you'd think she'd know me by now

aunty: "so footloose, do you like watching movies?"

jaw crashes to ground. eyes fall out of head.

heartbreak on centre court

"anyway, i lost", said nadal. i wish he won. anyway, he will.

stuck in my head

is that something-else rahman song from sillunu oru kaadhal, new york nagaram.

i've no clue what the song's about but it keeps coming back to loop endlessly on my laptop. in my head. on lazy afternoons. at midnights.

the oldest trick in the book

so my camera's been dead since the first lion sighting on safari. it fell at the precise moment that i had been saving its batteries for. after much murphy-cursing, i left my sleek little sony to its lifeless fate for the next 3 weeks. and then, over chai on a nice rainy afternoon, a much-had epiphany struck. like a bolt from the blue. just like they say. i took my sleek little sony and flicked it. and again. no luck. no life. epiphany failed.

this morning, emboldened by my success with the idea customer service chaps, i tried my luck again. and voila! i have a fully functional sony DSC-T33. what can i say, these laaton ke bhoot are just wired to be beaten.

and btw, all you fellow idea dialer tone sufferers, call idea right away. you just have to say the d in dialer for them to scamper around and promise prompt action and freedom from all d-rated promotions.

whoa! this thing looks good, steve!

i'm thrilled with the brand spanking new iPhone.


NYT has a pretty promising review. my favorite parts:

"You’ve probably seen Apple’s ads, showing how things on the screen have a physics all their own. Lists scroll with a flick of your finger, CD covers flip over as you flick them, e-mail messages collapse down into a trash can.

...

You scroll with a fingertip — much faster than scroll bars. You can double-tap to enlarge a block of text for reading, or rotate the screen 90 degrees, which rotates and magnifies the image to fill the wider view.

Finally, you can enlarge a Web page — or an e-mail message, or a photo — by spreading your thumb and forefinger on the glass. The image grows as though it’s on a sheet of latex."

so! what about africa then?

first things first. to travel, you need visas. and it ain't fun running around for those with an indian passport. if you actually manage to wangle a passport, that is. pick any mildly exotic destination and you can look forward to a maze of broken links, long obsolete 6-digit phone numbers and bheja fry travel agents. and then there's the ever ubiquitous note on foreign embassy sites: "no visas required for citizens of commonwealth countries EXCEPT india, pakistan, bangladesh, sri lanka..."

so anyhow, sapped and battle scarred, i got on the kenya airways flight to zambia. could barely lift a finger, so there was no question of excitement or enthusiasm. i exaggerate, of course. or the opposite. but you get the picture. had to change flights in nairobi. as i dragged my feet across the tarmac, i saw the sunrise. the great african sunrise. my first sunrise in decades. it was a spirit awakening moment. a life altering one even. and i fell in love with the vast, unspoiled, dark continent. NOOOOOOT! was a pretty lovely sunrise though. and that was that. welcome to africa.

my brand new buddies rescued me at the lusaka airport just as i was cursing myself for not calling ahead to find out what exactly the plan/protocol was. the three of us then stylishly rode off in mawala's chariot to meet up with the rest of the gang. and a fine, fine gang it was. and fun, fun too. a very good thing when you have three weeks of 24x7 to spend together.

the most unexpected thing about lusaka was this constant sense of deja vu. everything about it was familiar. this was NOT the africa i was promised on the discovery channel or even the BBC, come to think of it. from its street-side stores with crazy signs to its fancy multiplexed malls, lusaka could've been any city in india. the landscape was familiar. the mango trees were familiar. and most jaw droppingly, even the street dogs were familiar.



wow. such a long post. and i'm still on day one. now you know why i was stalling.

more after the break. don't touch that remote!

if you broke your camera

like i did, you might want to check this out. precis writeups on the best digital SLRs in the market.

when, oh when, will we have teeny SLRs?

that feeling of redundancy

seems like every thought has been thunk, every song has been sunk. every feeling has been felt, every word has been sait. every angle has been shot, every clever thing in the world has been dont.

i figured. i might as well sleep.

the african hangover

is going to last a while. at least as long as my tan does. i've been back a week & i'm still shocking assorted people. 'ooooooooooh, what happened to you!', is the common refrain. that, of course, is the cue for my african story. i've told it several times. and i still haven't told much of it.

trouble is, i'm still figuring it out. and by the time i figure it out, i might not want to tell the tale any more. even if i do, you might not want to hear it any more. and that's just the way it goes.

i protest

against this madness.

hyderabad is hurt, but i hope it gets well soon.

there are 10 types of people in this world

those who understand binary, and those who don't.

old joke, new toon. courtesy xkcd, of course.

he's got radioactive blood!

no, really! got radioactive blood, does our friendly neighborhood spiderman!

fist pounding, hair tearing, mind numbing

head banging, skin crawling, teeth gnashing. it's been that kind of a day. fiends, defined here, can do that to you. the boy at the gym. the girl at the gym. the travel agent woman. the hospital staff. the doctor's assistant. the embassy phone. fiends all.

and did i mention that idea cellular randomly sticks 'dialer tones' on your cell, your wishes be damned? in the midst of all the fiend-fighting today, out came the most jarring filmi song and danced on my nerves. out of mine own cell.

so call me then.

where are you from?

nice work again at xkcd!

can't hardly wait!

can't hardly wait.

---
rain?! r-a-i-n?!! gah.

---
bat first?! f-i-r-s-t?!! what're you smoking, punter!

---
murphy at work?

---
game over. punter's right. woohoo!

i am never going to die

said the man who wrote this prayer:

"Dear God, Compassionate and Merciful, Master of the universe, we who are steeped in sin, kneel in supplication before Your throne and beseech You to recall from this world Saadat Hasan Manto, son of Ghulam Hasan Manto, who was a man of great piety. Take him away, O Lord, for he runs off from fragrance, chasing filth. He hates the bright sun, preferring dark labyrinths. He has nothing but contempt for modesty but is fascinated by the naked and the shameless. He hates what is sweet, but will give his life to sample what is bitter. He does not so much as look at housewives but is entranced by the company of whores. He will not go near running waters, but loves to wade through slush. Where others weep, he laughs; where they laugh, he weeps. Evil-blackened faces he loves to wash with tender care to highlight their features. He never thinks about You, preferring to follow Satan everywhere, the same fallen angel who once disobeyed You."

he's the same man who wrote toba tek singh. went by the name of sadat hasan manto.

story of the vanishing bees

and suchlike in the new york times.

btw, anyone see a crow in hyderabad lately?

"have i entertained you?"

he asked. at the end of his last ever international cricket match. ever. the answer, brian charles lara, is a super emphatic YES.


i could've pelted something at pietersen for the glee he showed on running lara out. and samuels. oh god, samuels. how could you?

of course, i'm hardly being fair. or rational. hota hai, in cricket. these boys will be duly forgiven in time. but brian lara won't be forgotten. ever.

the four legged freaks

the deccan chronicle ran another story on dogs attacking humans. complete with gruesome, bloodied faces of innocent kids on the front page. the marauder, of course, was duly killed. and since we need to see to believe, a picture of the dead dog was buried discreetly in the inner pages.

it doesn't take a genius to deduce that a sinister, sinister plot is being hatched to eliminate the human race. what else could explain the recent fury of the four legged freaks? it all started with that big, fat elephant that trampled its mahout near some temple somewhere. i mean, you take an elephant out of the jungle. give it three square meals a day. and a plush job at a temple. complete with make-up and jewelry perks. not to mention all the attention of fawning devotees. and frequent television coverage to boot. i mean, rakhi sawant would kill for this gig, man. and what does the silly, over-fed jumbo do? it goes and kills its mahout. tramples him in full public view.

so anyways, it all started with that. and now the other freaks seem to have gotten their cue. excitable and abundant as they are, the dogs have taken up the cause with utmost relish. leopard attacks have been happening off and on, but there's what, three of them? not enough. i believe i read something about monkey attacks too, but that might be a figment of my imagination.

let's not worry too much though. these freaks have the saddam syndome. they think they can defeat the greatest species on the planet with their measly claws and canines. we have the authorities and poachers on our side. and they have guns. let's just hope the insects don't join the brigade. swarms of mosquitoes and roaches can be pretty damn hard to fight with guns and canons. it's a good thing we went nuclear.

the match was supposed to sizzle

... but ended up a bit of a fizzle. so said anasuya mathur on 'turning point' about the aussie-srilanka non-match yesterday. i laughed so hard, i fell off the sofa.

but really, i've never liked craftiness of the ranatunga variety. and the legacy seems to have stuck. what's with this 'hiding cards' business? just go win your cricket fair and square, yo! jayawardene, of course, pleads innocence... and i sure hope he is.

going back to 'turning point', it's been such a pleasure to watch the show without rabid navjot sidhu drowning out poor ajay jadeja. and since he could finally finish his sentences, jadeja came up with this:

'the aussies were frustrated, of course. here they were, wanting to crush the lankans... and there were the lankans, lying lifeless, asking the aussies to crush them'. or something like that. no fun kicking a dead dog, i tell ya.