Random Musings

Newbury Street in Boston is the place to go when you want to shop. It has all the outlets, and naturally, they are all very expensive. Not the kind of place I would naturally gravitate to.

Last evening, though, I was walking down Newbury, on my way back home from a meeting. I was keeping my eyes straight ahead, avoiding temptation. Unfortunately, straight ahead I saw a sign: Raven Secondhand Books. I didn’t know I was going to go there, but as I passed, my feet sort of naturally just turned and took me into that store.

And I’m glad I listened to my feet. The place was fantastic! Not as good as Blossoms, in Bangalore (I miss that!), but I found a lovely set of the Lord of the Rings. Hardcover, large fold out maps in color, beautiful type, pristine condition. And for $20! That’s cheap by Indian standards!

So now I feel at home in Boston/Cambridge.

Got my feet up on the coffee table. It’s that time of the year in Delhi when it’s sweltering. And I have little to do, so I sit with my feet up on the coffee table, listening to Greenday singing ditties about the last of the american girls, or something like that.

The last few months have been all interesting. Lots of paperwork to complete, lots of things to get through. Now, though, it’s all done. I’m flying in a month to Logan Airport, Boston. Yup, Boston, the home of the bean and the cod. Where the Lowells speak only to the Cabots. And the Cabots speak only to God. Ah, the old feudal system. Just like home, then.

I’m going there to attempt to get an MBA. I know, I know, long time readers of this journal are currently wide-eyed. I’m full of surprises, I am. You can send incredulous emails to the usual address.

So it’s another transitory month. My expectation levels are about at par with what they were when I went to law school, and from law school to Bangalore. And I had a nice time at both places, so this should be alright as well. Naturally, I’m going to freeze to bits, but on the bright side, I can make a snowman!

However, there’s still some time before I leave. I’m spending that month in peaceful contemplation, mostly. The World Cup is over (SPAAAAAAIN), so there’s a large, football shaped, void in my life now.

I have decided to be less anti social on Facebook now. I’ve actually opened my wall for comments! and even allowed people to see where I’ve worked. I still have only 66 friends though. And no, there are no scandalous pictures of me. Not just aren’t there any on Facebook, they just don’t exist. I don’t do scandalous things.

I’ll give you a minute to stop smirking nastily.

Done? Good.

So, moving on, where are we now? Ah yes, if you’re expecting explanations for the previous few cryptic posts, forget about it. Those are sentences stripped of context, sadly alone, with no story attached to them.

If there’s anyone in Delhi who’s reading this and wants to hang out before I’m off, email me. I’m going to go and read about octopuses now.

It was back in 2006 that I’d last mentioned Asterisk, the geeky IP-PBX system that you, as a normal red-blooded male (or woman, I’m not sexist) don’t give two hoots about.

I finally got around to fiddling with it. Spent all of today sitting at home and getting it to work. And you know, it did work. And then I was bored. Now that I’ve figured it out, the rest is just details. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind details, but it’s detail for detail’s sake that I absolutely detest.

It’s like this. Now, I know how to setup a VoIP-PBX for a mid-sized business, with voicemail, extensions, IVR, the works. Sure, there’s a lot I don’t know, but I’ve got the basics, and given a real-world problem, I’ll stick with it till I’ve figured it out. The operative words are “real-world”. Give me something to fix, and I’ll fix it.

It was fun figuring it out though. Pretty damn arcane, too.

Anyway, I see your eyes glaze over, so I’ll stop with the discussion on geeky punctuation marks.

It’s terribly hot. Naturally, this is placeholder text so that I can cleverly segue into talking about the World Cup. The football world cup. oh me oh my.. I do love watching that, and this time promises to be a whole lot of fun. The competition is wide open, and there’s a certain Lionel whatisname that has shown some smattering of talent. And oh yes, today I was discussing apartment plans. Hopefully (fingers crossed) in a four months I shall be freezing in a distant land. No, I don’t come from a land down under, but I sure as hell come from a land where the men plunder. Plunder is the middle name of the average Delhi denizen. Everyone seems to be walking around with but one thought uppermost in their minds: how do I get the better of the guy in front of/behind/beside/under/yet-to-be-born/me. While this is a laudable sentiment and leads to many great inventions (such as the world cheapest method of radioactive waste disposal.. cheap? hah, we actually made a PROFIT on it.) it does get a little tiresome all day every day. The city is constantly on edge, and tempers are never far from the surface. In fact, most people here are so ready to fight, they get disappointed when you apologise. The other day, I almost missed an exit, and swung across a lane of traffic to make it. I narrowly missed wiping out a stolid father of four (that’s a guess) going home on his scooter. It was entirely my fault, and he was well within his rights to be quite angry. He came up next to my car (I’d stopped) and yelled something at me. I couldn’t quite make it out, since he was mostly yelling inside his helmet, but it wasn’t complimentary. As he paused for breath, I told him that I agreed with him, and that I was sorry, and that I’d take more care in the future.

….
….
…..

Silence. Then a mumbled “yes, good, ok, bye” and he staggered off. He didn’t know what to say. It was quite funny.

Seriously, sometimes my life is so funny, it’s not even funny. Just in December I was all dull and grey, at a low ebb, even. Things weren’t really looking up, and I was grappling with all sorts of existential questions. You know, the sorts you think of when you have Rs.732.36 in the bank, no job, no admission anywhere, and the prospect of living on home food for a long while. (Hang on, home food?? that’s not so bad.. strike that.. but the rest counts!). I simply refused to face facts, and be all mature. This decision of mine was helped by the presence in Jaipur, after many long years in the hinterlands of that tiny little unimportant country where they play a pansy ass game all padded up and call it football, of TR and Nish-boy.

These two personages shall not be identified further, since I have a sneaking suspicion that one day both of ‘em are going to be Very Important®, and we don’t want biographers coming across this post then, mmmm-kay? Good. Anyway, so here we all were, the awesome threesome, reunited again. So what did we do? Did we talk about our careers? The future? Getting married, maybe? (Not to each other, dumbass, don’t bother reading further if you’re going to be cracking silly ones like that.) Perhaps investment advice??

Heh.

Here’s what we actually did, in no particular order:

1. Ate till we couldn’t walk.
2. Played Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 all night long.
3. Bought a cricket kit. With pads, gloves, leather ball, the whole enchilada. And then proceeded to use it.
4. Flew kites till our fingers bled and our hearts were gladdened.
5. Bought 500 kites for Makar Sankranti, only managed to fly about a hundred of them, since we’re all such extreme experts at kite flying. (yes, even Nish-B)
6. Laughed at each other’s plans, with no thought of offering support and/or consolation.
7. Drove to Nahargarh at 1 AM
8. Drove to Ramgarh at 2 AM
9. Saw mysterious men with torches coming towards us at Ramgarh, panicked and ran.
10. Possibly imbibed minor amounts of various alcoholic substances in a safe, and sober manner, with absolutely no silly behavior whatsoever.

Lest they be mortally offended, let me not forget the others who were there. Again, in no particular order, there was Manu “I ONLY WEAR CLOTHES THAT HAVE FMS EMBLAZONED ON THEM” B and Pu-Wa the amazing margarita drinker and all around cutie. Besides these two, there were a host of minor players, Zo-Wa, Bu-B, and so on, who had small, but poignant, roles to play.

So yes, like I was saying December was a month of doom and gloom. Nevertheless, I kept the stiff upper lip, and soldiered on.

Imagine my relief, then, when I learnt that I’ve actually been accepted to a decent B-school. Finance fell into place, and life looked up. However, I was still home, and pretty much broke. I might have had a little more than 732.36 (poetic license, don’t ya know??), but not a whole lot more.

And then, out of the blue, I was offered a job. And not just ANY job, no-siree. I don’t do normal, apparently. I was asked to head the Delhi operations of a firm that was about to open it’s office in Delhi. And not some teensy-weensy mom and pop joint, a pretty decently sized one. So here I am in Delhi, renting office space, hiring people, talking to vendors, and generally learning that running an office is pretty damn tough! Sigh, I even have to keep track of the law! Dukan Aur Vanijya Adhishthan Adhiniyam,1962, anyone??

So that’s me. It’s all good and getting better, and that’s how it always should be, is it not? And THAT, my friend, is what keeps me looking like a twenty two year old…

Weeeellll, maybe not 22. Might have exaggerated a smidgen there. More like 25. That’s still alrighty!

I’ve been home since the 9th of August, but I was working six days a week from the 11th of August to the 9th of October, so I barely had any time to rest and recuperate. For the past three weeks, however, I’ve been doing nothing.

Doing nothing is really boring, however, so I keep myself amused in various ways. Yesterday, I was crouched on a small ledge, ten feet above the ground, with a pipe wrench in hand, determined to fix the damn geysers.

I’ve also been fiddling about with Hyper-V 2008 R2 and VMWare ESXi. I spent some cash on upgrading the RAM in my desktop to 4 GB, cause DDR2 RAM is going to get pricier and pricier now. 4 GB should be enough for this box. The next one I get will have at least 8 GB of DDR3, and probably much more.

All this is fun, but the downside is that sitting at home is unfortunately not very lucrative. Financially, I’m up the creek. I’m not worried though, since I have one more month of idleness, and then I start working again, so it’s all good. Two months off are enough for anybody, especially when you can get cheese sandwiches made to order and delivered to your bedside (no, I’m not making my poor old mother run around, we have help).

I will fix some more things around the house before I leave. Windows Home Server is already running happily on my old machine, backing up my desktop and Mom’s laptop (she uses a Thinkpad T series.. she knows her hardware).

So that’s what I’m up to. What are all you corporate minions doing?

I’ve been home for a couple of months now. It’s all good, especially the fact that I have lots of time to get stuff fixed. I’m getting the car fixed, the computer fixed, and pretty much everything else fixed. I even bought TuneUp and cleaned my music collection, all 15,000+ songs.

TuneUP is quite fantastic. It’s not free, but at $16 (it’s $20, but I found a coupon), for a years subscription, it won’t break the bank either. And it works very well—just drag a bunch of songs over to the interface, and watch as it magically gets all the info.

TuneUp cleans up messy media.

It’s not all great—sometimes, it just seems to inexplicably hang, and I have to restart iTunes to get it to work. It works only with iTunes, not as a stand-alone program, so if you prefer another music player, you’re going to have to install iTunes, use TuneUp to clean the media, and then import those songs into the other player. Still, these are fairly minor issues, and I just got an update that seems to have fixed the hanging issue. If you have a lot of songs labeled Track 01.mp3, give TuneUp a go. They have a free version, which has some limitations, but it’s enough to let you know if you need to pay for the full version.

It took me about a week to clean up my collection, but it was worth it. Now I have neatly categorized songs, with proper album art and genres, and this makes it a lot easier to pick songs that I like to listen to.

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.

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.

Two months of mysterious absence shall go, mysteriously, unexplained. Expunge the memory of vainly pressing the refresh button, hoping against hope that I have written something to bring cheer into your dreary lives. Think not of the dark days when you came home from work, and rushed to check this journal. Curse me not, for I have returned, none the worse for wear.

I’m heading home for a couple of weeks, and shall fly kites. I shall also eat. No, don’t scoff, I NEED to eat. I was ill last week and lost five kilograms, so I need to put it all back on. That should take a day or so.

Small tip for anyone who’s looking to buy speakers. Buy the Audioengine A2′s. 10,000 bucks, but boy are they good!

To keep up the good start to 08, I decided to head home to Jaipur to fly kites on the 14th of Jan. I’ve not missed a single Sankranti in eighteen years, so I didn’t want this year to be the one. I informed my boss of my plans, and had him look crosswise at me.

I could almost see him thinking, “Just why do we have this guy working for us, again? I’m tempted to kick him out..” But he decided to be magnanimous, and told me to go forth, and cut some kites. Of course, I had to work very very hard in the preceding week to make up for my absence, but that was a minor blip. So post hard work, on Friday, the 11th, I flew to Delhi. Why Delhi? Delhi is cheaper to fly to. Must be something to do with all that Punjabi bling.. lights up the city and makes the approach for landing easier.

So there I was, only two hours late. The next day was fruitfully spent being a girl. No, I didn’t cross dress, I went to a mall with two friends of mine. I’m not much of a mall rat (at all) but hey, what the heck, it was fun. This is a big new mall in Delhi, called the City Mall, or Sigma Mall, or the Something Mall. Bah, whatever. It’s in Saket, and has all the cool (read expensive) brands there. Fcuk, Guess, Tommy, blah blah blah.

So after wandering about for an hour or two, I made plans for the evening and headed home.

All this was merely the prelude to the next day, the 13th. We (sis-in-law and I) were supposed to be driving down to Jpr at 7 AM. So naturally, we started at 3 PM. Drove like a maniac all the way, and got home at 8 PM.

M’verygoodpal Mehta was supposed to be leaving for the ol’ US of A on the 16th. Except he wasn’t. He’d misread the ticket (of course, trust Mehta), and found out at the eleventh hour that he’s leaving at the thirteenth hour! Well, not that drastic, but it entailed him frantically packing at 2 AM on the night of the 13th, and leaving on the morning of the 14th. So I landed up at his house at 10 PM, to laugh at him and generally bug him. Having done this successfully for five hours, and having made sure he’d probably forgotten half the things he was taking back for his bevy of beauties, I left at 3 AM.

Home by 3:10, in bed by 3:30 AM…

and UP at 8 AM, ready to hit the roof!

As I rushed up the stairs, I was hoping against hope that it would not be a disappointing day. You know, either rainy, or not windy or too windy, or windy in the wrong direction.. that kind of thing.

But never fear, the Universe works in good ways when you fly two thousand kilometers to fly kites. It was a PERFECT day. Sunny, and bright, and just windy enough. I flew a couple of kites from my house, and then headed to Ranbir Mamosa’s place, which is where I generally end up spending Sankranti.

Picture perfect blue skies, gentle breeze. The first hour or so, my kill rate was quite low, since I’d not flown a kite for a year. I was averaging only two kites cut per kite I flew. A quickly gobbled lunch helped me calm my nerves, and I returned to the roof full of steely resolve. And hell yeah! I’d found my touch again. After that, kites were fluttering down, but not mine, oh no, no sireee.. I started off by cutting 12 with one, dipped a bit to 9, and then brought it back up to about 12-15 per kite. Ripped through two kites at once, went far far away and hunted down the high flying ones, cleared a suitable volume of sky. So what if my hand was covered with blood? Blood I can afford to lose!

Two o’clock to six o’clock passed by in the manner preferred by kite-flying aficionados. Tr, dude, you missed a good Sankranti. But fear not, good pal, I flew one kite for you, and just like that time at Shobhit’s house, it went very very far, and cut very many kites. So you were there in spirit, and I’m sure that though you might be halfway across the world, you heard a faint echo of “Kaata!” somewhere in the night.

A very satisfying day came to an end, and I returned home. Bone weary, but with a big grin on my face and my fingers ripped up. I have no idea where I’ll be on the 14th of January 2009, but 14th Jan 2008 will definitely be remembered for a long time to come.

So that was my trip to Jaipur. And now I’m back here, working hard, and trying to figure out how to pay for all this profligate traveling that I’ve been doing On the other hand, even if I have to sell stuff, it was totally worth it. No doubts on that score whatsoever.