A Life Less Ordinary

Its been five months since I returned from Seattle, but somehow something or the other happens that invariably takes my mind back to my trip there. This is a post about some of those memory refreshing incidents that have happened since I got back.

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Grey's Anatomy:
My sister follows the serial, although I haven't seen more than ten minutes of it, not counting the constant promos on Star World interspersed with a song by 'The Fray'. Everytime I end up going home, she's called dibs on the remote whenever the damn serial is on air. The rest of the family sulks in other rooms until such time that the serial is finally over.

However, some evening, I was too lazy to go do something else and I ended up watching the first few minutes of the serial, only to see helicopter shots of the Space Needle, the Seattle Center and 3rd Avenue, after which my sister told me that the serial was based in Seattle. It was kinda cool to see an overhead view of the city and visualize myself having walked along those streets for the various arbit activities I'd undertaken.

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A Guy Thing:
Having seen Julia Stiles in 'The Bourne Supremacy' and 'The Bourne Ultimatum' as well as in '10 things I hate about you' (whose DVD is now selling like hotcakes since it starred Heath Ledger), I thought she was a real cutie, and since I was in the mood for a romantic comedy last evening, I picked up A Guy Thing from my friendly neighbourhood DVD store, only to find out that the entire frigging movie was based in Seattle.

Familiar streets, some shops I've walked past, references to Broadway and more shots of the over-rated Space Needle were enough to bring about feelings of nostalgia. The movie itself is something people can watch when they're feeling brain-dead, and still enjoy it all.

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The Hungry Tide:
The Hungry Tide, a book by Amitav Ghosh, and the second book by him that I've received as a birthday present after having been given The Glass Palace as a birthday gift a long time ago has one of its major characters based in Seattle. She's a marine biologist who's here on some research work, and during moments of reflection has her thoughts drift towards the city she's grown to call her own.

I've gone through only about a hundred pages of that book, given my currently pathetic reading speeds, but so far its not been a bad read.

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Gimme S'More:
I'd got enough chocolates from my trip to last me all of five months. I've been on a recent sweet consuming binge which has resulted in me eating ice creams, chocolates, sweets of all kinds and drinking unmeasurable quantities of Tropicana Twister, ensuring that my blood sugar levels have reached all-time highs. It was during one of these instances when I was gorging on a Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar that I was reminded of a S'more.

On my last evening in the city, I had been to a birthday party thrown by some of my 'native' friends (I used to refer to American citizens as natives) and while sitting out in someone's backyard surrounding a fire, sipping slowly on one beer for four hours to as to maintain levels of sobriety necessary to ensure I was at the airport on time the next morning, I was introduced to a S'more, and I can't honestly think of something else I've eaten that's so brilliantly sweet and tasty at the same time. I gave it my own name at that time, I called it a Hershmellow, because I guess I didn't think too much of the Graham cracker that was also part of the S'more.

Never pass upon a S'more if given a chance to consume one. In fact, ask for more.

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Starbucks, endless solo walks along all the streets, hanging out at the CHAC enough to be a regular there, working decently hard on weekdays and being unerringly slothful during the evenings and weekends, phone calls to India, fond memories of my entire trip and the good times I had have remained, and will be counted as one of the nicest travel experiences I've had.

The times they are a-changin, but the memories remain.

Having seen the Dark Knight for the second time with Kodhi at PVR, I was thinking about the concept of social experimenting on techies to see how many of them get off their high horses if they're given enough incentive to do the same.

I am targetting techies because I like making fun of myself.

There, I just absolved myself from all vitriol that I might receive from anyone at all.

**here be Dark Knight spoiler**
Moving on, I was thinking of how the Joker effectively manages to make people think along the lines of killing another bunch in order for their own survival, thereby ensuring that all societal norms and regulations go for a toss.
**end of Dark Knight spoiler**

Now I'm not as evil as the Joker is, and I wouldn't dream of killing people and all that, but it would nevertheless be fun to see how people would react under different situations, and provide the rest of us with some quality entertainment.

For instance, techies use lifts to go from one floor to another, and the lunch time rush is when the lifts experience peak traffic. Junta are usually orderly, except for in some cases when they crowd onto it like people would into a BMTC bus*. Breaking wind at such times would make for some classic candid camera moments.

What if someone were to sponsor lunch to the person who got on to the lift first, before everyone else who was also waiting in line did? Would a techie succumb to the prospect of having free lunch over the need to maintain discipline and decorum? I don't know, you tell me.

Cubicles are closed spaces, and sitting in close proximity with people should provide people with some sense to not wear strong odour perfumes. What if someone were to not have a bath to counter this assault on one's olfactory senses?

What if one were to immerse into a glass of water, any cell phone that rang during a meeting DESPITE having insisted on putting cellphones on silent mode at the start of the meeting?

These are questions whose answers I don't want to find, I just want such situations to be created in the tech environs to shake things up a little.

* Notice I said BMTC bus and not Mumbai local train.

PS - I honestly don't see the need to have put in a spoiler alert, considering even Monkee has seen the movie. That makes him the last person on the planet to do so, and Christopher Nolan has promised to insert an Easter Egg dedication to said person for having seen the movie finally. Watch this space.

Yeah, I decided to take a page out of the livejournal owned by purely_narcotic and let my meandering thoughts be compressed such that different ones could fit into the same post. The only difference is that, my posts, pretty much like all episodes in all seasons of Seinfeld are about nothing.

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Journalistic Forays:
Citizen Matters, I discovered, has its own page for contributing writers and here is mine. The awesome thing is that the 'about me' section can be modified by people that own the page, and unlike in the two social networking sites that I have content on, this 'about me' might actually be read by some people.

As an aside, my piece on the lack of public space for Sunday Jams is on the front page of the newsletter.

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Two Hit Wonder??:
Just this morning, I saw the video of 'Love is Noise' by The Verve on VH1 as I was cleaning up all the nose hair I had trimmed with a jumbo sized vacuum cleaner, and I could think just one more video of theirs that came to mind that everyone has seen and heard of. However, I could think of one other song of theirs that I have heard on the radio - 'lucky man' and I was wondering why VH1 was airing 'Rockstar' by Nickelback about eight hundred times a day and not putting any other videos. Usher's latest song, that I switch off as soon as I see his face, also features on that list.

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Peter has no Principle:
Yes. Woe is me. I am within a ten metre radius of an anomaly that has defied the Peter Princple and risen above to seemingly vertiginous heights and I have no clue why!!! Further elaboration (read whining / bitching) on said matter will be done verbally to people who will ask - 'How's life?'.

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Breakfast at Tifanny's:
I now plan on growing a handlebar mustache and wearing a leather jacket that has a skull and crossbones on it. Additionally, I also plan to cut queues and eyeball everyone in sight. Maybe that will compensate for having received the Rough Guide to Chick Flicks as a birthday present in jest from a certain Simian, although said person will deny the jest bit in no uncertain terms.

To compound my misery further, I rented 'Breakfast at Tifanny's' because I heard Audrey Hepburn was such a babe, and ended up watching it. I think I should not trim my nose hair for all of next year, to compensate. Edit: I must admit, Audrey Hepburn is a real cutie.

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This pretty much concludes the first of my many "Notes about Nothing", although there's few other regular lengthy posts that I do plan on writing once the mood does happen. Maybe NaN will be a one time only venture as well, only time will tell.

Skimpy has upped the ante of his blogging forays by moving to a new website altogether. Although the power of feed readers will ensure that nothing changes with regard to following his blog, at the same time, the movement to a new and improved fully customized website is another thing altogether.

Having seen quite a few blogs morph into fully-fledged websites, I've been wondering for quite some time as to whether I should discard the arbit google pages front end I have had for my website and follow the path of those who've got their own server space and hosted their content online.

At this point in time, I have complete NED* to do so, but I am sure that this will change before the year is through.

*No Enthu Da - a concept Skimpy discovered, and is as infectious as any. Wednesday NED currently plagues me.

A friend of mine named PGK, nicknamed Praveen Gopal Krishna and 'PeeGeeGay' respectively by his parents and his Malayali teachers in school and college is the founder of a theatre group named Merchants of Drama, which is staging a play, adapted from Stephen King's Novella - An Apt Pupil, at the Alliance Francaise (Off Cunningham Road) on the 11th and 12th of July 2008 at 7 pm.

As specified in the customized mass mail PGK sent across, that begins with 'Dear All', here is some additional information that will prove useful for you to lay your hands on them tickets. At INR 100, its a steal.

For donor passes priced at Rs.100 each, call 99808-62727 or 99002-12387. Else, just login to www.buzzintown.com or mail at: merchants.of.drama@gmail.com . Tickets are also available at Crossword on Residency Road and the Alliance Café.

What better way to spend a friday or saturday evening, I say?

Additionally, here is the link to the blog which contains more information about the play, like the cast, crew, poster and all the other stuff.

There is a significant possibility that this post of mine is redundant, simply because there's justifiable proof that most people who've followed my LJ have invariably added Skimpy's Livejournal to their RSS feed reader.

Although there's a single instance of validation for my assumption, I think I wouldn't be unwarranted in making an educated extrapolation.

Blame the absence of my customary simple way of writing on the truckloads of work staring down at me on my windows taskbar. Brains are fried. Apologies.

However, this post is aimed at that miniscule segment of junta that might've remained oblivious to the Photowalk concept that Skimpy imported from Chandrachoodan of Chennai (a.k.a Hell, as of two LJ posts ago, but I've reconsidered and changed my mind because three of my guitars - 2 bass and 1 electric have now been purchased from there).

Feel free to click on the links pasted above to get a fair idea regarding what I am talking about. It would also be nice if you decided to check out flickr for the photos tagged "Bangalorephotowalk" in case you're an utter newbie.

Now that we've got the lengthy introduction out of the way, here's to inform you that the third Bangalore photowalk will be held on 29th June 2008, and will start at the intersection of Brigade Road and Residency Road at 0759 hours.

In the early mornings, when the 'party' crowd is yet to wake up, these roads are actually nice to walk along on. Kindly leave a comment on Skimpy's LJ if you wish to participate.

Hope you can make it, especially if you're the fun kinds. Others welcome too.

I fall in the latter category, but I shall be there nevertheless, as the token slovenly guy in my 'photowalk shorts' and the dirty stubble. Call me Aqualung.

Someone left me an anonymous comment in Stonkey Love Games asking if there were no more Stonkey related stories.

Turns out, after the day their species was created on 12th May 2008, very little thought has been paid to them in lieu of life, the universe, everything and everything else apart from it having gotten in the way, in some cases, very pleasantly so.

However, Rahul and Priya are not languishing away in some dark corner of someone's backpacks, being constantly pummelled by umbrellas, folded Swiss Army knives, books of assorted shapes, sizes and vintage or 500 ml plastic water bottles or bootlegged absinthe.

Well, atleast Priya isn't cause she is in Shrenik's house. The same can't be said about Rahul though.

There has been feedback given with regard to how all the Rahuls and Priyas we know have been offended for the Stonkeys having been given their names. What they don't realize is that in a few years from now, they'd be on par with Svayambhuva Manu and Satarupa, Adam and Eve, Pappa Smurf and Mamma Smurf and so on.

Shrenik plans to come up with a photo essay on what transpires among the Stonkeys, while efforts are also underway to make them meet more often. Rahul Stonkey, meanwhile should be made to understand that there is no way he can be gay, for by doing so he's already eliminated all options he has of ever being able to procreate.

Next month - a possible photo essay and more stories.

Last heard, someone from Auroville saw this LJ and has decided to make more Stonkeys. But ours are the real McCoy, make no mistake.

While hanging out with a good friend of mine, Prateek, a few evenings ago, I made an observation I thought was worth LJ-ing about. He is a big fan of Mirza Ghalib and other Urdu poets, and can spout their stuff verbatim, on demand, and knows which poem to say in what context.

Full respect to our man for that.

By comparison, the only pieces of Hindi / Urdu poetry that I know is stuff that I have learnt in school while studying Hindi, and some other stuff that I know by virtue of said pieces of poetry being translated into popular songs that have been used in Hindi movies.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to come up with examples for either, and consequently, I guess I should just move on with the reason behind writing this post.

Quite a few of the poems quote the names of the poets themselves in them, leaving a sort of poet's watermark on it. Maybe this makes it easier for those that recite them to remember who sang it.

This struck me as being similar to how most rappers/hip hop artists begin their songs with their names, like 'MC Hammer' or 'fitty' (50 cent) and so on, and it was quite surprising once the connection was made.

I was caught on camera whilst on a drinking binge.

Much to my relief, it was on a still camera, rather than on video cam and my friend, Shrenik, had the gall to upload a pic of me indulging in my excesses thereafter on his flickr site.

He's a stud level photographer, do check his work out!

Last evening, at 1800, I received an SMS from skthewimp (Skimpy) who said that sw_aadisht (MadMan) and he were planning to meet up at Shiok in Indiranagar, and whether I was game to join them for dinner.

Feeling particularly lazy, and having had completed most of the work for the day, a significant disinclination to finish the rest of it, combined with the prospect of some good Thai food had me completely geared up for the Shiok expedition, by which time, Skimpy put another SMS saying how Madman cancelled out a minute post-confirmation.

However, I was still in no mood to work for the day, and so I decided that I would leave the office anyway in order to escape the potential onslaught of the rains, which I incidentally love, but not while riding on a two-wheeler in jam-packed traffic amidst retards who have lesser IQ collectively while behind the wheel or the handlebars of their vehicles than does my left butt-cheek.

I had spoken to Skimpy before leaving the office and we'd decided to loaf around in our area once Madman cancelled out, and he called me around 2000, when we decided to embark upon an arbit walk, something I formerly knew as a 'beat', when I was a kid.

A beat was a term used to refer to a watchman's walk around the turf he was in charge of, or alternatively used to refer to the territory that a cop used to patrol whenever he didn't have NED to do so. The extension of this term was then used when precocious kids in classes 6, 7, 8 and 9 began straying away from the usual activities of playing cricket and beating up the kids in classes 2, 3 and 4 that inhabited the same road as them, and instead began their forays into exploring their locality by walking around aimlessly until it was time to grab dinner at home and then go to sleep.

These 'beats' that I used to go on as a kid with a few friends was usually in order to kill time, without being a bother at home and these 'beats' are something that I missed a lot as studies, college and subsequently work took centerstage in my life.

Hence, while on an arbit gtalk conversation with Skimpy, who stays just about 800 metres away from my place on the other side of the outer ring road, we decided to put one beat, and at the same time, sit at some small road side coffee shop and listen to random people talk and get a feel of south Bangalore proper, while it still lasted.

I've seen and read about a lot of people from the previous generations who would get together in the evenings, sit under a tree at a 'kaTTe', which is a seating space comprising of circular or square benches constructed around the trunk of a tree, and then sit and sip coffee and talk about life, the universe and everything.

For me, this has a very RK Narayan-esque Malgudi-ish feel to it, and its sad to note that there are fewer and fewer places and activities that bring one to such a state of mind, as specified.

Such space was not available to sit and indulge ourselves as we'd have liked, nor did we have critical mass, and hence the idea was canned and in place of that, we decided to take a walk.

There was no agenda, and the only thing that I was looking for was some cold badam milk or some coffee combined with the exercise that only an aimless walk can provide.

Its been a while since I've been on such a 'beat', and armed with umbrellas, us 25 year olds embarked on an exercise that I think most would associate with guys who are older, wiser and have pretty much nothing else to do, and starting from the Kathriguppa signal on the Ring Road, near Renuka PU College, we walked all the way till Vidyapeetha Circle and into Srinagar and then back, while trading stories about the evils of off-shoring, Ramesh Menon's adult version of the Mahabharatha, mangoes, 'let it be', the CET in 2000 A.D, ogling at license plate numbers and so on.

I've been taking a lot of walks lately, including this arbit walk and the photowalk among others, and I must honestly confess that its good to indulge oneself in so much pleasant exercise.

Skimpy's put information that he's going to write a post on this as well, and unless he puts NED, you can check it out on his blag.

It is to be noted here that this is also among the first few instances when I've started feeling completely at home in Bangalore, a feeling that had eluded me for almost three years since I started working. Now, I feel like I'm growing roots here and slowly digging in.

Mysore shall always be my most favourite city, but I'm slowly but surely falling for Bangalore as well, though it shall always be a distant second favourite.

Multiple things are being plugged in this post. Firstly, one more piece of mine online at Citizen Matters. Oh, and yes, it does matter!

Secondly, plugging Skimpy's LJ, though it would be for most part redundant.

Thirdly, plugging in the Bangalore Photowalk by itself, to get more junta along and make it huge enough to clog traffic on some sunday mornings.

If Rajkumar's fans' association can block traffic on a monday morning when I get to work for no fault of mine, because some moron has desecrated his statue installed at the junction between Mysore Road and Ring Road, I should be able to, in retaliation see if there is some way I can give it back to them, by stopping a bus full of these fans near Majestic, on their way to a special screening of his movie, no offence intended, of course to the memory of Dr.Raj.

This post started off as something else, but is now morphing into something totally different. The only incorrect thing in the piece that I have linked up here is the mention of my association with Swarathma, something I can't claim any longer, having been the ex-manager of the band. Now I am associated with them as a fan and a well-wisher and that association, I feel needn't be highlighted with the by-line given to me on that piece.

So there. More power to the Photowalk.

This is more arbit a post than most, and if you do want to read through and try and make sense out of it, trust me, you will not.

You have been warned.

A Stonkey (pronounced pretty much the same way as a donkey, but with an 'st' prefixed instead of the 'd') is a unique species of animal that is a cross between a stegosaurus and a donkey. Created at Auroville, and packaged in cute little cloth bags to be given out as souvenir presents to friends, these Stonkeys are sold incorrectly as mini-horses simply because the creators of this species felt that such a move would make their products sell better.

Now the Stonkeys do look like stegosaurii with distinctive blades running symmetrically along their back, whilst also looking like a donkey, with an 'adorable meh' look to them, an expression the Stonkey gifter concocted to impress those she gifted it to.

The Adam and Eve of the Stonkeys have been christened 'Rahul' and 'Priya' respectively, and they met for the first time on the lunch table cafeteria in our office. Rahul fell for Priya at first sight, but then told her he was gay when she asked him out.

Now, its funny, but in Stonkey land, roles are reversed and the womans have to chase the guys, and hence Priya is trying to get Rahul to not be gay, for this would result in the destruction of their newly created species.

The female is more intelligent than the male of the species among Stonkeys, and this is an established fact which requires no extrapolation due to the limited number of data points available. Jargon jargon jargon.

The Stonkey saga shall continue at lunch time tomorrow and other lunch times thereafter unless NED kicks in, and there is a plan to catch them on camera, with an apt photo essay to depict how the Stonkey love games shall unfold.

In a bid to provide some random arbit posts post the election, I went on an LJ rampage of sorts, putting up five posts in less than an hour, once I returned home after casting my vote.

I don't know for what reason, but the fourth post that I put up, which was a post related to indelible ink and requested readers for some information didn't show up on the RSS feeds, and I noticed consequently that it hadn't shown up either on google reader or on my facebook feeds.

I don't know why it happened, but it did. But now you can read that post via the link, should the feed reader you employ not show you what I would've liked for it to.

In other news, I attended the Mysore Open Quiz conducted by KQA and hosted by Arul Mani at the Infosys, Mysore campus. The campus is lovely, to say the least, but as all tech company campuses go, I am a hundred percent certain that it will lose its sheen and charm to those that have to work there day in and day out.

Being aware of that fact made me have no regrets about not having explored the campus, and having seen only those parts of it that the open quiz attendees had to gain access to do our business, so to speak.

Having lost out on qualifying by half a point was hajjar disappointing, considering it was real stupidity on our part to have missed out on some questions that we should've got, for we got questions that most others didn't, atleast based purely on the crowd's response or enthusiasm levels displayed when the particular answer was given out, post the prelims.

Our team comprised of Rana Kar, Chandan Kulkarni, Varun Shenoy and of course me. The reason I am using full names of participants, as opposed to nicknames is to also document the reasoning behind us having our team name as 'Sha-Ka-Hari Chandan', which was quite arbit and out of the blue.

Turned out, Chandan, who's really smart and put good cracks, was indeed a vegetarian. Aptness are there.

Man United now has the Premier League title, and guess it was quite apt that Ryan Giggs, whose jersey I have which was gifted to me by the former owner of 'Bananas', put in the goal that sealed it all. Hooray!

With the state assembly elections coming up, a friend of mine called me up frantically and said that there will be no alcohol available on the 8th, 9th and 10th of this month, as alcohol is used as the standard means of buying people's votes.

This closure of watering holes, and restricting the supply of alcohol is a futile exercise as those with enough political clout would've stacked up adequate supplies, anticipating such a move by the election commission.

From what I heard, no retail outlets, pubs or bars would be able to sell alcohol during that time, although this wouldn't necessarily mean that people wouldn't have access to it. Somehow one's urge to drink beer intensifies under circumstances when it is prohibited to partake it. On that premise, the people of Gujrat should be getting drunk on the streets and partying like there is no tomorrow, but that is the stuff dreams are made of.

I've derived guilty pleasure out of drinking beer two days after Dr.Rajkumar died, when there was a state-wide bandh and no alcohol was being sold, and yet another time the same year on Gandhi jayanti, which is supposed to be a 'dry day'. Although the quantity consumed was not copious by anyone's standards, it was more about the cheap thrills derived out of violating rules harmlessly.

My friend who called me up at the beginning of this post is coming down to Mysore this weekend and has this idea of buying beer today, in enough quantities to tide him through until the day it starts flowing freely in the streets again, and wants to use my place in Mysore as a safehouse to stack it all up for his folks would probably not appreciate his industrious behaviour and foresight regarding this particular move.

Nor would mine, but I have some empty attic space to utilize.

Cheers to the elections!

Saturday, the 3rd of May 2008 saw me attend my first ever book launch. With this book launch, I now know two published authors personally, one of them being my friend Vikarna's dad - Dr.Krishna Rao who wrote the book whose launch I attended, and the other being a certain Aswath Venkataraman a.k.a Kodhi, who's book launch I wasn't invited to. Aswath is a cheap guy.

It was quite surprising that the book - The Coucal Collaterals, whose initial draft I had read almost three years ago was being released initially in Kannada, rather than the original language that it was written in, and due credit here has to go to Dr.Rao's father, Shri K.K.R Rao, who diligently mastered the use of computers in general and word processing software in particular in order to get the hang of sitting and translating his son's work into Kannada.

The book launch wasn't a glitzy affair and it was more of an intimate thing which was attended by close friends of the author, but it was a nice experience overall, considering it is a fervent and quite open ambition of mine as well to be a published author some day.

Of course, getting stuff printed in magazines and on other websites doesn't count because of the funda of sharing space, and as greedy and megalomaniacal as I am, I want my own book out some day, so that I can live off the royalties generated, sipping apple vodka martinis while lazing on a hammock in the shade in some nice place with not so much humidity, while dreaming about the next idea for a piece I have to write. Alternatively, I would love to scout around for a travel writer's job, but that can be done only in due time.

Back to the book launch - it was a touching affair where a lot of things were highlighted almost simultaneously. The pride that a set of parents took in their son's achievement of getting a serious and simultaneously entertaining book written, the love and respect a son had for his father who so painstakingly translated the book because he believed in his son's work, the sheer emotional high that a published author ends up having whilst seeing his work bear fruition, not to mention the fact that my attempts to help get his book published had the author himself thank me no less than twice during the speech he made to the audience, making me go simply red, but also making me feel proud and happy at the same time, for having been an active part of the proceedings.

The after launch gathering where one got to partake on some Glenfiddich single malt whiskey was also quite an entertaining affair, where my handy backpack's contents were viewed with suspicion because I had produced a bottle opener, a pen and a notepad from it on demand. Of course, I also had other items including a Lonely Planet guide to Israel and the Palestinian territories, a digicam, an 'I am Legend' DVD, a bottle of water and some Tibetan lucky charm coins, but thankfully nobody really asked for that.

This post might not necessarily make too much sense to anyone who doesn't really understand the context behind this narrative, but I figured out that it was an important occasion that required documentation nevertheless. It is seldom that I would venture to elucidate my specific emotions explicitly on a public forum, even though it might be my own personal space, but as I look back and read through this post, I figured I've let my guard down enough already.

The book's english version shall soon be out in October and it will be published and distributed by a publishing house in Kolkata and you shall know more about it in the days to come, possibly with s few hyperlinks or even a review of the piece by yours truly on some website or perhaps even on a newspaper!

Watch this space. Or the feed reader equivalent of the same.

I've had an observation to make regarding conversations I've had with people over the phone over an extended duration.

There have been instances when I have had to have conversations with complete strangers, for work related to the band I used to manage before, or for stuff related to the writing work I do.

This is one of those times that the convenience of having a cell phone presents itself, as I don't have to go meet those people personally, nor do I have to wade through the murky and ruthless swarm that is the traffic in Bangalore city, and can instead conduct transactions effectively this way.

In these telephone conversations, I have noticed that people in the entertainment industry that I am in conversation with (PR persons, artists, media liasons and so on) tend to end conversations with a long drawn out "bye", in a 'sweet' or polite way that isn't really warranted towards a person in the first phone call you've had with them.

Most of the time, my sign offs with unknown people or people I am formal with is to ask them to 'have a good day' or 'have a good evening' or something perfunctorily formal to just signal the end of the conversation officially.

With friends, specially the close ones, its more of 'piss off, cheap guy' or 'ok dude, gotta crash' or something to that effect. But I don't think I can ever fake niceness to strangers, unless I really like conversing with them, which can't be decided in the first ever time that words have been exchanged.

Edit: After a certain cheap guy pointed out to me that he could be nice to strangers and does it in London to get his way, I figured that I might've not written stuff out correctly and that I meant that I can be polite and socially proper with even the most arbit strangers, but that I can't subject them to the intimate way of saying goodbye or talking to them in a way that I would do with good friends.

Skimpy has come up with this super idea, which he has confessed to having borrowed from someone else who initially started it off.

Its sort of a cheap guy's Bangalore walk, which native junta can partake, and I, for one, unforeseen circumstances not withstanding, shall join Skimpy.

For more information, read here. If you're interested, sign up by commenting on Skimpy's post.

A friend of mine recently attended a corporate presentation at the office where he had commenced his summer internship. One profound statement made during the presentation was what he recounted to me, and it has somehow been stuck in my mind since then.

It isn't a principle unless it starts to hurt sometimes.

Sure, we all have principles. We all have certain sets of rules and regulations that we follow in order to lead what we would like to believe is a meaningful existence, one that we can look back upon at any point of time ahead in the future and feel good about, minus regrets.

The presence of principles and following them on a consistent basis definitely goes a long way in assuaging one's conscience in that regard.

I was able to personally relate to that statement made above due to the fact that I've undergone unpleasant situations / discomfort / sadness due to the fact that I've stuck to what I've felt has been right, and the bad feelings felt momentarily are relegated to oblivion in the long run.

One of the principles I have been following, more so out of selfish reasons rather than for the greater good of Mankind is to not have pirated software on my typewriter, come hell or high water. So far, I have Windows Vista, a licensed version of it that came along when the machine was purchased, following which I have been using Ubuntu on a consistently regular basis to write all the rubbish that I do. It has worked well for me so far, and I hope this continues further as the days go by.

(Pirated software = virus = high maintenance, not something a cheap guy like me would really want to put up with).

This principle was tested over this weekend when I had to send out a MS word document urgently before the end of sunday, and the open office installed on my typewriter was not able to open the file. I could've borrowed someone else's MS Office installer, something I had seriously contemplated doing to avoid going to my office on a sunday morning to complete the requisite work, but I chickened out and ended up going all the way to my work place to finish what was necessary, before heading out to have a wonderful lunch.

I guess the hot sun and the traffic sort of put me off some bit, not to mention almost slipping on the stairs while climbing down them four at a time because there was nobody I could bump into, but the satisfaction of not having had to renege on the word I gave to myself is priceless indeed.

I had received Khaled Hosseini's 'Kite Runner' as a birthday present two years ago from a certain cheap guy who celebrates his birthday today.

I really liked the book when I read it, because it was a human interest story. There was nothing really fascinating about it, and the only new things to learn from it were about life in Afghanistan before the Russian invasion, and the situation and circumstances that the country was facing under the Taliban rule, both of which were in the background as the story unfolded itself.

A powerful and moving tale of friendship, stuff that tugs at your heart-strings, no matter how macho you are and ends up making you get goose bumps, I just saw the movie version of the book on saturday evening.

Seeing the movie reinforced my belief that it is possible only under very few circumstances to do full justice to a book in its movie representation.

The line - 'For you a thousand times over...', used on two occasions in the book is so powerful that it gave me goose bumps when I read it. The circumstances under which the line makes its presence felt should be experienced first hand on reading the book, but needless to say, it captures the essence of the deep bond of friendship between the characters around whom the story revolves.

The corresponding portrayal in the movie was 'Meh', at best.

PS - Happy Birthday to Monkee and to Ron.

The Google - Orkut tie up has been advantageous in some ways, and caused painful experiences in other ways.

Orkut has its advantages, and it has helped me download some super music via rapidshare, like I had previously blogged about. It has helped me keep in touch with people I have known whom I'd rather not call / sms / meet, or those that I CANNOT call / sms / meet, and has contributed significantly ni directing traffic to my online writing spaces in ways I can't thank it enough for.

There are a multitude of other reasons, but this post is more of a rant, and not an orkut rave which will 'give you the 411 on the whole enchilada' as to why orkut is cool.

Now, a year ago, orkut introduced this feature by means of which you could integrate your friends list and chat with them on gtalk, and I was not one of those that followed the first wave of orkut-gtalkers, because I was very characteristically circumspect about the whole thing.

However, in december, in some arbit move that I can't even explain to myself, I found myself doing the unthinkable, and adding the orkut list to gtalk, resulting in a few hundred extra people having been on the list.

A couple of days and a few tens of arbit pings later, I finally decided to undo the stupid thing I had done, only to realize that the gtalk additions wouldn't go away, and they were here to stay.

Ever since then, I have been on the warpath, blocking people who I don't frequently chat with, or those with whom I don't foresee ever having more than a two line conversation, with an unparalleled vengeance. Now as I glance through the blocked list on gtalk, I notice that I have more people blocked than I chat with.

Only fools rush in.