Random Musings

The subject of this post is my oh-so-clever allusion to finally buying a camera. I’ve wanted to buy one for a long time, but I wanted a camera with manual controls. When I was a kid, I used to read the photography magazines, and I wished I could have had a camera then, but it was an expensive hobby in the days of film. Now, of course, things are much easier. I didn’t buy a DSLR for the simple reason that those are big and heavy. Also, I want to learn as much as I can before I spend on that.

So, what did I buy? I bought a Panasonic Lumix G2. This is based on the Micro Four-Thirds system, and has interchangeable lenses. If you want to see what I’ve been doing with the camera, go here:

My Flckr Photostream

I’m learning right now, so the pictures aren’t exactly what Ansel Adams would have shot. Still, it’s great fun.

2010 is almost over. It’s going to be my very first white christmas. I’ve never seen snow before, except in movies and far away in the distance. Now, though, it’s snowing and it’s very pretty. It’s also messy, slippery, dirty, cold and painful, but hey, we can suffer for our art, yes?

This year brought many changes. My grandmother passed away, and I wasn’t there. Words cannot express what she meant to me. And that pales before what she meant to my mother. It had to happen sometime, but that’s not much consolation. My lovely dog Daisy passed on as well. Those of you who know me know exactly what these two events did to me.

Life goes on, however, and I’m far away trying to live up to my grandmother’s last words to me. She told me to study hard, and I’m trying. I fall off the wagon sometimes, but on the whole, I manage to keep on it. My grades are up, and considering I haven’t studied in years and years I’m sorta pleased. Not too pleased though, I could be doing better. B-School is many things, but more than anything else, it is a place that really gives you as much as you put it. I’ve made some friends, even though we sound like a joke (An Indian, a Mexican, and an American walk into a bar..).

Some other stuff has happened, not all of which I am going to talk about. Tch tch, don’t look so disappointed, you can’t expect me to forget that Google is going to zap these words to the great unwashed masses (not YOU, of course) post haste.

What I can talk about is getting older! I’ve detected the beginnings of lines on my forehead. And I have some gray hair now. I refuse to be fat though, even though American food makes it very easy. Between the gym, home-cooking, and keeping an eagle eye on my weight, I’ve managed to keep it exactly at what it was back home. Can I keep this going? Hmmm, I’m certainly going to try.. I have a plan. A well thought out stratagem to go from where I am to where I want to be. Pitfalls abound, but I’m going to try to get across all of them.

I’m going to cook some dinner and watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s now. I hope you have a wonderful holiday as well. If you’re someone I know and haven’t heard from in ages, write to me! It’d be nice to catch up.

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.

Some of you may be wondering what the heck happened to me. I’ve never been this quiescent for so long (with one exception, in 2006). I’ve always managed to put up a post a month at least, so what’s been going on?

Well, let’s see now. Many, many things. I’ve been accepted to business school in the US, and am trying hard to get all the various ancillary things done so that I can go there. I had LASEK eye surgery, late in November ’09, so no more spectacles. This is by far the biggest change in my life. Most of you who read this will know that I wore specs; what most of you don’t know is that I’ve had specs since I was 6 years old. I’m 27 now, so for more than two decades, I’ve have my eyes obscured by two places of glass (later plastic, what with Crisal, and Carl Zeiss, and what not). Not anymore, though.

I’d been thinking about getting the procedure done for a while, but the last straw was in Delhi, when I broke my specs. My high power meant that I was practically blind, and had to somehow get a pair of specs made right then.

I came back to Jaipur, and immediately went to see a doctor. I went on Friday, and had the procedure performed on Tuesday. Zap!

Three days of agony, since LASEK takes quite some time to heal. Unlike LASIK, which is supposed to be pain free within a day, it took me ten days before I was able to sit in front of a computer, or read a book. My eyes healed slowly, but now, almost two months later, it’s simply amazing to be able to play tennis, or fly a kite, or just wake up in the morning and look around and see everything in sharp focus. It’s the best thing I’ve ever gotten done.

I was also in the process of applying to some colleges, and early in January I got the news that I’d been accepted to some. I don’t want to jinx things, so I’m not going to talk about it too much just yet, but keep your fingers crossed for me, gentle reader.

So things seem to be looking up, and getting clearer (literally, even).

but it’ll have to do. It’s been ages and ages since I wrote. And not for lack of time; after saving the world everyday, I’m left with some time on my hands, enough to write, perhaps. It’s just that I haven’t had anything to write about. Not that that’s stopped me before, not at all, never did. Somehow though, I get the feeling that what I write doesn’t cut it anymore. Do I then, make this a closed journal, rather than an open blog? I thought of that, indeed even selected that option from the little menu on the right. Changed it back to public, but I still don’t know why.

What do I write about? I don’t want to be whinging about things, even though I was telling someone today that cribbing is our national pastime. Neither do I wish to go on and on about the next geeky thing that I’m doing, or even the non-geeky things, of which, believe it or not, there are a few. Leaving what, then? A descriptive post about the minutiae of Blackberrys, which I’ve been seeing a lot of these days? Hmmm.. but no, not that, that’s too much like work, and work is worship, yes, but worship stretched too far becomes fanaticism, and that’s not a road worth walking.

Staring at the screen leads to a realization: I need new spectacles. The ones I have are a little scratched, and I know this, because I spent a minute trying to remove a spot on the screen, before the penny dropped. Spectacles are stupidly expensive these days, and some days I wonder if it’s better to just go get laser surgery and be rid of the whole thing forever. I suppose I shall do that, someday, if it’s possible for my eyes, that is. ZAP!, and no more squinting. Seems like magic, na?

I’m struggling too hard to keep this post on the straight and narrow, so I’m just going to stop now. It is spiraling down, down, down and there’s nothing I can do to save it. So let’s shoot it dead-stone-cold-dead, and come back another day.

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.

It was a calm Saturday today, and I spent most of the day in, alternately reading and watching a movie or three. I’d had a substantial lunch, so I wasn’t even very hungry, and those of you who know me are probably staggered by that statement. In any case, around nine thirty, I decided to go out and buy a couple of packets of Lays, since I was hungry again (ah, normal service resumes).

So I shrugged on a sweatshirt, wore my jeans, and stepped out of my apartment. In the corridor outside, two five year old girls were running up and down. As I pulled the door shut, they suddenly came up to me, and in perfect unison, said, “Can we see your house, please?”. I was taken aback, since I’ve never spoken to them. However, since the house was pretty clean, I said, “Why not”, and let them in.

They ran around the house quickly, said “It’s a very nice house”, and scampered out. It was quite amusing. I wonder what manner of strange beast I was harboring inside my house.

It’s the end of the month, which means it’s the beginning of the next, which means that it’s salary time! It will be nice to be briefly rich again, before I have to pay the rent, and the bills, and all that. For a few hours at least, I’ll have a lot of money

I’m looking forward to the new year. It’s always the same, no matter how bad or good the year has been, there’s just something about the next year coming up that bring cheer to the heart. And for this journal, it will be three years all done. It was actually four, but I was stupid, and accidentally wiped out my first year of posts. It’s been good fun, writing this, and I’m going to keep on going. All this disjointed, extremely sanitized, inoffensive, carefully-mentions-no-names-or-other-identifiable-information writing is fun.

It fun, because on the one hand, it’s an intensely personal thing. Yes, I know blogs are supposed to be public outpourings of every little detail of life, but I’ve never liked that idea. At the same time, I’ve tried keeping a personal journal, but I find that a little disconcerting as well. I don’t like writing down details, even if it’s just for me. What I’ve evolved over the past three (four!) years of writing on this site is an interesting compromise. I write stuff that I wouldn’t be worried about anybody reading, since it is on a public website, and all these bits are flying around on servers across the world, and who knows where they end up. At the same time, if I read it later, it should evoke what I felt at that time, and the circumstances surrounding that post, and it should remind me of things that I may have forgotten. I hadn’t actually been able to test this till now, since the events were still fresh in my memory, but now, when I go back and read posts from three years ago (Hedgehogs, Bears, and many more), it actually does work!

I remember all the other stuff that’s not written in the post, and some stuff that I have clean forgotten about came back to me. If I keep this going, it’ll be fun to look back in another few years. And despite many accusations of not writing enough, I do try and write a couple of times a month, at least. I’ve missed the odd month, and the mere absence of those months is enough for me to remember what I was up to at the time. Some good stuff, some not so good

My posts are backed up now, to two separate locations, so I ought not suffer the indignity of losing everything.

Let me know what you think of the new theme to my blog. Leave a comment.

Yes, coming off the back of my previous post about the joys of the actual written word, this may seem contradictory, but what the heck!

I’ve been using computers since 1992. That’s fifteen years, for those of you who are counting. The early years did not consist of much typing, but what little there was was done on those old style mechanical keyboards. You know, the ones that weighed a ton, and made an almighty racket, but were lovely to type on..

Later on, when we bought our own computer, we started using the rubber-dome keyboards. These are the most commonly available keyboards, and while they work fine, and are cheap, they are rubbery, and squishy, and just do NOT feel nice. I used these keyboards from 1997 to 2003, when I bought another computer.. This time, I made sure I picked up a TVS Gold Keyboard. While it’s not as heavy as the old style ones (you could KILL someone with those), it’s reassuringly hefty, and the keys were works of art.

I use the past tense, because, after using this keyboard for four years, I managed to kill it while bringing it back from college. Moans, groans, and lamentations. Doom and GLOOM. Especially since the only backup keyboard I had was a P-O-Shit Samsung that my dog had peed on a while back!! Ewwww you say, and EWWW!! said I! Still, what was there to do, except grit my teeth, disinfect the keyboard, and use it. So I did, for the past three weeks.. till today!

Yes, kids, I have a TVS Gold again! And this time, it’s in black The keys caress my fingertips, whispering promises of “forever”.. I feel like writing the great Indian novel, figuring out the Theory of Everything, coming up with a scathing attack on organized religion, writing love letters and poems to the great unknown woman in my life..

With a shrug and a smile, I look at what I’ve written so far, say “The hell with it!”, and click on the publish button.

Despite what you might think this post is about, you would be wrong. This is not a tale of my misery and woe. This is a tale of a late nights and little hedgehogs. !, you might say? It goes like this..

There I was, sitting pretty with a nice book, late at night, a few nights ago. Reading peacefully, and munching on junk food, in a futile attempt to gain weight (not). And then (drum roll), from outside my window, I hear the dulcet tones of Shashwat ( well, not really dulcet, but hey, I have artistic license and I’m not afraid to use it) calling out my name. “Nag”, he says, “Come out, and I’ll show you a hedgehog”.

…

…

!!!

For a few seconds, I am wondering what wormhole I’ve gone through, and what EXACTLY he means by that.. A quizzical look, and Shash hastens to explain he means the little brother of a porcupine. Having cleared that up, I must admit that I am intrigued. So I hop out of my room (literally.. over the balcony) and we go hedgehog hunting.

The interpid hunters, armed to the teeth with sarcasm and rhetoric, stalk into the long grass of the African plains ( remember what I said about artistic license). We fear no man, and certainly no animal, with the possible exception of that rarely sighted creature, chief wardenus horribilus. Communicating only by gesture, we use our phenomenal tracking skills to trace the cowering creature. Convinced that his ( her?) doom is upon him ( or her), he (or she.. arrrgh) is curled up into a little ball of spines, presenting what we in the trade call a Rakhee Sawant camoflauge.

The two of us freeze instantly, and disappear into the background. Time passes. The moon rises and sets, owls fly by, and curious animal sniif at us.. ( and a dog almost pees on one of us, won’t say which one) before he realizes that we are not trees, or lampposts, or other peeable material. The hedgehog cautiosly pokes it’s snout out, and takes a sniff… and instantly ducks back in. Why? Dunhill Desire is the answer. The intrepid hunters forgot that animals have a keen sense of smell, and that it might not be the best idea to go in there smelling of haute couture . Ah well, we slink away, safe in the knowledge that our dignity at least is safe, since no one saw us.. or did they.

A shadow filts across the hostel, and the two of us pause to wonder who that was. Was it a junior? On the other hand, everyone is a junior, since we are in the fifth year, so that don’t really help us much. The sound of footsteps running up the stairs, and we begin to wonder just what kind of opium smuggling operation we have stumbled into. The crab with the golden claws comes to our minds, and we don our trench coats, and adopt our hard bolied detective accents…

heh heh heh.. I am going crazy now, so I shall stop.. more in the same vein will be too much of a good thing. later all, much more much later.

I miss Daisy. Who is Daisy?

That’s Daisy.