You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer

Your ideas are very strange, and people often wonder what planet you're from. And while you may have some problems being "normal," you'll have no problems writing sci-fi. Whether it's epic films, important novels, or vivid comics... Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

The trip so far...

Right now in Finland and loving it so far.Its been almost four weeks and I will be here till next Sunday.Since this is my first time in a foreign country (having not been to Nepal even)...I was expectedly very very elated when I first got to hear about my trip from my manager.The whole of December was spent in frenzied preparations right from the clothes to the shoes to anything that would help me get through this 'trial by ice'(as one colleague put it ) and I thought of putting up a short post about my plans but could not get around to do it.But it is not as cold as I thought it would be(Apparently Finland is having its warmest winter ever recorded) but its beautiful when it snows!:

I would be doing a travelogue kinda post in some time as Falstaff says:
'the whole point of all this travel is to blog about it afterwards'. :-)
I would also be visiting Paris for some days.So till then....... Au revoir






PS:
It has been a month packed with some pleasant , strange and truly bizarre experiences.Today I made this:

That's Spaghetti for you ,with chopped onions and crushed tortilla chips(not visible) and the sauce is (hold your breath) Rasam! - made from MTR Rasam mix!!
Ah! the travails of Single South Indian Vegetarian men abroad or why do we lose so much weight there.

Zeppelin

I just love.adore.worship.idolize these guys.Nobody else comes close-and would ever come close.

Do you remember, mama, when I knocked upon your door?
I said you had the nerve to tell me
You didnt want me no more,
I open my front door hearing my back door slam,
You must have one of them new fangled,
New fangled back door man
Since Ive been loving you,
Im about to lose my worried mind

I got tagged by DC so here goes.

Ten things I miss in my life (in no exact order)
1. The British Library in Ranchi and the smell of the books there.
2. Playing Tennis under lights!/playing tennis
3. Sis - who is on another continent now.
4. My house in Jam esp the garden in winter in the afternoon.
5. sitting in the last bench in college with Akhil, laughing for no reason and at practically everything.
6. A very old and a dear friend of mine called Vaibhav - not able to locate him on Orkut either
7.Brahmin's coffee bar's idly/vada/coffee
8.Kaveri restaurant in Ranchi
9.A who moved to Delhi recently
10. quizzing with fellow Freud's nightmares (that was my team)

Ten things I want to achieve within a decade from now.
1. Backpack across South America with friends. Live there for two years, maybe.(similar to DC)
2. write a book
3. complete Ulysses :-)
4. Go to Kailash Mansarovar
5. try Sky diving.
6. contribute to an open source project.

7.Learn how to play the drums (very highly there)

8.learn decent cooking

9.start building my own house

10.vote in all the elctions I am eligible for.

this was fun!

The ear yend post

Things have been so chaotic and crazy and I have been so insanely busy that I feel like screaming(almost)..Lots of things to do and err....forms to fill.Last( Xmas) weekend went river rafting/trekking in Dandeli.River rafting is certainly something that even the most faint-hearted should try out as it is unbelievable fun.Also a lot of friends are leaving Bangalore and going elsewhere. A left for Delhi,Mazum is going to the States and my college roommate would be going to Chennai.So ended up running all over the place trying to synchronize farewell schedules. It is kinda sad that people whom you know so well and whom you always assumed would be a part of your life are suddenly moving away - doing their own thing and all that would be left would be random impersonal scraps on Orkut. Anyway so this time I decided to do an year end post.Blogging wise this was a better year with more posts than last year and few more people in the comments section (A grand total of 6 people -yay!) but as compared to other bloggers I have too few posts.Its not the lack of ideas but sloth which is to blame.Also add to this spending 8 hours a day in front of the computer and you have the perfect excuse to avoid blogging. Anyway 2007 was an eventful year and lots of things happened.

had a crummy internship-a heartbreak- went on an amazing trip to Goa-two trips to Jam- had a great B.E project experience-read quite a lot-left college-started work-moved into a new house-went on some more trips-fell sick repeatedly-realized quite a few things about myself.It was an amazing year in short and though not always pleasant it was a kind of year I would want to live again.It was pretty roller-coasterish.and yeah some resolutions for 2008:

1. Blog more often
2. Lose weight
3.Learn French & Tamil (don't ask!)
4.Start playing tennis
5.Learn cooking
6.Be 'kind' to people
7.Read more
8.Stick to your beliefs and have 'simple' goals in life.*

The Jains have a very interesting festival of forgiveness called Paryushana in which people ask forgiveness for their misdeeds of the past year.I think its a great concept.So in the same vein- Micchami Dukkadam to all of you readers of the blog. May you have a fun filled 2008! here's wishing all of you a very Happy New Year!!


*sounds very BT-ish I know :-)

Recently....

Its been a crazy post Diwali November.Getting adjusted to the new house.Falling sick repeatedly due to diarrhea.Planning for January.Work getting a little hectic.This weekend I was completely engrossed in traveling and attending Grihapravesh-es.Have been listening to a lot of classic stuff-The Doors and Sabbath and esp Led Zep (OK what do call a Hippie's and a carpenter's ideal date?--- tripping on Doors ( apologies to Saanjh :-) ) ) .Also I am mostly dead on Orkut but pretty much there on Facebook ( due to company intranet filtering and 'coz I hate Powerscrap) with all its myriad applications which ask you to characterize people , poke your friends, put up your fav comic on your profile and do thousand more fun things.Really you should check it out.*

I have been buying books left right and center since the last five months and lately I have been able to catch up on reading instead of just admiring the bookshelf.

Books bought recently:

1.The diaries of Franz Kafka
2.Gravity's Rainbow
3.Madame Flaubert
4.A clockwork orange
5.Brave new World
6.Nirvana's Biography
7.Step across this line
8.The ground beneath her feet
9.A father and son
10.The code book
11.Dubliners
12.Above average

Among these I have only managed to read A father and son,Above average and Brave new world.All the rest are in unread or half-read stages.I was impressed by Brave new world and I would say it pretty much beats all other Dystopian themes by quite a margin.I like the irony and the grey ending of the book and they way that issues like purpose of life are explored without firmly sticking to one.Another post I did on Dystopia some time back here
Hopefully I would have something interesting to say next time around.Most probably I would be putting up some older posts which are in draft just 'coz I have put enough effort into them to delete them.

*I think that lately, all I have been doing is pimping various sites.I know people come to my blog just to navigate to other cooler pages but what to do, hardly anything interesting happens in my life. I have been told that everything that I do has an air of recklessness to it-including this blog.

The Diwali post

My first Diwali post in the three Novembers on Blogspot.Diwali being the most favourite festival of mine.Diwalis in Ranchi were always special.There would be that special chill in the air with the coming of winter and the days and the afternoons would be marvelously sunny and blue-skied.Invariably we would have a four day mini-vacation from school.I remember a lot of Diwalis-some pretty routine,some out of the ordinary.There was this Diwali when we went to wish a family friend of ours and came back to see that all of our diyas had disappeared.This being a house on the ground floor.Me and my sis had an argument whether the diyas were carried off when lighted on lots and lots of steel trays or the thieves had a well laid out plan of extinguishing the diyas,emptying the oil in a can,collecting the wicks together and then stuffing all the diyas in a huge boraa, this latter suggestion being from my sister.Then when we were living in Satellite colony,we had a gang of boys going from block to block blowing up all the letterboxes(made of wood).Their modus operandi was to go in two groups of two to blocks facing each other and blow up the boxes simultaneously using two aloo-bombs stringed together.This was to cause simultaneous pandemonium.Apparently they also gutted the insides of a post-box made of steel (as they could not blow it up-if they had succeeded,then they would have sent scraps of hot metal flying everywhere - a la Flak Cannon in Unreal Tournament 2000).

Then there was the usual pre-Diwali notorious cracker bursting in school.It was always a ritual in school eagerly anticipated by everyone.Whoever attended Shyamali in the 90's would surely remember the sudden sound of a bomb going off in some corner or toilet and the roar that would rise instantly-the roar of the students cheering.There were special fireworks when we were in class 9th.The Secondary building students had just assembled for the morning prayers and there was an ear-shattering explosion and smoke was visible from the corridor of 10th std(Some people recall that this was at exactly the moment the Princi had started pleading for the cause of a cracker free school-but that I think is just melodramatic trickery of memory) .The Princi was furious and ordered for an immediate round up of the 'culprits' which resulted in Modi lining up some random ppl(which included some hapless victims from the late line) and pushing them on to the podium.Then the Princi in an attempt to act 'tough' started roughing up the slimmest guy of the lot,shaking his collar in front of the whole secondary section.It was the most pathetic display of arrogance by the teachers I have ever seen.There was also the Diwali in which Aashu had burnt his hands and there was collective universal mourning in school what with all his Bhakt log falling over each other to convey their sorrow and all the teachers hearing out his tepid tale of woe with the utmost seriousness.(There is this interesting tale about of a follower of Aashu*- Bhakt Pandey) but pardon me I am slipping into Shyamali folklore again.

What was once fun turned into a boring ritual once I came to Bangalore.Routine trips to relatives place and bursting crackers with cousins much younger than you is no great fun.Also in the Hostel there were a lot of crackers burst but that satisfaction was not there.Today for the first time-I lit diyas and found it pretty enjoyable .This time I am down with food poisoning(yes, again) so can't gorge on the usual sweets and delicacies as I used to.Hope your Diwali was fun.

*Aashutosh-Aashu for short(yes the two a's are there to appear at the top of any list alphabetically) is a friend who was the 'star' of Shyamali and the apple of every teacher's eyes.The Maryada Purushottam Ram of the batch.

Yeah, back at the roadhouse they got some bungalows

"All right,all right,all right.Hey listen ,listen,listen man.I don't know how many you people believe in astrology.(to a woman in the crowd)Yeah that's right baby.I am a Sagittarius.The most philosophical of all the signs......But anyway I don't believe in it.I think it's a bunch of bullshit ma self. But I tell you this man.I tell you this-I don't know whats gonna happen man but I am gonna have my kicks before the whole shit-house goes up in flames!!"

--live in Boston '70

A life of unrestrained hedonism.The dream that was always there and now will see fruition.

When I woke up this morning, I got myself a beer
Well, I woke up this morning, and I got myself a beer
The future's uncertain, and the end is always near

Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll, baby, roll
Let it roll, all night long

Yeah, I am gonna have my kicks before the whole shit-house goes up in flames.

and we go to Brazil......

THE BAD GUYS

It was frustrating to watch Lewis get stuck in the pit-lane-gravel and even more frustrating to see Kimi win.I was kinda hoping Hamilton will seal it today but that was not to happen.If only McLaren had called him into the pit lane one lap before.However this leads us to an absolutely gripping Brazilian Grand Prix and the championship again being decided in the last race.The points tally reads as follows:
1. Lewis Hamilton 107
2.Fernando Alonso 103
3.Kimi Raikonnen 100
(10 points for 1st place,8-for 2nd and 6 for 3rd)

so Lewis can win the Driver's Championship if he comes 1st or 2nd.However if he comes 3rd and Alonso 1st then it is an absolutely delicious case of a tie-which I do not know how FIA resolves.Kimi can only win if comes 1st or 2nd and that too if the other two do not make it to the podium.So it is really only about Alonso vs Hamilton.Keeping fingers crossed for the 21st.


update:Yeah all you comment trolls-Kimi won. and the most F-ed up part was I couldn't watch the race.couldn't watch bcoz i don't have a TV or a radio and almost puked in the morning when I saw the papers.and yeah-NO MORE ANONYMOUS COMMENTS.I am putting an end to the guessing game that I play every time I see a new comment.so there.

A post a day.....

The folks at the office say that Agile is really the way to go but me being a newbie don't know really.We (the torch-bearers of hardware) never really had an exposure to Waterfall anyway,so can't really judge which is better.Life is increasingly spent at meetings,trainings and presentations which is fine as long as you can sit somewhere where you can become invisible and snatch a wink or two.My strategy is to go for a little behind the middle seat so that I can still be at the back if the back-benchers ( seaters?) get called to the front.I am slowly getting addicted to Excel and Confluence-the wiki they use in our place.Life's little achievements consist of avoiding the maximum number of traffic lights by choosing bizzare driving routes,buying novels from shady second-hand books stores and by trying to eke out the most tax benefits by investing (planning to invest rather) in schemes which make you feel like that masterji in some old Doordarshan era ad-"Samay samay par LIC ka premium bharna jaroori hai".I am really thinking of writing book reviews to make this mundane blog a little more exciting by posting scandalous ideas and in general antagonizing everyone.Yeah and book reviews are very subjective things(that's what writerscafe.org says about Book review guidelines)-so everything is an opinion and not fact.

If you think that you have a tech(or a science) bone in your body,
check out boiledbeans
A visual quiz a day complete with a scorecard .What fun! this is the first thing that I do in the morning at the office.

Happy birthday to the Dutta twins(1st and 3rd from right).Even after so many years,I still cannot let go off the excitement that is your company.Right from the tennis matches to your music system, the double ride on your cycles to the insane laughing bouts.The Vietnamese hat in your living room to the frenzied accounts of your various escapades in school.The cynicism and the constant chatter about Cobain and Axl to the rides towards HEC.From talk about Noir films to Marijuana to the pandal hopping - I know it is not coming out well and I don't know how to put it but all I want to say is that you(including the Black field gang) are the only people around whom I am completely uninhibitedly at home.You are the very few people who have seen the real me.I don't say this often enough but I am grateful that I met you guys and even when I grow old and weak in the bones I will still cherish the memory of the time spent.Thanks for everything(and for a change I really mean it) and stay the same.peace.