to have gallant help at hand, who'll quickly roll up their sleeves and discover all kinds of tools for changing a tire (and a spare tire) in the boot of your car, which you weren't even aware you had been provided with, you can get away with watching them change the wheel in the biting cold, comfortably snug in your jacket, making a great show of trying to get through to rental helpline on your phone. However, you still won't be spared a 45 minutes long drive to the airport (all the while desperately worried about the smaller temporary tire) to get your car exchanged.

They're temperamental. Leave your headlights on when parking in the morning and your car will refuse to start when you get back in the evening. You'll have to call help to coax your dead battery alive by jumpstarting it. Obviously it'll have to rain on that day so that you freeze while you're hunting for your car and wondering why the car you're almost sure is your car isn't responding to the key remote.

They're demanding. You have to equip them with GPSs so that they'll take you to places. Occasionally wrestle for an hour with an ice-scraper while you clean their windows and wind shields of ice and snow after they've been standing in the snow for a day.

They have a weird sense of humor. Leave them alone in the parking lot while you go and eat in a restaurant 0.2 miles away and they are nowhere to be found when you get back. You'll spend an hour looking for them everywhere and just when you've given up and made a fool of yourself by calling up people to tell them you've lost your car and you need to be rescued, they'll suddenly appear out of thin air.

They play hard to get. Try looking for a second hand car to buy and you realize how many issues they have. And they're difficult to understand. Some people are known to take a long time to get comfortable with driving them.

As you can see my relationship with cars isn't going all that well. I'm onto my second rental already which I'm hoping will survive until I get my own car, and am also keeping my fingers crossed that it'll work out better that third time.

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.

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!)

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

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.

January 2003 - October 2005

In fond memory of Jabberwocky, the best of computers and the most faithful of companions (whenever he was working properly atleast).

Jabber was a full-time member of the IITB LAN for the greatest part of his life, and it can be safely said - he liked it there. Many were the movies and sitcoms he downloaded and then selflessly played for others' entertainment. In what spare time he had left, he uncomplainingly made himself available for surfing the net, checking mails and so on. He occasionally dabbled in academic work as well, but any major cut-down in his regular entertainment diet, unfortunately, did not agree with his constitution. Pressure of work in Feb-March 2005 led to a stroke (read motherboard fault), and though the transplant operation was successful, Jabber never fully recovered. The stress of maintaining dual Windows and Linux personalities also started showing around this time, leading to further complications.

A complete removal from the nurturing IITB network in May 2005, eventually proved to be fatal. After struggling on for a few months in the heat and power fluctuations of Kota, Jabber finally succumbed to a total hard-disk crash on October 4, 2005 (the wuss that he was!). May he rest in peace (the crashed hard-disk atleast).

I miss you already!

I'm blogging after some 3 weeks I think. Been fairly occupied with all sorts of things in this time and then ofcourse there was the lack of constant and free net access later. So I was on campus for about a week, met people, watched movies, and left wondering (not for the first time) how swiftly days go by in that place. Was still more amazed at how familiar everything was and yet not the same. It wasn't home anymore, not the way it had been for the last 4 years. Each time I entered the corridoor of my ex-wing I tried to recapture that old feeling of homecoming, in vain. I was well aware all the time that this was my last visit of some length to the place in a long while. Bye Bye IITB.

I came across the term 'graphomania' which means a mania for writing books in 'The book of laughter and forgetting' by Milan Kundera. According to the author - "Graphomania is
not a desire to write letters, personal diaries, or family chronicles,.. but a desire to write books (to have a public of unknown readers)...
Graphomania inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions -
(1) an elevated level of general well-being which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;
(2) a high degree of social automization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals;
(3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's social life."

What I was wondering about is - Is blogging a form of graphomania?

Was talking to a friend the other day, who recently visited Kota after some 4 years, and she was saying how the place has hardly changed in all this time. Inspite of consciously trying she was able to spot only one change, a new flyover, which after an unusually short flyover gestation period of 3 years, is now complete and open to traffic. I had one more change to add to the list- there are no crocodiles in Chambal Garden anymore. They had to be released into the river because the shallow, murky water of the croc pond was bad for them. Good for the crocs, sad for Chambal Garden.

Morning walks are bad for skin

While everybody was talking about sunsets and I was talking about Wodehouse, I was reminded of his poem Caliban at Sunset. Not that I have anything against sunsets. They can be really beautiful and infact I kind of specialize in painting them (in five strokes with a size 10 brush. Very helpful when you have your painting homework submission in another 30 minutes), although mine tend to come out bright orange and red with the sky looking distinctly angry. Must be the red fixation or all the hidden existential angst. Some people might say that those are the only two colors I bother mixing (apart from the blue for the water ofcourse), I'd go with the existential angst however.

Coming back to the poem, I like funny, witty poetry best. The shorter the better as well. If its too long, I often don't get to the end of the poem only. Haikus are good that ways, for example you definitely can't complain about length here (which happens to be a double dactyl actually as Lakesidey pointed out).

Higgledy-piggledy
Ludwig van Beethoven
Bored by requests for some
Music to hum,

Finally answered with
Oversimplicity
"Here's my Fifth Symphony:
Duh, duh, duh, DUM!"

-- E William Seaman.

I do like other kinds of poetry. Its just that I think that usually there's enough sadness in life anyways to be generated internally, so one should take external doses a little sparingly.

So much traffic! I had to walk some 3 kms today in the morning, wading through all the vehicle fumes, to get an auto to work since no auto wallah was ready to drive through the traffic-jam on airport road. Hopefully now that the flyover construction has been resumed, once its over the traffic situation on airport road should ease a bit. Meanwhile I rejoice at my whim which made me splurge on buying shoes which I didn't really need at that point of time.

I came across an extremely talkative auto driver, Murti, yesterday. He asked me the time somewhere in the middle of the drive (later on he explained that if I hadn't answered him then he would've insisted on my getting off his auto), and then once satisfied that I didn't mind him talking, spoke non-stop for the rest of the journey. It was a little difficult to understand everything he said since his Hindi wasn't very good and I couldn't ask him to repeat himself very often since he would turn around, away from the road, to patiently explain what he was saying. He assured me (every 5 minutes) that every woman who sat in his auto was his sister and even if Aishwarya Rai was to come and sit in his auto, he would treat her like a sister. I received some friendly advise that I shouldn't spend too much in Bangalore, should save everything and take it back home. When I was getting off his auto, he shook hands and told me how he had met a new sister today and then promptly asked me to give him ten rupees extra.

Red no more

I shift again tomorrow, the third time and to the fourth place in all, in less than two months in Bangalore. The fact that I've had only a couple of bags to cart around has been a blessing in all this shifting, although I've accumulated more and more stuff gradually and so I'm glad that there'll be no more moving-in/moving-out during what's left of my stay here. Why all this shifting has been happening is quite a story in itself, I'm not sure however if it would make for a thrilling narration, so I'll let it pass.
Bags remind me of why I have two white dresses for convocation now. The original white kurta ended up sporting big green splotches of color after my bag got completely soaked during Delhi-Bangalore flight and had to be substituted by the second white kurta. I couldn't help wondering whether Deccan airways straps passengers' luggage on top of the plane for it to have got so miserably wet.

I think I should invite congratulations for having successfully stuck to my resolve of not buying anything in red.. so far. This resolve stemmed from the realization a few months back that practically everything I had bought lately was some shade of red, and since then I've been consciously avoiding shopping in red. This weekend I walked into a store because their entire display consisted of red and white combinations and walked out with pink and purple shirts. Beat that for self-control!

As I was saying (to different people at different times), I have been reading a lot of Wodehouse lately. You can pick up two Wodehouses for 90 bucks from the road-side book-sellers, they might even reduce the price further I guess if someone bargained well, and I've collected six so far. For some reason I can never remember which Wodehouse I've read and which I haven't, especially the short stories collections. It might be because the names are usually along the lines of Carry on, Jeeves, Thank you, Jeeves, Very Good, Jeeves, which don't really give much clue towards the insides of the book. So I found it useful that someone who holds this opinion has taken the trouble to compile a list to enable others to refresh their Wodehouse memory.