AAAagh - Part 2

Part 1 is here

We all thought there wouldn't be a part-2. But ..there is. No sooner did we reach Frankfurt that we saw our connecting flight to Muscat was canceled. Our first reaction was - wait, that can't be right.  The airport was functioning, since we just landed in to this place and this place was definitely Frankfurt.  Planes landing equals airport working, right? Well, the runways are closed, they said. So that meant that the flight was canceled because they couldn't clear some runways, they said. We will put you on the waiting list to the next flight to Dubai, they said.  Waiting list? To Dubai? How are we supposed to go from there to Muscat? Oh, they said, there should be flights there that you can get at ticketing where there will be no 5 hour waiting queue. Like the one here in Frankfurt.

OK We'll take it. Waiting list. pssh, with the kind of luck we're having I was mentally preparing for a night's stay at the airport.


Just then, our luck decided to show up.  They were tons of people who didn't show up to the Dubai flight cuz they were stuck somewhere else.  So we got in, and I collapsed in relief on HGs shoulder.  HG, poor HG, who was near tears. Anyway, we got in on the flight, along with other kindred spirits such as a Calgary girl who spend 20 hours at the airport and an Indian dude who was with us. We got to Dubai and after some smooth talking from Mr. Bird, we get on the next flight and finally reached Muscat after 4 days of travel.

You know what the kicker part is? Our luggage showed up as well, loyally following our random flights to random airports. We totally did not expect that.

And now we are here, among family with all their love and the familiar smells and the immensely warm food and beds.  And we celebrated the dad's birthday today.

And tomorrow is our anniversary.

Most people I talked to (and whom HG talked to) gave us wise-wisdom words on how the first or the first two or the first three years will be the toughest.  After that, they said, it'll be all OK. I braced myself for these 'tough' years.  But it has nothing like these premonitions. Maybe because we treat each other extremely well. We take care of each other, supporting the wishes and weaving around differences with a something that is distinctly becoming natural. We treat each other so well that the knowledge that this person loves me stays within us. And when we do fight, we somehow always restrain from delivering that extra punch that could hurt.  Of course we fight. Heck, am the usual mouth off. And my tendency to dismiss some things is becoming quiet obvious. But there's so much clarity around us that my hitherto quelled intuitions immediately gives me warning signs.  And she, she's just as natural and true and sensible as they come - a person so connected with intuitions and movements that it's little surprise that she writes well.  As someone who's been pretending for so long and who just recently discovered what being true meant, this quality of hers astonishes me. I will always look up to her.

An anticlimax of sorts

I got this letter from a fan about a month ago

" I think you should reject this manuscript.....this article would not be useful to either experts or novices...

The article might be salvaged by a major rewrite, but very little from the current version is worth keeping. "

Of course, there was more.  Attached was a 3-page detailed point-by-point breakdown about what was wrong.   I discovered who this chap was, let's just say that I had my methods. To be fair, he did have some valid points.  So I spend the next few weeks writing, rewriting, addressing all his concerns and such until it becomes this gleaming thing of pure beauty, of which am very proud.  I send it off again, and nervously wait.  I daydream about how this chap is going to read it again, and acknowledge that yes indeed, this manuscript is seminal, wonderfully written and that Mr. Bird has addressed all of his concerns to the dot above i.

Today I discover that the manuscript got in.

Why the anti-climax? The editor of the journal was also one of my co-authors.  He didn't send it out to the reviewers again.  He just deemed my corrections were suffice.  Mr. Fan never got to see the great comeback.

Logicomix

It's been an off week, but the one thing that happened was  Logicomix!

ha!

This was an epic read.  In some ways, I should thank the fat bastard for forcing me to read Logic much beyond the  cursory knowledge. Anyway, Logicomix is on its surface a history of logic told from a biography of Bertand Russell's life, narrated by Russell himself in a speech.  I say 'biography' since even though Russell made it part of the speech, the speech itself is modified by the authors of this book. Also, the authors themselves are characters in the book! Throughout the book, the authors talk amongst themselves about the theme of the book. They tweak Russell's speech and as a consequence, his life and as a consequence, the history of logic, to fit their theme.

See how complicated that just read.

There's no way written text would capture all of these..layers.  But graphic novels - ah - these offer so much more freedom!

And this was my first graphic novel.  Watchmen is next on my list. I do need more recommendations, though.

Hidden Agendas

I flipped burgers for a bit while in graduate school.  It paid for rent and food, and I kinda liked the mind-lessness of it.

While there, I became friends with a co-worker, call her Casey, a bisexual single mom who was known for sleeping around.  She didn't try anything with me, knowing I was in a relationship. But she and I hit it off well, being cigarette buddies and all that.  She would tell me stuff about her life in general - her kid, her current girlfriend and the occasional guy in her life. I would tell her about grad school and the Indian prof with a pretend American accent who pretended to have trouble pronouncing Indian names. We never hung out, outside of work, for some reason, and I don't quite know why.

Once at the grill, she suddenly cursed and hid behind a wall.  I asked her what's wrong.  She said she was hiding from that Indian guy.  I looked and the only Indian guy around was Umh, a post doc.

"Who are you hiding from again? Umh?"

"Yeah thats him" she said, peering around the corner. "He's such a pervert."

Who?Umh?

Umh was one of the few stand-up guys I knew.  You know the kind - the quiet, the all-ways smiling, really good at cricket, the guy who doesn't utter a bad word, eager to help out and really smart.  The school topper cum cricket team captain cum quiz champion.  Plus he was married. His wife was in India with a one year old.

So again.

Who? Umh?

"Yup.  He keeps asking me out in this creepy way.  Once I said yes just to get rid of him, and he said meet me at the parking lot.  Who fucking meets anyone at the parking lot?"

Who? Umh?

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Yes him.  He even said his name just the way you say it."

That kind of brought me back.  Er..hmm..so did you meet up with him?

"No! I stood him up. Which is why am standing behind this wall.  Shit, he's coming this way. I gotta go."

Sure enough he came and said hi and wanted a grilled cheese sandwich.  I was pretty flabbergasted. The dude was vegetarian and didn't even drink.  Not that those are mutually exclusive to morals but still!

I pressed her again, but she seemed pretty certain.  Not pretty. Absolutely certain.

One of the gujju guys laughed at me when I mentioned this to him. No way, not Umh, he said.  I realized then that I shouldn't have told him.

Some part of me believed her.  She had no reason to lie. And she's not the kind to mistake things like this.  You don't mistake a creepy guy asking you out 10 times with someone else, no matter what skin color.

October

"O hushed October morning mild, 
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
To-morrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all."

- Robert Frost

You might think life has become mundane, but it's not that bad.  It has become very technical, though.  Time is now divided between re-writing and re-re -writing a review paper to the likes on particular reviewer and laying down the math for the big thesis. 

The said reviewer was rather unkind, but there is some fault of mine.  I didn't know who the big guns are in the field, and one thing that is important in science is this concept called literature searching, or in simple words - 'make sure you mention the big guns and that you're not treading on anyone's toes'.  I have spent my professional life, albeit small, in research, and it seems to me that very rarely is scientific research about discovering the truth.  It is sometimes a very political game that is merged with business. The business part, I get, the politics maybe not.  But one has to learn the ropes.  

And yes, the big idea is being started upon.  There is equal parts excitement and equal parts nervousness (oh god, please let this work, I cannot afford to start all over again).  And since it's the beginning, it all looks beautiful and well-placed and almost meant to be.  The ugly side has not been shown yet.

Fall is looking very pretty this year.

 

In the Kingdom of Pee

HG notoriously has a weak bladder. On a good night, she gets up only twice to pee.  If she drinks a whole glass of water before bedtime, she's screwed.  Travel is a whole another matter.  HG has developed an immunity to whatever condition the toilet is.  She will pee anywhere - in a clean toilet, in a dirty toilet, in a very dirty toilet, in a a very very dirty toilet, in a life-forsaken toilet - and even has improvised when no toilet was around.   Her pee stories are legendary and the poor thing is often a brunt of jokes for family members.

The only other compulsion that is as forceful as the need-to-pee is the need-to-not-wake-up.  Sometimes, the two clash (esp. as I mentioned before, if a whole glass of water is involved).  They wrestle with each other for dominance of HG.  And the resulting scenarios are pretty funny to watch.  I came home yesterday to find her lying on  the bed with very sleepy and sad eyes.  Yes, she needed to pee and yes she didn't want to get up.  This was the usual but what happened next was completely unexpected.

I wish I had the ability to hand off the need-to-pee to someone else.

Eh?

As a punishment you know? It'll be my reward for doing good.

And then came the fascinating story of the Kingdom of Pee.   

In the Kingdom of Pee, every man or woman is given a certain quota of a number of pees as a burden to carry around upon birth.  This quota is handed out by a set of gods called the Pee Birth gods.  Every person's conduct does is carefully observed by the Pee Conduct gods (shudder!).  If a person has done something good, not a regular everyday-do-your-job good, but a good of good significance, then the Pee Conduct gods will grant you a wish - you can hand out 10 need-to-pees to someone you don't like.  You can't force the good deed, it has to be completely accidental.  (What she meant by this was not too clear, but I am guessing it's something like you delivering life-saving CPR on your way to work when you're not even licensed to give First Aid. It's got to be that accidental, I suppose.) And you can get an option that no one should hand you their need-to-pee too.  So HG's survival 101 was this  - you should ask for Option 2 as your first reward (No one shall hand their need-to-pee to Thee!) and from then on Option 1 (Thou can hand over 10 need-to-pees to one that Thou detests! Oh for Pee's sake, stop handing them off to your husband!)

The rules of the Kingdom of Pee broke down of course under my persistent What-if-scenarios, but in the end of this, seeing my flabbergasted expression, she goes - Hey you know what I realized? 

Gulp, what?

 I can make up shit as I go along.

You can't tell from the way I walk that...

Well..I got through the quals.  In the end, the big guy's ego had to be stroked - not too much, not too little - just enough for him to feel important and make him feel ...validated.

In the beginning I did study - hard.  Hours and hours of logic everyday.  It even gave a new mode of thinking.  There was one question set handed out and I completed it.  There were no more question sets from then on.  I just solved questions from the text book and slipped them under his door.

Look, am working hard. You've made an effect.

After a time it became apparent that there was going to be no re-examination.  No re-quals and no re-testing.  I doubt he even looked through my answer sheets.  In the end, he simply signed the document and we went off to vacation to Boston.  I suppose I shouldnt complain about how this turned out.  It's just that the pointlessness is more overwhelming than the importance.

I'll take the logic, thanks.  I'll even take the lesson on whom to watch out for.  I feel nothing.

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After living with HG here for almost two months, I have deduced that there is a certain pattern to when she asks me to do something about the house. Here are the three modes
1) If you are standing in the vicinity of something that needs to be done - honey, do this.
2) If you are standing in the general vicinity and you are a presence that is sometimes a tad unnecessary - honey while you're there, can you do this?
3) If you are nowhere in the vicinity and  there is something that needs to be done - honey on your way here can you please do this?

The best part is that all this is asked irrespective of what you are doing.  You could be doing  nothing (close the windows), peeling potatoes (can you increase the AC?)  or vaccuming (she actually made me stop vaccuming to ask me throw something in the garbage).  I was once working, and got up to pee when I was asked to switch off the fan.  The fan was nowhere close to me or my path from the couch to the loo, but there it was - I was asked to to make a detour to where she was and to switch off the fan.

Unbelievable.
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The First Onam

My first onam in the US some years ago saw me diligently making payasam for my roommates. All said and done, I was a bit homesick and plus it made my parents happy to know that I was involved in some form of celebration. It came out OK, as far as I can remember, but it took so much effort that the subsequent six Onams saw me just pick up the phone and call people to wish. I have, correction - had, this block when it comes to Malayalam dishes. I couldn't say which was what, much less cook any of it. So when I heard HG rattle off dish names and ingredients, I was rather looking forward to a first true Onam. The Real McCoy thing. With rice aka chor, sambar, cabbage thoran, avial, kootu curry, inji pulli, potato thoran, pineapple pacchadi, semia payasam and pappadam. (So much for the block! Ha! How about them apples?) Oh wait..I forgot the best part - this sadya had non vegetarian items of chicken roast and fish fry too on the menu list, a concept completely foreign to me, one that caused my mother some frowning before she satisfied herself with "Oh but I guess Sunday is not Onam". People can satisfy themselves whichever way they want. HG wasn't backing down. And I was thinking .. "yum".

A drive to the Indian store in Indy saw a bit of this looking-forwardness wane off. HG was driving, having freshly passed her learner's permit. She was also yelling, at me (the instructor of American road rules), that n+ years of driving slow will not permit her to go the highway speed limit right off the bat. She was also yelling at me that n+ years of driving has given her enough skills to avoid hitting parked cars. We wont go into whose fault was what - but there was a moment where I thought - Aye, will this Onam be pulled off OK? Or will there be a meltdown?

But making ups happened. And cooking was started on Saturday night. I was up first with my sambar. And we realized there was no daal. Or rather, the "right" daal. HG said use this other daal, I think it should be OK. Silly me, even after witnessing her debacle , I still listened to her. Half hour later, we were tasting feet-like stuff in yellow and making faces. Us -0, things-that-went-wrong -1. Thankfully, the international store here sold daal, so off we went. We then realized that we are running quite late on our schedule. So I went into Speed mode, freaking the heck out of HG who said later, just call me when you're done. And I did. Sambar was done.

Chicken was then marinated. Cabbage was next (again me), along with HG making her kootu curry. We had gotten frozen bengal gram for kootu curry and there were panicked phone calls to aunts (since Moms were sleeping) about whether this was the right stuff. But we finished it off. Cabbage first, Kootu curry second. And things were said, like "oh this is your cabbage, I would have made it this way" and "oh so this is what kootu curry is". Fish was marinated as well. And potatoes were boiled for the next day. Inji pulli was begun. More frantic calls to mums (this time they were up) were made. Without any further catastrophes this too was passed. Tired that we were, we called it a night. It was past midnight. And there was still much to do.

And of course, we got up late, close to almost eight. Guests were supposed to come by 130 pm. Potatoes were frantically cooked by me. And I was pretty sure we wouldn't make it, when HG went into zen-like mode. Fear not, she said, things will get done by 10.30. And things did get done, amazingly. Damn, this woman really goes when she goes. Not without bugaboos though. The pineapple "refused to boil" in HGs words. My sad jokes about them being Mexican pineapples, and thus something that needs reckoning, were not appreciated. Curses were flung in all directions - at the pressure cooker, at the size of pans, at the pineapple, at me. But everything did get done and every bit was perfect looking. And both of us were looking happily at each other. The end was in sight.

At 130 pm the guests sauntered in wishing happy onam. The dishes were photographed and then dug into. Yum was the most frequently uttered word.

HG was truly happy. She was tired, but she had done it. Thrown our first onam sadya as a home and a family. She was up for the challenge, always was. This was her doing, with a lot of good help.

Best part is, there are plenty of left overs.

Yum.

The Porn story

I grew up in a disciplined and a very protected household, with the result being that I never hung with my schoolmates. I was never allowed to join any school team, even though I was very good at sports, and was only allowed once in an inter-school event. I never ventured out to any of classmates places and no one in particular came to mine. The overall effect of such was that I was introduced to most things came late in my life. Especially guy stuff - like knowing all the mallu bad words, and watching porn.

This was before the internet, at a time when video stores were prolific. Sure, there were movies with adult content in them, but these were all fast forwarded by my dad at first and my big sister later on. Dad even yelled at our video store guy for giving a kid a comedy movie (I forget the name) involving a sperm bank. A watchful eye was kept on my viewing activities. Then, we moved video stores and this new one had a rack dedicated to porn. And I would scheme, from being filled with boyish curiosity, on how to go about discovering it. One afternoon, my friend E's place became free and he invited me over. And that was were the first screening happened (I was in the 11th) amongst other gents who had a rather exceptional knowledge about this stuff.

The video store content however remained elusive.

A short time later, my parents had to leave leaving me the sole occupant of the house for a whole weekend. A-ha. Among the list of banned things that I was going to do, a visit to the video rental was going to be one of them. Among the others, if you must know, was trying to play basketball at the nearby church playground, watching late night TV and smoking a cigarette on the terrace. Plans were made, and nervousness was quelled. The video store guy after all knew my parents, both being frequent temple goers. But I had a feeling it might be OK. The day came and I rode the bike to the place.

The rack was empty.

I quelled further nervousness and reasoned with myself. If I didnt ask now, there'll be no tomorrow. Maybe he just shifted it.

I asked.

Er, cheta, what happened to all the ..cough..blue films?

Oh that. I gave them all away and I stopped that stuff.

I was so suprised and taken aback that I blurted out "Why?!" and immediately regretted it. I didn't want him to think of me as a horny teenager, but I was just so immensly suprised at why this guy would do this ..now... after such a long time of harboring these films. Thankfully, he didnt appear to think any such thing.

"I just stopped it. Got up one morning and decided to get rid of it all. It's not because I was scared of being caught or anything. I just couldn't do it, couldn't go the temple every day and look at His face. So I got rid of it, didn't even sell it for money."

Hmm.

As I left the place, I waved to his little girl. Maybe having her in the house was one reason.

'Tis an Iron and Wine afternoon

The return of Ykas from vacation saw the resumption of animated talking between him and Sequence L.

I wouldn't say that the residents of the graduate student office are characters right out of PhDcomics. For one thing, there's only one white guy in this room. And everyone here are hardworkers that maintain regular hours and are fairly normal to talk too, . But there is a lot of cross-talk and there are certain quirks.

W, the white guy, is a baseball fan. Him and the Puerto Rican-Ramirez-die-hard-follower get together often to shoot the baseball shit. W is not exclusivelly a baseball fan - he can talk any sport with anyone who cares to listen. During the world cup, there were frequent REALLY LOUD curses coming from his end one day. I thought his research was collapsing.

"You ok W?"

"Yeah I will be once USA fucking scores".

You get the drift.

Then there are the South Koreans. The wise, aged, been-there-done-that couple of guys who are silent except when they start jabbering in korean. The newest member to this club, Sequence L, is not welcomed wholly by these two wise men, but is tolerated purely on an origin-ship context. The lady south korean, Dr. Ho, on the other hand, is the most hardworking amongst all of us - extremely focused and a general joy to have a next desk person.

Incidentally, Sequence L (you might have guessed) is an expert on gene sequencing analysis. He worked for a bit before returning to grad school and always begins his questions with the phrase "Back in the day, when I was..".

Then there's young Ykas. Him and SL are a match made in heaven. Both love to jabber - ceaselessly.

The chinese are a group on their own cherishing their native tongue. The bot who sits behind me speaks English in a very mechanical voice and goes 5 days in a row in the same clothes. the other guy constantly clears his throat once he starts thinking. A, when she was here, would get so mad at this sound that she would boost the volume of her headphones to deafening proportions. Unfortunately for me, her headphones were leaky and thus there I was stuck between the throat-clearer and bad-sounding-bhangra. Throat-clearer's wife is quiet, for the most part, until she connects with three other chinese women. Then it becomes a chinese allegro of what I assume is fashion and gossip (since our field is not terribly this exciting).

And me? I ain't much of an office talker, but I used to curse when shit didnt work. But not anymore. Since I got rather intimidated by Dr. Ho's quiet working routine.

Most days will find me behind headphones. This afternoon found me hooked on Iron and Wine after one of HG's music suggestions.

The Facebook reduction rules

I recently realized that the number of FB friends that I have is getting a little too much to handle. There is a limit to manageable social connectivity, as I understand it, called the Dunbar's number (about 150 social contacts) and the aim was to reach this.

So, it was chop down time. And here were some rules.

1. Keep people you meet almost on a constant daily basis. This list included officemates, fellow graduate students, IT support staff (very important!), cricket mates and other sports-mates.
2. Remove faculty though (I didn't really have any on my list but this seemed like a general sound scheme).
3. Remove religious nuts thanking god at every moment (even if they fall under Rule 1).
4. Remove away the dude who gets 10 comments for every status message he shares and you can't figure out why (Exceptions - those who fall under Rule 1).
5. Keep people you've truly enjoyed drinking with, and others who were OK drinking buddies (for now).
6. Keep people you think you'll truly enjoy drinking with.
7. Remove people whose friend request you've mulled on for a week to begin with.
8. Remove people from high school whom you sent a friend request. You wanted to see where they ended up and now you know. Some have become fat and ugly. Most have jobs.
9. Remove one time meets. There's only so much you can chat about that one meet.
10. Remove people who take too many Farmville, Barmville and other permutations of sillyness. There's only so much Hide **** Application you can do.
11. Keep people whose blogs you read, whose photography skills you admire and who have cute kids.

And the most important part is this - if you do get caught, make up an email-got-hacked story. You know - My email got hacked, people started getting random shit from me (Didn't you get any? Oh consider yourself lucky!) so I had to delete everything including facebook (And I'll surely add you as soon as I get on FB).

Trouble is, am still a 100 away from landmark number. So I need more rules. I suspect I might just use HGs filtering method of does-this-person-irritate-me.

A certain malluness has crept into the apartment

As I type this, there's Yesudas singing his trademark Guruvayoor songs in the background.

Soon that'll be replaced by the mallu playlist. And one head will bob up and down.

(Sometimes though, Janis Joplin gets broadcast. This incidentally is a new as well)

HG walks around sometime with a thortu on her head.

There are lamps being lit quite religiously every Monday.

And a never ending collection of Malayalam movies. Dasan and Vijayan et al.

All curses that are flung at each other are in the native.

Fish is being made. This has become quite regular. There is a talk of a fish biriyani.

And the menu for a first Onam is being planned in detail. Which includes non veg, much to my mom's consternation.

Ah..the good stuff.

Houston we have a problem

Let's face it. Cards out on the table. Ever since the qualifiers disaster, I have lost all of my gumption. Disaster is probably a harsh word for this event considering I've been given somewhat of a second chance (more on that another time). But it will be one if whatever is inside of me doesn't buck up.

The past two months have been my most unproductive yet so far. All I did was write a 25 page paper which should have taken me a week (and it's still not done). Heck, I wrote a darn good 40 page review article on the whole field in under two months WITH coursework and what not. Analysis for the other project has to be now redone. Though thats not my fault, I should have caught RP's mistake right from the start and pushed at it instead of prolonging things.

So there, a wasted summer.

Maybe I burnt myself out the last two years. Maybe it, whatever it is, was catching up before the quals finally was the last straw. Or so I'd like to think. It's much more comforting to think of it like that as opposed to harsher things such as the fact that you've lost interest in your science. Honestly though I don't think it's that bad. I am, simply put, disheartened by the fact that I couldn't pass my quals because of a schmuck who was pissed that I didn't give him enough respect and who is now making it worse by dragging out the process while pretending to give a fuck.

When it happened, I kept thinking how it could turn out to be the best thing for me. I know this one CS prof in Vancouver who told his student to drop out of the program since his math skills were insufficient. The kid did drop out but within a year published a Science paper that got the prof asking him to come back. The kid said - no thanks you said my math was bad, am in Microsoft now.

Years ago, I got called a disappointment by a college principal in front of a whole crowd. That stung then, though now I laugh at it. And I came back with great stuff in my final sem. Years before that, during my 12th, I got accused of forging marks on a term paper. I got pissed and scored really high in the CBSE exam. Both times I faced my instigator afterwards, both times I said nothing. Both me and the deed left unacknowledged.

I think of these comebacks now, trying to get into that frame of mind. Easier said than done of course.

Maybe it's time to break things done, keep chopping at them and putting each in its place. Feelings and emotions and thoughts and ambitions and then..get to the work that needs to be done.

We have grand plans now dont we?

So..tick tock.

Knocking on a watermelon

Summer here means highway closures. So when I saw the highway Traffic Advisory Light flashing, while heading to Chicago airport, urging us to tune to AM 530, I perked up. Now, my mama told me when you see flashing advisory lights asking you to tune to AM 530, you tune to AM 530. So I did. And I found out my usual highway is blocked, and something about the way the lady said 'looo..oong delays' made me go uh-oh.

And so I took out the map - the good old fashioned map and traced alternative routes and bada boom later, I was cruising on the left lane when the right lanes are all backed up for 5 miles. And I reach in time to pick up this woman , with her bags and shoes (there is a dearth of footwear in cochin now).

Well, that felt good.

The highway gods did not take this work around too kindly, and blocked the hell out of us on the way back. We did make it back ok though.

There's a big watermelon that I bought, and I've been knocking on it every morning. I have no clue what to look for, but I just like doing it.

"Allright...

..... very well then"

is my advisor's favorite phrase.

One could very well claim it's his philosophy too.

It's that time of the year again

When I first saw the Tour, I was at a friend's house in Utah and he was flipping channels. "Look, there's Armstrong in yellow". This was in 2003, Armstrong's fifth year of contention. I remember looking up and saw this mass moving around a corner, vibrant colored and shaped like an arrow. Deciphering the color yellow was impossible, and it looked like all they do is ride all day.

And now, July will find me glued to the Tour. I've watched live it the last three years, watched the DVDs for the years before (the Armstrong years since '99) and know that I will be watching it next year as well.

The Tour is a three week story that moves through about 20 stages or so, with a couple of rest days. Each stage is a single-day race on its own. So you race a 100km race one day, go to sleep, get up in the morning and do it all over again for 20 days. The beginning of the race is all flat, and there's plenty of hard-core-big-motored fast riders who go at it. A week and a half later, they hit the Pyrenees mountains at which point the only thought is crossing the finish line.

There are stage winners, who win on a particular day and then there's the overall Tour leader, the maillot jaune, the guy who wears the yellow jersey. This guy is the leader of what is called the General Classification. Besides this, there's the Green Jersey for the sprinters, the Polka Dot Jersey which is for the mountain climbers, and the White jersey for the best young rider.

There are 22 teams this year, and each team has a leader that is targeting one of these jerseys. There are two or three lieutenants under this leader and then there are domestiques, whose sole job is to listen to team orders, protect the main guys from a crash and do the horse-work.

You can save up to 60% of your energy by riding behind another rider. So all the domestiques ride up front, letting the leader save his energy until the very end. Since each stage is a race, there are no shortage of guys who want the glory of being a stage winner. When the race starts, the whole group (called the peloton) start together, until a few brave fellows set off on their own. This is called the breakaway. The peloton then tries to catch up this breakaway, through a steady slow increase in pace. Teams get together, make the decision and then start leading the peloton, which explains the arrow shape. The peloton becomes this self-organizing thing moving steadily and with intent. You have to time the breakaway just right. Set off too early, you got a long-day's work riding alone. Set off too late - the peloton will catch up cuz the pace was alreader high. Then, they don't really treat you too kindly for making them work unnecessarily by sending you to the back.

Everything is a mixture of strategy, talent, endurance, road technicalities combined with luck.

And no prizes for guessing whom am supporting this year.

You know it's a good day when

your advisor, returning from his month long vacation, walks into the graduate student office and there's only two of his students there. You are one of them. And the other guy tells the advisor - Er, am leaving for vacation tomorrow.

My dearest HG,

Yes, it's been six months since I married you. I know that six month celebrations are not common, and I'd be like Subodh (from DCH) if I remembered our anniversary every six months and pestered you with cake. But since this is our first six months being married, I hope you'd allow me to say a few things. After all, how many times does a first six month anniversary come about? Yes, exactly....once.

In the past six months, we have seen each other a total of 25 days. That's it. These days, naturally, were the best ever I've had. The remaining, about 155 or so, were the second best I've had. I know that in the next six months, these numbers will change dramatically. One thing though - I thought I knew you before marrying you. Not completely, but enough to keep me satisfied and confident that I knew you and that you are mine. Little did I know that there were secrets about you that I discovered since then. And now I hope these secrets, these little things that tell me who you are, never stop coming. In some ways, I want you to be a mystery. So that little things surface every now and then, that only I know of.

Secondly, two weeks more and you will be here. I heard once a lady say that it's pretty easy to figure men out - pay little attention to what they say and more attention to what they do. I hope that I've shown you that I love you through the things I did. I hope that this is somewhere deep within you, to give you confidence that you need in order to do what you need to do. And when you're here with me, I hope that this gets cemented.

And lastly, I started this blog with the intention of being true. I realised that if I let the lies (starting with one or two and then becoming indecipherable) stay, I wil never reach anywhere. What I found suprising is that I am naturally true when I am with you. Discovering you has lead to discovering me.

I don't have much fancy words. Well, I do. But let's save our friends the pain. You know I love you.

Happy six month anniversary :).

Yours,

Bird.

This came to me in a dream

A dark haired girl ( I recall nothing else) and I were having a conversation.

.

.

.

Girl: And oh, I know that subject too.

Me: How do you know so much in detail?

Girl: When I pick up a subject or a textbook, I think of myself as the Creator of that subject. If I were to build this or that theory, how would I do it? Most times, there is a correlation between mine and the textbook version.

Me: But won't that take forever?!!

Girl: The very fact that you're asking me that proves to me you've never tried it.

.

.

For some reason, I just recall just this part of the dream. I'll be the first to admit - this quals thing is really getting on me, making me feel insecure about a whole lot of things.

The Nobel laureate

Just before my talk at the ASMS conference, I was chatting with this guy R, when he suddenly gets up and greets a small Asian man. "Koichi! How are you?" That's when it hit me - this was Koichi Tanaka, the 2002 Nobel Laureate famous for his MALDI work. Yup, that right, and he was here to attend this session. My colleague, Paul then asked me - So? Are you nervous? I replied, why would I be nervous? There's only a Nobel prize winner in the damn audience.

Anyway, R finishes his small talk with his "Koichi" and sits down.

Hey you know who that is?

Yeah that's Koichi Tanaka isn't it? He seems to be a very humble man.

That he is. You know, back when he won the prize, he was an instant celebrity in Japan. In a good and bad way. Good because he got to set up his own institute and bad because of all the attention he was getting. They say that there used to queues of people waiting to see him and parents would give him their children to be kissed.

What! No kiddin?

No kidding. The funny part is Koichi hated all the attention so he would hide in the bushes outside his institute to avoid the crowd.

And that picture of the small man hiding in the bushes was so funny in my head that I promptly forgot all my nervousness and gave the talk pretty OK.

Back at home, I was sifting through all the cards of people who dropped by my poster and requested a copy of it. And lo and behold, his card was there with his name, designation, email and everything else. The Laureate had stopped by my poster and I hadn't even noticed him, much less talked to him. Too late, I thought and added his email id koichi blah @ blah to the mass listing. While going through the remaining cards, I found a card of a post doc from the same institute, but the strange thing was that the email id on the card was ditto that of Tanaka's!

I checked again. There was no doubt about it. The email id was koichi blah @ blah. This guy and his post docs had one email id. How totally weird!

Songs and you

Some songs remind me of you. Knowing you, you'd want to know the list. Not that you're romantically hopeless, but lists are your thing now aren't they? But there is no such list. Am sure I could make one, but the songs wouldnt share anything amongst them. See, some songs have just one line that remind me of you, others have a catchy title which I wouldnt have noticed otherwise. Others have simply a tune which my brain latches on and before you know it, am daydreaming. Yet others, and these are rare, are completely on the whole about you. You know these ones. I want to do something with these ones. I either send them to you, lyrcize them for you or I simply pick up learning the guitar so that I can sing to you.

what's scary is

the thought that maybe you're not as good as you thought you were.

The bum area

SLC had its share of bums, as any city does. And since the conference was bang in the middle of downtown, we ran into a few. What was different though was that the usual homeless rules didn't apply. Bums are supposed to be territorial. But here, we found four different guys with placards on one corner on any given day.

I was standing outside the convention center waiting for an old classmate to show up, when this guy walks to me and says - Sir, would you let a man clean the windows of your car? I said - umm, sorry I dont have a car. I didn't quite catch what he said next but he repeated it on his own in a shaking-his-head kinda way so I heard it clearly. And it surprised me. 'It ain't about the car, mister....it ain't about the car'. Great. The dude wanted money but was too proud or something so he made a theme and me the dumb idiot just didn't see the theme, the grander picture blah blah.....Eesh the philosophy!

Another bum somehow slipped inside the building into the poster hall. My friend, FijiMan looked up and was astonished to find this bum staring intently at his poster taking in the print, figures, plots and all.

Hey man, what are you doing here?
Sir? You got some chaaaange?
Er.. no.

The guy proceeded to collect all the empty soda cans from the recycle bin, and stuffed them into his bag.

They must have found him. The security on the last couple of days was pretty high.

The Temple Go-ers

This is a post I've been planning on writing for a long time, but kept postponing for..wait for it..the quals. Now that this shit is going to take longer than expected, there is no use in postponing things any more.

My parents are perfectly lovable people, and there are many things I admire about them. Dad is very practical, methodical and hardworking and is a does-everything-for-you kinda guy whose opinions are respected throughout the family. Ma is a kind and sweet lady, loves the heck out of us and always looks for positives doing her on-the-other-hand kind of analysis which sometimes is irritating, but well meant. They're are both pretty pious people. Which is OK as such, except when it comes to going to temples.

Especially to Guruvayoor.

Guruvayoor is a famous Vishnu's temple about 3 hour drive from Cochin. It's a big place and almost always packed. There are long queues, and the temple doors close very often so the river of people just wait there in queue for their chance at seeing the deity. I just want to make this more effective so the gist is this - you wake up , you travel for 3 hours, you spend a good 2 hours or so (if you're lucky) in a bullying queue, you get all of 30 secs to actually stand before the deity before you've shoved away, and you travel back for another 3 hours.

My parents approach this trip like a military campaign. The date is set months in advance. And as it approaches, many more details are set including the best time to leave. Many scenarios are run through in both heads, involving traffic, the calendar (if there are any special pujas that day), what to do with irregular closing times of the temple doors and such. When the day comes, they are up and about with energy, both praying that everything goes smoothly that day. My mom has this theory which goes something like this - you have to be 'blessed' to go pray there without any hold ups. If there is a huge crowd and big delays, it is a challenge that must be faced and surpassed with patience.

So the moment the car reaches, both of them have this look in their eye that I just cannot describe. They hurry on to the main entrance. A quick stock of the crowd situation is taken, and then we split up - mom goes to the ladies queue and me and dad take our place in the general queue. And then the wait starts. Sometimes it's really really bad, especially in December where we wait two hours outside the temple before we wait another two hours inside the temple. But doing this for them is OK, so I do it. However, on a good day, when all of India's one billion don't show up together, we get it done in relatively quick. But 'quick' is a misnomer because by then, trust me, you're beat from standing, suffocated from the crowd, irritated at the pushing and pulling and just plain fed up.

Anyway, you are thankful it's all over and you come around and see your mother waiting for you. And then you see the look in her eyes and you fervently wish you don't hear the following words. - 'That was quick wasnt it? I think we have time to do it one more time'

One more time? You try and reason with her. You say - look we had a good one, we're all 'blessed' and stuff so let's count our 'blessings' and leave. Now. No effect. You try and take a stand, Nope you're not coming for one more round of body beating. That's when the emotional stuff starts. First it was 'Look, you come only once in a couple of years and you make this much fuss' but lately it's been the even more dangerous 'you come in a couple of years home and I want you to do this please? This is very important to me. Do I force you to do anything else?' Eesh. And so you're back there in the line, cursing yourself for the stupid blessings comment and for not taking a stand.

And this is not just me. My aunt once went to Guruvayoor one December, saw the long queue, prayed from outside and left, perfectly content. When she mentioned this to my mom over the phone, there was silence. HG got caught in this recently where my mom declared that everyone was afraid to come to guruvayoor with her. HG felt really bad and went in a second time.

On the way back they analyse all other scenarios in which things could have been worse, and decide they had it easy. I gape at them. But they ignore me. They are genuinely happy, face lit with joy and calm alike. And you shrug it all away. Well if it makes them this happy.

I once asked my dad some years ago whether he in his youth ever questioned religion. He had this confused look on his face. The thought had never occurred to him. I smiled, at least he's got a view he sticks to.

The fat bastard sang

and I could do nothing but listen. Every fiber of me wanted to go at war with him.

Fuck you, you piece of shithole. Logic is not fucking part of algorithms. You know what is fucking logic? Logic is fucking logic. And just because you got your PhD in fucking logic does not mean you try and push it into every scope of every exam that you give. Especially when you don't include any of that in your syllabus. Go to war with you? Shit..I got better pride than that. You're impenetrable aren't you? You've got tenure and everything is allright. Doesn't matter if you don't publish shit or got no one to work for you. No one respects you. You hear me? Well of course you don't cuz this is a blog that you will never read. And am not about to yell this at your face. So this shit is all pretty pointless.

But..

Bring it on fucker

Exam blues

Two more weeks to go, until the big qualifiers or 'the last important exam' as my advisor HT put it. I am definitely not ready, and I don't think I ever will be.

The problem is the guy who's setting up my algorithms paper is not the guy who's teaching algorithms. In fact, the guy who's setting my algorithms paper has nothing to do with algorithms (he's supposedly in databases), and to boot, the guy who's setting my algorithms paper is unpredictable at best, an Ahole at worst.

I thought I was safely out of his grasp cuz I was never in his area but he managed to muscle his way in. And the other staff think he's a pain and the just let him be. You can never get a direct answer out of him. I tried getting him to talk and he says - dont' worry you've got beautiful hair you'll pass. What the..

Between wanting to say 'fuck off, am not gonna bother' and kissing his ass was a hard choice since I wouldn't get far with either. So far, I've played it cool, giving him his ego boost by showing him I was tense and worried, and reacting just enough to his painful jokes ('the amount of time on the oral exam will be a function of how much you don't know') while not believing a word he's saying. At least I managed to get a printed email with a prescribed syllabus.

Studying biology is getting to be more fun than algorithms and that never happens to me.

Oh well. We'll see how it goes.

add this to the list of why

She held her own, she said, against an international star.

I was simultaneously amazed, proud, and weirdly enough - grounded.

In which I get hit on

Psshhh.....Let me explain.

Incident # 1
-------------
We were at our Alley Bar, which incidentally is becoming a favorite watering hole. We, being, myself, Constable and his wife PM. PM taps on the shoulder of a guy and asks him to take a picture of the three of us.

Sure

After the photo has been taken, we say thanks to this kind dude. He laughs and clumps a hand on my shoulder.

Oh no problem! I could take pictures of you all night long

I said hmm and sipped my beer thinking - What would Danny Ocean do?

Incident # 2
-------------
I was on foot heading back to office talking on the phone with HG, when suddenly a car drives by and a bunch of girls pop their heads out and yells at me - HEY! TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF!!

Er..baby? A bunch of girls just asked me to take my shirt off.

What?

I watch the car go on for a few meters and pass a very ordinary looking guy. The window comes down, a few heads pop out - HEY! TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF!!

Hmm...Never mind, honey..you were saying?

New is in

Ever notice how contemporary English focuses less on the choice of big words for conveying something and more on the choice of words put into metaphors? Today I read this from someone's blog writing - 'it's a big deal like Godzilla's penis size' (Ouch). Jon Stewart the other day talked about going and doing his own thing - "I will Simon your Garfunkel ass and take off on my own".

I rather like this. I think it's imaginative, and I could never do it. My brain is not wired to think into metaphors.

On the other hand, as Ykas pointed out - CS people have this urge in them to use some technical jargon to describe something (am thankfully not in this category). I was drawing a graph on the board, you know, with nodes and edges. I erased edges to a group of nodes on one part of the graph, and said loudly - OK now what are these?

The CS guy replies - That is a disconnected component.

Yes Captain Obvious, I wasn't looking for a technical definition.

One more time

One more down.

Another conference, another poster, another listening to the experts, the wanna-bes, the farts, the losers and the suck-ups talk. Once in a while you get the real deal. Other times, you walk away with four smash hit ideas that leave you on a high, of which one might make it to fruition.

I really want to be on the other side of that dais. Isn't it time for that already?

And I need newer people to hang out with at these things rather than the same chaps from the old company. There are some that I like that will not talk about work or the lab. Sadly, they were not there this time. It was usual company bitching. Heck! I quit remember? I really don't want to hear this. But it's my own fault. I gotta stop the whole identification of myself as the ex-lab member who quit. Ugh.

Got to see the beach though. I love oceans. I love mountains too which made it hard to pick and choose a future city to dwell until I saw Vancouver.

The first time I went to a conference, I was a young green idealistic 24 year old at Utah State. The mormon profs kept to themselves for three days, always eating together and tucked in bed by 8 at night. One, who incidentally was my fav, discovered I was a liberal. 'You would have voted for the other guy!' said he. Later, on the ride home, he tried to get me quit smoking and pick up running. Much later, when I did, I wrote an email to him implying his words had stayed with me. He didnt reply back.

Anyway, whomever I talked to (profs of other univs) at that conference was usually half drunk to reply or would direct me to their Chinese colleague (am not kidding) who either didn't talk much or didn't talk English much.

I returned to campus thinking what the heck the whole point was in sitting for three days, listening to ten speakers a day and stare at thirty posters in each field and coming away with ninety questions.

There isnt any. The best tip anyone can give you is to pick and choose.

Now a days, I just sit and listen and take what comes my way. And wait for my turn to be on the other side.

The familiarity

We hear things that the other says that we know deep down are true, but it just makes a difference since the other said it.

We star in each other's dreams. Almost on a daily basis. Both poignant cameos and also protracted story lines with continued presence. And it feels good.

And now..

Everything
reminds me
of
you.

When you can't win them all..

So far, I've done pretty OK with all of HG's family, her relatives and her friends. I love her naturally which I guess shows and as a consequence am given the nod of approval mostly without any fuss. The only guy that refuses to acknowledge my existence is her apartment security guard.

Seriously.

This balding grumpy looking chap's world has shaken by my arrival. Forget speaking to me, he doesn't look at me, and talks only to her. Even when it's just the three of us are in the lift together going up. I wanted to start a conversation with a gentle 'Aap kaise ho?' but the cat had come and taken off with my tongue and put a big marble in my throat. What resulted was a guttural sound. At which he waggled his eyebrows in his my general direction and continued his conversation with HG.

Oh well.

When the smoke had cleared

and the dust was still..
She was standing there and speaking my name.

I guarantee she looked like an angel
I couldn't think of what I should say.

But when Adam saw Eve in the garden
I believe he felt the self same way.

Here's to a week with you.

And I wanted to stamp on the iPhone

Constable has an iPhone. He calls it 'the voice of god' cuz any conversation that we have is ultimately wikied or googled up and settled right then and there. And with the iPhone he's got a zillion apps. The latest one is this restaurant suggestion thingy that rolls a dice (or two) and randomly pops up with a suggestion for restaurant or bar in town.

(The look) Dude you're not serious are you? It's raining and we're under a tree rolling dice for a bar?

Oh come on, it'll be fun.

Sigh. How about this? You know that thing about tossing a coin? You don't really need to wait for the coin to land. When the coin is up in the air, you automatically make a wish for heads or tails. And that's the thing that you want.

( to deaf ears ) This thing just showed up zagreb. Ugh. Trying again.

2 mins later. More wetter (read soaked) than two minutes before.

Why is it showing me a restaurant in Indianapolis!

And I wanted to stamp on the iPhone.

PS - We ended up going to the Alley Bar which of course has the world's greatest spicy peanuts that you can crack AND DROP ON THE FLOOR! Seriously. The whole floor is all crunchy peanut skins. And it feels so good to purposefully litter.

South Koreans are Zen people

Ykas got into the PhD program here, and so we were having this conversation where I mentioned it to him that now that he's going to be here longer, he can really go after that biology girl who's also in the PhD program. He replies - Oh I don't know man. She's pretty serious about that Boston guy.

Our South Korean officemate, looked up from his code and said this with a very wise expression on his face.

'You know - there's a saying in South Korea. Just because there's a goalie doesn't mean you can't score'

In which I get my apartment back

Goodbye roomie.

Not that you did anything that made it to the list. Except for having an annoying girlfriend who's a self-declared-in-fb Shiv Senaite, and who thinks everyone south of Bombay is alike and speak South Indian. And maybe an overdose of spice in whatever you cooked and made me taste. Also, you were a bit random at times with unnecessary topics of conversation. But you were largely, in the general scheme of things, on the whole, in all entirety, and for the most part - quite OK. You did save me some bucks which helped in taking HG around.

But I like my apartment - a bit too selfishly to be shared with non family, you see?

Zeppelin shall play on the stereos on Saturday mornings once more. And Tamil songs twice on Sunday.

Now if only the perpetual roommate can get here quickly.

The Runner's story

Amidst writing a very hard review paper while carrying a niggling idea that sounds good in my head about selling my bike and giving up biking, I decided to see how good I am at running. And I was pleasantly suprised to find myself knocking 30 minute 3 milers at least twice a week.

See, I always was a runner and I was dashed good at it. Four years ago, I started competing in Washington State and I did fairly well too. My motives for running were not so sound though. I basically wanted to eat good food and drink copious amounts of beer as much as I wanted, and I ran so that I can do all these things. Plus there were cute girls. My training was haphazard, my discipline was malleable and it was more adrelanin that kept me up than anything else. But I managed OK. Until I reached a point where I fell in love with it and it somehow became part of my life. The simplicity of it all appealed to me - put one foot in front of the other as long as you can, as fast as you can.

And then my ankles got shot. I twisted one really badly. Being dumb and all macho like, I refused to let that put me down and went skiing before full recovery and then the other one gave up. This happened continously. I would rest, make it better and try again to run but the ankles just refused to cooperate. I took up other sports. My ankles didnt quite agree to this idea. They said intermittent no's to softball and cricket and a definite resounding no to soccer.

Looking back, this one injury to me signifies the start of a downward trend in life, all culminating in Vancouver, before the yin (or is it the yang?) took over.

And now my ankles have said yes to running.

The familarity of it all - the lightness of the body, the soreness of muscles, the pasta, the craving for sugar - it's all so comforting. I am smarter now, so everything will be looked at with a pessimistic and cautious eye.

Don't meant to scare you, but.

Algorithms prof : I hope you've started studying for your qualifying examinations this summer.

Me : But that's three months away! Are you setting the exam scale to be really hard?


Algorithms prof thinks for a whole two minutes (during which I look at him increasingly astonished) and then,

"I would have started studying if I were you"

Gulp.

Ruminate

There is a little plaster on the ceiling above my desk that has come out. The shape it makes is similar to the outline of Kashmir.

The Kashmir whose outline keeps changing.

From what our high school textbooks used to say to what Google Maps shows us today.

Or the current map of India, for that matter.

And I sit back and reflect on this. On boundary lines in flux.

Blurt of the day, the week etc.

Being so nervous about giving a very biological talk that you mispronounce "organism" as.......


Not once.

Multiple times.

Words that got me brownie points

HG : So, how's the ring doing ? :P

Me: The ring...is a pleasure to wear.

Turn 29

Yes yes. It feels all the same after 27. I still act like a 12 year old, though. Well, perhaps 13.

Maybe more ponderings on age and it's effects next year when the big 3-0 hits.

Propaganda

Go ahead. Give it a try on Pandora.

Sign that said it all

Students protesting against religious interference in abortion. One of them had the sign - Get your rosaries out of my ovaries.

Things I want to remember

- When we arrive at her place for lunch, she came out to see me first, it looked like she had dropped whatever she was doing in a hurry AND then came out.

- Asking HG if she cooked anything among all the dishes from that first lunch. And immediately knowing what the answer was.

- Selecting our stage design - I chose one, she chose another - but they didnt have some things for that design lying around. So they went with my choice. I remember walking in early on the wedding day and feeling rather proud.

- Convincing a rather paranoid HG to let me ride an Activa in Cochin traffic! God, painful.

- Feeling totally useless at HG's place when they were putting mehndi for her (It was technically supposed to be an all-girls thing). She basically called me over to scratch her nose while her hands were busy.

- It was amusing to see both sets of parents adjust to us meeting everyday for long hours. They knew better. Thankfully. I was hooked on seeing her.

- The guruvayoor trip with my family prior to the wedding. I remember telling HG that my parents become these two abnormal unmanageble obsessive strange people everytime a temple trip is in the works.

- The minor chaos concerning videographers losing their way.

- On the day before the wedding, a Christmas carol group stopped by our place and sang for us. We treated them to dinner. They were all orphans.

- Waiting at the temple for HG. They all barged in, loking incredibly rushed. I knew there must have been some ..ahem..difficulties. She smiled though.

- When I was tying the thali around HG, she had this look of panic on her face, which kinda made me panic as well. Then someone said smile, and she broke into happy one.

- The idlis that we ate at BTH after the morning temple ceremeny were the best idli's ever. That and the coffee there. I was dashed hungry.

- Being told by this old guy, who was in charge of the ceremony, not to be with my wife until AFTER the ceremony. I wanted to say something but seeing HG get pissed enough for the both of us was amusing.

- The kumkumam fiasco! Throughout the wedding, HG had a very red nose from excess kumkumam (or whatever that red powder is called). She blamed me for having put too much on to begin with. Blamed me..for..days. Until video evidence showed that after I applied it, she messed with it and the whole thing came down on her nose. Ha! The joy of innocence.

- Seeing all my good friends show up beamingly.

- Seeing V (HG's younger sister) sitting next to the old MC fart all through lunch.

- The tatoo conversation:
Big Sis: Hey mom, did you see what he has done? Hes gone and got a tatoo.
Mom: Show me. Ugh!
Dad: Show me. Ugh!
Little nephew: Show me. Ugh!
This 4-year old kid has his priorities wrong. But soon, he'll be his uncles admirer. Muhaha...
Mom and Dad go on a rant about how horrible it looks and what an idiot I was. Then,
Mom: Well..not for me to say anything especially if you're going to get another one. HG will take care of that.
HG: err... I have one too.

- Going to Thalassery. Reaching the station at crack of dawn and realizing no one was there to pick us up. HG was pissed. I wasnt. I had just noticed the pure countryside air.

- Living at that ancestral house there. I loved that place. It's old and antique and wonderfully fresh. I wanted to go hiking but was banned due to..wait for it..foxes.

- Suryakeeradam being sung by HG's dad. HG and me were outside in the early morning light, when we heard him singing. That song will never be heard the same way again.

- The immense amount of food I consumed there. Especially the mutton.

- Half of Thalassery showing up for the reception. Touchy feely people. Grown mallu men with moustaches trying to hold my pinkie.

- Trip to Thailand. The whole naturality and comfort of it all, like I've been travelling with her forever.

- Very proud of my saving skills, hitherto non-existent.

- NY eve : If the year is anything like how we feel at the stroke of midnight...

- The beach, the ocean, the beer

- The guide forcing us to go to a place we've seen before. The real reason turned out that the guide wanted to pick up his girlfriend.

- Trip to Muscat. Getting a new suit. Hangin out with HG and V.

- Muscat reception - meeting slightly weird slightly drunk men advancing theories and opinions. One guy came up to me and said 'There are 6 people in China about to take over the world'.

- Opening presents. V was responsible for noting down who gave what. She had a hard time with over-enthusiastic poeple shouting names at her from diff directions.

- Cooking for the family. Seeing HG's parents happy and content.

- Finally settling down finally for a week at one place. And getting a routine out of it. Loads of chai served on demand, mallu movies, yum food (I've consumed an ocean of fish), very little movement.

- HG coming out to the airport, which she's never done for anyone.

And it's done. Am going to try (with some regret) to get off this one month ecstacy mainly because while making me smile, the finished and the away part is depressing me. And there's tons of work to be done.

Well am back

To a place I don't really want to be
To spacing out fifty times a day
To when talking and making conversation is an effort
To hollow laughters
To living in the past one month for as long as possible


Maybe this is where I belong


(and well done...you've single handedly ruined every bit of euphoria there was and caused a 'I wish I was..' thought)