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.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Friday, August 26, 2005
How I was feeling horrible and decided to take a break
I wish I had something to write about, I really do. I have all this time on my hands, its been quite some time since I made an entry here and I really can't think of anything else to do right now sitting here. All perfectly good reasons to be updating blog.
The reason I have nothing to write about is because life has been pretty much a routine lately. I come in for work, I do whatever till about 6-6:30 PM, and then I go back home, I eat, read and then go off to sleep. All weekdays follow this pattern. Weekends afford some diversion, which is why I usually end up writing something after a weekend. All this routine and a combination of some other things ended up leaving me quite unsettled, unhappy yesterday. So I took off from work early, went roaming around for a bit, bought some stuff, and hence am in a much better frame of mind today.
And I came across this today :). Had Mrs Morris cared to speak to me yesterday, I might've come up with an answer along the same lines.
What I Told Mrs. Morris When She Asked How I Was Feeling Today
Grumbly, grouchy,
crabby, grumpy,
sleepy, slouchy,
fussy, frumpy,
whiny, weary,
cranky, crazy,
dingy, dreary,
languid, lazy,
dizzy, drowsy,
cruddy, crummy,
loony, lousy,
scruffy, scummy,
bleary, batty
scraggly, sketchy,
rusty, ratty,
testy, techy.
That describes it,
Mrs. Morris.
Thank you for the
new thesaurus.
--Kenn Nesbitt
The reason I have nothing to write about is because life has been pretty much a routine lately. I come in for work, I do whatever till about 6-6:30 PM, and then I go back home, I eat, read and then go off to sleep. All weekdays follow this pattern. Weekends afford some diversion, which is why I usually end up writing something after a weekend. All this routine and a combination of some other things ended up leaving me quite unsettled, unhappy yesterday. So I took off from work early, went roaming around for a bit, bought some stuff, and hence am in a much better frame of mind today.
And I came across this today :). Had Mrs Morris cared to speak to me yesterday, I might've come up with an answer along the same lines.
What I Told Mrs. Morris When She Asked How I Was Feeling Today
Grumbly, grouchy,
crabby, grumpy,
sleepy, slouchy,
fussy, frumpy,
whiny, weary,
cranky, crazy,
dingy, dreary,
languid, lazy,
dizzy, drowsy,
cruddy, crummy,
loony, lousy,
scruffy, scummy,
bleary, batty
scraggly, sketchy,
rusty, ratty,
testy, techy.
That describes it,
Mrs. Morris.
Thank you for the
new thesaurus.
--Kenn Nesbitt
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Big City Small City
I crossed over yesterday and became a true Banglorean (as in the young, come here for a job sort) in spirit, atleast temporarily. After all that I crib about everybody in Bangalore heading towards Forum/Brigade Road-MG Road on weekends, I did exactly that yesterday and both in the same day as well. Spent the morning watching two movies at PVR (the Forum multiplex). Mangal Pandey was very disappointing, not that I had gone with very high expectations, but still it doesn't say much for a movie if you spent most of the first half waiting for the intermission, and the second wondering how much longer before the movie ends. The songs in the movie are especially useless and the women have absolutely nothing to do, so they could have easily got rid of both and made a shorter, much less painful mangal pandey, or so I think. Madagascar, the second movie I saw, was a nice change after this. Its not absolutely wonderful but good fun nevertheless and its just one and a half hours long which is always good.
The brigade road trip was for meeting up with some batchmates. Most of them didn't show up so the few of us who were there trooped off into a restaurant, ate, and came back.
Some of my earliest reading consisted of Russian folk-tales. There was a big book of those with one of my cousins whom we used to visit in summer vacations and I absolutely coveted it. Almost all the stories had a witch called Baba Yaga who lived in a hut which stood in the middle of the forest on chicken legs. Having legs the hut could move around and the door would turn away whenever you tried to enter it, so it used to be a tricky bit for the hero to figure out how to enter the hut during his quest to rescue the princess. There also used to be a self-unraveling ball of wool in many stories which the hero would take along, I don't remember the context there entirely though.
Russian book fairs used to be a big highlight (for me) of the Dussehra Mela in Kota as well, which incidentally was one of the things Kota was famous for prior to the coaching boom. The effigies of Ravan and his brothers in the Kota Dussehra Mela were amongst the tallest in the country and the fair itself went on for some 15 days. Much household shopping used to happen during the fair especially buying bed-sheets for some reason. And ofcourse there was the mandatory visit to the softy stalls. I use past tense here because I have no idea about the state of affairs for the past four years. Its probably still all the same although I wonder if it still holds the same importance in the small town life of Kota.
The brigade road trip was for meeting up with some batchmates. Most of them didn't show up so the few of us who were there trooped off into a restaurant, ate, and came back.
Some of my earliest reading consisted of Russian folk-tales. There was a big book of those with one of my cousins whom we used to visit in summer vacations and I absolutely coveted it. Almost all the stories had a witch called Baba Yaga who lived in a hut which stood in the middle of the forest on chicken legs. Having legs the hut could move around and the door would turn away whenever you tried to enter it, so it used to be a tricky bit for the hero to figure out how to enter the hut during his quest to rescue the princess. There also used to be a self-unraveling ball of wool in many stories which the hero would take along, I don't remember the context there entirely though.
Russian book fairs used to be a big highlight (for me) of the Dussehra Mela in Kota as well, which incidentally was one of the things Kota was famous for prior to the coaching boom. The effigies of Ravan and his brothers in the Kota Dussehra Mela were amongst the tallest in the country and the fair itself went on for some 15 days. Much household shopping used to happen during the fair especially buying bed-sheets for some reason. And ofcourse there was the mandatory visit to the softy stalls. I use past tense here because I have no idea about the state of affairs for the past four years. Its probably still all the same although I wonder if it still holds the same importance in the small town life of Kota.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Gothic Romances. (With a side-dish of shoes and garnished with dolphins)
I'm reading one currently - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Infact the introduction to this book is where I came across the term Gothic Romance and now I find the concept quite amusing. It seems to be quite an easy recipe -
Put one very prone to fainting and hysterics (Hehe I remember in the book 'Secret Garden' when Mary hears the term hysterics she finds it very interesting and decides to have some herself when the opportunity arose) woman in a large gloomy castle in an extremely cold and windy place. Introduce an equally gloomy, 'not so conventionally handsome but having a square jaw and a harsh set of features that set him apart in the crowd' hero in the castle. Make everybody slightly psychotic and generally talk as if the world is coming to an end, and when not talking mope around all over the place. Add super-natural elements to taste and you should have a gothic romance on your hands. Oh the hysterical woman will first have to be scared of the hero and then fall in love with him when she discovers how wonderful he actually is.
I'm in love with my new shoes currently. I bought them this weekend and now I think they are the most wonderful thing in the world. I keep stealing a glance at them from time to time. Maybe I should describe them a little to help you understand them better. Well, they are blue and white (I bought blue socks as well to go with them), with white laces and big blue plastic nike arrows on the side. Actually I don't like the plastic arrows so much and they are kind of redundant as well since there already is a much more tasteful, smaller blue arrow at the back. But then I guess that one isn't so visible and that defeats its purpose. Ok so the visible part of the sole is white and there are some white wave like leather patterns on the sides. A grey leather pattern forms an outline of the white leather pattern. Oh there's another nike arrow on the leather pattern just above the laces. And now I don't like that leather pattern so much! Hmph. There's nothing like analyzing to dampen new-found love I guess. Anyways the shoes are still the most comfortable footwear I have currently so their rating shouldn't go down much more for sometime.
Kray wrote about dolphins in his blog. Kray you should make friends with a dolphin. Then you can ride it around whenever u feel like getting off the ship for a while or you could just talk to it while standing on the deck of your ship. Oh and do write about penguins if you see any!
Put one very prone to fainting and hysterics (Hehe I remember in the book 'Secret Garden' when Mary hears the term hysterics she finds it very interesting and decides to have some herself when the opportunity arose) woman in a large gloomy castle in an extremely cold and windy place. Introduce an equally gloomy, 'not so conventionally handsome but having a square jaw and a harsh set of features that set him apart in the crowd' hero in the castle. Make everybody slightly psychotic and generally talk as if the world is coming to an end, and when not talking mope around all over the place. Add super-natural elements to taste and you should have a gothic romance on your hands. Oh the hysterical woman will first have to be scared of the hero and then fall in love with him when she discovers how wonderful he actually is.
I'm in love with my new shoes currently. I bought them this weekend and now I think they are the most wonderful thing in the world. I keep stealing a glance at them from time to time. Maybe I should describe them a little to help you understand them better. Well, they are blue and white (I bought blue socks as well to go with them), with white laces and big blue plastic nike arrows on the side. Actually I don't like the plastic arrows so much and they are kind of redundant as well since there already is a much more tasteful, smaller blue arrow at the back. But then I guess that one isn't so visible and that defeats its purpose. Ok so the visible part of the sole is white and there are some white wave like leather patterns on the sides. A grey leather pattern forms an outline of the white leather pattern. Oh there's another nike arrow on the leather pattern just above the laces. And now I don't like that leather pattern so much! Hmph. There's nothing like analyzing to dampen new-found love I guess. Anyways the shoes are still the most comfortable footwear I have currently so their rating shouldn't go down much more for sometime.
Kray wrote about dolphins in his blog. Kray you should make friends with a dolphin. Then you can ride it around whenever u feel like getting off the ship for a while or you could just talk to it while standing on the deck of your ship. Oh and do write about penguins if you see any!
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Nothing much to say
Sad that all the blogs I was used to checking on a regular basis are no longer being updated. For that matter I had pretty much forgotten abt my blog itself last few days. Firstly I was away for the weekend for a white water rafting trip (it turned out to be mostly some peaceful boating in a placid river, I didn't even fall off the raft, yay!!) and then once the week started I decided to stop slacking off and do some work.
Anyways if you sit in front of a comp all day long, you have to find ways to entertain yourself. I've tried reading e-books but I normally get too pained after a while. My latest fad is reading journal comics archives. Some of them are atually quite well-drawn and funny to read. Nice way to kill some time on the net. An interesting way to blog also this i.e. in the form of a comic. Its a little too much effort though (and time consuming) and ofcourse u need to be able to draw, although that is not necessarily a pre-requsite. I wish someone I know would start a journal comic, it should be fun keeping track of it.
Anyways if you sit in front of a comp all day long, you have to find ways to entertain yourself. I've tried reading e-books but I normally get too pained after a while. My latest fad is reading journal comics archives. Some of them are atually quite well-drawn and funny to read. Nice way to kill some time on the net. An interesting way to blog also this i.e. in the form of a comic. Its a little too much effort though (and time consuming) and ofcourse u need to be able to draw, although that is not necessarily a pre-requsite. I wish someone I know would start a journal comic, it should be fun keeping track of it.
Friday, August 05, 2005
TTM Revisited
So I finally finished reading The Three Musketeers yesterday. Interesting book, although I started loosing patience a little towards the end and skipped a few pages, actually I skipped the entire made up story the evil woman tells the Felton fellow to convince him of her innocence. I had read a highly abridged version of this book long long time back, and the only bit I remembered from that was when they overhear the cardinal's conversation with Milady through the chimney pipe, so I was very happy when I came to that.
One thing I was wondering about, since my history is not all that upto the mark - Is the queen Anne in the book the Anne of the 'Let them eat cakes if they don't have bread' fame who was the cause of French revolution? Don't know why I started wondering about this in the first place. I think its because I was watching something on the History Channel about the French Revolution where they were talking about the frivolous queen, Anne of Austria, whom everybody in France hated, and the queen Anne in TTM is also Austrian.
Just found this somewhere online -But when it came to Anne of Austria—“our Spanish queen”—his (some Historian's) vituperation knew no bounds. He depicted her as weak, narrow-minded, ignorant, fat, lazy, and vain; accused her of adultery; and claimed that Cardinal Mazarin, “that Italian clown,” was the true father of her second son.
Well the Anne in the book is supposed to be extremely beautiful and the Cardinal hates her guts. However she is the wife of Louis XIII. Now I wonder if the Duke of Buckingham was real. Nevermind.
One thing I was wondering about, since my history is not all that upto the mark - Is the queen Anne in the book the Anne of the 'Let them eat cakes if they don't have bread' fame who was the cause of French revolution? Don't know why I started wondering about this in the first place. I think its because I was watching something on the History Channel about the French Revolution where they were talking about the frivolous queen, Anne of Austria, whom everybody in France hated, and the queen Anne in TTM is also Austrian.
Just found this somewhere online -But when it came to Anne of Austria—“our Spanish queen”—his (some Historian's) vituperation knew no bounds. He depicted her as weak, narrow-minded, ignorant, fat, lazy, and vain; accused her of adultery; and claimed that Cardinal Mazarin, “that Italian clown,” was the true father of her second son.
Well the Anne in the book is supposed to be extremely beautiful and the Cardinal hates her guts. However she is the wife of Louis XIII. Now I wonder if the Duke of Buckingham was real. Nevermind.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Condensed Mills and Boons
This is something I came across while browsing for online comic archives. And if you've read any Mills and Boons you know what I mean by the title. Anyways I was extremely amused on seeing this, didn't know that comic books like these (http://www.jennymiller.com/romancecomics/thecomics.html) existed.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Headlines
Read in the newspaper today - Vrindavan Gardens have been closed to visitors on account of flooding in the sorrounding areas and the Krishnaraj Sagar Dam being full to the brim. If you've been to Mysore you've probably been to the Vrindavan gardens and know that you have to cross this pathway over the dam to get to the gardens. I was thinking that if the dam gates are open the view from there should be amazing. This reminds of when I used to go to Kota Dam to see the water when they would open the gates during monsoons. Back home floods were comparatively harmless things. The maximum damage they would do was to leave a carpet of silt behind in all the rooms when the water receded. Besides all of us kids got the day off from school and spent it playing in knee deep water, a harmless and fun holiday. However yeah, it was a fairly nbd situation while the water was rising and if your house was built low at the street level, there could be more damage to stuff.
Coming back to newspaper, another headline which caught my attention today was novels through text messages. Methinks reading novels through SMS would be quite painful especially since I don't quite enjoy reading books on comp also. I'm also sure that if I had read the whole article I would have discovered that the idea is Japanese in origin.
The sports page today was full of stuff about today's India Srilanka match. One of the articles started with - 'India take the field today under Saurav Ganguly's shadow' which should make it easy to guess that it was TOI which I was reading. Wonder when they'll stop coming up with these clever headlines. One of the things I can't figure out is why I dislike Sanjay Manjrekar so much. Whenever he comes up for commentary I feel like turning the TV mute. A friend who was a huge fan of Jadeja, had once run into Manjrekar instead in London and played a game of tennis with him. True, this in no way helps to explain why I don't like him but then this blog is supposed to go nowhere.
Coming back to newspaper, another headline which caught my attention today was novels through text messages. Methinks reading novels through SMS would be quite painful especially since I don't quite enjoy reading books on comp also. I'm also sure that if I had read the whole article I would have discovered that the idea is Japanese in origin.
The sports page today was full of stuff about today's India Srilanka match. One of the articles started with - 'India take the field today under Saurav Ganguly's shadow' which should make it easy to guess that it was TOI which I was reading. Wonder when they'll stop coming up with these clever headlines. One of the things I can't figure out is why I dislike Sanjay Manjrekar so much. Whenever he comes up for commentary I feel like turning the TV mute. A friend who was a huge fan of Jadeja, had once run into Manjrekar instead in London and played a game of tennis with him. True, this in no way helps to explain why I don't like him but then this blog is supposed to go nowhere.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Handwriting
Blogging ofcourse I've started this weekend itself, however before this I'd taken to writing stuff down in in writing pad for sometime. The following is a reproducion from there. (Yes yes, I was very bored and very jobless at home .. but I still didn't get my license made and now I'll probably suffer because of that :()
One of those things about me which is never going to change - my bad handwriting. Basically since I'm writing all this time the bad handwriting thing is more obvious or rather observable. and hence gives me something to ponder over. I tried various things in my school years as part of attempts to improve my handwriting. I think one of the very first tips I received was to apply a lot more pressure while writing. I guess it ensures better control or something. I was in upper KG at that time, so I s'pose it helped make my handwriting somewhat more legible atleast I remember a teacher telling me so. However over the years this habit of pressing the pen a little too hard on paper while writing has proved something of a liability - broken nibs, torn paper and so on.
Then somewhere down the line, I think in 6th standard, I started breaking my words and writing. I don't remember if it was somebody's suggestion or my own whim but I stuck with this for one year and then I started linking everything up again, not quite everything though, I still break a word or two after and I or an f. I also changed my word formation somewhat over the years. Everything used to be a lot more curlier when I was young, cursive handwriting style. So, I made my 'f's, 'h's, 'l's sharper and meaner. Oh unfortunately I can't show the difference here but I changed my 'm', 'B', 'b', 'G' etc. as well. However all this didn't really help to improve the overall sloppiness of my handwriting. Which brings me to the realization that my handwriting has always been sloppy. I might form individual alphabets alright, but while writing words my 't's get bent, 'e's nudge each other, alphabets become tall and short as suits their fancy, crooked, bent and generally falling over each other. Basically in one word 'sloppy'.
I wonder what a handwriting expert would have to say to this and also the fact that I realize this flaw and yet haven't corrected it. Some people insist that the inherent sloppiness of my handwriting is due to wrong grip of the pen. Very early in life I adapted my grip and my style of writing to ensure maximum speed. The thing is I think fast or rather I used to be able to come up with answers fast and I would be in a terrible hurry to put them down and move on to the next thing. I used to hate it if someone would finish their classwork (or homework) before me. I suppose hence the sacrifice of proper word formation for the sake of speed. Those who know me now would find it hard to believe that I did anything in a hurry.
Its true though, I hate taking too long over anything. Once I get started on something, I have to finish it asap, be it cleaning my room, writing a report, mugging for a quiz or an exam, or discussing important life-affecting matters, and I've often sacrificed being thorough and meticulous for the sake of speed. Infact I have a well earned reputation at home that any plans I make have to be changed eventually and often with some expense involved. That's mainly due to the fact that I'm never patient enough to wait a while and then decide. Patience brings me to how I get bored of most things pretty fast but that's for another time.
One of those things about me which is never going to change - my bad handwriting. Basically since I'm writing all this time the bad handwriting thing is more obvious or rather observable. and hence gives me something to ponder over. I tried various things in my school years as part of attempts to improve my handwriting. I think one of the very first tips I received was to apply a lot more pressure while writing. I guess it ensures better control or something. I was in upper KG at that time, so I s'pose it helped make my handwriting somewhat more legible atleast I remember a teacher telling me so. However over the years this habit of pressing the pen a little too hard on paper while writing has proved something of a liability - broken nibs, torn paper and so on.
Then somewhere down the line, I think in 6th standard, I started breaking my words and writing. I don't remember if it was somebody's suggestion or my own whim but I stuck with this for one year and then I started linking everything up again, not quite everything though, I still break a word or two after and I or an f. I also changed my word formation somewhat over the years. Everything used to be a lot more curlier when I was young, cursive handwriting style. So, I made my 'f's, 'h's, 'l's sharper and meaner. Oh unfortunately I can't show the difference here but I changed my 'm', 'B', 'b', 'G' etc. as well. However all this didn't really help to improve the overall sloppiness of my handwriting. Which brings me to the realization that my handwriting has always been sloppy. I might form individual alphabets alright, but while writing words my 't's get bent, 'e's nudge each other, alphabets become tall and short as suits their fancy, crooked, bent and generally falling over each other. Basically in one word 'sloppy'.
I wonder what a handwriting expert would have to say to this and also the fact that I realize this flaw and yet haven't corrected it. Some people insist that the inherent sloppiness of my handwriting is due to wrong grip of the pen. Very early in life I adapted my grip and my style of writing to ensure maximum speed. The thing is I think fast or rather I used to be able to come up with answers fast and I would be in a terrible hurry to put them down and move on to the next thing. I used to hate it if someone would finish their classwork (or homework) before me. I suppose hence the sacrifice of proper word formation for the sake of speed. Those who know me now would find it hard to believe that I did anything in a hurry.
Its true though, I hate taking too long over anything. Once I get started on something, I have to finish it asap, be it cleaning my room, writing a report, mugging for a quiz or an exam, or discussing important life-affecting matters, and I've often sacrificed being thorough and meticulous for the sake of speed. Infact I have a well earned reputation at home that any plans I make have to be changed eventually and often with some expense involved. That's mainly due to the fact that I'm never patient enough to wait a while and then decide. Patience brings me to how I get bored of most things pretty fast but that's for another time.
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