Yes – I had one of them days – I went out after much thought and prevarication to buy myself a samsung galaxy tablet. I got out, started fiddling with it and could not help but think that I had made  a brilliant choice with  this one. And then, I got to the stage of inserting the sim card, and thats when it all started to go wrong. Somehow, the stupid micro-sim adapter managed to get stuck in the slot and none of my attempts to get this thing out have been successful to date. I am left with  this nasty feeling that I may have to shell out a bit more money to have the 3g gooodness that I have been so yearning for all of these days.

I do notice one thing with this tablet though – in its own strange way, it seems to have increased my productivity by its simple lack of features. The lack of distractions and the simplicity of the interface seems to be splendid for the average writer who wants to get his quota of words done with for the day. It also doubles up wonderfully well as a all in one entertainment system. For all practical purposes, I have very little use for my mac if this thing keeps up as well as it seems to be doing. Fingers crossed!

I’ve whined a great deal about some things here to some poor souls (read Sroyon, Ayan and Simran) who have no option but to listen, but despite all of that, I have to admit that I absolutely love the city. In fact, I like it almost as much as the time I spent at NUJS which is really saying something!

Top tip for the anglophilic Indian who comes here for the first time  – chivalry is truly dead in the land of Big Ben. The average Jat taxi driver who awaits flight weary souls at New Delhi’s swanky, new and likely short lived airport, is probably more chivalrous than the average English dude. In fact the only other chivalrous people whom you are likely to see in London are other anglophilic Indian guys.  I believe that the reason for this is that they are deceived by devious Indian expat women who realise that they  can exploit such anglophilic tendencies to get some extra patta. On a slightly tangential note, nothing impresses me more than a desi woman commanding respect . On the other hand, there are few things in the world more fucking irritating than a desi woman suddenly going la di da just because she’s spent a year abroad. Yes – I believe that is enough political incorrectness for a post.

In other news, I used to think stockings were sexy – until I saw this woman who seemed to think that it was cool to wear moth eaten ones. Much like I thought jeans were cool until I saw them worn with the waist line at crotch level and revealing enough butt cleavage to have me hurling my lunch all over myself.

And finally – I’ve finally gone and got myself a camera. More on that soon.

CHACHINNGGG!!!!

I hit jack pot I tell you. JACKPOT. So, how did it all happen. To start things off, my iclke elder brother and the recent addition to the family vamoosed off to them Arabian deserts leaving their home theatre sound system behind. That got me hooking up my macbook and my ipod touch (once again hand downs from my ickle elder brother who has rather gotten into this habit of handing me down pretty cool things) to the home theatre sound system so that I could continue listening to them Thievery Corporation and Wolfmother songs, but now in surround sound. But thus is human avarice that the small step up in my listening pleasures made me only hungry for more, and I once again found myself brooding over the loss of the radio and all the fun that came with it.

Then a couple of days ago, BSNL made an announcement that had me all excited. They decided to hand out a freebie to all of us cheapskates who had steadfastly refused to increase our bandwidth beyond 256 kbps for over several years now, and told us that they were doubling our speeds for free. At first, the true import of this didn’t not sink in to me and I wasted a few hours reveling in the fact that I could now watch a youtube video without having to identify a suitable book to read in the space of time between me actually opening the video and the browser finishing up with the buffering before I could actually WATCH the video. So, having watched a few kids and adults make fools of themselves on home videos and thinking that they become anything other than fools by uploading them on to youtube, I found myself exploring what other things I could do with the new found freedom that my increased bandwidth offered me.

Ans then it hit me like orca whale blubber of an orca whale just blown up by dynamite. I downloaded the ‘Shoutcast’ app for my ipod touch, and voila, I had internet radio at home. Needless to say, I wake up to this awesome channel ‘Martini in the Morning’. Internet Radio! Highly Recommended. Internet Radio! For all your needs!

I’m going to talk of just one – Ninja Assasin. Whizzing shurikens, swooshing swords and bloodshed which the Grand Canyon couldn’t hold. Of course, it had the grand old ninja master who turned out to be grand old nasty i’m gonna get my ass whooped coz I am Ozunu ninja master in this one. Worth a watch when one despairs of having too much to do in too little time. It is full of these motivational ninja sayings like “You think you feel pain now that you have been bludgeoned in the head with an iron rod? I’ll poke you with four of my fingers in your stomach and you shall know true pain!” It also has this Takeshi guy doing the customary kung fu movie Bruce Lee like taunt – “come here little brother, let us play like old times.” Much like that scene from “Enter the Dragon” where Bruce Lee goes – “Outside”.

I wonder how it is that amongst all the people getting sliced and diced by all that flying cutting apparatus, one man with no armor whatsoever, and who is not even the ninja assassin dude, can run around toting a pistol and shoot those lightning fast ninjas down. Then there is the whole thing about the woman having her heart on the right side of her chest. The evil guy thinks he has killed her, knifed her straight through the heart and all that. Only not quite. Hollywood, it seems, has taken a leaf out of the Indian film maker’s book of corny story lines.

On an entirely different note – there is something about Ahmedinejad’s gall which truly fascinates me. His latest coup with the non-permanent members of the Security Council on the nuclear enrichment issue, is, I believe, just the latest trick in his seemingly never empty bag of them. He is pretty wizard-like in his execution – a wave of the hand .. and poof the world is suddenly uncertain what to do with him. And could anyone tell me why in the world the G-15 (an acronym for the Group of Fifteen) is called so when it actually consists of seventeen countries?

Currently though, I am not green dot busy. I am well and truly green dotty. For the weekend. For today. This is a luxury which is now not lost on me.

The quaker pleasantly surprised me with a call the other day – he has warned me of the London cold and culled out a strategy for procuring the woolens. He has kindly offered to whoop my bottom at tennis as well. I think I’ll ask the dude from Bombay to be my doubles pair. I fear though that the quaker will entice him away from me with the promise of the terrific thighs that his boxers offer.

A trip to Ladakh and Leh with the dude from Bombay is in the offing.. But that is for May – when I shall be done with work in Chennai for the time being.

Oh.. and much has happened since the previous post. I have graduated. My brother has changed his marital status. A friend is running about reporting on local football games. I have bid a final adieu to the city of joy. I don’t think I’ll go there much now. At least, I don’t think I would much like going back there. It is not quite the same anymore now.

Apparently that phrase translates to – ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down’, which was used by a WW II General as his motto. We do learn strange things from the songs we sing.

I love songs that make you feel like someone just walked over your grave – which send a neat little shiver down your spine. Not because they are spooky or anything, just that they hint at something dark and gloomy. ‘Elanor Rigby’ for instance. Or ‘Cemeteries of London’. Like Lessing’s ‘The Fifth Child’ or any of Ishiguro’s set to verse and melody.

I like my dark rooms and my table lamps. A friend once told me that I think quite like a cave man would. I reckon there is some truth to that. I’ll have my dark cold damp cave lined with warm cozy furs. I’ll need some books and beer though.

And now that world space is dead, I’ve moved on to internet radio. To me the radio shall never be a relic of the past.

I would like to smoke a cigar. Just once – so that I can say that I have. Much like the time I ate a snail.

The world is full of people looking back at the year gone by and looking forward to the year ahead. There is even the bunch who do neither and resolutely cling on to the present like they would to a truck careening over the edge of a cliff. Actually, I’m not too sure anyone would cling to a truck like that but this bunch would.

To be in the present at all times is to be unimaginative. To be in the present on new year’s eve is to be a rock unmoved by the wind. I am neither and I go where the wind will take me.

If I was the rage this year, I would be SO last year in but a few hours. Discarded and forgotten, my moment would have passed. Should I then be happy now in these moments when all tend to reckon of things gone by and things yet to come, that I was not the rage this year? Should I rejoice having been nothing special for the comfort that it offers me now by precluding the possibility of the new year holding the threat of my becoming ordinary? Or should I grieve that an entire year has passed by and I seem not to have done much which mattered? If one could decide how one is to feel about such things I understand now that the world would be a very difficult place to live in. It is good then that we have little control over our emotions, for with control comes the difficulty of having to control.

I don’t know if I made much sense. I don’t know if it mattered. I do know that I would have said it all any which way. I suspect that I will go to Scarborough Fair in the coming year. The canticle points and the country beckons.

The resolute need no resolutions and I am resolute in my intention to have none. A play of words then to bid this year adieu.

Occasionally, The Hindu comes out with something apart from their ridiculous ‘intellectual’ airs of self-importance which would qualify as pretty funny. (My dad now claims he buys the paper only for the obituaries and the crossword. I like the way they think they are Chinese.) Today was such an occasion, although I’m unsure whether they really realized that what they printed draws a laugh or two, since they placed it in the Editorial Page. A scientist is livid, it seems, with Holiday Cards containing eight edged snow flakes. It irks him because it has been known to mankind for at least 400 years now that snowflakes can only be six sided. Once The Hindu was done with applying its journalistic mind to this quite anal-retentive viewpoint (or rather, once The Guardian was done with it and The Hindu ripped it off), the issue was suitably intellectualized to read as fundamental clash between the disciplines of art and science.

Snowflake anyone??

–
The Beatles

There’s just something about those lines which is bloody brilliant!

On another note, I am almost through Stoker’s Dracula and I have to admit it’s been one hell of a read. If ever a book was worth all the hype this one was it. If you haven’t read it yet, I would urge to go right out and get a copy for yourself. Try reading through it in small bits, a little each night. Use a reading lamp in a dark room for the added spooky effect. I loved reading it this way, and I reckon I’ll do it again sometime in the future. Like the saying goes, a book worth reading once is worth reading again.

I think I understand why they chose Van Helsing to base a movie on. Apart from the Count himself, Helsing is undoubtedly the most enigmatic of the characters in the book. There is just something so endearing about this eccentric, quite mad Dutch scientist. The man’s tendency to break into sombre, gravely intended but quite comically worded preludes to his brave actions are a treat to read.

Oh.. and there is Reinfield. I think I will dedicate an entire post to Reinfield sometime soon. He is quite simply superbly warped in the head. He is a lunatic who eats flies, or lets spider eats flies and he eats the spiders instead. Or he lets sparrows eat spiders which eat flies and he himself eats the spiders. He counts them off too.. the ones he eats and the ones which they eat and so on. He has a nice logic to it all, a purpose towards the achievement of which he is very resolutely set. And I though Hannibal Lecter was weird.

I think I will try some Sherlock or good ole Feluda in a bit. I’m in the mood for some mystery.

Back to work tomorrow – the fever has passed.