Vacation

Note: Comic Sans MS my favorite font! And blogspot doesn't offer it in their standard fonts! We need a Comic Sans revolution!!!

Just a weeks worth of vacation is left to me now. Those two and a half months - such a long time I'd once thought - have just passed me by. And after a bit of retrospection, I surely wont say I've been up to nothing. The more time we loose, the more memories we make. And these eighty odd days have given me magnificent memories - magnificent, as in grand mind you; don't be judgemental yet, my days in fact have been a grand cacophony of good and bad, light and dark experiences - which I'm not going to forget so soon. Well I had to phrase it this way, ' I'll cherish them for my life ' wouldn't sound good coming out of me considering my forgetfulness that sometimes even qualifies me as an amnesia patient!! Here I'd like to borrow something from Abhishek Moharana who in turn borrowed it from Mr. Ruskin Bond,

"Looking back on boyhood days, Even unhappiness acquires a certain glow..."

Time is natures way of keeping everything from happening at once. And Mr. Nature with his 13.73 billion years experience made sure that I stick to his way. My vacation too dint unfold to me in one single shot, but I got to live it in three different installments, in three phases with each lasting a tad under a month. This post is about the three installments in which I've lived the last couple of month's. Well a great trip to the Dalhousie - Dangs paradise is indeed paradise - preceded my journey back home and a post about my experiences there too has been pending. These phases began as I returned home.

|||||..................
Phase I:
During this phase I guess nothing much happened. I just stuck to my same old Roorkee daily routine. Glued my eves to the computer screen, slept late got up even later, skipped meals. Stuff like getting stuff from the local vendor and strolling around aimlessly with some other jobless soul replaced the lectures while going around meeting people replaced practicals. Though it was a welcome change. There was no Mt. DOMS and occasionally school boys would just ask me what they should do in life IIT or AIEEE or CET, the kind of stuff you give to boys with big ambitions and all. Its better than being told by profs what you'll finally be in life a nothing or a loser or a failure, the kind of stuff profs give you after trespassing your sleep. Alibag replaces Dehra Dun and Mussoorie, sand and sea replaced peaks and valleys that's about it. I did read a books, to name a few, The Three Mistakes of My Life - about Indians and for Indians similar to his previous ones, but not bad - by Chetan Bhagat, Brida - a few brilliant ideas shrouded in PCs typical mysticism and inner meaning thoughts - by Paulo Coelho and Right Ho, Jeeves - not my cup of tea - by P. G. Woodhouse.

||||||||||.......
Phase II:
I had to part with my laptop for 3 weeks at a stretch - I hate those HP Care Centre guys for it, its still not with me!! - the longest I've been away from it so far. Here I was without my daily dose of staring at the LCD screen, desperately in search of something to do. Football - something I knew nothing about - came to my rescue. I'd recently mistaken Peter Cech for a referee and his protective skull cap for some high tech headphone set used by the referee! Euro 2008 had just begun and football fever had gripped my - mostly cricket playing - friends. With new studs being bought and footballer's jerseys donned, we were all set for a daily dose of football. Every evening we played in spite of the rain and every night I sat glued to the TV set, following every single second ( even pre and post match analysis). I thought of blogging a bit about the matches, but I guess the inertia thingy crept in. And now that I'm kinda rid of it, its too late to talk about Euro 2008. Now I know most players, their teams and positions in them, also the clubs they play/played and their strategies. That's not it, I can kind of remember every important or interesting match.

|||||||||||||||
Phase III:
The third phase turned out to be the busiest of all. After years of wanting to learn swimming I finally decided to do it. Every morning I would wake up at 7am - that's kinda midnight for me - and make my way through Andheri Station's relentless traffic. Its kinda hard for commuters when just a two lane one way road leads to Andheri's Railway Station, Bus Depot, Auto Stand and a shopping area. Exhaustion - due to swimming - caused most of my afternoons to be spent sleeping. I did watch a lot of movies during these few days. Every friday evening was spent watching some or the other movie. Sarkar Raj - the producers called it a hit, media called it average, the trade called it a flop; Aamir - a nice and realistic thriller about a common man forced into criminal exploitation; Jane Tu...... Ya Jane Na - a tolerable love story portrayed in new light; Hancock - first half was nice, by the second half, things take a turn for the banal, its pure bollywood masala climax sucks; Kismat Konnection - sucks big time, waste of time and money; The Dark Knight - brilliant movie, go watch it now if you haven't and even if you have, I guess you'd love to go again. Joker is too good - " Why so serious? Lets put a smile on your face." I also read a book, or rather finished a book I'd been reading for a while, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini. A novel not to be missed, an incredible chronicle of forty years of Afghan history and the pitiable condition of Afghan women. A deeply moving story of family, friendship and faith.

And thus have I spent 3 precious months of my life.......

Newtons 1st law of motion............

S-37 RJB -I'm gonna miss it this year!!- about half a year back I lay sprawled upon my bed half asleep and fully confused thinking about my first post. I'd just decided to emulate Dang and opened up my own blog 'Babeypedia'. And a poem - too mushy to be mine - I'd written long back to impress my seniors and to win a place into WONA, came to my rescue.

I guess I haven't done justice to my blog. Its been a long long time since my last blog. Unlike my initial blogging days, I no more have a shortage of topics. In fact I'v enough astray brainwaves pulsating in my brain to fill up volumes and volumes with my usual gibberish. But the truth is I haven't even been able to put together a single post let alone volumes. I really dint know what was keeping me from blogging. Was it the absence of my laptop - which has spent half the vacation in HP Care Centres being fixed up - or the absence of Wi-Fi or was it the absence of free time. Well I guess neither these nor the numerous other reasons I coined were true.
The reason was laziness. I'd rather sleep than write. Its not that I dint try, I did but I must confess it was half hearted. I tried to write but never went beyond a line or two I'd often linger on the first or second line for a long time and then I'd quit for the time being. I had to break free of my inertia. Bits and pieces of an article on inertia - the mental one mind you - that I'd written with Dang started cropping up in my mind. I tried hard, but Mr. Inertia tried harder and when I was about to give up, it happened I just needed a bit more of nudging.
Most of my friends have started blogging while my blog lies half dead already. There is so much I want to blog about, so much I want to share. And today I read this scrap from Dang, "And wt about ur blog....it seems every1 is bloging now expect you..cum on update ur blog...lot of ppl frm 1st year hav already started to blog..." This proved to be that one nudge I needed. And here I am at a cousins place with a virus infected half dead pc blogging again!!!