Random Musings

At least, there should be peace, but my neighbours don’t seem to agree. A couple of nights ago the indigo silence of the night was rudely shattered by the sound of raised voices. I peeked out, and these two chaps were almost about to have a fist fight. Over parking space.

It seemed a little pointless to me, but I don’t much like to fight, so perhaps I was missing something.

There is a feeling that winter has just about passed. It’s colder than ever, a sure sign that things are about to heat up real soon. The next weekend is a long one, but sadly I’m too poor right now to plan anything for it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since I have a stack of books to finish. I’ve been snatching a couple of hours every day to read them, and have made some good progress.

Just read what I’d written so far, and was struck by just how boring it was. It really is boring, nothing but a bare recital of what I did and what happened and blah blah blah…snore. No zip in the writing, no zest, no life. Just boiled potatoes. However, boiled potatoes are extremely yummy when mashed up with warm butter and some salt. Mashing potatoes is a fine art, not well understood by all. You don’t want them all lumpy and hard to chew, and neither do you want them runny and dripping off the fork. Properly done, this simple dish makes the tongue tingle, and the belly grumble happily once it’s done.

I’ve seen pre-mixed packets of mashed potatoes in the shops here. Never bought any, because to me they have no soul. None whatsoever. No, truly, I have not yet mashed potatoes myself here, but I resolutely refuse to eat that concoction of souless tubers mixed with heathenish chemicals. In this age of golden miracles, perhaps I’m missing out on a good thing? No, these things may be old, but they are the bedrock of many a familiar thing.

This is another example of rambling around. I really have nothing much to say tonight, but I feel like writing a little. So I’m actually watching the word count tick over, word by word, slowly, little by little, inching towards an uncertain future.

Has anyone else ever noticed what happens to the rubber slippers (flip-flops, the Americans say, but I say NO), that we wear around the house. The soles wear smooth, imperceptibly reaching a day when you rush into the bathroom, trying very hard to hurry up cause you’re unbearably late for work. The slippers hit a pool of water, and, with no warning whatsoever, physics takes over and you aquaplane helplessly across the bathroom, waving your arms in a semaphoric manner that no one is there to decipher. If you’re lucky, you manage to catch your self before a not so pleasant introduction with the constituents of the wall. If not…well, then you prepare to spend a while saying hello to every one of them, as you slide slowly down and come to rest in a pool od shuddering humanity, absolutely sure, in every fiber of your being, that you will be fired this day. This very day, not tomorrow, or the day after. This is the day that you have been waiting for but you didn’t know it. Deep in your cold heart’s core, a spark of life flames up, struck by the impact. Life is short, and there’s many a slip, so it’s what you do in the spaces between the falls that matters. All this gets too heavy, so you pick yourself up, and turn on the shower, only to skip out a second later, cursing volubly, as the piping hot water hits your numbed skin.

You stand by, shivering and slowly turning blue, poking a cautious hand into the stream to check the temperature. When it seems fine, you step back in, only to realize that the hand of fate ensured that your own hand was a lot colder than the rest of you, so when all was well for the hand, all was most certainly not well for the rest of you, as the rest of you lets you know in no uncertain terms.

Move one, move on, move one and on, and move on and on.

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Been a few days of Windows 7. Again, so far, so pretty good.

Been GPSing around the city again. I’m testing a few GPS devices for this story that I’m writing, and unlike most magazines that review these little gizmos by listing the features, I wanted to actually use the damn things before I waxed eloquent. Fine sentiment, yes, but just a couple of small problems. First, I don’t have a car. Yup, that’s right, I’m just a poor boy in a rich man’s world, and all I got is a bike. Admittedly a pretty nice bike, being the Pulsar 200 (in black, natch!), but it’s a little difficult hanging onto the handlebars and fumbling with a GPS thingy, all at the same time. Also, you can’t really hear the pretty lady say “Take the next right, moron”, on a bike. The second problem is more a function of chronology and geography than anything else. Simply put, I’m in Bangalore, in 2009. This means that, just like me, a gazillion other people have made their way here from all over the world, and those pretty little roads in the pensioners paradise are now seething, snarling, teeming, endless lines of red brake lights winking at you from under kohl-rimmed lashes.

But never discount a geek on a mission—he shall find a way. In my case, it was to wait till 12 AM, pop the GPS thingy into my bag, plug in some headphones, and set off. I chose a destination on the dark side of the moon (the other end of Bangalore, which might as well be the dark side of the moon, especially since the roads here closely resemble the dark (and bright) side of the moon), and set up. To thwart the chill in the air, I was well wrapped up in woolies (Delhi folk, chill here means 12 degrees C, eat your heart out), and the roads were nice and traffic free. It was strange, to say the least, to ride along listening faithfully to a little voice in my ear, but I followed instructions to the T, and boy what a ride I had.

At first, all went well. I was on nice broad roads, and the lady in my ear seemed pleased. A few k’s in, though, and she directed me down a little street. I had my qualms, but heck, I’m testing this thing, ain’t I, so there I went. And it took me through Chikpet. Now, for those who don’t know Bangalore, let me just say that this particular locality is something like Chandni Chowk in Delhi, the walled city in Jaipur, or the narrow lanes in old Calcutta. If it had been daytime, I would probably still have been there, stuck in traffic, but thankfully, it was all shuttered and dark, and I made my way through quite swiftly. To be fair to the device, it is possible that I took a wrong turning at one point, since there were two lanes close together, and I would have had to check the screen to be sure of the one to take, which I obviously couldn’t.

In any case, I did get back on track, and the little lady did actually get me to Point B with a minimum of fuss. The way home was a lot smoother, since all I had to do was press “Take me home”, having cannily saved that destination earlier, and she took me home. And by a much nicer route, I might add—broad, well-lit roads. In fact, I swear I caught a hint of smugness in her tone, when we got home. “You have reached your destination”.

I’ve been using this device some more, and I’m quite impressed so far. I’m also testing a competitor, but since that one doesn’t have a headphone port, I need a partner in crime to sit behind me and guide me around the city of blinding lights. That shall happen over the weekend.

I toyed with asking my boss to lend me his car for the tests, or just outright buying one on the company’s dime, but hmmm, in these recessive times, one can’t be too careful, so I didn’t.

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Why sigh? Those who know, will know.

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After a mere six months of using Windows Vista full-time on my desktop at home, I bit the bullet and installed the beta version of Windows 7. Now, normally, I would do a fresh install of Windows, but this time around, I didn’t feel like reinstalling all the programs that I have set up, so I thought I’d try the upgrade. Now, bear in mind that I’ve NEVER had an upgrade between Windows versions go perfectly smoothly. Still, in the interests of science (and also cause I was hungry and needed to go make myself some hot dogs), I tossed in the DVD, chose upgrade, and wandered off to the kitchen.

Over an hour later, and the setup was still chugging away. I didn’t expect it to take so long, but where a younger me would have restarted, I decided to let the damn thing take its own time. I read for a while, and after another forty-odd minutes, it was done.

And, shoot me down and call me drafty, but it..just..worked! All my programs, all my settings, everything just carried over smoothly. The only thing that stopped working was LogMeIn.

Microsoft Office 2007 – Check
Grid (Race Car) – Check
Skype – Check
Firefox (and add-ons) – Check
Gtalk – Check
Google Earth – Check
Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 – Check

I haven’t yet run across an application that does not work, and all my hardware is working perfectly as well. Admittedly, it’s only been a few hours, but not bad at all, Microsoft.

First impressions are positive, vastly more so than when I tried the first beta of Windows Vista (oooh, was that a dog or what). I’m still not sure about the new taskbar though. The combining of applications shortcuts and running applications is something that you don’t expect on Windows. It’s the exact same thing as on the OSX dock, and while I did get used to that, I never quite agreed with the idea. In any case, I’ll be using this for a while longer before I pass judgment. The rest of the OS is quite slick. Nothing like the leap from XP to Vista, Vista to 7 is more subtle. The UI improvements are minor, but the usability enhancements are quite welcome. Stuff like dragging the active window to the top of the screen maximizing it automatically, and so on. While small, these help. Now what 7 needs is a nice Exposé rip-off, and we’re all set.

I’ll be using this as the only OS on this machine from now on, so I expect to know a little more about Windows 7 in the days to come. So far though, it’s looking good.

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the first half of the movie ends and I open this thing up to write some. I’m back in the garden city, after a refreshing trip back home. There’s only one thing that I wasn’t able to do much of, and that’s fly kites. I did fly some, and hey, I had a hundred percent win ratio, since I cut six for the loss of none. Not too shabby, eh?
I also dabbled in real estate. The exact nature of my dabbling shall remain unsaid, but suffice it to say that it was something that I didn’t think I’d be doing for a longish time to come.
It was cold up north. A lot colder than it is here, in these salubrious climes. It would be impossible to ride around on a bike like I do over here. The bike is parked inside my flat right now, since I had parked in here for the holiday and couldn’t be bothered taking it out in the day. So tomorrow, I will ride out of my apartment on a big 200cc bike, and ride down the ramp leading up to the building. My neighbors wonder about me anyway, so let’s give them some more fodder to chew on.
Oh yes, I know it’s 2009, and traditionally, the first post of the year should be one with resolutions, hopes and dreams, and all that. I decided to skip that, and I think my readers will be thankful. I mean, do you really want to read ANOTHER whiny post about how great the year ahead is going to be?
I did go to a couple of kickass parties though, so I would classify the beginning of the year as a success, unlike last year.
So that’s off the cards. What is on the cards? The Malazan Book of the Fallen, that’s what. I now need to go buy all of that, and read my way through it. The faces of the forgotten loom fearfully large in the distant recesses of the soul.
Movies, music, and food. I saw Ghajini, and now I’m going to go see Chandni Chowk to China.
Perhaps I should write a few stories. Oh yeah, but I do that all the time. Technically auspicious, though, is not something that happens very often.

Hmm, after that little digression, I’m back on track. I think I’ll finish the movie that I was watching.

We’ll be seeing more of each other now, since I might write more. Then again, I might not.

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