BACK TO COLLEGE

I spent five years and about a few hundred blogposts all within a little campus by the lake.
I'm now going back. For only a day, but still.
202 and 209 - here I come.

#nervous
#happy
#TOTALLYEXCITED
#messfood
#lane
#netcentreandtetravex
#somuchsomuch

Self-destruct sequence

I feel like I should be doing more than drinking sweet tea and eating khakras as the occasional tear pools in the rims of my large retro glasses.

I may also be the only one who remembers, well, me and bloggy. I just realised that of all the constants in my life, the only one that has remained through all of the good times and the bad, is the image of me sitting in front of a computer and tapping out on the familiar white and orange interface. Sometimes there are tears and sometimes there are such wonderful incredible highs and often times there is a wry smile and some CAPS LOVING. I love this image of me, and I should carry it around more and feed it well.

Five years since the first October 28.

I'm alone and angry and calm and melancholy, but not so much so that I can't laugh at myself and shake my head sadly.

My post after Diwali was to  be a fabulous one, filled with happiness and colour and light and the bliss of finding new family that is so so easy. But this is what procrastination does, gentle reader, and instead of bubbling over with mirth and eating homemade sweets and narrating jokes in broken Telugu, I am now sad-raging.

Appreciate, if you can, the understated tone of this post, for it is an expression of my heart's waxing and waning. I'm old enough to know nothing is fair and young enough to hate the unfairness of it anyway. Such maturity comes at a price - and that price I think is restraint, which should be the politeness of princes (not punctuality, because of course a prince(ss) is never late, the rest are merely early).

I think its time for more tea. And without sugar, I think, for the old masochistic joke about one lump or two comes to mind and we can all do without that, don't you think? xx

Sex with Patrick Stewart

A few days ago, we had an impromptu party at home. A bunch of friends dropped by (not one of them was a lawyer! ha!) and we decided to drink a little, chat a little, and then play Cards Against Humanity.

If you haven't yet played the game, I would urge you, nay, I beseech you, to gather around a group of terribly funny people and PLAY PLAY PLAY - this game, with the enticing tagline "The party game for horrible people".

The simplicity of the game is matched by just how easy it is to play (very easy), to get (download and cut into squares) and bring out the repressed bitchy horrible person inside you!

 For more inspiration, check out their Tumblr here.

Apart from providing entertainment, and a window into your friends' minds that you sometimes wish you'd rather didn't have, Cards against Humanity also proves to be an educational experience.
 

All of life's a circle what

What <yet-to-be-determined-punctuation-mark>

It's my new thing these days. My new word accessory of the -till-whenever-I find-a-new-one.

For the past many weeks or so, it was 'and so on and so-forth', and you would think adding it to every other sentence would induce a rather overwhelming sense of elegance and a wisp of nonchalance when I speak, but sadly, it turned into a crutch I clung to while refusing to let my on-holiday-come-back-later brain really try to accomplish more than mango-eating.

My new word therefore is what. Its not said as a question, as in "What is wrong with you?" or even an exclamation "Whaaaaaat." its more of a mocky-sarcastic, drawl that cool people have and that I am now going to try to emulate. What.

***

I have eaten many mangoes, but none have come close to achieving the perfection of the Banganapalli mango from last summer. Just saying.

***

Suddenly feeling much deja vu. As I sit on my living room floor in front of the TV and type this out, its raining outside, and I am suddenly transported to Spore just after I quit when all of the city was rainy and I was sitting on my living room floor and writing a blogpost about quitting. :)

I was listening to Samba Noir then, but for now, I feel this is an age+ time -appropriate piece of music. Failing which, we'll always have Toco.

***
I've had the time of my life the last few weeks. I don't know why more adults don't take summer vacations, and I have to say, truthfully, DF has been the best for sponsoring this break of mine. Totally - ja, jee le apni zindagi type moment, and all I have to show for it, is a long list of youtube videos we have to watch when he comes back home everynight.

FYI, this marriage rox.

All your knowledge are belong to us

Somedays, while I am supposed to be revamping my CV but I idly chase a stray thought through the freescape of my imagination, I am struck by how little I know about the world.

Truly, and despite spending an inordinate amount of time on the interwebs (going from CV writing tips (bleargh) to reading about B-52 Bomber updates within the span of a couple of minutes), I know less than what I think I should about the world. 

For example:

1) I don't really know how electricity is transmitted. Or radio waves. Or sound waves even. Or light.  I can't really prove the Big Bang happened.
2) I don't know how fossil fuels create energy, and why steam cars are silly, but steam turbines are awesome (er?).
3) I don't know how to construct a building. Or make bricks, or cement, or steel. And paint! How do you make paint!
4) I don't understand carpentry well. Or plumb-ery. Or electricty (wait, I already said that.)
5) I wouldn't know how to make a processing chip. Or wine. Or perfume. Or cheese! CHEESE. Or tomatoes. Or fertilizers. Or refrigerators. Or bras. Or tampons.
6) I don't know how to set a bone. 
7) Or write music.
8) Or make a candle from animal fat.
9) Or make a fountain pen.
10) Or ink. Unless I catch a squid.
11) But how will I make a net?
(old joke: Sew some holes together).
12) OMG. needle and thread.
13) For which I need bones.  But where to get bones? :(
14) And fibre.
15) Rope! Rope-making is supposed to be an art. Yet another thing I have no knowledge of. 
16) And how will I ever build a raft. Forget a canoe, or a trieme, or a ship. OMG what to do about AIRCRAFT CARRIERS.
17) Bombs. Fission. Sigh. How to tell uranium 231 from whatever else.
18)  And how to make batteries. Spectacles. Torches. Matchsticks (phosphorous  - this I remember from Chemistry class but not much more).
19) Headphones. (by this point I am weary and am randomly looking around my study to see what I can make from the objects all around)
20) Post-its, no. PAPER! TOILET PAPER OMG, PLUMBING (already said that, didn't I?).

Everyday, around item no. 20 on my list of things I don't know, I give up on the pursuit of useful knowledge, and I console myself with the fact that some disaster-preparedness star American has figured this out, and collected books, and built bunkers and so on. If the world ever sort of ends, I will just have to find this person (but what to do about compass and sailing and processed and preserved food and emergency medication and nets and all?) Sigh.

What if I end up in Australia instead and get eaten by a jellyfish. Life is treacherous, you know, and its just the kind of comically-ironic event that would happen to me.

Anyway, I don't know why, but everytime I think about all of the awesome knowledge out there that I'd like to learn (like transistors and submarines and stocks and monetary policy and the concept of private property!), I feel bad that I'm instead becoming the kind of person who's writing a CV.

Screw the CV, I want to say. My CV should say.

SPAAX:
Address / Ph / Email :
_______________________

I AM AWESOME and funny and I like dragonflies. I am also very smart and I think you should talk to me because I like lots of interesting things and can tell you about them (like nets and jellyfish invasions ). Bye!
_____________________

But it doesn't. Someday when I have broken the system responsibly from the inside, I will make a CV like this one. Unless a jellyfish has eaten it. 

Well, hello there

Excuse the hiatus - would you?

In the last 11 days of doing-nothing-ness, I have:

1) Cleaned, organised and sorted out the house I live in to within an inch of my life. Various items, including all pairs of trousers I own and election id cards are still missing. We are awaiting word on their safe existence while I wear the same pair of pink trousers everytime I step out of the house.

2) Got used to the idea of sleeping 14 hours a day.

3) Experimented with everyday household food items and white rum to create cocktails, much like George in the wonderful George's Marvellous Medicine. (roohafza, golgappa paani, rasam, etc).

4) Downloaded Calibre to organise and restore the previous organisation of my kindle collections, which is hopelessly jumbled across devices, id-s, and programs. Been procrastinating on the same.

5) Downloaded some books by Charles Stross - started reading Accelerando which is interesting so far.

6) Received Piketty's 'Capital in the 21st Century' as a gift - along with a lovely legend asking me to please move out the lyrics of Bollywood songs from my head and instead replace them with useful knowledge.

7)   Started to root + install Cyanogen Mod on the spare phone at home. Been procrastinating on the same.

8) Having the voice inside my head do Toby Ziegler's when reading the news.("Bonnie, Ginger" "The BBC
just announced a coup in Thailand.")

9)  Re-watching all of West Wing, by means of a marathon session  - at Season 3 thus far.

10) Setting up a gym in my terrace, which can be accessed by climbing a ladder and then stepping on a split ac unit. Making contact with grease, rags and screwdrivers for the same.

11) Eating and drinking and making merry.


And you thought I was merely being lazy? Pshaw 

Shammi K

Today my life feels like a Shammi Kapoor song. I can't figure out why, it wasn't a spectacular day or anything, but I'm jauntier and perkier and happier than usual. :)

I'm like the sheepish call you get the morning after

You know the ones, don't you? Where you've either dropped me back home, knowing fully well that despite my calm, drunken assurance that I'll just be a moment before I pick up my passport and come back down so we can head to the airport (and fly away gloriously into an adventure), I'm going to curl up on my sofa, shoes on, spittle clinging gently to my chin and a bucket under my head, just in case, forgetting all about you.

Or where I insist that you leave the house at 3 am after a rowdy racuous argument, and then proceed to  meticulously snip the buttons off each of your shirts and dump them on the stairwell in a fit of controlled rage.

Or where I hide your glasses and go away to a party and switch my phone off, because in that moment of pique, immaturity offers the best shield under which I can hide my frustration.

Or where, well, you get the picture.

And the sheepish call. Where I don't really say, I'm sorry bloggy, I left you thinking it was the sophisticated and adult thing to do, but in the harsh, hungover, light of day, its a bit petty, what?

Yep.

***

Veiled apology to bloggy apart, for the first time, gentle reader, I realised what it was like to have someone actively and clearly try to screw me over. While one part of me was scrambling for evidence, and writing emails saying things like "this is without prejudice to the other rights under the Retainer Agreement" and calling up lawyer-friends for legal advice and forcing them to send me bills, the other part of me was like:

1)  "huh. look at that. you're getting screwed over. huh. interesting.this is what it actually feels like."
2) "clearly all the times you had to forgoe your morning flatwhite + chocolate croissant for a wonderfully exciting meeting was not actually a screw-over. huh"
3) "being asked to do timesheets was not a screw-over. huh"
4) "being paid in full without any dicking around on leave entitlements was not so routine as I thought. huh"
5) "so this is what being treated like a worthless piece of crap actually means. huh"

After a couple of fairly traumatic weeks, where I had to question self-worth, other people's worth, wish I had a chief minister aunt/uncle hidden away somewhere, make long-distance and short-distance advice seeking phone calls and draw up a vindictive game-plan, things finally ended in the most practical/unexciting manner yesterday. And it ended because I had the foresight to set up a smoking gun.

And I'll say this - no amount of literature on power-dynamics, or societal structures analysis or gyan on drafting contracts, or understanding dispute-resolution strategies could have given me the kind of learning I had in the last few weeks.

I feel like I left bruised but a winner, though not as much win as I'd like. Ah well.

***
Though its been advanced by a couple of months, I'm finally, actively, totally and unresistingly entering into a super-scary phase of life - the I AM JUST CHILLING AND NOT WORKING AT ALL UH HUH THAT'S RIGHT phase.

Not only am I be completely free to do whatever I want, I am also doing this with  
 no lifeboat/gameplan in mind for the future. Exciting in the scariest possible way! YAY!

As much as I hate you uncertainty - looks like we're going to have to become great friends - so let's get a move on.

As Day 1 of chill phase - I have woken up late, had a domestic argument, watched the most recent episode of Big Bang Theory and eaten cold pizza for lunch. I may or may not nap now. I have a feeling this is going to be fun! Await my despatches from the front.

I have the honour to remain 
Your most truly obedient servant
Spaax