This time last year...

... I was on my way back from a totally INSANE trip to Goa. :-<MI'd gotten over early, and I woke up very late in the afternoon of 28th December. Met a couple of my wingies, still a little sleep in my eyes. We decided we wanted to go to Goa. On bikes!! We managed to coax (read browbeat) a junior to complete the group of four, and set off.

Tragedy struck early when we realised we'd travelled roughly 30 Kms in the wrong direction, towards Pune instead of Goa. We'd left the comfy confines of the campus at 5 pm, by 11 in the night, with an already sore butt, hands freezing in the cold wind, my friends choosing to fall asleep while driving, I was convinced that I'd made the biggest mistake of my life, yet :P.

70 hours later, the tally stood thus: 24 hours on the way to Goa, 24 on the way back, 2 hours sleeping on benches off Anjuna beach (where we were unceremoniously woken up by the prodding of cops, who for some vague reason turned all sympathetic and helpful when they found out that we were poor students from Mumbai who'd come to see the wonderful Goa and hadn't managed to find any acco :D), and the meagre balance we spent zipping around from beach to beach on our bikes! I so totally loved every moment of it!!!

I was back in time to spend New Year's Eve with friends, and Natural's ice cream :D. Much has happened in the one year since. Some of those friends are celebrating New Year in NY, some are sitting at home. In this past year I've visited the sandy beaches of peninsular Malaysia, the rocky beaches of Hokkaido and the brilliant fjords of Norway, but I wish I'd had the chance to go back to the sunny, dreamy beaches of Goa (NOT on bikes :P)!!

Big city life.

I'm just not cut out for it. There are too many people, too many buildings, too many cars, too many bits and corners you'll end up knowing nothing about, even if you spend you entire life living there. While I'm sure these aren't exactly life-threatening matters, the matter to me.

See, I grew up in this small town. Well, it was a small town when we first moved there.. then it became a big town. And then a few years before I left, it was officially declared a small city. But I digress. The good thing about Asansol was that it was essentially small. I have, on occassion, managed to cycle from one end to the other (east-west along the G T Road) in a single afternoon. The other good thing was that my Mum considered it small enough to let me roam around with zot constraints. Which is far from what I can say about Kolkata. My dad sold his bike before moving here. Primarily to prevent me from getting myself killed (read: riding a two wheeler in Kolkata traffic).

And now that I finally have a proper 4-wheeler licence and have absolutely free access to my dad's car, that same Kolkata traffic has managed to make me hate driving!! Something I'd have found downright ridiculous under almost any other circumstances.

What I really hate about my current state is that I can't go running around the streets. I'd get run over, or choke on vehicle fumes. I can't go kick a soccer ball in the field nearby when I feel like it. There is no field nearby. I can't go hang out with my friends when I'm bored of sitting at home. Everyone I know is somewhere else, spending New Year with their family or at work/college.

Birds in flight.

Okay, so I did spend the last four years in Mumbai, and totally loved it. But that was different. That was more like living in an island of sanity, and looking out onto the insanity of the rest of the city. And I knew people there!!!

Life?! Don't tell me about life.

Yes, I feel like Marvin. Manically depressed that is. No particular reason why I should though. Had a pretty nice Christmas, spending time with lots of relatives at my grandparents' place. First time I made it to such a get-together in 5 years. But at some point during the trip to Shantiniketan this thought struck me: Life's like this long long road. In the four days since then I've driven over 500 kms, and have been struck by the startling similarities time and time again. The beautiful stretches of smooth tarmac, the sudden potholes. The green canopied paths, the suffocating traffic snarls...

Right, so a belated Merry Christmas to everyone. I'm currently mourning the first Mood I I've missed since 2k1. Especially so, since I missed it by just 4 days :(. But then, I did have a great time attending Poush Mela :D. If only everything hadn't ended up happening at the same time :-<.

I am Turkish!

What Snatch character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Interesting thing is, I was kinda hoping I'd be Turkish! Okay, so the description might not be a spot on match, but it's cool nonetheless :D.

PS. Matches my haircut too :P.

The usual bunch of feelings...

The rush of warmth when meeting old friends. The sadness of leaving again. The pure relief of being back home after a tough stretch. Of course the length of my hair (or lack thereof) was an immediate source of amusement to everyone, from friends who'd come to pick me up at Mumbai airport to my Mum when she saw me at Kolkata airport /:).

This was my most lukhha visit to the city in a while! What with the Panama Consulate choosing to dispense with my paperwork in a record single day. But I'd landed up at a particularly busy time for everyone else - placements. So I had time enough for a nice solitary walk around the campus. Okay, so I'll not go into all the memories that it brought crashing upon my head... But these images I'll share.

Ironically, I spent my last night in campus in the room I used to call mine till about 6 months back.

Tired

I don't seem to have managed to shake off the after-effects of my 8 weeks of School in Norway yet :(. Got to Mumbai very early yesterday, instead of late the night before, thanks to Lufthansa's ability to delay everything that can possibly be delayed. I'm eternally grateful to Vinod and Mandel's Broth for taking the pain of waiting forever and eventually lugging me back to campus.

It's good to be back. The temperature outside is warmer than my room in Asker (central heating notwithstanding). Don't know when I'll be back here, so I'm making the most of my visit :D. I wish this crappy perpetual tiredness will let go of me for a while though...

Open book...

I'm giving a test. Right now. It's open book, open notes, open net... And it's a practical. I'm working at a bloody XEON workstation, but it's still taking ages to run the jobs I've submitted. Not surprising really, given the huge volume of data I'm shoving down the processor's throat. Processing GBs of data every second seems to be a necessity instead of a luxury. And I thought the Pentium 4 HT was cool /:).

HA! One job's finished \:D/, now to submit another. Then more time-pass.....

-- some hours later --

It's finally over. Hopefully my last day in the Oslo office for some time. I have another twelve hours before my flight. I went to see off yet another one of my friends, it was still daylight then, at 2 pm. By the time I got back, the sun was long gone. What it left behind was a golden twilight.

--

I wonder why some people like walking alone. To aviod intrusions into their thoughts? 'Cos they like nature more than other human beings maybe? Is it that they are afraid of getting used to company, and it'll feel really bad to lose it? (The 'if you have nothing then you have nothing to lose' policy.) Or is it merely because noone else wants to walk with them? Hmm. Some food for thought while I prepare to put yet another nightout before an early morning flight.

The last time I did that,... :) ah, now that was one of those days when I sincerely thanked God for the wonder that is Yahoo! Messenger :D.

Wake Up!!

That's something I always find extremely difficult to do :(. Especially when I'm up against a deadline! My 'late for' list got another entry this morning when I was woken up by a friend after the morning bus to office had arrived and I still hadn't showed up at the lobby. And this wasn't the first time.

Good thing is, I always manage to find people who do wake me up (barely on time). On board the Trident (my ship) the steward in charge of cleaning my room eventually made it a point to land up to clean my room at 1150 instead of 1200. Just to make sure I was up in time for my midday shift :D. The height of course was when I missed half of an end-semester exam in college. A wingie was kind enough to drop me off to the department, but I was so psyched out that I wasted another half hour sitting at the table. (My hand was shaking too much for me to be able to write :P.) Yes yes, I passed. The next day I had my cellphone ringing, my comp blaring and batchmates screaming from the adjascent wing well in time for the paper :). I miss campus. And my batchmates :-<.

EP '01 @ IITB

'You said, "So go!.".....'

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

- Friedich Nietzsche

Saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again tonight, after quite a while. Reminded me of the time when I first saw the trailer and went like: 'I have to see this one!'

--

That's what it looked like when I woke up Friday morning. Pretty promising huh?! Especially when it'd been snowing for pretty much the whole week. Add to that the Christmas party we had at the end of the day. It was really something to see senior people in the office go totally nuts on the dancefloor :D. Great start to my last weekend in Norway!

I figured I'd go trekking in the morning. On a Saturday morning, the time which on previous weekends I've religiously spent sleeping! Yeah, life on a Saturday morning hasn't changed much for me. Just the scenery: from my hostel room back in college to my cabin on board the Trident, sailing around the Sea of Okhotsk, to my room surrounded by a foot and a half of snow in Norway... So I skipped out of the party early. Bade goodbye to friends who were leaving, having finished their respective courses, and went to sleep early!

Been up since 7.45 am watching fresh snow-fall :(. Okay I did that till it was clear I wasn't going trekking anyway.

Yayy!!!

So, remember me saying that I wanted to buy the sequel to The Simoqin Prophecies?!! And crazylilthing wasn't kidding when she said she knew Samit Basu personally! The details are as follows:

visit http://samitbasu.blogspot.com/ for info on the new book and more
visit http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/books/bookdetail.asp?ID=6115 for The Manticore's Secret page at Penguin Books India.

And this means I can buy it when I get back home for my break later this month :D!

Random thoughts

It's fun walking in the snow. As in while it's snowing. Better than walking in the rain, in that you can brush it off, unlike rain water.

There's lots of kinds of snow. Lightly fallen snow, stuff that lays in an almost translucent layer, easily brushed away. Trouble is, it more often than not disappears in a tiny puddle of water before long. Then there's the hard crinkly snow. Beware of playing with this kind 'cos it's perfectly capable of bruising you! Then there's the hard packed snow. Mostly after it's been snowing for a while. And loads of people have walked over it. I don't like this kind of snow. Wouldn't recommend falling down on this stuff, which can easily happen, since this is also the most slippery. The kind I like the least is the slushy, muddy stuff that's left lying on the road by the indifferent cars. It isn't even white!

I really like the freshly fallen fluffy snow. It's soft. When you walk through it, it feels like a luxurious carpet. And you can make perfect snowballs with it!! But nothing beats flakes of snow softly floating down from the sky. It settles ever so lightly on your outstretched palm. It isn't even too cold. I can see it float down my window now. I think the word I'm looking for, is ethereal.

Fragile flower

All in a day

What's common between a friend of mine from college, a colleague at work, another colleague's son, my current boss's estranged elder brother and the King of Thailand?!! They were all born on the same day! Yeah well, different years of course! Actually maybe not even the same day... What is 5th December in Thailand might very well be 4th in Germany or the US of A.

I forget why exactly I found this extremely amusing a while back.

whatever

There are these times when I just feel like crying out loud. Actually it's more like screaming out loud. I'm alone in a fairly decently soundproof room. I probably won't scare anyone out of their sleep at 3 in the morning. But on second thoughts, I don't. Scream that is. Now I'm hungry. Again.

--

Was flipping through channels on TV as usual. Saw Mark Ruffalo in some movie I didn't immediately recognise. (Of course, there are lots of movies he's done that I hadn't ever heard of, but I didn't know that till I looked up IMDB.) Anyway, point is, no movie has had me stuck to my seat (or the channel) all through the way this one did. I must have missed just the starting credits. But with no commercial breaks I didn't know the name. Turns out it's called You Can Count on Me. If anyone has seen and liked My Life Without Me, I suggest you look out for this one.

I am

Spinning out of control. Slowly, very slowly picking up speed. Until eventually, I don't know why, how, when.

But it all happened anyway.

There’s too much work and I’m spent
There’s too much pressure and I admit
I got no time to move ahead
Have you heard one thing that I’ve said

And all these little things in life they all create this haze
There’s too many things to get done, and I’m running out of days

And I can’t last here for so long
I feel this current it’s so strong
It gets me further down the line
It gets me closer to the line

And all these little things in life they all create this haze
There’s too many things to get done, and I’m running out of days

Will all these little things in life they all create this haze
And now I’m running out of time I can’t see through this haze
My friend tell me why it has to be this way
There’s too many things to get done, and I’m running out of days

Running Out of Days

- 3 Doors Down