Songs and stories from forgotten yesterdays

By all counts, this has been an entertaining week :). Nonetheless, I spent large parts of it cursing the oppressive weather, and at least some little time worrying if my passport had in fact managed to find its way into the Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi. At least on the latter issue, my mind is now at rest.

The primary source of entertainment has been, not surprisingly, Bryson! A Short History of Nearly Everything is by no means a short book. But what is bewildering is exactly how much he manages to stuff into it without making it 5 times longer! You almost feel a sense of awe and some achievement just making it to the end and better still, if you can actually remember some part of how the story winds itself through the aeons of known (and often quite frankly, mostly unknown) history of our world.

I do wish I'd known sooner that one of Charles Darwin's seminal works was on barnacles. Darwin is quoted as having said,

I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before.

Who knew right? Now anyone who's ever been on a seismic boat working off Australia's North West Shelf, or offshore Angola, or (I am told) offshore Brazil, can comfort themselves that they are in exalted company when they inevitably feel the above sentiment :D.

All in all the whole thing makes one feel rather small. Not altogether unlike that feeling you get when you venture out on open deck on a dark cloudless night in the middle of the ocean and stare up at the starry sky.

Then there was Sixpence. I stumbled upon the news quite suddenly, that they'd re-united and that an album's on the way. The fact of course, is that the album has been on its way a long time, and there's still no proper release date. Still! I thought back, and was quite alarmed when I realized that their last proper release, Divine Discontent, had come out a decade ago!

I miss the warmth
And I miss the sun
I miss the ocean
I miss everyone
And I miss the bridges
That span across the bay
Tonight, it seems like ages ago

I don't think I'd even listened to them in years. And old songs have such a way of bringing back old memories, haven't they? I suppose there's also the fact that you're so much more likely to stumble across an old song out of the blue than an old photo.

In the middle of all this, there was that particular morning when I got woken up by a phone call. It is a decidedly unusual thing, for, even though I habitually sleep in while at home (and why shouldn't I? :P) everyone who could call me, knows that. So imagine my surprise when the caller opens with, "Oi! I'm getting married tomorrow, can you show up?!"

It didn't help that for some reason I was under the impression that said friend had already gotten married a month earlier, while I was at sea! In the end it all worked out great, 'cos I finally made it to a friend's wedding after missing them by the dozens these last couple of years :).

So yes, it has been a good week. Now, will it be too much to ask for some news on that visa sometime this coming week? We shall see. In the mean time, I managed to unearth a couple of more Artemis Fowl books from the book store under the escalator, so that should keep me happily occupied.

Currently: dreaming of snow
Listening to: Sixpence None the Richer - A million parachutes