Wednesday, September 28, 2005
of gauss, game and groggy
what a week! my b-school experience definitely doesn't fit the bell curve. the extremes would end up flattening the poor thing beyond recognition. actually, they'd end up skewing it to the negative.
Monday, September 26, 2005
swades
there's something about the music of swades that gets me. always. i loved it when i was home. i love it even more out here. stirs something within. and it's not just the music. maybe it's all the memories that go with it too. vyases, it's been a year since that dandia nite. driving through empty roads. chill in the air. wind in our faces. u humming away. me discovering swades. beautiful.
beautiful.
beautiful.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Monday, August 08, 2005
now THAT's what i call cricket
i'm in love. again. the interest had waned with boring, clinical, undramatic matches. but edgbaston brought back the spark. what a perfect test match. there was *nothing* the coach could do. *nothing* the captain could do. *nothing* the manager could do. it was down to the tailenders to save the match. tantalizing stuff!
http://content.cricinfo.com/engvaus/content/story/215305.html
my heart broke when that silly english wicketkeeper took kasper's wicket. still, glad that it wasn't my man lee that got out. love the aussies. and glad the pommies made such a match out of it.
http://content.cricinfo.com/engvaus/content/story/215305.html
my heart broke when that silly english wicketkeeper took kasper's wicket. still, glad that it wasn't my man lee that got out. love the aussies. and glad the pommies made such a match out of it.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
rain ride
the monsoons always sneak up on you. always.
there'll be dark clouds. gusty winds. swaying trees. and then just a misty spray. again and again. till you stop noticing.
and then one day, when you're on your way home and stuck in traffic... you notice how dusty the windshield is. and then you notice a few raindrops. very slowly, they start crowding the glass. too quickly, you turn on the wipers. you notice how the blades could've scratched the glass. too much dust. not enough raindrops. but they keep coming down. flick switch. glass wiped clean. glass blurred again. repeat. not raindrops anymore. not misty spray. rain. torrential rain.
struggling wipers. some old song on the radio. big puddles on the road. splashing through. not stopping. not quite seeing. best ride ever.
in the papers the next morning. uprooted trees. frozen traffic. power outages. snapped wires. all reported with glee. all drenched in 17.1 mm of rain. precious. more to come. yippeee!
there'll be dark clouds. gusty winds. swaying trees. and then just a misty spray. again and again. till you stop noticing.
and then one day, when you're on your way home and stuck in traffic... you notice how dusty the windshield is. and then you notice a few raindrops. very slowly, they start crowding the glass. too quickly, you turn on the wipers. you notice how the blades could've scratched the glass. too much dust. not enough raindrops. but they keep coming down. flick switch. glass wiped clean. glass blurred again. repeat. not raindrops anymore. not misty spray. rain. torrential rain.
struggling wipers. some old song on the radio. big puddles on the road. splashing through. not stopping. not quite seeing. best ride ever.
in the papers the next morning. uprooted trees. frozen traffic. power outages. snapped wires. all reported with glee. all drenched in 17.1 mm of rain. precious. more to come. yippeee!
Friday, June 17, 2005
stay hungry. stay foolish.
Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered at Stanford University on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
parineeta
mr and mrs smith. d. parineeta. bunty aur babli. naina. was a long list for one sunday. if a certain mutant didn't conspire to land in the city this morning, i might've given parineeta a miss. but it did. and i didn't. the mutant is a good thing :)
i loved parineeta.
for its old world charm
for the romance
for vidya balan
for saif ali khan
and for a tune that won't leave my head.
i loved parineeta.
for its old world charm
for the romance
for vidya balan
for saif ali khan
and for a tune that won't leave my head.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
stair wars - episode II
hahahaha... i crack myself up. the stairs can make me tumble. but they WON'T make me crack. the second time round, they did get me good though. enuf to warrant a trip to the hospital. wheelchair, x-rays and all. felt some excitement at the possibility of a long cherished fracture dream coming true. not to be. a sprained knee and some exaggerated limping is all i have to show. episode III might still be the best one yet.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Saturday, May 21, 2005
the importance of le derrierre
early saturday morning. i had a book in one hand. a bowl of sliced mango in the other. a bottle of water tucked under my arm. the brother's oversized slippers on my feet. together, we slipped down the stairs. went flying and landed with a BIG thud/crash/glug, five steps down. me on my butt. the book on the floor. the glass bowl all over the place. don't remember what happened to the bottle.
a path so treacherous
now listen carefully. your derrierre is a good thing. a very good thing. feed it. pamper it. and don't listen to the likes of kate moss or heidi klum.
a path so treacherous
now listen carefully. your derrierre is a good thing. a very good thing. feed it. pamper it. and don't listen to the likes of kate moss or heidi klum.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
if you see a contradiction...
check your premises. one of them will be wrong.
i'm ironing out a contradiction in my mind right now. will be back. sooner than u think.
i'm ironing out a contradiction in my mind right now. will be back. sooner than u think.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Sunday, April 10, 2005
the brilliance of brian lara
who comes back after an eight-month break from first-class test cricket to score 196 runs?
brian. charles. lara.
brian. charles. lara.
my toes just touched the water
norah jones has been keeping me company in the car. didn't quite like her at first. she was too quiet. too boring like. so i went back to her after exhausting all other options. including u2 revisited. which was awesome. u2, that is. vertigo ran to roaring (swearing?) applause. but back to norah. told u she was all quiet and non-intrusive. she can make u do a double take, though. found myself increasing the volume first (interesting how that made her sound much better). and then repeating a song so i could listen more carefully. and then again. she does grow on you, norah does.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
you ever do that?
i've gotten into this habit of reading stuff backwards. been at least a few years now. dunno how or why this started. it's not like i read words backwards... more at the sentence/paragraph level. so each time i see a long-ish article, i move right to the end and work my way back to the front.
i freak me out.
i freak me out.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
bloody hell indeed
*horror* look what i missed!!!
new boy dhoni making a splash. niiiiiiiiiice!
viru and dhoni doing pakistan's dhulai!
sachin getting run out. awwww... why him?!!
bees getting into the act! that's right, get 'em green ones!!!
razzaq threatening to make a match of it...
... before inzy almost killed him. for running him out. a-g-a-i-n. *chuckle*
the post match banter where inzy got all witty.
man of the match. 148 runs. 15 fours. 4 sixes. bloody wow!
new boy dhoni making a splash. niiiiiiiiiice!
viru and dhoni doing pakistan's dhulai!
sachin getting run out. awwww... why him?!!
bees getting into the act! that's right, get 'em green ones!!!
razzaq threatening to make a match of it...
... before inzy almost killed him. for running him out. a-g-a-i-n. *chuckle*
the post match banter where inzy got all witty.
man of the match. 148 runs. 15 fours. 4 sixes. bloody wow!
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
bloody hell
that's the first thing i said this morning. while still in bed. definitely not a good way to start the day. reminds me of something i read a long time ago... a little snippet written by a man describing his new born son. the kid, only a few months old, had a favorite word. he'd repeat it each time he saw something that excited him. and each morning, when he opened his eyes, he'd say it again --- 'WOW'.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
restlessness...
mind on overdrive. too much caffeine. long weekend. hot summer day. hour on the treadmill. 100 channels of shit on the tv. hair won't listen. clothes won't fit. walk out in a huff. nirvana at crossword. three new books. one chilled brrrrista. glance in the mirror. back to prettyness.
Friday, March 25, 2005
bonfire on the roadside
as i was driving around town this evening, i saw fire. like *fire* fire? no. filmi fire? nope. ooooooooooooh, it must be that holi bonfire thingie then. it was. some people were carrying out an elaborate ritual by the roadside. was the first time i actually watched one live... here's pics for you good god-fearing folks :D
not too clear, but hey, the best i could do in the crowd...
holi bonfire
feeding the fire
here's one more pic
not too clear, but hey, the best i could do in the crowd...
holi bonfire
feeding the fire
here's one more pic
out of the blue yaar
strange how people remember you out of the blue. and when they all seem to think of you at the same time, it's scary. like there's a me-fever out there or something. *shudder*
Friday, March 18, 2005
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
how difficult can that be?
so as i walked towards my car this evening, someone asked me to throw a tennis ball back onto the court. figured the losers could use some help. gallantly picked up the ball, handed my bag to a friend, took a few steps back, swung my arm... and sent the ball flying diagonally behind me. hmph. tried again. this time, i sent it diagonally in front of me. and drew wild cheers for the entertainment. awful awful performance.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
dude, where's my car!
duuuuuude, where *is* my car?!!!
begin flashback
saturday, 5-Mar-05
3:00 pm: call sheetal. busy. repeat.
3:10 pm: call sheetal. busy. change strategy. call sheetal's cell. this number does not exist. strange.
3:15 pm: call sheetal's cell. from *my* cell. riiiiiiiiiiiiing. woohoo! sheetal? ummmm. (holy crap!) shweta?!!! got the wrong un.
3:20 pm: call *sheetal*'s cell. riiiiiiiiiiing. riiiiiiiiiiing. riiiiiiiiiiing. riiiiiiiiiiing. busy. (what the hell?!!!)
3:30 pm: one last try. sheetal? (aha! she can't ignore me forever!) movie? which one? aviator. umm... ahh... well, ok. in 15 min? sure. btw, it's sold out. but we'll try anyway.
4:00 pm: the *only* multiplex in town is bursting at its seams. (holy crap.) no line at the ticket counter. ignore facts. go to the counter. excuse me? do u have tickets to the aviator? for the next show? no madam. (isn't it obvious, dumbass?) one final desperate move. do u have tickets to *anything*? NO. (now get out of my face.)
5:00 pm: finished window shopping. on the way back. extremely unhappy. all that hard work. no fruit.
5:15 pm: see favorite coffee shop on the other side of the road. don't want to make one big circle to get there. look for a spot to park so we can just cross over to the other side. see a big fat 'no parking' sign. in no mood to give up coffee for lack of a stupid parking spot. park anyway. risk life to cross road. get to the other side. get coffee. click pictures of sheetal's new hairdo. get as many angles as possible so friends far away can get a complete picture of new look. satisfaction. finally.
finish coffee. no car in sight.
5:45 pm: dude, where's my car?!
end flashback
sheetal seems to know. but she wishes not to tell. an autowallah is more forthcoming. 'aapki gaadi dhoondhre? traffic wale leke gaye'. (smug bastard.) tells us where to find it. refuses to take us there though. (smug bastard.)
so we go off on a car finding mission. some friendly police wallahs use their walkie talkie to confirm that it was indeed the traffic police that got my car. (and not *horror*, thieves.) point us to another cop. who's busy directing traffic at a very busy intersection. we risk our lives again. enter the intersection on foot. *shudder*. sheetal goes, 'bhai saab, traffic police hamari gaadi leke gaye. kahan pe milegi?' he points us to the car!!!!!!!!!!!!! there it was, gleaming in the sun. the poor baby was towed two miles from where i parked it. but it seemed ok. we rushed to its side. completely ignored traffic this time. very dramatic.
think that's enuf words for now. here's what happened next.
friendly cop leaves busy intersection to take shackles off poor car. obviously very exciting stuff for some people (other than me).
edit: i took off the other pics 'coz i'm super paranoid yaar. and now i don't feel like completing the story. so this is how it will be.
begin flashback
saturday, 5-Mar-05
3:00 pm: call sheetal. busy. repeat.
3:10 pm: call sheetal. busy. change strategy. call sheetal's cell. this number does not exist. strange.
3:15 pm: call sheetal's cell. from *my* cell. riiiiiiiiiiiiing. woohoo! sheetal? ummmm. (holy crap!) shweta?!!! got the wrong un.
3:20 pm: call *sheetal*'s cell. riiiiiiiiiiing. riiiiiiiiiiing. riiiiiiiiiiing. riiiiiiiiiiing. busy. (what the hell?!!!)
3:30 pm: one last try. sheetal? (aha! she can't ignore me forever!) movie? which one? aviator. umm... ahh... well, ok. in 15 min? sure. btw, it's sold out. but we'll try anyway.
4:00 pm: the *only* multiplex in town is bursting at its seams. (holy crap.) no line at the ticket counter. ignore facts. go to the counter. excuse me? do u have tickets to the aviator? for the next show? no madam. (isn't it obvious, dumbass?) one final desperate move. do u have tickets to *anything*? NO. (now get out of my face.)
5:00 pm: finished window shopping. on the way back. extremely unhappy. all that hard work. no fruit.
5:15 pm: see favorite coffee shop on the other side of the road. don't want to make one big circle to get there. look for a spot to park so we can just cross over to the other side. see a big fat 'no parking' sign. in no mood to give up coffee for lack of a stupid parking spot. park anyway. risk life to cross road. get to the other side. get coffee. click pictures of sheetal's new hairdo. get as many angles as possible so friends far away can get a complete picture of new look. satisfaction. finally.
finish coffee. no car in sight.
5:45 pm: dude, where's my car?!
end flashback
sheetal seems to know. but she wishes not to tell. an autowallah is more forthcoming. 'aapki gaadi dhoondhre? traffic wale leke gaye'. (smug bastard.) tells us where to find it. refuses to take us there though. (smug bastard.)
so we go off on a car finding mission. some friendly police wallahs use their walkie talkie to confirm that it was indeed the traffic police that got my car. (and not *horror*, thieves.) point us to another cop. who's busy directing traffic at a very busy intersection. we risk our lives again. enter the intersection on foot. *shudder*. sheetal goes, 'bhai saab, traffic police hamari gaadi leke gaye. kahan pe milegi?' he points us to the car!!!!!!!!!!!!! there it was, gleaming in the sun. the poor baby was towed two miles from where i parked it. but it seemed ok. we rushed to its side. completely ignored traffic this time. very dramatic.
think that's enuf words for now. here's what happened next.
friendly cop leaves busy intersection to take shackles off poor car. obviously very exciting stuff for some people (other than me).
edit: i took off the other pics 'coz i'm super paranoid yaar. and now i don't feel like completing the story. so this is how it will be.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
who wants to be a millionaire?
this is how the story goes...
Once, when I was a young man, I had the chance to speak with the CEO of our company. He was a wise old man, and I took the opportunity to ask him how he became wealthy, figuring that his insights would help me in my life.
"Son," he said, as he leaned forward in his chair. "It was the height of the Great Depression. Stockbrokers were leaping from buildings, and I found myself on the streets of Chicago, flat broke, except for a nickel in my pocket. I took that nickel, bought an apple, and spent the entire day polishing that apple until it was as shiny as you please. I sold that apple for ten cents. The next day, I bought two apples, spent all days polishing them, and sold them at the end of the day. By the end of the week, I had accumulated $3.20 selling apples. Then, my wife's uncle died and left us two million dollars."
I learned a lot from that man.
hahameter :) :) :)
Once, when I was a young man, I had the chance to speak with the CEO of our company. He was a wise old man, and I took the opportunity to ask him how he became wealthy, figuring that his insights would help me in my life.
"Son," he said, as he leaned forward in his chair. "It was the height of the Great Depression. Stockbrokers were leaping from buildings, and I found myself on the streets of Chicago, flat broke, except for a nickel in my pocket. I took that nickel, bought an apple, and spent the entire day polishing that apple until it was as shiny as you please. I sold that apple for ten cents. The next day, I bought two apples, spent all days polishing them, and sold them at the end of the day. By the end of the week, I had accumulated $3.20 selling apples. Then, my wife's uncle died and left us two million dollars."
I learned a lot from that man.
hahameter :) :) :)
Monday, January 03, 2005
writer's block
just when you need to write 1500 words of magic, creativity deserts you. murphy! you bastard!
Saturday, January 01, 2005
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