New!

It is actually 2007! The December sabbatical is sadly over, and its back to the bump and grind now. Tomorrow I join the legion of the workhorses :) Wake up at six, get back home by 5.30 or 6 in the evenings. But all said and done, its kinda nice to finally get that full-time job going after so many years of studies. So, here's to the new year and the new job.

December

A complete blur of events:

- Wrapped up stuff at work

- Had fun with the last minute Claire-ing for my "dress"

- Observed how drunk and outrageous colleagues can get at the Office Christmas parties!

- Ran to NY and visited my lovely niece.. so much so that I didn't leave the house for all of the three days I was there!

- Got back, and rotted since then

So, all in all.. nothing spectacular.. and even if, ain't interested in writing anything.. Maybe New Year will kick my habit in again.. Ciao~

'Tis the season..

Yes, the flu, but also Christmas is around the corner. Therein lies my biggest confusion. It started with the days back in a Christian Convent School, and I still have this craving for a Christmas tree of my own in my house. So I thought, why not? This is my third Christmas here, and maybe I should start the tradition too! A nice spacious living room sure deserves a funky tree..

There began my dumb questions about the trees to A, who sure had a laugh over it all. Looks like I've spent the entire day at work browsing for trees?! I wanted a tree taller than I am (d'uh!), but imagine how many ornaments that would require to get all covered up. And we can't really have a naked tree can we? I'd love the fresh cut ones, but lets face it, I am NOT in the mood to sweep up fallen needles once the season is over, nor am I enthused over lugging it home tied to the top of my car, or trying to schedule a recycle pick-up.. Agreed, a real tree smells divine, the pine-y scent etc, etc,. But nah, an artificial one makes more sense, I can stow it away until the next season, and in the long run, it is the right thing to do!

But then Th enlightened me about the issue of the number of ornaments I'd have to buy.. which would definitely skyrocket.. and hooha, I'd spend twice as much on ornaments than on the tree. But c'mon, can't I indulge myself? Yes I can.. and I WILL. I am going to buy a big 7ft tree..

Or should I buy the 4.5 foot one.. its only 30 bucks, sensible right?

But I want the 7ft one though its 75 bucks..

Mummyyyy.... I can't make up my mind.

By the way, do I even need a Christmas tree? Hmm..

How dare they!!!

I read an article now and then analyzing Sachin's poor form, and that gets me REAL pissed.. And when I do start ranting and raving, believe me, it will drive anyone crazy or murderous or worse, suicidal!

I like cricket too, c'mon, how can you not like the sport? Despite the GBShaw-11 fools theory, it is a game after all, and I love it.. every pulse-pounding minute of it. In fact, I'm one of these superstitious folks who won't change their seating, much less transfer the drink from one hand to the other for fear that it'd get Tendulkar out!!!! My days as a cricket fan were hugely when I was at school, and would come home to hear my mom in turn rant and rave about my dad and the rest at home glued to the game!! (talk about how some things never change) I loved the way Jadeja would strut instead of rushing to the crease when he knows his run is safe (why the heck did he come and squeak in that movie with Celina Jaitley, God only knows!!), I used to think Azhar was cool, and would be thrilled with all the yelling that Mongia would do wicket-keeping. And nothing need be said about how smart Kumble was ;), and the GOD Sachin Tendulkar, the Jammyboy Dravid and Ganguly too..

But whatever it was, I loved the Indian team, and did agree with folks who said: Cricket is our religion and Sachin is our God!!

Anyways, what makes me angry these days is how Sachin is getting the flak for his batting. WTF? Who are all these people who come and criticize that nice down-to-earth soul? About him retiring, getting out cheaply, scared of rising deliveries (grrrr!!!), and all that crap. Ok, I ain't technically sound to comment about all this, but cmon, what the heck.. that guy has been such a source of inspiration to an entire nation of young boys.. so much so that it wasn't the dream to be 'on the team' but to 'be the next sachin tendulkar'.. and is this the way we treat him? How people love to watch the mighty fall, and then claim the dust as a trophy? Make someone like him an 'also-ran'? I'm not saying the Indian team was a one-man team.. but give the guy the credit he's due. Why are you so bent on making him fizzle out? With all the injuries, the pressure, the dedication.. he needs to have a Hall-of-fame all to himself!

But come what may, however the nitpicking idiots may try to write him off, the history of the game cannot be undone, the writing will be there up on the wall, and those of us who grew up idolizing him will never forget the golden era of the game that was (and will again be) Tendulkar's glory!!!

Another week, another weekend.

I am currently trying to complete my 2 credit project.. or should I say 'start'!!!

Hence the lack of updates. My imagination is as big as a zeolite pore-tunnel (which is fairly big on the molecular scale and hence accounts for its use in pervaporation) and sarcasm ain't oozing out of any pore about any topic under the sun. Taking two days off this week sure helped run through it faster. But Tuesday was a joke, when I completely forgot that I'd taken the day off to collect my commencement stuff, and ended up blowing 80 bucks on a winter coat at H&M instead!! Minimum earnt, maximum spent, who cares!

But yeay! Its Friday! :)

Friday sure is the Mr.Popular of the week! I remember this McD's radio ad which touts Monday free-coffees, and hence Monday goes up a notch in the 'cool' ratings, and is thrilled that Friday even talks to it.. But imagine, the week is in fact a good distribution of personalities so to speak..

And yeay again.. next week is a three-day-workweek.. yoohoo! Thank Thanksgiving :)

Gym-bo.. gymmy-boy.. gym-ster!

Disclaimer: This is not meant to be offensive to the gym-lovers/gymsters (whatever you call yourself) I know and don't know... a.k.a 'Enjoy maadi, lite-lene-ka! Not that my blog is public anyways, and no one's gonna be reading it. Aah, just trying to act smart by adding a pompous looking and dumb-schmuck sounding 'disclaimer'.. but I digress..

I'm one of those people who can't gym. Period.

Not to say I didn't try it just coz I wasn't getting enough exercise owing to my lack of frequent dance sessions. So I thought to myself, hey, this should be fun! Boy was I wrong...

People already complain I am thin. Fine, I am fortunately (and unfortunate in some aspects) small built.. (c'mon, be lady-like and say 'petite') and thin, and not prone to putting on 3 pounds in the five minutes after I eat a slice of chocolate cake. This draws sneers and jibes when I proclaim I am going to try a gym routine henceforth. Some gymsters (ooh, my vocab) don't see the need for me to be in a gym or anywhere within a 5 mile radius of it, for that matter! Maybe I'd disappear if I tried to gym.. and blah blah. Nevertheless, I did make a few trips there and haven't been back since.

Now maybe its a case with my school gym, for I haven't been to any other, but I got the feeling I was getting into some mechanized trench-in-the-middle-of-nowhere! The place was jammed with a gazillion gymming equipment - if I can call it that, for I don't really know their names all that well, apart from the Treadmill and the weights :)

And its the people in the gym that made me stay there for the twenty minutes or so that I was around.. There were those who watched F.R.I.E.N.D.S. episodes while they were Hitler-whipping their abs to perfection, the ones who tried to one-up each other with the techy-ness of their iPods and Walkmans, the ones who were really there to gym, a couple of giggly girls, and the huff-and-puff ones who'd work religiously on intricate guillotine-like mammoths of machinery.

The gym is just NOT for me. Grunting, sweating, making puffy-fish faces trying to lift weights, looking mean-machine on the biceps, etc just did not work for me. I don't wanna wear any of those spandex-y/itchy/net-fiber-on-the-inside gym outfits; nor have I ever managed to find a pair of soft work-out pants that I like.. (like: feel sexy/smart in!) Nor do I wanna worry about jiggly parts when I'm trying to walk/run on the treadmill.. :D

So much so, the second (and the last to date) time I went to the gym just to try and 'work-out', I just sat on the Cycling thingie and pedalled and pedalled and pedalled and finished quite a bit of Da Vince Code the n-th time around!! Yea, I'm just going to stay away from there. Just be-ing is enough exercise for me, atleast at this stage of my life.

Maybe once I pack on the mega-giga-pounds in the future, (shudder, God forbid I just bloat inexplicably anytime soon, shudder); I'll buy a robot that drags you by the neck (or multi-layers of the neck-that-was) and deposits your ass on the road, and/or molecular-transfers you to the nearest gym and puts a force-shield around the house that does not let you back in without a satisfactory body-fat analysis.. Geekiness ahoy! But yea, who knows what gizmo-gadgets will rule the day in the future? But if it comes to that, I do hope they will make one which just zaps you into shape without any effort on your part, other than pressing a button and inputting your favored parameters. I should think about this more.. hmmm, interesting!

Salsa Thursday!

Every morning, when I pack myself some food for the day at work, I feel like I'm preparing for a picnic! All the food I take, apart from my junk-food-vending-machine.. It gets me through the individual day, but how do I get through an entire week? The secret: Salsa Thursdays.. Tada!!! Every Thursday, Pam brings in Salsa that she makes at home, plus two bags of chips, and sets them down on the table downstairs.. This countdown to Thursday kinda takes the blues off the first three days back at work, how psycho am I! Oooh, I wait till its 9:00 am on Thursdays to rush down and pretty much be among her first 'customers'. The interesting part is about the salsa.

Americans, in general, don't seem to be too tolerant of spicy stuff. Look at all the cheese - my point has been made. But of course, me the great, would die without spice in all probability. And Pam makes this spicy stuff, and if I say spicy, then you should understand how spicy it must be! And I simply looove it. So, the funny thing is to see how these folks eat the salsa. They take a bunchload of chips, sprinkle some salsa over it, like we sprinkle holy water on our food after a puja!!! And then, they huff and puff about the spice, and drink a gallon of Coke/water! Hehe.. and when they see me dip my chip in the salsa bowl and bring up a pile of 'liquid fire' to my mouth, they just watch like I'm one of those 'freakshow' corners at the carnivals! Tickles me pink.. Long live salsa.. I'll surely miss these Thursdays once I'm done with the internship!

Inky Pinky Ponky

I was just 'Orkutting' and came across the line: Who said life is fair, it is about making choices.

It took me only a couple of minutes to realize the truth in that statement. In life, we do really come across those 'decision-making-crossroads' (And I assume that includes the Inky-Pinky-Ponky ones too!), and sometimes we do not realize that we are in fact at such a juncture. More often than not, we do take the easy way out. Reminded me of this poem I came across in high school:

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Theories abound and arguments continue over the interpretation of this poem - if Frost was mocking his friend's indecisiveness, if it was about his choice in life to become a poet, if there is a satire in saying that 'Though as for that the passing there, Had worn them really about the same' alluding to the fact that we see what we want to see, and a lot of other views.

Be as it may, it all boils down to making a choice. What triggers a person to lean towards one choice more than another? Is it the state of mind at that point of time, the pressures, the feasibility, the 'correctness' of the decision..? Does his 'And that has made all the difference' ring a satisfactory tone, or a sigh of things that may-have-been?

They say that people who are mentally strong, and keep a cool & clear head while making a decision are those who are good decision makers. Why? Why can it not be that fickle minded people think about an issue in more angles than one, and hence cannot make up their mind? Eventually, everyone does end up making a decision, for good or bad. And time will tell.. Even then, down the lane, some might look back, some might not. Some might regret it, and some might reap a future benefit from the wrong choice (as it might have seemed at an earlier point in time) they made. Is life just a play of probability? Is it just nothing but a 0-1/on-off choice?

Society shapes what you think. But aren't you a part of the society? And thus influencing some other person's train of thought? If that were true, are we all just a tapestry bound together by interwoven thought processes? What of the so called non-conformists? Are they the knots in between? Do they need to be weeded out? I would think not. They add the textural dimension, don't they? Would you rather have a cotton rug beneath your feet, or a nice knotted Persian?

All you need is the belief to adhere to your decision, and the strength to see it through. That is what strong people are made of, not a single window of thought.. Deep down, you must just believe that you are doing what you think is smart and right. Right - morally and ethically. And from this decision and conviction will spring the strength that will carry you through it. It took the spider all the way up, did it not? :)

I will always remember the one line that takes me through life: 'Everything that happens, happens for the best'. How easy it is to throw the dice, and realize that you have done your part, and the faces that land up on the dice are not really in your hands (as long as you ain't cheatin'..!) As big as you think that your life has its problems, there are people out there with problems much worse anyways.

Psyched!

Why am I thrilled? Because I picked up a whole bunch of books to read.. Yeay! An obscure corner of the mall had this bookstore which had this Bag-it-offer.. you just pick up a normal sized grocery bag, and put all the books you want into it, and its all for just 5 bucks! How cool is that??!!! So, racing against mall-closing-time, I zipped through shelves of books, and guess I picked up somewhere around 25 books? And now, I can slowly read all of them, when I'm indulging myself during that 15 day holiday that I'm counting down to...

I picked up a whole bunch of varied fiction stuff, right from the Jackie Collins variety to Robin Cooks and a lot of unknowns. In between all these plots lies this one type of novel which I still love and hate. Its the psycho stuff... all the brutal serial killers, the raving maniacs with minds that snapped from a childhood tragedy, the cold blooded ruthless ones who kill just for the heck of it, the criminal masterminds who plot intricate cat-and -mouse games just to thwart the Yard.

I haven't yet decided if I love them or hate them. For instance there was this Dean Koontz "Intensity" that I read, about this guy who kills to appease his fine 'senses' and is a cop in real life. What a twisted character he was... These are the kind of novels you loathe, go 'eeeewwwww' over, but still continue reading because you want to see what happens in the end! Some of these psycho plots are so elaborate, some are killers on a whim, some consider themselves Gods of justice, some carve up pregnant women, some go about getting rid of gay people, some fashion whole scenarios like in the movie 'Saw', some just have mindless sprees, and what not? I absolutely HATE them.. but every now and then, when the mood gets to me, I go all dark and morbid and sit down curled with one of these kind of novels.

Do people write such novels mirroring the actual criminals out there in society? Do they write them as an escapist fantasy that they'd like to embark on, but cannot owing to the societal scenario? Do criminals get their ideas from all these pages of gore and guts? What drives the writer/the reader to write/read such a story? Why do I, at times, want to read a purely psychotic story? Is it to convince myself that there are people who are more psycho than I am? Am I psycho? Is it just to see how cracked the human facade can be? Is it to just become numb and not think about anything for a while after you read that? I cannot fathom it, but I repulse these novels.. And yet, once in a while, I pick up one of their kinds!

And whatever you study into the mystery that is the human mind, there aren't going to be answers out there. Psychiatrists exist, I'm not saying they are baloney.. But in the end, no one can predict/figure out in entirety what drives such sociopaths. They are in a way fanatics. But that is a whole other state of existence. I'd say that in a way, all humans are fanatics about something or the other, it is just the degree of obsession that is the thin line between the normal folks and the others. But who are we to claim ourselves as normal? I'm obsessive about having a clean space, where-as someone at a higher degree of this obsession might, for all you know, go around slashing people who bother him in that aspect! I might tolerate all beliefs and faiths, but someone who is not open to it might as well become a 'terrorist' in their own right. And what of the people the society brands as 'terrorists'? What made them that way? Was it just their upbringing, or was there a humane side to them too? What of all the different angles which define a person?

What is it that drives people to become that way? Again, it is all in the mind. As gullible as it can get, the psyche can be completely unrelenting and unyielding. That makes us who we are. For some, the control drives you either to the extremes or to a balance which might be your key to sanity. But you cannot question the sanity of anyone at the extreme ends of the spectrum either! What gives you the ability to decide who is sane and who is not? After all, an insane persons first claim is that he/she is indeed sane.

This is where the future of humanity pretty much lies: in the balance of control over the self and over others. In the mind...

Boooooring.

Have I done any notably 'crazy' things in my life? Hmm... I wonder!

Nothing so absolutely smashin' to gloat about. Dyammm, am I a boring individual?

Ok, maybe I should list the 'crazy' things I haven't done, and then go about doing them in 2007.

Naahh, I should just get crazy on impulse. Talking about which, I have done quite a bit of 'impulsive' stuff in the two years I've been here, and that reassures me I ain't that predictable and boooooring.