thank you - nomention

the weekend that was. and horsey

2006-07-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

so it's good to be blogging and reading random blogs. so for your viewing pleasure:

horsey's blog: it's hard to describe this one. imagine kumar from harold and kumar go to white castle blogging. and being funnier than in the movie.

horsey's cousin is compulsive reading. something in the genes?

dal 'n llama: the blog is a set of surreal snippets that when put together somehow make a wierd sort of sense. stylized but engrossing.

i watched lady in the water on saturday. i can't resist sticking in a link to a review that pans the movie. i know the guy that runs the site and while i think he's hilarious methinks he's being real mean to shyamalan. the review and an excerpt:

After "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable," which were a long time ago at this point, I liken writer/director and self-proclaimed auteur M. Night Shyamalan to a dog that comes by and takes a big dump on my lawn every year or so. At some point, I walk out to the dump site and stare at a big pile of crap.

sunday was the pearl jam concert at the gorge. it was the best concert that ever was. really. eddie vedder wore shorts and drank out of successive bottles of champagne or wine or moonshine. i couldn't tell from where i was standing and he didn't pour me a drink. the prick. mike mc.cready is a genius.

the whole experience reminds me of the aftermath of the tom petty concert at the gorge last year. sozzled out of our minds (at least, i was), the three of us - rags, naveed and i, sang (or rather, screamed out) our own rendition of meatloaf's wasted youth. we had a highly appreciative audience of moochers from other campsites. they drank our booze, ate our food and pillaged our tents. naveed, rags - we need to keep that tradition alive. really.
this was the venue of my solemn oath to never, ever, never, ever drink jagermeister again.

friday, tuesday, ... what's the difference?

2006-07-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

it's friday. yaay. but it doesnt' really feel like a friday. something's off. it really feels like a tuesday, or even a wednesday. so there's something i didn't stick in here earlier: i strained my back over the weekend and spent most of the week at home, on my back. suppine. so the last few days sucked like an industrial strength hoover. it's still not completely back to normal.

i was looking forward to doing some hiking this weekend. methinks i'll do a quick hike tomorrow. i don't get to take my fancy new backpack up though (i keep discovering new pockets in the thing each time i use it). sometimes i'm tempted to simply have a portion of my paycheck wired directly to rei.

and my all-time hero rajini is back. my life will never be the same now that i've discovered this site. i miss sitting 4 feet away from the screen in a theater packed with people screaming, jumping and generally exhibiting symptons of advanced nitrogen-induced narcosis.

given that i wasn't really a part of civilization this week, i'm a little starved for things to say. so i'm going to cheat and stick in a little story i wrote a few years ago. it's a bit corny. but you'll live through it.

Seagulls See More Than They Let On

One side of the ticket said 'W003' in slanted script. Nothing on the other side indicated what the arcane symbols on the reverse meant. Yuri turned the ticket over a couple of times just to make sure that there wasn't anything else on it.

"What do you expect to find there?" Susan cut in sharply, "A user manual for the ticket? Maybe they'll consider putting pictures on the ticket. What the heck does the ‘W’ stand for?”.

Yuri turned in his seat to look at her. His legs were sore from sitting cramped up in her two-seater sports car. He wanted to stretch his legs, he craved fresh air, he needed to get out of the influence of the wretched unremitting thumping that pulsed out of the speakers and he desperately needed to get to the men's room. A steady throbbing in the back of his head reminded him that they'd had to forego lunch in their hurry to make the last ferry. The tequila from last night didn’t make things any better. He hadn’t had time to pack, just barely enough time to throw a few things into a bag and run out to the car. He tried to stretch but gave up when he felt a sharp pain in his back and slouched down lower in the seat with a small sigh.

Susan stared back at him defiantly, daring him to retort. "So mastermind, cracked the code as yet? Or is your back still hurting and stopping you from thinking?”

Yuri marveled that she could pout, frown, snap at him and still get away with it. Susan was the nicest person he knew except when she was mad at him.

"Umm ... I have a feeling that the ‘W’ stands for Waitlist. I could be wrong though. I’m sure we’ll get on this ferry." he said in a hesitant murmur, almost to himself.

"Waitlist? You mean like a list of people who may not get on the ferry?" - It was more a scream than a question - "you mean to tell me that we went through all that to get on the waitlist for this crummy ferry? You have got to be kidding me here. That's ridiculous, there's no way I'm not getting on that ferry today. Stop sitting there with that stupid look on your face; ask that guy what the ‘W’ stands for”.

Yuri rolled down the window and called out to a man in blue overalls. All Susan caught from the man’s reply was the word ‘waitlist’. She slammed her hand against the steering wheel in frustration.

"That's just great. Perfect! Sure, Mr.Smartypants knows everything. Oh look there's the ferry station. Look at the long lines for the tickets to get on the ferry. But Mr.Smartypants knows better than to drive towards the shortest line. No sir. My super-smart, technological-marvel boyfriend knows that Murphy's Law will suddenly kick in and make that line move slower. So, Mr.Know-it-all tells me to drive to a longer line because he's sure that'll move faster" she said in one continuous torrent.

Yuri squirmed in his seat and took a deep breath but Susan wasn’t done as yet. "You see that green car there? That car was behind us when we got off the freeway. He headed towards the shorter line, got a ticket before we did and pulled into that spot four cars ahead. I bet his ticket doesn't have a ‘W’ on it" she fumed.

Yuri looked away from her at the steel-blue water lapping the pier. A solitary white seagull speckled with grey sat on a railing near the car and began to inspect its feet. And to think this was supposed to be a romantic long weekend. Just what they needed to get their relationship back on track again - lazy walks on the beach and leisurely ferry rides. He wanted to make the ferry too, wanted to have time with her away from the rest of the world but Susan was reacting wildly for something that wasn’t really his fault. He’d never given her roses before; he’d always thought it corny but he’d arranged to have a hundred roses waiting for her in their room when they checked into the hotel.

"Bird watching now? Tell you what Yuri, if that moron in the green car gets on the ferry and we don’t, I'll ... I'm going to ... I don't know but it'll be really bad. We can’t even get a refund on the hotel and I’m not spending another weekend at home watching brain-dead movies.” Susan had lowered her voice a couple of notches but was still irritated.

Yuri bit back a sharp retort and stuck his tongue out at the bird. It looked just like the pretentious puffed up bird on the cover of Susan’s dog-eared copy of ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’ by Richard Bach. Yuri detested the book with all his heart. He hated books with morals and he hated books that had talking animals in them. He especially hated it when Susan curled up on the couch and read passages aloud from the book which was mostly about a moralistic bird who was obsessed with the fact that he could fly. A philosopher in feathers and a yellow beak was something the world should not have to deal with.

It was still early afternoon but the sun was low in the sky. The windows on his side fogged up and the seagull went slightly opaque. He was tempted to trace patterns on the glass but knew that it would only irritate Susan further. The last time he’d tried playing nots-and-crosses on the caked dust on the side of her car she’d had a fit. The bird looked up wearily from his feet and seemed to look Yuri straight in the eye like he’d seen it all before.

“Sure buddy, stare all you want” Yuri thought to himself “I’m sure this scene looks funny from where you’re sitting. You guys have it easy; you can simply fly away if things get out of hand. I’m the one cooped up in this miserably small car”.

Yuri turned to look at Susan. Her hair was a bit tousled and a few strands of hair fell across her eyes. “Maybe if we’d started a little earlier we’d not be here with a waitlisted ticket. Yeah, maybe if we’d started earlier than noon we’d already be on the island so stop making it sound like it’s my fault. You’re the one that kept dropping off back to sleep despite my calling you every half hour trying to wake you” Yuri managed in a voice that was calm but edged with irritation.

“Now it’s my fault? Unbelievable! It’s easier to get out of bed when one hasn’t gotten hopelessly drunk at their boyfriend’s party the previous night. And the night before and the night before and the night before.” Susan cut in sharply. She continued “You didn’t seem to complain about my drinking then. In fact, I seem to remember you urging me to join you guys in your endless machismo drinking game. Or maybe you didn’t notice that I was getting a little drunk and tripped over a cable? No, how could you? You were too busy hitting on Alice”.

Yuri let a few seconds march by in military precision before he said “Your so-called friend, your best buddy was hitting on me in case you didn’t notice… and don’t think I didn’t see all the ‘friendly’ hugs you were giving Stan. Every time I turned, there you were like a pendulum off his neck. Tick-tock-tick-tock, like a metronome. What kind of a guy changes his first name anyway? Stanunathan Rama-whatever evolves to Stan in the US of A. These Indian guys try way too hard to fit in”. He continued in a sing-song voice “Hi! I am Stan and I am very humbly pleased to have made your acquaintance. I study computers and I have an elephant called Moti back home. In my spare time I like to hang out in malls looking at chicks out of the corner of my eye.”

Susan’s cheeks turned a fetching shade of red. “Yuri, this isn’t about Stan at all. Stan is the sweetest guy around. Are you accusing me of flirting with him? Why don’t you just come right out and say it like an adult instead of hiding it under all those layers of hostility? This is so typical of you. You make a vague accusation, cover it with a dozen layers of verbal icing and then you retreat into your corner before I can respond. What does his changing his name have to do with anything? You know what? I think I’ll explode if I sit in here any longer”. She got out of the car, slammed the door shut and walked towards a small low building a few dozen yards away.

Yuri cursed aloud. He wished he’d been the one to storm out; he really needed to use the men’s room. Fighting was getting to be a habit. Their relationship had pivoted around gradually till their roles were almost reversed now. Susan had been the calm, logical one while he was prone to fits of anger and tantrums. She’d taken his mood swings, his petty cynical remarks and his irritability all in her stride. They’d never had a fight the first few months when they’d started seeing each other. Gently at first but increasingly firmly she’d started to push back.

The first time they’d fought, Yuri was taken aback by how unwilling she’d been to bend. Admittedly he had to share in some of the blame. Susan had wanted him to meet her parents and invited them over to her house for dinner. She was nervous because her parents didn’t know that she was seeing someone. Especially someone whose father used to be in the Russian nuclear program and had defected to the West under dubious circumstances. Yuri was smart, would graduate with a doctorate in artificial intelligence within a year and had excellent prospects but he lacked the one quality her parents wanted in a prospective son-in-law – he wasn’t Chinese.

He was nervous and turned up a wee bit drunk. Her parents were perfectly polite but expressed their disapproval with excruciating subtle oriental tact. The dinner was a fiasco. He spilled his drink, slurred over a few words and was quick to refute everything her father expressed his opinion about. The high-point of the evening was when he pinched Susan’s behind as she walked past him carrying the dessert. The sound of the bowl hitting the carpet was drowned out by a choked gasp from her mother.

Things might still have been fine if Yuri had been a little contrite when they were clearing up after her parents had left. Instead he’d harangued her about putting him through the ordeal of meeting her obviously unsociable parents. She’d faced him then with her hands on her hips, water still dripping off her fingers onto the waxed kitchen floor with a blank look on her face. “Get out right now” she’d said softly, almost in a whisper. Nothing else, but the tone of her voice made him cringe. He sent her flowers and silly mushy poems every day for a week before she agreed to see him again.

That night marked a change in their relationship. He wasn’t as confident about her anymore, he tread warily where he used to flail about without a care, sure that she’d smile her indulgent smile and let it pass. Yuri would still sometimes push things till he sensed that Susan wasn’t going to budge further and then back down immediately. They soon found an easy rhythm that suited both of them.

Yuri was jolted out of his reverie when the door opened and Susan slid back into her seat. She’d pulled her hair back tight and her face looked freshly washed. The tiny lines of fatigue that had edged her eyes were gone.

“You should go wash your face too Yuri” she said, her voice offering a peace pipe. She reached out for his hand and squeezed it but Yuri wasn’t ready to be mollified as yet. He jerked his hand away and turned the radio off. “I don’t know how you can listen to this crap. It’s just insolent noise” he said stiffly.

“You’re going to try to blame this whole thing on me aren’t you? Whatever made me think you’d change?” asked Susan, astonished. “We would still have made it here on time if you’d helped me when we got the flat tire. The flat tire, I might add, that we got when you were driving” she continued.

Yuri laughed aloud. “You’re blaming me for the nail on the road? Are you implying that I aimed for the nail? You really are something” he managed between chuckles.

Susan let a full minute before go by she said in a strained voice “No Yuri, I was talking about what happened after; when I was trying to change the tire. Not only did you not help change the tire, you actually made it harder”.

“What do you mean made it harder? I helped figure out how to open the jack didn’t I? Why is it my fault that your fancy, cool, expensive German car has incomprehensible instructions in the manual?” Yuri said, barely holding back a laugh.

Susan continued “So you had to sit by the sound of the road and read out the instructions with that stupid German accent? That ridiculous accent that sounds like something out of those stupid B-grade war movies you force me to watch with you. You could at least have helped me pull the spare tire out of the boot”.

Yuri let that one slide by. It had seemed a funny idea then to read the instructions aloud with a guttural accent but it retrospect it struck him as being plumb dumb. He should really have helped her lift the tire at least. Instead, he’d clowned around and pretended to hitch a ride with every passing car.

He turned to look at her. Her face was flushed and a thin blue vein along the side of her neck pulsed erratically. An errant strand of hair fell across her eyes and she pushed it away with an impatient motion. He’d never seen her this mad before, had never seen her so confrontational. It was like discovering a whole new person inside someone he thought he know well. He was used to her backing down if he pushed her far enough and he wasn’t sure he knew how to handle the new Susan.

“Yuri my boy” he thought to himself “this is it - the moment of truth. Are you a man or a mouse? Sure, you made a mistake, but are you going to let her push you around like this? Are you going to back down and let her walk all over you just because you know she’s right?”

He looked again at the bird who by now had hopped to a different railing. “Hey Jonathan, help me out here. What would you do if you were me? What if you were arguing with Mrs. Jonathan Livingston? Would you poke her in the beak and fly away when she pushed you against a wall? Or would you stay and fight and argue till both of you can’t stand the sight of each other for days? No. You wouldn’t fight at all would you? You understand that there are bigger things in life. There’s more to a relationship than having the upper hand. There’s a whole universe out there and it’s nice to have someone to share it with.” The bird looked him straight in the eye and lazily lifted one wing in silent approbation.

The car in front of them started to move forward. A few hundred feet away the line of cars started entering the belly of the ferry.

“Finally! At least we’re moving now. Yuri, you realize this whole thing is dumb; and it really is your fault if we can’t get on the ferry” Susan said with an impish grin. She flared up easily but cooled down just as quickly.

Yuri looked back at her evenly. “What do you want me to do? Threaten the ferry captain with a loaf of bread to let us onboard?” he said, his characteristic flavor of dry humor barely concealed beneath the surface. Then, with an evil sneer, “No sudden moves or I’ll crumb you to death”.

Susan chortled and suddenly they were both laughing, clutching at each other in the cramped space of the car.

The line moved steadily. They were one car away from entering the ferry when a yellow-vested man held up a stop sign. He turned to shout to someone on the ferry and when he heard the reply he pulled a chain across the road and locked it in place.

“Sorry folks, that’s it for today. You can get a refund on your way out or use the same ticket tomorrow” he said while walking away.

“You know what’s really funny about this?” Yuri started.

“Yuri, shut up”.

popping pills and navel gazing

2006-07-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

i wish i was an internet expert in the indian government. i would rule. really. here's an example: the president of india gets a threatening e-mail

Security officials immediately took all necessary precautions and launched an operation to trace the origin of the email, they said.

what kind of 'necessary precautions' would one take? stop checking e-mail? erase the browse cache? and the super-sleuths added:

The cyber cell in the Home Ministry was handed over the one paragraph email and it was suspected that the sender of the mail could have used a fictitious name.

well, wouldn't that be kinda obvious? given that i'm really good at stating the obvious at meetings, i would rock that organization.

the indian government banning a bunch of websites (including blogspot.com) has a number of people really pissed off.

I am very tense and angry. The ban is cutting us off from the people.
sailesh bharatwasi, blogger

neha's post (that gets super technical with traces and hops) is a quick peek into the heated debate among indian bloggers.

now, i get the intent of the ban. i really do. but the government really screwed the pooch in communicating the reasons for the ban. it seems to range from "the terrorists were using blogs to pass along orders" [heh?] to "those sites are anti-india". and indian isp's went a second round with the pooch - instead of blocking off specific blogs, they blocked out entire second-level domains like blogspot.com. it would've taken an intern all of 24 minutes to figure out how to block out a specific blog. i'm guessing they blocked an ip or a range of ip's.
while the entire episode is quite silly, things of this nature are never entirely forgotten. glenn reynolds blogged about this today.

methinks it's about time north korea took down kim jong-il's blog :)

random surfing a few weeks ago took me to this post about goats and clock towers. so i promptly forwarded the link to sid and jyo. and the following conversation ensued:
sid: this reminds me of some idiots in school who shaved a cat. the poor thing looked really silly. apparently the most cruel thing you can do to a (semi-wild) anyway is to cut off its whiskers. apparently the whiskers are as wide as the body, so it uses it to tell whether it can get into places without making noise. good no?
me: lol! kinda like a wide-body detector. well, if i ever see a cat and there's no-one around and i have a pair of scissors handy …
sid: it might make it more confusing to cut off whiskers on one side only.
me: you're sick. really.

and for those of you with visions of thunder thighs on air india, think again. air india's starting a hot-or-not contest and the "not hot"s get booted off the plane.

and now for the navel gazing portion of this post. for the uninitated, navel gazing is the obsessive act of staring into the deep, dark depths of the life you've carved out for yourself. among the the highlights are: revisiting the choices you've made, the friends you've pushed away, the relationships you let unravel - you get the idea. it's closely related to a mid-life crisis but sans the crisis component. it's an exercise in contemplation that rarely results in action. my recent bout of navel gazing has left me questioning a few things. things on the list (in no particular order):
- why do i write so infrequently? will i ever get around to writing a book?
- should i find a job that really makes a difference? do i really believe i'm building software that empowers people ... yada, yada, yada ...?
- why have i never attempted to run a marathon?
- why do i have about fifty books at home that i haven't gotten 'round to reading? why do i keep buying more? do i really believe i'm going to get an unaccounted for quantum of time to catch up with my reading?
- am i enjoying being single a little too much to do anything about it?
- why do i enjoy watching the elevator go up and down on the space needle?

did i mention that i'm reading aparajito by bibhutibhushan bandopadhyay? i'm really enjoying the book but i'm starting to really dislike the little cretin. everything's a little too easy for him. i'm hoping bando injects a little angst into apo's life soon.

i finally have internet access at home. openta23 and linksys_3 - whoever you are, thanks for not securing your wireless networks.

back in the saddle again, again

2006-07-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

i'm back. again. i think i am.
and this time i think i'll stay.

things that happened since the last time i blogged (in no particular order):
- i switched teams at work, twice. now i'm almost back to where i started
- i started reading again
- i made a promise to myself to get back in touch with old friends. i didn't
- i made a promise to myself to let the people who matter to me know that they matter to me. i haven't
- i moved. twice. i don't plan to move for a few years
- i still can't figure seattle's obssession with the space needle
- i moved to a place that has a great view of the puget sound
- the new place also has a view of the space needle but that ties in with my aforementioned curiousity about the general fixation with the needle
- i've made new friends. life is moving along
- i'm reading aparajito. it reminds me of the saturday movies on doordarshan. simple characters with simple lives. gentler times
- i became a ski-addict. i broke bones and dislocated a shoulder but kept at it. i can't believe i didn't get around to doing this earlier
- i made fun of snowboarders. they're a touchy lot
- i've been taking the bus to work more often. it's nice to be able to read on the way to work

my fingers are rusty and the brain is rustier still; a form of cerebral friction that makes it harder to get rolling. the hardest part about blogging for me is walking the fine line between my life and the snapshots of my life i', willing to put out there. i found my life slipping out into my blog. i suppose it was inevitable. i need to keep watching out for that.

it's been more than a year since i blogged but it feels good to be back. it's like going to a high-school reunion. everyone's the same and everyone's changed, both at the same time.

back in the saddle again

2005-08-08T23:37:00.000-07:00

it's been a while and the joints in the fingers need a little oil. but i'm back to blogging. it'll take a while to get the thoughts flowing again but it'll happen. watch this space :)

clearing out cobwebs

2004-10-17T03:15:00.000-07:00

and it struck me that he was approaching it all wrong. perhaps what sisyphus needed was someone walking upto him, tapping him on the shoulder ...

content snipped ...

lace up

2004-10-16T03:04:00.000-07:00

running. knees flex, straighten. calves tighten, impact. legs move in a smooth blur. nostrils flared, head up. just the beating of my heart, tightness in my chest. arms move like a metronome. no time to think. no introspection. no mulling over choices. no confusion. everything's easier to understand, everything's more fluid.

hard choices resolve themselves at the end of a run. but damn, some things in life are hard.

a persistant little cloud of cynicism

2004-10-14T01:05:00.000-07:00

i'm an opinionated, tenaciously argumentative pain in the ass. i have an opinion about everything and i'm usually quite loud. i have opinions about every tv show and every sitcom. i watch the episodes back to back laughing louder than the soundtrack. i then proceed to dissect the show and make snootish remarks about the peurile nature of the comedy or lack of comedy thereof. but somehow i don't have much to say about the grooviest comedy of them all - the bush presidency.

i've always thought of myself as being socially aware. and given my penchant for launching into diatribes, i often find myself arguing with people about the state of affairs. except now. except in the face of a farce calling itself a presidential election. all through the "incident" in iraq i watched cnn with disbelief on my face, waiting for the penny to drop. i refuse to call it a war. a war is when one country sends it's army in to attack another country's army. what we saw on live television was a mockery of independence and a nation's sovereignty.

each time this was discussed i cynically dismissed it as just another corporate takeover, definitiley hostile. each time the presidential elections were discussed i'd dismiss it with "you know who'll win - the guy who makes the loudest noise". i didn't bother to analyze the issues, i didn't bother to rationalize or condemn any of the behavior. i didn't question any of the violations of human rights or the freedom of a country. i didn't wear a t-shirt that said "the nation's on orange alert but the government's a lemon" (tm) - that's mine and so i better not see that on a t-shirt. in short, i did nothing. i sat by watching the circus.

until i was in a meeting with a senior developer from a team i work with. he'd always struck me as quiet and laid back. someone who kept his opinions to himself. and then i saw the sticker on his laptop. huge bold red letters shouted out "bush must be defeated". that jolted me. was i not even capable of expressing an opinion? is the cynicism in me stronger than hope? i hope not.

here's a well written analysis of some of the issues. i've been reading up at instapundit (the link's on the left) trying to assimilate current and past thinking. perhaps in a few weeks i'll actually have an opinion?

in other news i bought a camera. i promise to flood this blog with pictures in a few days, especially of those stubborn trees who refuse to wake up and smell the fall.

so long superman, now we'll never know why you wore your underwear outside your tights. more power to you.

the weekend that was

2004-10-05T01:51:00.000-07:00

and seattle is full of surprises. it's fall and the trees lining the avenues are studiously ignoring the fact. really. the trees are part of a giant conspiracy to mess with the seasons.fade away slowly to a scene in the executive offices of hallmark cards

it's a long corridor with small narrow doors on each side spaced about a foot apart from each other. every few minutes a vice president dashes out of her office and runs screaming down the hall

"the trees aren't changing colors ... stop the presses, for god's sake, stop the goddamn presses. we can't sell the millions of congrats on the trees in your front yard changing colors cards we just printed".

yes gentlepeople, they do have those cards in your local hallmark store. hallmark has an average of 2.47 cards for each day of the year. and these 'special days' are all thought up by women. yes, it's true - hallmark has 365x2.47 vice presidents, all of them women. to become vp at hallmark you need to create a new day. and they all really _are_ women.

you disagree? do you really think a man could have come up with take care of your goldfish day? i think not!

now, i'm sure a few of you are sitting out there seething about the chauvinistic overtones in the previous paragraph. if you're feeling bad, let me know and i'll send you a too bad you feel this way and i'm sorry i trampled all over women's lib card from hallmark. and while we're still on that subject, i wish hallmark would create a happy women's lib day and we could all gather around, sing a few songs, cut a cake, get over women's lib and get on with life.

coming back to where i left off - the seasons are seriously whacked in seattle. it didn't rain over summer. they keep telling me it's fall but the trees are all clothed in mostly green leaves. it must be the influx of canadians. canada mostly has just one season - ice hockey.

the weekend was great though. hiked up mt.si on saturday. the weather was amazing and the views of mt.rainier from the top were spectacular. i wish, i wish, i wish i had a digital camera. i can't make up my mind on the camera. i lurked in the aisles of fry's, best buy, good guys and circuit city. mostly junk there. the cameras on display were mostly the rejects from dpreview.com. headed out to greenlake on sunday and met up with a few friends. i tried running again (after the trip to india) and managed to run a lap of the lake without killing myself. it took a while to roll my tongue back into my mouth though. a cyclist had a narrow escape on account of my trailing tongue. sunday evening saw me sitting in front of a paper on spyware and trying to muster the enthusiasm to start working. after a while i succumbed to the lure of the cable box.

my new thing to watch - curb your enthusiasm featuring larry david (the guy who made seinfeld). it's drop dead funny without all the pretentious crap seinfeld is loaded with, isn't stupid-funny like friends, doesn't provoke homicidal tendencies like raymond and has as much innuendo as coupling.

curently reading - the unbearable lightness of being by milan kundera. i rarely find a book that makes me go back and re-read a passage over and over again because it's so loaded with interpretations and this is definitely one of those. the last time i savored a book as much was when i read nausea.

come friday evening and the week leaves a dominant emotion like a post-it in my head. and most mondays i have a feel for what the week is going to be like. not today though - it's wierd.

the gods had condemned sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. they had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. as for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. at the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. then sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. he goes back down to the plain.

it is during that return, that pause, that sisyphus interests me. a face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! i see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. that hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. at each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. he is stronger than his rock.

- from the myth of sisyphus by albert camus

reading that essay got me started writing a science fiction story titled sisyphus reborn that i never did get around to completing. someday i'll get around to finishing it.

have you seen my spigot? the blue midget was seen running down the corner with it. he was being chased by the leprechaun.

thar she blows

2004-10-02T03:27:00.000-07:00

ho hum we have a few dormant volcanoes in the backyard. st.helens and rainier. st.helens blew her top yesterday but it was a lame affair. some huffing and puffing and some smoke and ash. i was quite disappointed. i was expecting streams of molten lava flowing down 40th st and a host of chickens running just in front of the lava trying to save themselves. ever so often a few feathers going up in a puff of smoke with a little 'poof' sound. i either watch too much tv or it's really late in the night and i'm still working off the alcohol from last week.

now this site is compulsory reading : auburn family homepage. ever so often when you're riding the subway late at night you should wonder, is this guy in the same compartment?

and in current affairs, i've decided to take the plunge and buy a digital camera later today. i've researched quite a few based on features/price/reviews etc. the moment i walk in there all of that will fly off the window and i'll pick the one i stop next to and go "this is cool s***".

so stay tuned in for some cool pics (by my definition of cool which has often been used as a synonym for "deviant").

yo.

and since it's been awhile

2004-10-01T01:11:00.000-07:00

methinks it's time for another blog entry. for those of you who think that 'methinks' is slang, it ain't. it's old english, much used by the bard.

while i think up some more witty things to say here're a quick review:

movies

what time is it there [mandarin, french and english with english subtitles] : i liked the movie. it's a bit offbeat and doesn't have much in the way of sounds. there's no music and the dialogues are sparse. however, the film struck a strange chord of disquiet. there's a mood of bleak desperation waiting to engulf every character behind each frame. but they go on doing their own thing mechanically, without passion waiting for the day to end. but somehow in the middle of all of this, there's the element of hope. this movie is much better watched alone so you don't have to put up with "let's watch die hard instead" comments.

shower [korean with english subtitles] : this was about average. i suspect i've just become a bit cynical about the "son returns to father's small town existence and brings a bunch of changes with him". it's a little about re-discovering family and understanding the responsibilities you escaped when you left home. it was a bit maudlin in places and the narrative wasn't uniformly interesting. recommended if you have space on your netflix account and can't think of anything else to watch

and i now have digital cable. i have no clue how i survied this long without it. it's amazing - i could make love to my cable box. hbo on demand is a complete substitute for a social life. first there was halo and now there's hbo. soon there'll be halo2 and then my life will be complete.

in other news, i started guitar lessons today. since g was super mean to me and didn't allow me to borrow her #$*&#$ precious guitar i had to go with s to the guitar store and plonk down muchos money for a guitar. he was like a kid in a candy store.

the store had something called a "drums face-off" in progress. it was classic 8mile style. gangsta-style white boys with bandanas and living dead t-shirts banging away at the drums without a shred of musical ability between the lot of them. how do they all get to look this way? the girls were all, i repeat, all dressed in low-slung jeans that had to send tentacles upwards to touch hips and pink/red t-shirts. the other outfit of choice was a combination of a sweatshirt with sweatpants that had variants of the word booty on the seat of the pants. the objective being, i suppose, to get guys to look there and stay long enough to read what's there.

now ladies, here's a word of advice you can pass around from the ladkas against very decorated asses (lavda). if it's good enough to stare at, the words just get in the way. if not, someday we'll get round to suing for misleading advertising.

it's been a long week but the weekend's almost here. there's nothing a weekend of wild partying, smoking crack, chasing tail, hunting whale and cow-tipping won't cure.

moo?

went up a mountain and slid down on my butt

2004-09-14T01:04:00.000-07:00

7:45 am : in the restaurant at paradise inn, bleary-eyed, sleepy and hungry

8:00 am : chomp on oatmeal pancakes and wash it down with coffee

8:10 am : walk to the ranger station. ask the ranger "how does one get to camp muir?"

8:11 am : stare ranger in the eye while she gives you the "just another dumb inexperienced climber without a clue" look

8:12 am : wish she'd quit giving you the "just another dumb inexperienced climber without a clue" look

8:13 am : pick up trail map and smile at the updated weather forecast which predicts partly cloudy weather

8:14 am : walk back out into the mild rain and figure that the other part of the forecast probably means "partly sunny". ignore rain

8:15 am : lock car and hit the "i don't need to do this hike, i can just go back home, watch a movie and tell everyone i did the hike" moment that always precedes a hike.

8:20 am : start up the trail. hit previously mentioned moment 4 minutes into the hike but trudge on

the first part of the hike is along the skyline trail upto pebble creek. this is a really picturesque hike which i'm sure is spectacular in summer. it has alpine meadows on both sides for a couple of miles. it's all good until pebble creek. the snowfield starts a few hundred feet from pebble creek. this is also the end of the trail. there's a sign there with a picture of 2 hikers hidden in falling snow with the caption "this could me you". it goes on to say "in good weather many climbers have been known to have reached camp muir safely but even experienced climbers have died since the weather changes quite fast".

just as i stood there eating a power bar, a squirrel hopped energetically up to me. he looked eagerly at my power bar. considering there were even hardly any plants around i guess power bars are his staple diet! he was a frisky little critter.

the path through the snowfield is marked by small, frail flags which more often than not are on the ground partly hidden under falling snow. it was snowing (mild) when i reached the snowfield and i couldn't see too far (visibility around 60-70 feet). after a few hundred feet i couldn't see the trail. i was one of the first few hikers and so had no footprints to follow. i walked about there for about 20 minutes trying to find the trail. i decided to wait for the next set of climbers and go up with them failing which i'd give in to the 8:15 am impulse. i had to wait there for almost a half hour till i saw the next set of hikers come up.

me : yo. i'm a moron who decided to do camp muir alone

craig, pat, dale, phil : yes, you're a moron

me : can i tag along with you guys?

craig, pat, dale, phil : yes, we're being nice to morons on this hike. tag along.

and so we hiked up with me bringing up the rear, struggling to kick my feet into the hard-packed snow that was partly ice. i slipped and struggled until craig gave me his pole to use. if they could, my calf muscles would have crawled up the slope and thanked him.

the weather stayed overcast through the entire climb with pat trying his "it's really partly cloudy joke" till we were ready to push him into a crevasse. after a while he started singing. by then we were looking for a crevasse to throw ourselves into (i'm just kidding here pat!). craig did an awesome job of finding the flags and leading us up.

	this sign just before you enter the snowfield isn't terribly encouraging. i stood there for a few minutes before moving on! (click on images for larger views)
	phil and me on the way. my lips were frozen and i was slurring most of the way up.
	we plodded our way up in some pretty crappy weather. this is about when pat broke into song
	after what seemed like hours we saw muir. my feet cramped up a few hundred feet below muir and i slowed everyone down. a bunch of rocks never looked so good
	dale, craig and pat (in order). pat told us about craig's date with a marmot on the way down. we saw a few while descending.
	the way back down was easy, we sat on garbage bags and slid down a lot of the way!
	how did we feel when we got back down? this pretty much says it all!

and that folks, was the hike upto camp muir and back. i'm looking forward to heading back there sometime soon.

thank you but i have my own power bars

2004-09-12T22:28:00.000-07:00

ages ago i wrote a lament about climbing mt.si without enough power bars and almost snatching one from a passing kid. but i bought my own power bars yesterday. a lot of them. and since i had enough power bars i hiked up to camp muir today. the weather was crappy, there was sleet and ice falling constantly, visibility was about 50 feet and the wind blew icicles in your face and eyes and lips. it was a ghastly day but an amazing hike. i drove out from redmond at 4:45 am (the first sunrise i've seen in ages!) and i've had a grand total of 5 hours of sleep this weekend (which explains the slurring when i type). muir is at 10,105 feet and the total altitude gain from paradise point is about 4600 feet. not much really but most of it was through hard-packed ice up a 40 grade incline. sliding down a glaciar on your butt using your boots as brakes has got to be the most fun thing this side of martian lizard-hopping. more details when i get some snaps.

strum those strings granpa

2004-09-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

i went back and re-read a few chapters of 'neuromancer' by william gibson yesterday. when i first read it i had mixed reactions. gibson's need to be cutting edge seemed to get in the way of the creative muse occasionally - or at least it seemed that way to me back then. i've since read 'count zero' and 'pattern recognition' and i can see that it's just gibson's mind at work. i can imagine him to be the kind of guy who talks in a stream of consciousness mode, constantly switching topics and rhythms in a stacatto nasal tone. pattern recognition was a let-down. my first reaction was "he's lost it". gibson seemed to be groping in the dark to catch up with the internet and online communities. the central theme of the book, an online bulletin board where footage-heads post messages is quite lame. in a way it's pretty funny - the man who coined the word cyberspace and whose description of a wired world excited geeks and technologists alike in the 80's hasn't grasped what's out there right now. someone load up a copy of napster on the man's machine. i'm sure he'll get a mini-series out of that! lance olsen has a pretty good piece about gibson.

a bunch of us went to see thin lizzie, joe satriani and deep purple at the white river amphitheater yesterday (why would anyone build a concert venue in auburn? there're more cows there than rockers). the show was great but the audience mostly consisted of forty-somethings with beer guts, long stringy hair and harley davidson t-shirts jerking sporadically in tune with the music. occasional drunken shouts of "yeah baby, it's rocking" threatened to tear a hole in the time-space continuum and take us right back to the 70's. joe satriani - the man is a genius. there's no way anyone can make their fingers move that fast. this man was actually doing that and making a musical instrument (sorry meatloaf) "play notes that i had never even heard before". he was absolutely brilliant. the deep purple folks should rename themselves 'preserved by cryogenics'. there's no way that someone that old can play a musical instrument.

i watched 'true colors' (john cusack) a few days ago. easy to watch movie, slightly prep-school and with corny music. oh why oh why oh why did i have to miss the harold and kumar movie? big studio heads, if you ever do read this, please put it on dvd. please, please.

it started out to be a warm sunny day but it's clouding over and weakening my resolve to go biking today. the burke-gilman trail gets windy, cold and terribly unappetizing on days like this. so instead i think i'll give mt.si another go. the last time around they were renovating the lower 2 miles of the trail, hopefully they're done with that. thank god for the ipod mini and wind-proof jackets.

the mystery of the broken screen door

2004-09-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

it's been a while since I posted anything here. crazy partying, social climbing, furniture matching, wild raves and hanging out in rooms filled with other pot-heads doesn't leave time enough for something as prosaic as a blog. but i'll trudge on nevertheless.

a bunch of us saw robin williams at the showbox last week. the show was called 'working on new material' but i'd say the material was pretty much ready. the show was a riot. they were checking id's at the entrance. and it wasn't because they were serving alcohol; it was because of the jokes.

robin williams is a very dirty man. very, very dirty man. given that he's about 800 million years old already, he's a very dirty old man. the man shouldn't be allowed to grace the covers of movies like mrs.doubtfire. he would have been more appropriate for the r rated version - "mrs.doubt on fire - the uncensored version". the man uses the f word like punctuation, always makes sure that the dirty words are preceded by a dirty adjective (point to ponder - is the word 'f***ing', used before a portion of the male anatomy, an adjective?). and here's the clincher (pardon the pun) - he keeps grabbing his crotch. and i don't mean in a gentle michael jacksonish stylistic way. this is downright, rude, fingers clenching, jaw clenching grabbing. at first there was a point to the grabbing. towards the end of the show he just went at it like disc brakes on michael shumacher's car in the middle of a race. somewhere down the line he had a fairly long conversation with previously mentioned portion of this anatomy.

the show was extremely funny though. the funniest bit had a heavy indian accent on the phone - "hello, thank you for calling outsourcing, what can we code for you today?".

the next day a few of us watched city of god by fernando meirelles. it ranks right up there with amores perros by Alejandro González Iñárritu for it's vivid imagery, amazing choreography and the sheer simplicity of violence. definitely not for the oprah book club lovers.

and finally after holding my breath for a really long time it was time to head out for the long weekend. and so friday saw 16 of us headed out to lake chelan for some wild partying at an amazing vacation house that had more electronic equipment than a pearl jam concert (just got told that i'm going to a deep purple concert at the white river amphitheater this friday. yaay! thanks rags, and thank god for cool people from austin).

16 people with many crates of alcohol and wild part instincts that were coming up with a vengence make for a fantastic weekend. the weekend included me getting drunk on an extremely small intake of alcohol (damn this low tolerence for liquor thing i'm cursed/blessed with), some funny dancing, board games, lots of table-tennis, some tennis, some ultimate, lotsa swimming, stargazing, holding onto dear life on a small jelly-doughnut shaped float while being dragged through the water at 40 miles an hour behind a speedboat driven by an extremely repressed surgeon (don't ask!) and jumping up and down on a trampoline set on the water a hundred feet from the shore. did i mention the really nice roads for driving? or the really good food that some of the more efficient folks loaded up on at costco? and i've not even mentioned mr.pj's amazing barbequeing/tea-making skills.

the highlight of the trip was obviously the screen door that features in the title of the post. it happened like this: first off, imagine d very drunk, very happy and cheerfully boisterous. somewhere down the line d decided to prove to me and s that he really was wearing boxers. we maintained that we believed the hypothesis and that there was no need for experimental analysis. but d proceeded to prove his theory. but the experiment went out of control and so d ran towards the porch to pull his pants back up. to this description i must add the crucial bit that d was wearing sunglasses inside the house at about 10:00 pm. the sunglasses made it hard for him to see the screen door and he promptly put his foot through it. next he put a steadying hand through the screen door which fell off the frame and ended its short life on a conveniently located deck chair. apart from the hilarity and potential for ribbing, the only other good thing that came off this encounter was that d proved his theory. qed.

these guys brought out a cake for my b'day (if you're reading this, thanks n!) which was delicious. most people had to take n's word for it being delicious because the cake played an important part in another of d's escapades - the upside down cake episode.

after the usual huffing on the candle and the cutting, d picked the cake up and began prancing around the hardwood floors. somewhere in the middle of this idyllic prance, he decided to feed the wall-clock some cake. the next few moments are shrouded in mystery but the cake ended up face down on the floor. i think we still managed to get a few good bits out of it though!

and since she had missed out on the chelan trip g convinced b, u, k and her sister to take me to dinner at an italian joint where i unflinchingly performed d's 'save the cow' joke (don't ask, you have to be there to appreciate it). i bought myself a cool watch but g kept making fun of it over dinner. although it just enforced my internal 'this watch is cool' factor, i exchanged it for another today.

and that's it for today. classes start end of the month, i'm trying to con them into letting me take an 'independent study' class instead of the core classes. i'm starting to miss the 'dear respected sir' form letters we bulk-mailed while applying to grad school!

i'd like to end with a quote (possibly the worst macho-bulls*** i've ever seen) from the punisher. so this guys family was anihilated (again, don't ask why - you have to be there to appreciate it) and he's all decked up to kill some bad-ass guys. a completely under-utilized witch-doctor calls out to him "go with god" and the man goes (dripping so much machismo that the spot boy had to clean up after him on the sets while filming that shot) - "god will have to sit this one out".

bleep.

and back to our regular programme ...

2004-08-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

ah! saturday. it's one of those really nice days outside, not too hot, mildly overcast and no plans for the day. the best kind of half a weekend really. a few of us headed out to california pizza kitchen for dinner yesterday followed by hero. cpk (downtown bellevue) is a great place for pizza. hero was a great movie. the only flaw- the seats we got. second row from the screen isn't the best place when the entire movie is subtitled and you have some tall people sitting in front of you. i had to peek between locks of strangly hair and thick heads (we got a bunch of kilt-wearing alternative dressers in front of us) to read the action on the screen. i was tempted to borrow a few rubber bands from g and tie their hair up to enhance the viewing experience.

and it's a terribly small world. of all the people out here i had to be introduced to the one person i'd been hoping to avoid! but hey, at least that's over now :)

i got done reading the alchemist by paulo coehlo on the flight back to seattle. it's a great read. he could easily have culled out a ton of stuff from the last 50 pages and had a leaner, meaner and cooler fable. it's a great read nevertheless. not for the morals or the inpirational message - read it purely for the sheer simplicity of the imagery.

disaster stikes. just looked up movie timings ... a bunch of us were supposed to watch harold and kumar go to white_castle and it's just out of the theaters... i got conned into watching that crappy 'corporation' movie earlier this week with the promise of this whacho movie later, but zounds! i'm gonna have to wait for the dvd. the weekend just got a bit overcast.

da blog will have to wait. i'm gonna head out for a hike. my usual haunt ... mt.si

back in seattle and craving caffeine ...

2004-08-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

so i'm back in seattle and fighting jet lag and memories of a bad movie. i got conned into seeing the corporation last night. don't be fooled by the reviews here. the movie sucked like a high-powered hoover. it was a pathetic excuse for a documentary. it was patched footage put together by low-iq zealots without a clue and a huge agenda. they made michael moore look highly objective and rational. incidentally, they had a lot of footage of moore pontificating ad nauseum and the movie took forever to get over.

so i'm back at work trying to catch up with e-mail and thinking about last week when i was probably running on the beach about this time. i'll get to updating the trivandrum bits later tonight. i need some coffee now. yawn.

if you have a decent connection check the spec spot out. it has a number of short spots (quick ads) created by wannabe creative types. some of them are hilarious. and yes, we do have the gratuitous spot with the indian cabbie

and meanwhile in the grasslands of africa ...

2004-08-20T00:32:00.000-07:00

it started off innocently - questions about life in seattle. cooking patterns, usage of oil and spices, the availability of bay-leaf (i nodded sagely without the faintest clue as to what a bay-leaf was), the freshness of the frozen rotis (an oxymoron if i ever saw one) and the price of gas.

like masai tribesmen stalking a lone lion they were patient, following the spoor accurately, forcing me right where they wanted me. i ran through the tall grass, shaking my mane occasionally to shake the flies off my face, not really bothered by the puny figures carrying sticks but with a faint sense of unease that i was playing into their hands. but i plunged on nevertheless, confident that a few swipes of my paw and a few choice roars should do the trick.

and then i found myself in an arrayo that was blocked off at one end by rocks that had been pushed down from the slopes above. my senses tingled but i still wasn't overtly worried. i whirled around and then almost fainted in surprise, where i'd sensed a half dozen men there were now a few dozen spread across the river-bed in a ragged formation leaving me no way to escape without a fight. i took a few paces back and pawed the ground, the men started to approach cautiously but relentlessly, spears at their shoulder, shields held in front of them. i roared then, a futile attempt to scare them off. they kept moving forward.

i then did what i do under extreme duress. i rolled over onto my back and kissed my furry ass goodbye.

hold him down, hold him down. bring the girl.

2004-08-16T02:58:00.000-07:00

now for some details. my mom's elder sister, smart as a whip and with a tongue that can carve a turkey if she was in the mood. and when it comes to family get-togethers she's often in the mood. her husband used to be in the government, quite senior, and a faint smell of curruption hangs around him like a slightly grimy cup. it's more a feeling you get when you talk to him than anything he says. their children are all grown up and have lives of their own. but i get the feeling that they control their son's life by remote control. he has a daughter who'll be a teen soon but he calls in almost everyday to report on what's happening at work. after a few hours with them my mom starts getting muchos concerned about my laid back attitude towards career advancement, my spendthrift ways and my marriage - or rather, the lack of one.

my mom and her sister are constantly on the youngest brother's case telling him what to do with his life and his career. he's a pretty smart guy, he got his start in a bank started by an ancestor, works for another bank now. he spends most of his day schmoozing with people trying to get them to transfer their deposits from some other bank into his own. he's a case study in phychoses, paranoid about his boss, sure that the competition is out to 'get him' and quite confused about everything else in life. his wife is an amazingly sweet and competent woman who holds his excesses in check with a velvet glove. his kids, my cousins are still in school. one of them is in the 12th grade, pretending to work hard at his studies. he's the perfect man about the house, he actually blushes when my aunts tell him that he should be in the movies. he sings most of the time and has malayalam movie dialogues down pat. his younger brother is so overshadowed that he's become the shy silent type. but it's obvious that the real power lies in the tail.

so that was the cast gathered in trivandrum. the morning after we got there was a ceremony for my grandfather, we stuck a new plaque on his grave. an immensely vivid life, marked with some insipid inscriptions on a slab of granite. we headed back after that for another big lunch at home. the afternoon saw us sitting in the living room on ornate furniture that's about a century old with a slowly spinning ancient ceiling fan struggling to keep pace with the stacatto conversation that darted across the room.

and that's when the aunts did the unthinkable, they cornered me with a classic pincer manuevour. i was pinned to the couch and they closed in for the kill. the opening salvo was so innocent - "so, what is it like in the us? aren't you lonely by now?" and then it got progressively fiendish.

who's that white woman in the photo huh?

2004-08-16T01:18:00.000-07:00

my mom has a sister and two brothers. her younger brother stays in the house in trivandrum with his family and my grandmother. her elder siblings stay in trichur near each other but they rarely meet. there's more intrigue, petty rivalry and strife in this family that in most soap operas. my grandmother's the point of contention now. like some strange hitherto undiscovered species of exotic fowl none of them know how to take care of her. but that doesn't stop them, all of them have opposing ideas for taking care of her.

my grandmother's an enigma. i'm not sure anyone ever really knew her. i've never known her to have any friends of her own, any desires, hopes or likes of her own. she lived in my grandfather's shadow when he was alive. and now that he's dead she seems to have come into her own. she spoke to me for longer the first hour i was in trivandrum than she's ever talked to me, all the years i've known her. i feel i know her a little better now, daughter of the chief-justice of kerala, married to my grandfather when she was still in her teens, stuck in trichur while he went gallivanting around the world till her father put pressure on the government of india to cut his stipend. we teased her quite a bit about the photos of appapan with the white woman and kids, she steadfastly maintained that it was the wife and kids of the guy who took the photo, appapan's colleague.

she's in rewind mode now, reliving the best parts of her life and telling us about the choice parts. happy storytelling ammama.

goodbye and thanks for the chase

2004-08-13T13:42:00.000-07:00

sometimes instead of karim-saab's we'd head out to the sri mulam club for a game of cards and a couple of pegs of brandy. this place was chock-full of middle-aged and older men playing cards with their favorite poison at their elbow. it was the kind of place where eneryone knew everyone else and the average net worth was the gdp of most african countries. appapan (what i called my grandfather) had an established set of cronies and they'd yell at a bearer to bring me a small stool. they tried to get me interested in rummy early on and although i understood some of the finer points of the game (these guys spent more time at cards than working), i never did see the point. my stongest memory of the place is one of them trying to teach me to play billiards. i remember standing on a stool to be able to use the cue-stick.

we had a big dinner almost every evening. if i was lucky he'd give me some money to buy sip-up's from ayyapan's shop down the street. sip-up's were frozen sticks of flavored water in little plastic sleeves. the after dinner session was on the porch with me straining to read in the bad light, my mom and a visiting aunt talking about relatives, with my grandmothers cutting in occasionally with some obscure insight.

he got me hooked onto james hardly chase early on and he gave me the few he had lying around. he'd pooh-pooh my grandmother's protests over the gratuitous half-naked woman draped over the cover. a certain phase of my literary growth consisted entirely of hapless detectives and traitorous women oozing oomph in palm beach or beverly hills. at the end of each vacation he'd get me to bring him a bulging wallet from which he'd extract a few hundred rupee notes and press it into my hands. those notes had a half life of about 10 minutes, after giving me a fifty to buy a book on the platform my mom would confiscate the rest. appapan was always a little quieter on the day i was leaving, and as if to compensate for this slip he'd be extra gruff when he was sending us off in the auto.

that's how i remember dr.c.m.george. retired professor, bon-vivant who travelled all the way to canada to get his phd, whose photos holding a kid with a white woman in the background led to no end of speculation among us cousins, the terror of the neighborhood. he lived a good life and they tell me he died a good death, keeping everyone around him on their toes and grumbling about the food in the hospital. i didn't give him a chance to call me the 'great man' before he died, i was too busy trying to juggle graduate school and a relationship gone awry to travel out to say goodbye.

trivandrum ahoy

2004-08-13T01:39:00.000-07:00

it's about 750 km from madras to trivandrum. the roads are great, other cars are aggressive and the entire drive is like a long videogame. pac-man has those little buggy, crabby things that try to eat you. how simplistic. imagine avoiding cyclists, autos, cows, kids, dogs, squirrels, low-flying crows and trucks with wobbly wheels. all at 120 km/h. all with a mom in the backseat who keeps complaining about the bumpy ride, emits sharps intakes of breath just before you attempt that brilliant overtake manuevour that would have had shumacher taking notes and a dad whose calculations of time and distance have no bearing on the 3 dimensional world. it was, to put it mildly, an interesting experience.

the house in trivandrum was exactly how i remembered it, but much nicer. it used to be the one-stop venue for all my summer vacations while growing up. my grandparents lived there alone with a coterie of servants. more accurately, my grandmother lived there and my grandfather ruled his fiefdom from the porch, traumatizing all the passersby whom he know from when they were in diapers. i remember him from when i was little, wiry and full of life. he'd call on the telephone every sunday afternoon and ask to speak to the 'great man' even before talking to his daughter. that was how he used to call me ever since i can remember.

when in trivandrum we had a routine all to ourselves. mornings were spent on the porch. he'd read a couple of newspapers and read some bits out loud occasionally. i'd have my head buried in my latest alistair maclean novel. my grandmother would direct the endless flow of mangoes, tea, juices and coconuts from the kitchen to the porch. we were a tiny island of humanity in the middle of a crowded colony of people rushing to work, moms shopping and kids late for school. passersby would inevitably call out to my grandfather from the road and pause by the gate to be amused by my grandfather's description of my latest escapades; most of them shamelessly concocted. i sat there alternately preening and mortified. the paucity of water in madras and my making up for that by depleting the water levels in trivandrum was a sure-fire way to get a few chuckles.

if i was lucky a couple of kids down the street would get a game of monopoly going and i'd roll the dice with the best of them. there were three of them on udarashiromany avenue that i used to spend most of my afternoons with. choopa, the leader and dabbler in amateur theatrics. sajji, the serious academic one. harikrishnan, mama's boy whose fate was sealed with a dad who ran an industrial strength tuition center in his house and who kept forcing his son to study harder. we'd hang out mostly at harikrishnan's house. i suspect the three of them didn't hang out usually but those months of summer when i'd visit we'd all somehow naturally come together. their houses were right across the road from ours. there were of course other boys who came and went, none that i really recall well enough. choopa's now an established actor in malayalam television serials and has small roles in movies. he's got the typical 'acchayan' look with a receding forehead, gold-framed glasses, an amply well-fed body and a luxorious moustache. saji is married with a kid and unsurprisingly he became an engineer with a construction company. harikrishnan surprised everyone by settling down in california with a wife and a job with cisco. i got to see the first two this trip, it was a slightly awkward meeting, perhaps it was just the monopoly and cards that kept us together.

some evenings my grandfather would walk across to the neighbor's house to play cards. the house belonged to an academic called karim who eventually became quite famous in kerala. i'd simply jump the wall and run into their kitchen to be pampered. they'd play rumy with coins as stakes. i inhaled enough second-hand smoke there to convince me to never take up smoking ever. they'd sit on wicker chairs around an ancient wooden table in the porch that was covered by a frayed felt cover, karim smoking his imported cigarettes and my grandfather smoking his usuals 'wills'. time used to slow down during those evenings, maybe it was the way the smoke rose lazily from the cigarettes held languidly in their long fingers. fingers which were always shuffling and rearranging cards, perpertually looking for an advantage in the game. the games were never about winning, it was more two friends needing an excuse to spend time with each other.

half-moon bay and other experiences

2004-08-12T05:05:00.000-07:00

so i hung around in chennai for a few days after i got here on a sunday morning. my mom still teaches in the school i went to and she takes off early. my dad takes off earlier so it's usually just me and max till about 2:00 pm.

i was all the eager-beaver the first few days, i was still quite disoriented time-wise and was up at 4:00 am raring to do stuff. turns out there's not much you can do at 4:00 and so i did a fair share of navel-gazing. at about 5:45 i'd head out to the beach with my dad. the beach is just down the road and it's great out there. i used to
call it half-moon bay on account of the countless bums lined up squatting on the beach but the cops have (pardon the pun) 'crack'ed down on that :). so it's no longer 'eyes-straight-only' running, you can actually look around and enjoy the sunrise and water as you run past huffing and puffing jogging aunty-jis on the verge of a massive stroke, faces all red and bloated capillaries about to pop.

about 10:00 i'd head out to landmark to pick up some books. it's amazing that they have a section dedicated to books in english by indian writers. and it's not dominated solely by the oxford twanged, trinity college returns.
there's a huge variety, amit chaudhuri (who belongs to the previously described class but retains his innate indian'ness), jhumpa lahiri, anita desai, upamanyu chatterjee, hari kunzru, vikram chandra, amitav ghosh and quite a few more.
i'm currently on lahiri's 'namesake' after ploughing though kunzru's 'transmission' and chaudhuri's 'a strange and sublime address'. namesake is a pretty good read, i'll post a few reviews of the books in a bit.

after the bookshop forays i'd head out to the coffee day in ifthahani center and sit there surrounded by gucchi-touting, cellphone stroking teens looking suave and excited all at the same time. they sit four to a table sharing a cup of coffee staring at their phones. they either have it to their ear, or they're staring at it intently or they're offering sms messages to a strange and new-age cellular god, like priests chanting shlokas around a fire. ever so often a phone would ring and there'll be a mad scramble for phones all around. i was conspicious there, with my lack of a cell-phone standing out almost like i was naked. in fact i could have sat there butt naked with a phone and would have drawn lesser scornful stares. the waiter plunked my coffee down at the table with an inaudible "humph".
the other thing differentiating me from the guys sitting there is the lack of 'boxer-peek'. my jeans were at about waist-level unlike the other adonis-clones with their jeans around their knees and boxers peeking out like little imps. i was hopelessly not 'with the scene'.

somewhere through the week i took my mom to the jewelry store to buy her something nice. this is turning out to be an annual ritual that only my mom and the mastercard company appreciate greatly. what started out as a hunt for a small studd or a nice pair of earrings soon turned into the hunt for 'the most expensive piece of metal with shiny stones set in it'. the people behind the counter started rubbing their hands under the counter and i could hear the owner of the store on the phone ordering himself a new car. meanwhile, my wallet started a slow burn in my posterior. we walked out of there happy. my mom happy that i cared enough and me happy that it was over. like surgery, it hurt but nothing that many months of therapy can't heal.

so my driver and the maid at home fell madly in love and got married sometime last year. i still recall the phone conversation with my mom

me: how're things there?
mom: big trouble, i think there's some kitch-mitsch happening between the maid and the driver
me: nice! good for them
mom: shut up. you don't have to face the scandal
me: what scandal? they like each other, so what?
mom: but what if something happens?
me: ah yes, perhaps you should talk to them
mom: chee, i can't talk to them about these things
me: write a letter to the editor then. if you were in the us you could have gone on the oprah show and talked about this
mom: we just bought a book that's featured on the oprah book club
me: groan. traitor
click.

and now they're expecting their first kid. she's in the hospital and this guy just hangs around at our place, too confused to do anything concrete. i doubt he's even 23 years old. it must be pretty stressful for him coping with all of this. to add to that he's a maniac driver who's responsible for numerous dents. hopefully fatherhood will tone his driving skills down!

a few assorted things happened that week including being asked to leave the restaurant at the gandhinagar club because i was wearing shorts. so we sat outside on the lawn which was nice. it was the healthiest meal i've eaten. the mosquitoes sucked the blood out of me at the same rate at which i was eating. i speculated for a while about the possibilty of using mosquitoes as part of a crash-diet but figured the the idea might not have much appeal.

and then we drove out to kerala on saturday morning but more about that in a few hours when i get back from the gym. i go to a gym here called - believe this - maverick.

it's a pleasure pissing you off sir

2004-08-12T02:49:00.000-07:00

so here's the long promised blog update ... i've been busy - so sue me :). most of you overworked gentlepeople out there may not know this, but doing nothing is quite hard!

let's start with the flight out of seattle. i took northwest via amsterdam and bombay. don't do it. it's a crappy flight. no in-flight entertainment console and they force you to watch a shah rukh movie. the only form of entertainment is the concentric rings at the bottom of the barf bag.

stewardess: what'll you have to drink sir?
me: some of that awful tasting orange juice please
stewardess: we're out of orange juice
me: how about some tomato?
stewardess: we're out of all juices. i never had any juices on the cart. but i like making you ask for it. so what'll you have?
me: something terribly alcoholic and a pot of marijuana. the booze will keep my eyes unfocussed so i don't have to see you and the pot will numb the shooting pains in my shoulder as you slam into it each time you walk by
stewardess: here's your water sir. would you like something else?
me: throw yourself off the plane
stewardess: it's a pleasure pissing you off sir

and then it's schipol in a few hours.

me: a coffee please
woman_at_the_counter: 800 gazillion euros please
me: i just want a cup of coffee, not the machine itself
woman_at_the_counter: oh, then that'll be 300.45 gazillion euros. will there be anything else?
me: throw yourself under a running plane
woman_at_the_counter: it's a pleasure pissing you off sir

and many, many, many hours later - bombay airport.

customs_guy_with_moustache: so you have many things to declare no? you are having many electronics no?
me: no. nothing much in there
customs_guy_with_moustache: so you are having lots of gold no?
me: i'm coming in from seattle, so no gold and it's been a long flight. check the bags if you want to
customs_guy_with_moustache: i don't need to open bags, i can smell these things
me: that's just me, not the bags
customs_guy_with_moustache: so you are bringing drugs into the country?
me: do you seriously think i'll tell you if i was?
customs_guy_with_moustache: so are you here on vacation? having a good time?
me: not really, and i really like standing here talking to you
customs_guy_with_moustache: it's a pleasure pissing you off sir

and then many more hours later, i'm home. my dog's name is max. he's a golden retriever, not so gold anymore. he's about 13, slow as a dodo and a bit hard of hearing now.

me: hey there max, hey buddy, what's been happening?
max_the_dog: {who? where? i can hear a voice, i can't tell where it's coming from. these voices in my head ... i think i need a shrink but these people are too cheap for that}
me: cootchi, cootchie, cootchie ...
max_the_dog: {oh no, that cootchie-cooeing retard is back again. i thought he was gone for good. now i'll have to do all those stupid things he makes me do like fetch the paper, look cute when he takes me to the beach to chat women up using me as the bait. i think i'll just pretend to not hear him. i'll stare at this pot instead. nice pot}
me: i think he's a little hard of hearing now. he used to be so alert before
max_the_dog: {look yoyo, you don't feed me any more. these other humans in the house do. so go stare at your navel or something}
me: i guess he'll remember me later. i've brought him some shampoo
max_the_dog: {then drink it yourself bozo. i'll pretend not to hear when you yell at me to go to the backyard for a bath. so piss off now. this really is a nice pot. i wonder if she's single}

and the days go on. more in a couple of hours.

sound horn

2004-08-05T12:29:00.000-07:00

i took off to india 2 weeks ago. didn't bother to update the blog, sorry about that. decided to leave over a weekend and was on a flight that friday.

me: boss, i'm taking time off.

boss: huh?

me: i'm taking time off.

boss: oh yeah, you're that new guy who works for me. great. you'll need the time off after all this stuff i'm dumping on you.

me: i'm leaving this week.

boss: huh?

boss: huh?

me: yeah, i'm thinking of leaving this week. i'm getting burnt out.

boss: huh?

me: yeah, i'm going to india. i'll be gone 4 weeks. the net connection there is crappy and i don't care enough to check e-mail. i have tons of stuff that's incomplete that i'll be dumping on random people. i'll make a huge pretense of handing off things to people in an orderly fashion but in reality i'll be dumping stuff on them. stuff that's so obtuse and badly described that they have no way of getting things done.

boss: huh?

me: so it's all fixed then.

boss: but...

me: (from further down the corridor, walking briskly away) thank you for understanding. this is so cool. you'll be famous, i'll put you in my blog.

and so it transpired that a few days later i jumped aboard a crappy northwest airlines flight (with no in-flight entertainment) and headed out to madras.

spent most part of this week driving through kerala and visiting assorted relatives. there's only one reason for the evolution of mallu relative - material for blogging. soon showing in a browser near you. just managed to get myself a high-speed connection so bloging will start again.

i've driven about 600 km today and my eyes are still imagining the rear of trucks with the ubiquitous signs - "horn please", "we two, ours one", "bypass rider" and my favorite - "no kiss". so i'll head off to hit the sack now but i'll be back tomorrow with oodles of material. i love relatives :)

cut it out!

2004-07-16T22:05:00.000-07:00

stop bringing it on. really.

could i please buy that power-bar from you?

2004-07-12T01:57:00.000-07:00

i rehearsed that line about 50 times going up a mountain. to put that in context, here's the story. so i wake up on saturday looking forward to an absolutely blissful, caffeine-free, movie-loaded day indoors without any of those unhealthy exercise-type things scheduled for the day. my weekly fix from netflix was on the worship platform in front of the tv and the freezer had a ton of colored popsicles (why do they even try to convince us that it's *real* fruit? gimme the chemicals anydays). so, in all, a great day for lazers united (as in people who laze ... in case you were wondering).you know the kind of day i'm talking about right?
and then, stealthily, it kicks in. the "oh but it's such a nice day outside" thought. sometimes you dream it up yourself and sometime it's that over-enthusiastic friend who's all charged up about going up a hill and coming down. and that was my thought, my own damned invention - to go up a hill and come down. and dammit, i'm not even english!

i went up mt.si. it was dripping a little when i started up but it wasn't too bad. i kept trudging up the trail kicking myself for doing it. i had to keep moving over for the elderly people passing me in the fast lane waving their sticks at me. so i'm a little slow, sue me. around the 3 mile mark i decided that this was stupid, i've proven a point, i've driven out 30 miles in the rain to trudge up a hill. time to get sensible.

and then i heard the bell again. i'd been midly irritated by a bell all the way up the trail. it wasn't very loud, but it was incessent and always seemed to be just a little ahead of me. so i walked a little faster and found the bell. the bell was attached to a small wooden keg. the small wooden keg was in turn attached to a great huge shaggy neck. the great huge shaggy neck connected a huge wooly head to the rest of a st.bernard. a big friendly happy looking dog. being lead up he trail by this dog was a blind man. now, mt.si is not a terribly hard hike but it's not for the faint of heart. it's pretty steep and the rain had made it pretty hard not to slip. that spurred me on and i decided to wing it.

and then it happened - i got hungry. it was this sudden transition. one minute i was wondering if the wooden keg (the one attached to the big neck) contained whiskey and the next i was hungry. ravenously hungry. all i could think of were krispy creme donuts. i'd passed the store in issaquah on my way. i pulled my backpack out to pull the power-bars out. no power bars. i'd left them in the boot of the car. so i trudged on. each time i passed a weary hiker munching on a power bar i'd drool. those unwary hikers had no idea that they were an inch away from a ravenous power-bar seeking humanoid. then it struck me that i could buy a power bar off someone. but i didn't get around to actually doing it. i'd left my wallet in the boot of my car. so i trudged on.

i wanted to do the haystack scramble at the top but visibility was about 20 meters. it was cold and wet and chilly and foggy and desolate at the top. there wasn't even a view except for a small break in the cloud cover over snoqualmie valley. given that i was soggy and my boots made a 'squelchy' sound with each step i decided to leave the scramble for another day. and i trudged back down.

word of advice - when it's cold and wet and it's been raining a lot, don't take shortcuts. or you'll end up sliding down quite a bit, seeing some of your life flash before your eyes, arresting your slide painfully using your bare hands, get up and try to wipe the mud off your behind and realize that you can't since your hands are covered in mud and pine needles. you will then end up trying to squirt water on your hands using your back-pack mounted water hose thingie and figure out that it's not easy given that you can't actually hold the hose using aforementioned hands. stick to the trail, take the shortcut when it's sunny.

but in all it was a great hike. i was up and down in about three hours and a quarter even though i spent quite some time on the top goofing off. mt.si is a great hike for a sunny day, it's not bad on a rainy day if you have a good rain-proof jacket.

yaaay! the halo2 beta is out. i've been waiting for this since the inception of the transistor. but frankly, the beta has been a bit of a let-down so far. i like the maps but there's only a few of them and the weapons are a bit difficult to get used to. the pistol is the only weapon you *really* need anyway. but the halo2 pistol seems to be quite useless. they have all these fancy covenant weapons that i don't like very much. hopefully we'll get to download and use some good maps sometime soon. fingers crossed.

i saw king arthur earlier today. my friends have officially stated that they don't want to watch a movie with me ever again. i can't help it - i laugh when the guy with the arrow sticking out of his rear does this heroic lunge, saves the maiden and kills the saxon. i laugh when the music reaches a cresendo and the hero flails his arms amidst a whirlwind of knives and bodies fall like sacks of laundry around him. i laugh when i see about 30 polite saxons attacking the brave knight. they're polite because they only ever attack one at a time.
it's like in martial arts movies, specifically kung-fu movies. they surround the hero but they only attack one at a time. it's like there's an unwritten code.

here's a fun fact, saxons plait their beards. that was a bit disturbing. here's a fierce saxon warrior with arms of steel and a ferocious expression and a pony-tail in his beard. next he'll be challenging me to a death-match and a game of house-house afterwards complete with a miniature tea-set and barbie dolls.

tired of all those cool movies and serials set in ny city? here's one for the seattle'ites. singles. it's a must watch. another great movie in the confused cinematography genre is go.

yawn, it's another week coming up. sometimes i get the feeling that life is passing me by and giving me the finger as it goes by. remember sometime ago when i said "bring it on"? can we please stop "bringing it on" now? i'm full, thank you.

more about the fremont fair

2004-07-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

so i finally managed to lay my hands on the pics from the fremont fair (thanks to r's excellent photographic skills).

believe me, this wasn't the craziest car there. there were cars with skulls on the hood, with barbie dolls pasted on the roof, striped like tigers and one entirely covered with oversized women's underwear

this guy was a complete character! he sat in the middle of the street challenging people to make him lose control of the 'space ship'. he'd move the ship (which was a bit of yellow foam) wildly and the pilot (the poor sucker who paid $2 to make a fool of himself) was supposed to try to regain control. the only thing that took away from the realism was that ever so often the ship would jump out of the screen and head towards the pilot's face. didn't he ever watch the last starfighter?

and in other news, i had my first game in the ultimate league. i'm in a team called the condors (go figure!). and to our utter astonishment, we won (and it wasn't even a close game). we played in the rain and the wind didn't make things any easier. you could always hear your mark sneak up on you because of the squishing sound (turf retains a lot of water ). my throwing under pressure sucked but i ran like a mad dog and helped the team some. at the end we had to come up with a cheer for the other team. the team was called jam. we spent about 5 minutes throwing ideas around ranging from free-style rap to throwing clumps of grass at them. we finally settled on spelling out jam and doing a cheerleading routine. passersby gawked at the sight of nine soaking wet men and a woman kicking their boots up in the air and screaming. we have a game every week, i need to work on my forehand throws in the meantime. i need to find some pick-up games around here.

to report some progress on my 'be-nice-to-people' movement. it's having some degree of success but it's an uphill battle . people who try to quit smoking stand around smokers just sucking up that second-hand smoke. in my case i hope and pray for someone to say something funny, just for a few second-hand wisecracks.

i know, it's an addiction. but i'm working on it.

pat on my back.

the 4th of july weekend and the 'be-nice-to-people' effort

2004-07-06T00:17:00.002-07:00

so this was an amazing weekend. simply brilliant. i'm actually feeling good about going in to work; i usually end up being so knackered by the weekend that my first thought at work is 'coffee'. and my second thought, and the third and so on.

friday started off with a visit to comedy underground. they had daniel packard who turned out to be absolutely, knee-shaking funny. the way i rate comedy clubs - it's not about how funny the show was. the essence of a great comedy club is in how much fodder it gives you to use after you leave the club. and as far as this show went- it was a cornucopia of one-liners and concepts. to throw some out here -

- it's not really men who obsess about sex, it's the inner monkey inside each male. it's all the monkey's fault. a word to all the women out there - reach out to a man's inner monkey. make the monkey feel secure.

- "i don't have issues. no, i have subscriptions"

the rest of the acts were just about okay. pretty hard crowd, there was this one woman who couldn't stop talking to daniel in the middle of his act. half the audience wanted to walk over to her and hit her over the head. the other (monkey-controlled) half wanted to look down her top. i'd like to amend that. if you actually looked down her top you'd be looking at her belly-button.

we headed out to jillian's after to play pool. i officially suck at the game. the only thing i should play on a green surface is ultimate frizbee. but i could definitely charge money for allowing people to watch my game. some of those shots defined the laws of physics (and the laws of pool, to boot!).

saturday we grilled some stuff at a friend's place and played a bunch of x-box. i had my first taste of fifa 2004 (soccer). and i'm officially hooked. i like complex games with a bunch of variables and this is perfect. i also officially suck at topspin tennis. later that day we headed out to chopstix, a piano bar downtown seattle. the place was great! we sang along and got a bit tipsy. irrespective of alcohol level, i like places where i can be loud and this place had louder people!

in the midst of this great weekend i walked into a complete trap. friend of mine (the one with subscriptions about copying music) bet me 20 bucks that i couldn't be nice to her for 2 weeks. two whole weeks without wisecracks, snide remarks, long tripping sessions, intense leg-pulling and making up stories about her. i cannot discuss her intense crush on vin diesel, her fetish for arranging furniture at right angles, her inabilty to take a left turn when oncoming traffic is under five hundred yards away, her fixation about the number of speed bumps in her apartment complex, her noisy car, her belief that the cast of friends are actually friends in real life and live in three apartments somewhere in the city, and this is the worst - the bottles of nail polish in her refrigerator. and this is where it gets worse - i have to try to be reasonably nice to other people as well. to someone like me who lives for 'the right moment to say something funny' this is sheer torture. i don't see smiling faces at dinners, to me it's mostly bull's-eyes on necks and i'm loaded with wisecracks.

sunday was a bit healthier with some tennis and working out. my approach to working out is unique. first i head over to the stretching area and try to look more flexible than the octogenarian touching her toes backwards. i then dawdle around the bookrack trying to find something to read. i pick a magazine and then head to the water fountain for a quick sip. i then squint at all the machinery looking for something that looks cool but not too hard. once i find a machine i approach it rather warily. i then see how much weight the last person used on the machine. more often than not i find it's twice what i can possibly imagine doing (those health freaks with lowered life expectancies and names like 'carl', or 'brett'). i reach for the pin to adjust the weight and pull my hand back rapidly. i then look around to see if anyone's watching. if the coast's clear i adjust the weights quickly. i read the instructions and look at my knees in the mirror for a while. i have 'outy' knees. most people have 'innies'. i grunt and curse for the next few minutes on the machine. i head to the water fountain after that, all the while looking for the next instrument of absolute torture that i could subject to. you get the general idea.

we headed out to gasworks park for the 4th of july fireworks. it was awesome. i've always wondered what the big deal was but it was spectacular and quite moving. people need causes and rituals, i'm too cynical to feel strongly about most things but i see how the system needs more of these to keep the general fabric of society in reasonably good repair. parking was really bad around there. the 'boys' ended up having to walk a really long way to the car, navigate our way through crazy traffic to pick the 'girls' up. they really didn't seem properly appreciative. we men are very, very underappreciated. perhaps the spca can be interested in the inner monkey concept? new law to be passed - abusing the inner monkey is a crime.

and the biggest event in my life recently, i've found another set of self-involved-shallow-navel-gazing-narcissistic-peurile-twenty-somethings-who-need-to-get-a-life. these people are more thirty-somethings, have british accents and live on the sets of this show called coupling. the show is funny as hell. and i love their accents. especially the way they say 'bloody ell'.

looks like a long hard week coming up ahead. lots of work. lots of dreading the gym. lots of unread books sneering at me as i walk past them in the house. lots of having to be nice to people with funny stuff popping up in my head.

... bring it on :)

.

desi spidey and kim's journal

2004-06-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

this just killed me - desi-eshtyle spiderman. who would've thunk it? peter parker morps into pavitr prabhakar complete with a lungi and without the toighty-tighty underwear. he's a bit of a mix - maharashtrian and pathan (check out the jodhpur-style shoes). makes you wonder, doesn't the 'costume' make it harder to swing around? what about wind resistance? isn't it harder to change into this? especially considering that phone booths aren't all that common in india. and where does he hide his costume while he's off doing his reporting thing? i supppose aunt may becomes meera maasi and love interest mary jane becomes mansi jhaveri. oh well, i grew up on the green lantern but times change.

i'll add a set of links somewhere for the blogs i follow but here's the funniest of them all - a blog purporting to be maintained by kim jong 2 (the south korean head-honcho). it's a complete riot with transcripts of chat sessions with bush.

so some guy tried to make some money off google because he knew how to automate http get statements? i should be in a different line of work, i've never been in the news.

when the workday slows down and you need your fix, head over to the onion. where else do you get to see stuff like this?

remember bainbridge island? here's how the rich people live ...

biking on bainbridge

2004-06-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

here's an interesting fact. if you type as badly as i do and head over to http://www.bloger.com, when you try to leave the page you're prompted to set your homepage to http://www.munky.com. why, oh why, oh why would i want to do that? aarrrgh.

so it's getting close to time for another rant. a rant against spyware, browser hijacking, pop-ups and things of that ilk. but i'll save that for later.

i saw yojimbo by kurosawa over the weekend. it's your regular western but set in a village (which is all of four buildings) in china with two warring gangs. it even has the standard-issue coffin-maker who makes a killing out of the falling bodies. one of the best movies ever is ran. you could turn the subtitles off and still get the movie.

i turned up for ultimate league practice yesterday. i was exhausted before we got done with the warm-up. by the time we got to the drills i was panting so hard that people were tripping over my tongue that trailed all the way onto the turf. but i'm going to work at it. at least i know what a stack and a force are now.

a bunch of us saw fahrenheit 911 on sunday. first impressions - it was a very, very funny movie posing as a documentary, the facts are dealt with exhaustively and reasonably objectively (i'm surprised that moore managed to stay as objective in the movie as he has), the sequences are put together well enough and it doesn't scream 'omigod, omigod, omigod' which is more the moore style. the film downplayed the non-finding of wmd even though it touches upon the 'hunt for wmd'. definitely worth watching. the best line in the movie? - "who's your daddy".

i started reading baumgartner's bombay by anita desai. it's serious reading, i wish i could find something lighter, something alive and cheerful.

if you're into biking at all, bainbridge island is a must. head over to pier 52 on alaskan way (downtown seattle). the ferry to bainbridge takes about 35 minutes and it's a great ride. when you get off the ferry head over to the information center (just outside where the ferry docks) and pick up a bike map. my advice, pick the 'flat and easy' routes. it's still plenty hilly! it's best to drive a few miles out to the start of the trail, park your car and then get on the bike. there's lots to see along the way. make it a point to bike along rockaway beach, the view of seattle from there is just something out of a sci-fi novel - rolling hills with small houses on either side of a towering city with buildings that seems to rise out of nowhere ,flanked by two collosal stadiums. i'll post some pics here soon.

on a completely different track, here's an interesting read - '21 rules of thumb - how microsoft develops it's software'. that question is surely fodder for a million funny one-liners but it's still an interesting read.

eulogy for napster and lounging in greenlake

2004-06-22T01:02:00.000-07:00

i like bouncing ideas off people. i mostly do it for the sound of my own voice, but occasionally - i listen. a friend of mine's been bouncing off quite a few of her beliefs about life, the universe and opinion-forming-principles off me and some of it is starting to stick. damn.

bob dylan at 1:00 am. i really need to get some new mp3's. oh! the days of napster.

did i really type that aloud? i wish i could take that back. but i can't ... so i'll admit it.

"i used to napster, but i didn't inhale".

so this aforementioned friend used to napster just as i did in grad school. she stopped because she can now afford to pay for music. i stopped because it'll be a drag to hire a lawyer when they slap a lawsuit on my behind. the bigger issue obviously is about paying for content. she believes that it's okay to pay $20 for a cd because the record label says so. the artist and the people behind the music deserve the money. fair enough, i agree with her on the second point. what i don't like is that nirvana's smells like teen spirit costs more now than it used to when Kurt was alive. so where does all that money go now? not to kurt for sure. it's sucked up by some chubby guy in a golden suit with a big flashy diamond on his pinky and an unlit cigar sticking out of his pouty lips underneath a receding forehead set off by beady eyes.
patents die out after twenty years. perhaps the amount you pay for music should taper off as an album gets older. when an industry hires chubby lawyers in black suits with tasteful rings and cigars (dominican, not cuban) sticking out of their pursed lips to sue thirteen-year olds it's close to hitting rock bottom. shame on you.

and please, please - don't introduce so many formats. it's stupid. figure out a smarter way to protect downloaded music. locking people in by restricting the devices they can play their music on, preventing them from making copies of their music ... wrong approach people. you have some smart minds working for you but they're probably controlled by mba wielding technology-control-management types. the dark side is filled with razor sharp minds with endless time on their hands trying to make you look stupid.
darth's clan will win. figure something else out.

i saw this ridiculously funny movie called the breakfast club over the weekend. highly recommended watching if you're not in the mood for mindless comedy. on that vein, lolita is a must see. kubrick's treatment is quite different from nabakov's yarn. and yeah, nabakov's being accused of pliagirism. shame on you ... dirty old man :).
if you're in the mood for some mental gymnastics the corrections by jonathan franzen is a good workout. somehow, his writing forces me to re-read most lines. the language is simple, the grammar is great but i can't grok it in the first go. go figure. huh?

the weekend was great. it's sunny out here most days now. yipee.

green lake park had tons of people in skimpy clothes working out, looking great and being generally un-naturally healthy. a few of us drove out there, found a convenient tree and plonked down in the shade. the closest i came to exercising was a running critique of the ultimate frizbee players in the vicinity. but we did detect a statistical anamoly - there was an inordinate number of shoebox dogs being taken for a stroll (shoebox dog = a dog that can fit in a shoebox). some of the women walking the dogs had platform shoes that were bigger than the dogs. really.

and then we headed out to alki beach to witness another statistical anamoly - women in really short, frilly skirts poised precariously on their hips. the skirts seemed to emit a dangerous predisposition towards leaping off hips, slipping across pavement and hailing a passing guy. before you mutter 'wishful thinking', i have witnesses. really.

an ode to google

2004-06-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

so what's the deal with google? a lot actually. over the years i've looked at google from a number of different perspectives and i'll chalk some out here. i work in a related space so i've had some time to think about this.

a lot of people made money by building information portals in the last decade. to make money off a portal you need give people a reason to keep coming back. you either do this by providing content or by providing services. the companies that focus on content are making money, but not a whole lot. the average guy still prefers cable to internet explorer. there are reams of articles about how the internet revolutionized b2b, b2c, c2c etc. for the average internet user that means zilch - it just means you can buy stuff over the internet. the real value-add is the ability to find and share information. to find information you need an index and that's why search technology will be the hottest thing around for a long time.

google has great technology. they invested time and smart minds on algorithmic search and nothing else till they got it mostly right. a lot of players offered lexical search (basically looking for certain words in a document) that worked pretty well but got distracted with building sexier portals. google's technology which was initially roughly based on kleinberg's hubs and authorities idea combined with the ideas they described in their 'anatomy of a search engine' paper has definitely evolved, but the basic ideas are brilliant and still work. i had to review this paper for a graduate course in data mining. i had a funny slide on appendix a which was titled 'advertising and mixed motives' which decried advertising tied up with search engine results. i guess these guys are decrying all the way to the bank now :).

i'm still in awe of the number of technologies that google works on. the basic search is just the tip of the iceberg. they have invested time in a number of cool ideas that have huge potential - blogging, price-comparison, email, multi-lingual language support, image search ... it goes on.

in the midst of all of that they have the time to champion causes like the fight against deceptive software and maintain the google blog (which gives you a good feel for what the work-ethic is like...)

before you start thinking it - no, i don't work for google. far from it. but i respect the company and the direction they're taking. i respect the fact that all the heady hype and hoopla is written up by technologists who're peeking in from the outside at the outer layers of what they're working on. i respect the fact that they don't have vp's making statements about how cool their technology is. or how they're garnering market-share. or how they're trying to bump the stock price up by inane statements.

i need more caffeine. and yeah, that slartibartfast guy is a poser.

who needs bookmarks?

2004-06-17T00:12:00.000-07:00

is it just the books i'm reading or is it me? at last count i'm reading five books. i pick them up in almost no logical order. how sad is that? instead of a girl in every port i have a book in every room. at least i'm better off than people who need a fix of mind-numbingly-predictable-back-to-back episodes of friends.

wait... i'm one of those people.

well, at least i'm not abnormal. no, wait. read previous line.

so the stock market's picking up. my net worth went up by about 34 cents today. after taxes that should leave me just about enough for ... nothing.

i saw caddyshack today. it cracked me up. bill murray is a god. they could have made the gopher a little more realistic but i like the moves the little fella had. groovy (pronounced gruveee with an accent on the last e).
i need to book tickets for india sometime in the near future. i'm resolved to be more proactive about things. i'll spend some time thinking about that this week.

i also need a vacation. i've been heading into work this week waiting to leave. even the 34 cents didn't do much to increase my morale. i think my expectations have gone up. damn.

which leads me to another interesting thought. what's the difference between being really, truly happy and strapping yourself to some electrodes that convince you that you're happy (using three aaa batteries, two green wires and a diode - write me for detailed diagrams). sci-fi has dealt with this ad-nauseum.

here's another take on this - the social engineering variety. if i keep convincing myself that i'm worth nothing, i don't deserve much and that i don't need to have friends i can (eventually) be happy with much lesser. lowered expectations and achievements but much happier. truly.
so, as a start i'm lowering my expectations from quadrillionaire to billionaire.

so you gazzilionaires and gmail users - i don't envy you. i found my spigot.

friendless in seattle?

2004-06-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

i'm getting dangerously close to cleaning up on friends.

sometimes, just sometimes, when i lounge on my futon in a artificially-generated-laugh-track-induced stupor i press pause on the dvd player and spend a minute looking at the patently ridiculous expressions on screen. i memorize their facial arrangements. after ten minutes i repeat the exercise. their bodies are in different places but their faces look the same. and from this i came up with a magnificient theory.

they make the 'friends' act that way to save on bandwidth.

come on, it's a perfectly obvious explanation for why their facial expressions seem to cycle every 33.452 seconds (the time between laughs).

when they send the video signals across the wire they send frame data about the background, the body movements and other action. they don't send data about the faces though - they just send data like "ross:3,monica:16,joey:1,chandler:2" where the number stands for a certain expression. for example chandler:2 is chandler with the 'duh-aha' expression.

for the next frame they send "joey:4,chandler:2,rachel:8".

they used to have to send more data for chandler but then he grew really fat and you can't tell between his facial expressions anymore. so he's stuck at 2 - the 'duh-aha' expression.

i started re-reading the douglas adams' second-best masterpiece over the weekend. yes, they're all masterpieces but dirk gently's holistic detective agency is the best. hence, the first in the hitchhiker's trilogy (although there are actually 5 of them?) takes second place. if you disagree you can take it up with my pet vogon. i found the entire set, used (of course - i'm cheap) at elliot bay. i can't believe they actually have 'pattern recognition' in the bargain book section now.

may they be struck by the curse of mildew. lots of it. especially in their prominently displayed copies of 'the da vinci code' which is a featured selection of the incomparable 'oprah book club'.
the oprah hangout is a pretty exclusive club. you need to wear a bookmark and a post-it to enter. dog-ears are discouraged but the drinks are free.

there's a friends trivia game?

2004-06-14T19:58:00.000-07:00

i saw the 'friends triva' game at a wizards of the coast store last year and laughed aloud.

i laughed reallly hard repeatedly saying 'oh man, oh man, who would buy that?'.

it then turned out that someone who'd come along had actually played the game and went on to say that it was a lot of fun.

so then i was pointing at him, laughing loud and repeatedly saying 'oh man, oh man, who would play that?'.

and now it's happened to me. i have no cable and netflix is too slow. i've been living in a layer that's shielded from reality by an endless succession of episodes from friends.

i'm (gulp) more than halfway through them. soon it'll be over. there'll be no more self-involved-shallow-navel-gazing-narcissistic-peurile-twenty-somethings-who-need-to-get-a-life types keeping me laughing.

what am i going to do? oh what oh what oh what?

here's a thought - i could always get cable, tune in to cnn and watch self-involved-shallow-navel-gazing-narcissistic-peurile-fifty-somethings-who-need-to-get-a-life types talk about the 'situation' in iraq and how it's awful that the natives are fighting back and how they have the audacity to resist the invasion. why can't they just let the damned oil flow freely?

i know, i know. you think i have the shallow view that iraq was all about the oil.

you're wrong. i see the bigger picture. it's not as simple as 'walk in there and take the oil'. it's more like 'walk in there, get rid of the guys in power, get rid of most of the people who don't toe the line, bomb and destroy everything, hand out contracts to rebuild everything, and then, only then - take the oil'.

it's a shame when a well-thought-out strategy like that gets all messed up by insurgents blowing up oil fields.

btw, have you seen my spigot? i left it by the comma.

me:- "who's god". ramona:- "piss off"

2004-06-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

and it's monday.

again.

it's been this way for the last few years. and before that. we need a change in this whole days-of-the-week thing, it's getting monotonous.

i'd like to buy an island. and on my island i'll have some new rules. i'll start with the 'no mondays' rule.

there's a guy at work with a sign on his door that says 'there are two secrets to being successful at business. the first is to never tell everyone you know.' it's funny - in a geeky sort of way (which is of course the best kind). but i've devised a way to piss him off and make him take that sign off his door. i'll stop by his office every day and ask him about the second secret. i'll keep doing it until he starts throwing things at me when i walk in the door. i'll then scrawl the second secret under the first - 'keep bugging people until you get what you want'.
that ought to enhance my reputation as a guy who gets things done.

i sometimes mess with ramona when i get bored. ramona's this ai bot on ray kurzweil's site. she does really well on the 'who is ___' kind of questions. try 'who is god' for kicks. if you haven't already, check out the rest of the articles on that site. some of the essays on machine intelligence are pretty cool.

about two years ago i got started writing a story about an intelligent lifeform in the internet. the basic premise was that the brain was a set of interconnected neurons all running parts of the same program, or rather, by their interconnections and firing *were* the program itself. in other words - consciousness.

the story starts out inside the mind of the protagonoist. just your regular guy in india. all of his thoughts, memories, emotions, feelings in real time. but that's where it got interesting. the guy doesn't really exist. all of that is generated by a program running on distributed nodes across the internet - a machine generated consciousness. i was all excited about exploring the whole concept of consciousness. would it be murder to turn all those machines off and bring them back on? if you think of the system as a state machine in a self-contained system then as long as previous state is retained the system can be brought back up at any point with no change. but it it then the same 'version' of the consciousness or was something altered?

most of this is still in my head - i didn't get around to completing the story. i'm tepidly determined to complete the story before classes start up again in september. it took a little steam out of me when i saw the same concept in the form of Jane, the evolved computer intelligence from Orson Scott Card's Ender series.

psst... need a box of pe*is enlargers?

2004-06-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

i stared at my inbox for a full minute willing new mail. no luck.

it's friday and people who have a life are out doing other things. i think I'll go off and check my yahoo mail.

yahoo mail is so dependable. i keep getting mail about penis enlargers and breast enhancers. inevitably, both mails are from the same guy.
someone really needs to explain to matt.davison@emedicineathome.com that the market for people who're interested in both products is very, very small. if it really was a big market then you'd see more of this around.

so you walk into costco and ask them where they keep the ear buds. this friendly sales woman leads you between the bales of diapers and hands you a box of 9999 ear buds (that's the smallest size they carry). you thank her and start to walk away and she asks you if you'd like to buy a dozen penis enlargers. if you stop to show any interest whatsoever, she'll start the cross-selling pitch. a half hour later you're struggling to open the boot of your car which is hard when you're balancing a huge box of penis enlargers and a bigger box of breast enhancers (they were on sale).
cross-selling to cross-dressers? now there's a niche market they don't teach you about at wharton.

so i think I'll give this a shot

2004-06-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

i'm here. finally. who would've thunk it? blogopia.

i'll have witty things to blog every time i'm near typing distance of a browser. i'll tell funny stories and make insightful observations about everyday things but from a completely wacky perspective which will make people go - 'oh wow, this guy is wacky. truly.'.
yes, this blog is going to rock. so cool.

people will talk about this blog over coffee. and like in 'pattern recognition' by william gibson i'll spawn a geek following by posting traces of a thought, glimmers of an idea. see what i did there? i let it drop that i've read the book. i'll do things like that to make this a cool blog. somewhere later i'll allude to my erudite movie watching habits.

see, i did it again and you didn't even notice. i was born to do this.

i must admit that i'm feeling a bit of performance anxiety. what if i can't be witty on demand? i know, i can always inhale a helium balloon. i'm a party animal. roar, roaar.

i need caffeine.