Baptisms of Fire (on ice)

So here I am again… bruised and battered but still in one piece.

So there we were all together in my house on Friday afternoon… 6 snowboarding virgins (2 snow virgins even) and one ex ski instructor. The peace pipe was smoked as it always is at the start of a journey and we were off in two cars. The snow team included me, my boyfriend S, my housemate T, my friend R and her boyfriend K, S’s friend from work B and our friend V.

Roadtripping with my two favourite allies
Fully loaded, we got snacks and supplies



The drive was nice… for once we didn’t argue about the music and just listened to everything that played. And most of it was singable so quite naturally I didn’t shut up for six hours. I even found this CD that I recorded maybe 4 years ago when I first got a CD burner and it was full of songs I hadn’t heard in ages. You Are My Religion, for fuck’s sake and Unforgivable Sinner. I’d forgotten those songs even existed. And as always, I gazed out the window at the rolling hills and country towns and villages and thought of other trips I’ve taken in the past… trips that start out as this one did, with the smoking and the drinking and the driving and the laughing and the singing.

We saw many sheep along the way. Ah, rural Victoria, is there anything quite like it? Please excuse me, I think sheep are damn cute.



So anyway, many smoke breaks and toilet breaks and food breaks later, we caught a glimpse of some snow covered peaks.

These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be



We drove up the mountain (Mt Hotham, it was), taking corners at terrifying speeds as always… boys will be boys after all. Eventually, it was 9 pm by the time we had settled in and eaten dinner and started sipping our first drinks. By 10:30 pm, we were SMASHED!

To kick things off, we started playing Fuzzy Duck but I think everyone’s just become too damn good at it these days… fuck-ups are rare and few between. Fuzzy Duck is this highly entertaining drinking game which involves people saying Fuzzy Duck in a circle until someone says Does He. The direction is then reversed and the phrase changes to Ducky Fuzz. After a few drinks most people mess up and say things like Fuck He Does and Does He Fuck, and when you mess up, you slam a shot! So anyway, we’ve been playing this for a long time at my famous fruit punch shot nights but I’ll save those experiences for another day.

We gave up on Fuzzy Duck and started playing Dumb Charades. S, T and I were on one team against the other four and we were on a fucking roll, I kid you not. We’re not normally that great or anything but that night, we just had some kind of connection going and were guessing everything in about 10 seconds and the other team was just losing miserably. And sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to guess… T was trying to charade a sounds like for ‘brass’ and acted smoking some ‘grass’. We got what he was trying to do alright, but S and I must’ve said every single other word we knew for it from ganga to Mary Jane and just completely missed the basic, first word I ever learnt in the whole business of smoking up. By the end of all this shouting and screaming, we were extremely smashed and decided to go hang outside in the snow.

The photo below was taken to capture my comic attempts at drinking my drink with my gloves on. It made for such a blogworthy pic though since it preserves my anonymity ;)



Outside in the snow we drank and took drunken photos on someone’s parked snowmobile and bonded with various other guests who also came out to hang in the snow and shared the love (the weed love, that is) and smoked many cigarettes (this was also terribly difficult with my gloves). All in all, it was a very fun night and we went to bed extremely late. The "single" boys were in a room full of bunk beds and it was much fun to climb up to the top bunk and pretend one was on the Brindavan Express.

Barely five hours later, we were rudely awoken by the bright morning sunlight. Apparently sunlight is always much brighter in snow towns because of the sun reflecting off the snow – I had not thought of this before!



We showered and dressed in many layers (at least I did, I don’t take chances with the cold) and drank much water to combat our hangovers and spent some time renting our gear. So on top of all my layers, I had a puffy snow jacket and waterproof ski pants, some horrendously heavy snowboard boots, and a very cumbersome snowboard. Thus armed, we set off for the slopes.

As mentioned before, B used to be a ski instructor and he was on skis while the rest of us were on snowboards and he was still able to give us some basic pointers on snowboarding. After about half an hour of gliding around on flat terrain, we became overly ambitious and decided to take the ski lift up one of the slopes even before we had our beginner’s lesson which was some time away.

The ski lift itself is obviously a terrifying experience on its own. I fell trying to get on it (you try getting to the lift from the gate on time with one foot strapped into your snowboard and the bloody seats don’t stop for long enough) and I fell getting off it (again, you try gliding off the lift with one foot strapped in and then having to get out of the way quickly before the next set of people get off it)!



Once I had regained my composure somewhat, the enormity of what we were attempting hit me and terrified me no end. We were at the top of a very tall slope… we couldn’t even see the home stretch, and we couldn’t even stand up on our boards without sliding off in the wrong direction or falling on our asses. If it had not been for B, who very patiently helped me up every time I fell, and who prevented me from falling every time I tried to stand up, and who tried to show me how to stand without sliding or falling, I would’ve surely slipped off the side of that mountain onto the hard road below.

So we attempted the long slide down the mountain. Every couple of feet, I would have a tremendous fall that rattled every single bone in my body. The fun part was that every single one of us was going through the same so once I fell I’d look around to see who was around me because surely one of them would be nearby, also on their ass. Some of their falls were incredibly funny to witness as I’m sure some of my falls were. Getting up (and staying up) after having fallen was certainly the hardest thing to do. And if anyone had told me that I would actually feel hot on a snow covered mountain in 4 degree Celsius temperature, I would’ve laughed scornfully at them. But it was hot and I actually began to regret my many layers because snowboarding is hard work, and the sun was beating down pretty fierce that day. So every time I fell, utterly and completely exhausted, I’d lie down on the soft, clean snow for a while and that was pure heaven. Halfway down the mountain, I completely lost my will to continue. I felt that I simply couldn’t lift myself up again. But more than the pain in my bum and my head, I felt I couldn’t take the heat and dehydration anymore and simply forced myself down the rest of the way, half boarding, half sliding and half falling. Phew… just recapping that all has made me slightly exhausted. Also the story is rather long for me to finish now… so, *to be continued*.

Oh, and if anyone wondered about the title of the post, that line from Brothers in Arms kept playing in my head over and over again as I struggled to snowboard. My fellow beginners were my brothers in arms, that long, tiring and yet extremely fulfilling day…

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I’ve witnessed your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

A Day in the Life...

Firstly, thank you all so much... for the comments, the emails and the overall moral support and sympathy. With many of you, I don't even know your real names and it's really very touching to feel your sympathy and compassion across the bits and bytes in such a manner. And Rat and I were chatting on MSN yesterday and she said Appachen is slightly famous in blogworld now. I think he would've liked that :) So anyway, there ended an era...

I played hooky from work today. I wasn't really planning on it and I was even awake at 9:00 in the morning but something inside just cried for some time for myself. Time to think, time to be alone, time to mourn, time to just run errands that I'm always too hungover to run on the weekends...

So I called in sick and spent a rather luxurious morning on the couch watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off on my day off. Believe it or not, I've never watched that teenage classic before. How fucking cute is Matthew Broderick in it? When he was lip synching Twist & Shout at the parade (such a cute scene), I wished I had watched the movie in high school so I could've had a terriby desperate school girl's crush on him. Ah well...

After lunch (Nutella sandwiches) and a shower, I set off for a jaunt around the city. What I miss most about student life is walking around the city in the daytime. Of course, then, I had no money so I could only walk and look. And of course, now, I have no time to do anything. Today was a glorious winter's day. Bright sunshine and no wind, so just the tiniest little nip in the air and really a very pleasant day to walk about in. So I ran a couple of errands and then proceeded to the optometrist for a checkup. God has blessed me with the constitution of an ox but when it comes to my teeth and my eyes, He has always played a rather cruel game with me. Admittedly, I didn't help the situation much by eating chocolate all the time and not brushing twice a day or reading by candlelight when the power went out and never touching carrots, but still... So anyway, visits to the dentist and optometrist are always dreaded although my last visit to the dentist was pretty non-eventful very surprisingly. So anyway, I wear contact lenses and my eyes have been bothering me for a while now... a general irritation and soreness... and after putting my eyes through much torture (this includes those bloody alphabet tests, I HATE THEM, I'm always certain to fail the tiniest letters test) the optometrist says "You're not going to like me" and I'm thinking uh oh and ask "Why" and he's like "You need to stop wearing your lenses for a while. You have a Conjunctivitis allergy". So, I have to wear my horrible glasses continuously for a week or so. I haven't done that since age 14. My glasses don't look horrible but after wearing lenses all the time, going back to wearing glasses is so fucking uncomfortable. And what about when it rains? What then, HUH?? Ok, I'll stop throwing a tantrum like a small child now!

After the depressing visit to the optometrist and wearing my GLASSES instead of my sunglasses, I set off to get my eyebrows done. My regular place was booked out and I tried this tiny Wax & Nail place and the lady said all the professionals were busy so if I wouldn't mind getting it done by a student... I was slightly hesitant but really wanted to get them done so went ahead. So I lay on the bed and closed my eyes and heard much muttering in a foreign language from the two petite Asian "students" attending to my eyebrows. I was rather concerned that it was all going to go horribly wrong but by this point there was nothing I could do. On the whole, it turned out ok. Certainly could've done with more shaping but at least I still have two of them in reasonable shape.

Then I ate an ice-cream (Baskin Robbins Triple Choc... as I am also on weight loss mentality, shouldn't have but what the hell) and spent some time messaging this lazy Rat who informed me that she had taken sickie due to hangover. Tsk tsk... I wish I could've also taken sickie for such a fun reason!

Finally I went into Borders to buy some more books (also on the agenda for today was to join a library but didn't have time in the end)... I'm currently going through books at a highly frantic pace and really need to join a library to curb the spending on books. But I tell you, going into a bookstore for me is like a kid in a candy store or my boyfriend in an electronics store or car accessories store. And always I wish I could just take over the whole store. Oooh, I think maybe one day I should run a bookstore... it will make me very happy! Today I purchased a 4 book compilation of Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot mysteries.

Oh, also dashed into Church real quick. Outstanding Catholic (Catholic who never goes inside Church and always stands outside, joke from some jobless uncles of mine) that I am, its been a really long time and I felt the need as I frequently do when it's been more than a couple of months and also the need to pray for the departed soul of my grandfather and all that. The Church has installed these automatic doors and I was rather alarmed when they swung open almost in my face with a great loud creak... I totally missed the signs that said 'Automatic Doors opening outwards. Stay clear'! Anyway, they proved to be highly distracting with that loud creak even when you were inside the Church.

So now I am home again. Been chatting with Lavi who is making me all homesick for such items as roti and mattar paneer. All I have for dinner is puff pastry which serves as roti when made on the tawa and some rather suspect Dum Murgh I made last night. Well, Dum Murgh is what Sanjeev Kapoor calls it... he is my latest recipe book man... it is really just a glorified chicken curry and actually its not all that bad. Anyway, all this talk of food has made me rather hungry. The rest of my day will involve eating leftovers, watching the season finale of Lost and oooh, almost forgot, I need to pack. I'm heading off to the mountains tomorrow for a ski/snowboard weekend, not that I've ever attempted either. Been to the snow once before though... was quite a chill experience (pun intended)!! And on Monday I go to Sydney on work so I hope to be back in blogworld by Tuesday at the latest ;)

In Mourning

My grandfather passed away last night. This is the first close member of my family that I am losing and I feel so bad about the fact that I wasn’t able to be there for him at the end. I was always his favourite grandchild too… because I was the eldest, and I was a girl, and in his eyes I was the most beautiful child he’d ever seen, and I was pretty smart too. He had such dreams of throwing me this fabulous wedding when he got me married to some highly successful, extremely handsome Malayalee Catholic boy (if such a person exists). I dispelled him of that notion pretty early on but he still clung on to the hope that one day I would have a complete change of heart. Finally the last time I saw him he had even given up on that dream. He didn’t care if I married a Hindu or a Muslim or a Sindhi or a Marwadi. All he wanted was for me to get married before he passed on. So essentially I didn’t grant him his last wish. A part of me will always feel terribly guilty about that even though I always said to him that its my life and my choice.

He was such a nice man, even such a fun man. Always thinking about where he would take his family on their next summer holiday together. He loved his whiskey (the size of his drinks always put me to shame) and he loved his horse racing and anyone’s birthday or special occasion was excuse enough for him to throw a big party. Once he invited S over for a chat (more to interrogate him on his intentions with his “innocent” granddaughter, I feel) and he fixed him two drinks at the size he normally drinks and S got soooo smashed. It was hilarious, for me that is. S was just dying at how high he was. Many of my friends also knew him, have hung out with him, stayed over at his house when I was staying there, came along to their Christmas parties. Dear Rat even went to the hospital last week to visit my grandmother and parents and I was very touched that she did that. She’s been on two holidays with my family so she knows them pretty well.

And this other thing I will never forget and always brings such a smile to my face… I (and the other grandkids) call (or should I say, called, so depressing) this grandfather Appachen, which is a Malayalee word for grandfather, and everyone else calls him Dad or Uncle or whatever. At one of his birthdays, S and J and Snoop came along to the party and when it was time to cut the cake, everyone sang and you could hear one voice louder than the others singing quite happily “Happy Birthday Appachen”… it was Snoop of course… quite naturally, he was also calling him Appachen. Appachen of course was like, who is this new grandchild who came out of nowhere.

He was old and weak and he lived a good life. I can understand that he had to pass on but that doesn’t make it any easier, especially for my grandmother who spent 55 years of her life with him. And then, there are his three sons and daughters-in-law and five grandchildren who were all so fond of him. And it wasn’t just his immediate family. He was such a role model and surrogate dad to so many other people in the extended family.

I could ramble on for ages about him and the things he did and how much he meant to me and so many other people, but I think I’ll stop now.

I can’t be there at the funeral so I’ve asked my sister to read out the following letter I wrote last night as soon as I heard the news. I know that he will be listening.

Dearest Appachen

There are so many things I’m sorry about. I’m sorry I never got the chance to say goodbye properly. I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time with you, especially in the last three years I’ve been away. I’m sorry I didn’t get married in your lifetime which was one of the strongest wishes you had. But there are so many things I’m grateful for… so many memories of having you in my life for the last 24 years.

I watched as people around you always showed you the greatest of respect and how you always helped those around you and those less fortunate than you. I listened as you called your wife of many years Darling, and told us tiny tots that family, religion and tradition were things we should always hold close to our hearts. I cried when you spoke of your dead mother with tears in your eyes and told of how much you missed her. I hope you are together again now.

Little things I remember. The little things you did for your grandkids… when I was a kid, I loved Pepsi and you always made sure there was a full crate for my consumption when I came over. Car rides and horse rides and boat rides, books and movies and restaurants… anything to keep us entertained. I loved green bananas and grapes so you’d make sure there were green bananas and grapes when I came over. Anything our parents said no to, we always had a backup plan in you and you never had the heart to say no to us.

You laughed at my precociousness and told me to reach for the stars and you were always so very proud whenever I achieved anything.

I remember a day when you quite patiently took me from bank to bank to get things notarised (I think there were 15 banks in total) all for the sake of helping me get my visa. I remember thinking that day that there was no one else who would’ve done all that without getting at least slightly irritated and losing their temper at least once at the heat or the waiting or the traffic or anything like that. That was one of the happiest days I spent with you in the recent past.

And always I remember the look of joy on your face whenever you welcomed me back home and even whenever you casually saw me for lunch or dinner or just to say Hello. And the way you cried every time you said goodbye… you were always so afraid that you wouldn’t get the chance to see me again. The last time I said goodbye to you was in October last year and you made such an effort to wake up early and see me off at the unearthly hour at which I was leaving. And I remember the hug you gave me through the bars at the airport and your grip was so very tight and you cried and I think maybe you knew you wouldn’t see me again and I remember hoping that it wasn’t the last time I saw you and how we would laugh again together when I saw you this year. It was never to be.

It still hasn’t sunk in really, that you are no longer around. I suppose it won’t fully until I come home to Madras and realise that you are really not there. Because you are such a part of what home and Madras means to me and now a part of my home will be missing. But you must know that you will live on in our minds and spirits and memories. Whenever I eat a good meal or have a sip of fine whiskey or attend a good party, I will raise my glass in memory of you. Because even though you were old and diabetic and should’ve been taking more care of what you ate and drank, when Amana and I chastened you about it, you said that your weaknesses were good food, fine whiskey and a good party. And that’s how I’ll always remember you… as someone who lived his life to the fullest and who didn’t waste any time in being worried about things not worth worrying about.

I will miss you terribly and think of you everyday. Goodbye dearest Appachen. I know you will be keeping an eye on us from afar and I’m pretty sure there’s some good horse racing and fine whiskey to enjoy up there until we all join you.

Love always,

Your oldest granddaughter

Penny Lane

You are Penny Lane! The centerpiece of Almost Famous, you are a dreamer in the highest degree. Your jacket spawned a million Abercrombie look-alikes this year, but they'll never embody the spirit of rock n' roll quite like you did. You have a tender heart, which is easily wounded, but you also possess the will to move on, which comes in quite handy. In your own words, "It's all happening".

Borrowed this quiz from The Bride. Quite ironic indeed. Although, I have to say that I didn't choose this name because of Penny Lane from Almost Famous... I always liked the Beatles song and got the "idea" to make it my MSN nickname from the movie. And the rest as they say, is history!

Which Almost Famous character are you?

And it’s your face I’m looking for on every street

Its that time again. When I begin to miss everything and everyone I know from home. I’m not sure what triggers it. I’m happy and busy and then suddenly Wham!, it hits me like a ton of bricks. And then for the umpteenth time I wonder if any of this is worth it. New cultures, new experiences, financial independence, whatever… I’m rather over that whole spiel.

This time, I think I can put my finger on what brought it on. A few things… my grandfather is very old and diabetic and recently suffered a fall and hasn’t been really getting better and every time I’ve called, after the conversation, I’ve felt like running into my room and burying myself into my quilt and somehow going back in time to when he was younger and healthier and could speak coherently. Poor old man, I really hope he gets better and that I’m able to see him again.

I haven’t heard from my Mom and Dad in a long while. There are people I know who speak to their parents (definitely their mothers) at least thrice a week. I probably speak to my parents once a month, and that’s enough for me. We’re not the ‘tell each other what we ate for lunch and dinner’ type. But they still push for the thrice a week quick emails to let them know I’m alive and alright. And normally, my Dad will email me like thrice before I finally reply and ask him to stop irritating me. But in the past three weeks, there’s only been a couple of hastily scribbled lines and I really miss hearing from them. I hate not knowing what’s going on. I know they’re real busy with my sister’s active lifestyle and my granddad being so ill and I’m also worried that they’re not emailing me because they don’t want to lie to me about how bad he really is.

Then there was an email from my 15 year old sister sister this weekend. Surprise, surprise indeed! She went on about high school and sports day and inter school cultural events and play practice and salsa lessons and teenage boys and I think to myself, great, I’m missing out on the best years of her life!

The following is an excerpt from her email. It was sent to me and my 16 year old cousin Mike who lives in the US. Isn’t it amazing how these under 18 year olds absolutely refuse to use capitalisation or punctuation of any sort. Most times I need to read these kids’ emails twice or thrice before I catch everything.

i miss the time we spent together in summer soooo much.. all the fun we had. sooo mike r'nt u doin anythin to try nd get me a schol??? cmon i know u miss me nd want me back ther nd also c if u can find a way for penny lane to come.. evrey once in a while i think bout that trip tp aussie when were all 18.. it'll be soooo much fun

Her current obsession is getting a scholarship to study in the US when she finishes high school. So again, I lose the opportunity to have a single family member anywhere near me. But she’s also trying to get me a job in the US so we can all be one big happy family there in a few years. I never ever thought I’d miss family the way I do currently but it is unbelievably depressing to not have a single family member in the country, let alone a single family friend. So I would welcome a move to the US to chill with my aunts and grandparents and cousins.

I promised her and Mike and Mark an awesome trip to Australia as soon as they were all 18 so I could really take them out and show them a good time and they could have their first drinks with me, their big sister. Although, come to think about it, they’ve already had their first drink with me. I got super wasted one night in May and they fully took advantage of my drunkenness that night and went and got themselves a silly wine cooler or something to share among themselves. M&M’s mom would just kill me (and them) if she ever found out! So anyway, at least I have that to look forward to… in about…. ummmm… three years?!!

And then finally there’s the friend of Madras. So there’s been lots of drinking and partying and what not but also too much of ‘Oh, remember when that happened? Remember that night at my house? Remember that trip to Bangalore? Man, he’ll never change’, etc. etc. I miss Madras and I miss my friends in Madras. What I would give for my little circle to live in the same place, doing the same silly things we did in days gone by?!

So, yes, home is a long way off. The people who make my home the warm haven it is are scattered all around the globe. There’s a scene from the movie Garden State where the main character talks about what its like to come back home. He says how you always imagine home a certain way in your head when you live away from home and then when you actually come back you realise that you’ve been holding on to something that just isn’t there anymore and “home” is now just a place that stores your old stuff. But you don’t really have a new home yet so you’re kinda stuck, lost, in limbo… until you have children of your own and home becomes a place that your children will always want to come back to because of the wonderful memories you create with them in your home.

I don’t know how much sense that made. Watch the movie. Its pretty funny.

My home isn’t the way I remember it when I return, but I still miss it and yearn for it everyday. And right now, I am in such a state of limbo that saying Boo might push me over the edge.

Where do we go? What do we do?

This too shall pass…

The sacred and profane
The pleasure and the pain
Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete
And it’s your face I’m looking for on every street

---Dire Straits - On Every Street

Happy Birthday Snoop

Today my bestest guy friend turns 23 (incidentally, 23 is his favourite number as he’s the biggest Michael Jordon fan). He’s been bugging me for ages to write something about him on my blog. And that’s just one of the reasons why I love him. Because he is completely honest about being obsessed with himself. That’s not to say he doesn’t care about other people… He is a narcissist who is completely loyal to those that love him (and there are many who love him) and he’s also funny and sweet and thoughtful.

So yes, he’s abused my digital camera to the stage of having taken 66 different head shots of himself and I distinctly remember a time when he whacked me on my arms with a pool cue and when it comes to being a drama queen he is second to none and there are periods when I don’t hear from him for months on end and one time, he was being rude to me for no real reason and I asked him Why and he said because I can say whatever I want to you two since I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think (incidentally, the other person this was directed to was Rat). And he told me my blog template is really boring and that he wouldn't read my blog unless I changed my template. And even if EVERY single other person tells me I look hot in a certain photo, he tells me I look kinda mental from that angle.

But he’s also made me laugh until I could barely breathe. He’s taught me how to play pool like an ace (not that I’m all that good anymore). If ever I spoke to him after a terrible fight with S, I would be bawling my eyes out and he would say almost anything to get me to stop crying and get me to smile. When various boys were hitting on me and sending me pager messages (this was way back in 1999 when I thought I’d never have a mobile phone), he’d sometimes send me ‘suggestive’ messages pretending to be those boys and eventually every time I got a message I’d call him first to make sure it was a genuine message from the boy in question and not really from him… so silly he was. And before I had this text pager, I only had a numeric pager (god, how prehistoric was that) and all my friends had codes that meant they were just saying Hi (yeah, we were 17 and jobless and really lame!) and his code was 8:30 which was a joke about one of the boys hitting on me who wouldn’t say 8:30 like normal people but would say eight tharty. So anyway, once Snoop and I were talking and suddenly he said ‘Gotta go’ and hung up. And then I got a numeric page of 8:30 at exactly 8:30 pm. It was so silly but so sweet and he knew such things would make me laugh.

So anyway, there’s so much more to say about him. He’s such a good basketball player and such a good pool player. His dream is to watch Dr. Dre and/or Snoop Dogg live in concert.

Many a fun moment we have shared together. Many a drunk moment we have shared together. Many a stoned moment we have shared together. And many a comfortable moment we have shared together – the kind of comfort that comes only with the best of friends and the easiest of connections.

The picture below was taken the night before I left India for Australia in 2002. We haven’t been able to be there for each other’s birthdays since, but Snoop, please know that I will get extra drunk just for you tonight and will surely call you to wish you in that state. And I will bray that part in Hey Jude which always reminds me of you.

And please come to Australia to study so we can celebrate many more birthdays together. Please :)

Drinking happened last night. A friend from Madras is visiting Melbourne on work and it was his first night out on the town so we couldn’t disappoint… we had to go out and paint the town red. Red was exactly what one of the bars we went to felt like – its called Polly and as the review says, its all red velvet and dim lighting and gilt mirrors and spittoons for ashtrays. We then moved on to Bimbos and with a name like that why their logo is a baby and why they had a baby doll strung up over the bar dressed in S & M attire and sporting a penis was a mystery that provoked much discussion.

S & I realised that we’ve actually been to Bimbos ages ago with a friend and Bimbos has this really cool circular dome covered room and we were just sitting there and some other people came in and sat there and then some other people came in and sat there and we all just sat around in one big semi-circle and some of them started rolling and shared the joints with us and it was just all a very “random and share the love” night!

The toilet stalls in Bimbos had these Indian picture sheets that we used to buy if we had to stick pictures of fruits, vegetables, animals, etc. in our school scrapbooks. And these were those weird ass picture sheets that tell you what a good boy should do (wake up early, brush “up” teeth “salute” his parents, pray, etc. etc.) and another one was pictures of school boys from different cultures or religions. So there were pictures of Sikh boy, Hindu boy, Muslim boy, Christian boy, Bengali boy and there was even Mallu boy. So funny it was. And there were like tons of these things plastered in every stall (I checked). So bizarre the whole thing was.

Anyway, was quite wasted by the end of it all last night and I think I will kill someone if I don’t get to sleep well tonight because I slept horribly on Sunday night too.

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Aforementioned friend from Madras also brought CDs (as part of Mint’s CD Tree venture) from Rat & Lavi so been listening to that all morning. Thanks girls – my CDs you will get to listen to in approximately two weeks when friend returns to Madras.

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This one’s for you Jay. Was going through online TV guide the other day and came across an animated show playing in the middle of the night called Stripperella starring Pamela Anderson. You’ve probably heard of it already and for those who haven’t, show heroine is Erotica and she is and I quote “Stripper by night. Crimefighter by later night. Erotica is the sexiest stripper ever to touch a pole. With a heart of gold, a passion for animal rights, and a weakness for fashion, Erotica is always helping the other dancers at The Tender Loins with their problems. When her belly ring vibrates, Erotica snaps into action as Stripperella, the superhero/secret agent.”

Tender Loins just cracked me up.

Stripperella also battles such villains as The Bridesmaid, who as her name suggests is dying to get married and goes around kidnapping grooms.

Jay, surely Boyfriendman and Miss Thing will be a bigger hit than stripper crime fighters so please get started and your blogger buddies will be behind you all the way ;)

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Logged out of hotmail today and got redirected to MSN India and there was a link on the homepage to Aamir Khan’s new blog for his upcoming movie Mangal Pandey. Of course the word blog caught my attention and I went and checked it out and there are lame pictures of him pretending to blog on his laptop. And what is with that new hairstyle of his? He looks like a wet dog. Also, he was replying to comments on the previous post and said something along the lines of, ‘So I’ve picked some “blogs” at random to reply to’. These guys are so not with blogging terminology. And these pissy MSN thingies are more than blogs… they are SPACES. Anyway, I haven’t watched a Hindi movie in years but this Mangal Pandey thing looks quite interesting and I hope they have limited it to merely one song-and-dance sequence.

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Finally finished Shantaram on Sunday. Apparently he lives down the road from me or something. Ages ago we went to a Goan restaurant nearby and the owner is a very friendly and funny man and he’s best friends with the author, Gregory David Roberts and showed me a preview of the book and I came across it the other day in my Spend $75 at Borders experience and went ahead and bought it. Basic synopsis of the story is that he escaped from prison in Melbourne and somehow made it to India and spent almost ten years living like a local and working for the mafia and everything. He was finally captured in 1990 and served out his prison term and wrote this book based on his experiences in India.

I wish I could talk about India with half as much eloquence as he does. What an amazing story and what an interesting insight through the white man’s eyes into our peculiar Indian ways. Its all about the heart man, in India. We think with our minds and are sometimes motivated by money and power and what not but ultimately us Indians are so ruled by our hearts is what he says and what I totally agree with. So anyway, please go read it fellow bookworms if you haven’t already.

A View From A Room

This is the view from my window at work. Isn’t is awesome?



I didn’t always have this view. The company itself resides in a dark depressing building next door with windows that don’t let any light in. But our department lucked out and moved last September to this building with the beautiful open plan floor and floor-to-ceiling windows with views of Albert Park and the St Kilda bay.

I was also really lucky to get this sweet spot next to the window. My boss was particularly happy with me at the time and told me I could choose any spot I wanted in the new place. I will not have this spot forever sadly. The company that we share the building with next door is moving out at the end of the year and then we will surely have to move back to the dreariness and dinginess that is next door. In winter months I never got to see the sun when I worked next door. I am already dreading our impending move even though it is months away.



Look, look… a ship!



In the first month of working here, the arrival of a ship in my little view of the bay was cause for much excitement. At other times, I simply like looking out at the sea. Canon aren’t kidding when they advertise that a new colour is created every second. I’ve watched the sea change from the lightest of blues to the darkest of greens, sometimes all in the same day. There are days when the rain causes the sea to completely disappear into a wall of white mist. There are days when the sea is a dull gun metal grey as it reflects the dark cloudy sky above it. And then there are the glorious warm and sunny days when the bay is crowded with tiny craft and the brilliantly coloured kites of kite surfers and sails of wind surfers vie for your attention and you wistfully look out at them in seconds snatched away from looking at your computer screen.

And its not just the bay. There are planes and helicopters constantly whizzing by. There are tram and road incidents to keep an eye out for. There are peaceful demonstrators and anarchists on megaphones. There are folks playing cricket in the grounds diagonally opposite to us. There’s the towering buildings of the city in the background and the Bolte Bridge on the right. At Grand Prix time, there’s sometimes a glimpse of a car or two as they practice around the Albert Park track and the noise from the cars is a beauty in itself. And my personal favourite, the rain. Always the rain, beating down on the glass. Rain that falls straight sometimes and slanting otherwise. Rain that reminds me of the monsoons in my own beloved land.

Ah view, I shall surely miss when we have to part ways. But until then, I shall do you full justice and keep on looking out…

"Its all about world domination"

That’s what the chief protagonists of the game Risk kept telling me last evening when I asked what the game was about as I’d never played before. “So, what’s the game about”, I asked. “It’s all about world domination”, he replied. “So how do you play the game”, I asked. “You try and totally dominate the world”, he replied. Four hours and many defeated armies later I couldn't have put it better myself. Essentially the globe is equitably divided between all the players and you attack other territories and defend your own. And you have little infantry men standing guard on your territories and the image of these little men with their guns pointing upward are strangely chilling (especially when you’re getting ready to attack) even though you know its only a game. Although, some of us playing had difficulty remembering it was just a game… Wives annihilated husbands, friends turned on friends, Egypt declared “jihad” on North America, even my own S very seriously said to me, “If I have to get rid of you, I will… because this is war baby and there ain’t no love here”.

There was no winner… it might’ve turned into a physical fight if we’d continued to battle each other to the death on the board. We tried playing Dumb Charades after but that turned into a shouting match as well because I think we were all still smarting from our global domination efforts and the extra rowdy effect caused by all the beer. I’d forgotten how much of a hangover six bottles of beer can give you. This morning was NOT cool.

The first half of the weekend was also fun. Friday night was the usual piss-up and I met up with a few people I hadn’t seen in a while. There was some drunken Harry Potter discussion also I feel. At home, I felt the urge as I quite frequently do when drunk to call someone and I decided to honour my sister with the call this time but she had her phone switched off. And then I couldn’t stop myself from calling my Mom to find out what was up with that. I sooooo need not stop ringing my parents and/or grandparents when drunk. Surely they must know that I am heavily intoxicated.. the late hour, the slightly higher pitched voice, the extra laughing for things I normally wouldn’t laugh at, always some drunken boys in the background being loud and abusive and sometimes even singing the National Anthem… they were doing that on Friday. My parents were like what the hell is going on and I’m like they’re singing the freaking National Anthem and I have no clue why. But anyway, mostly they also just laugh and don’t bring up the drinking which is very good of them as the next morning I am always incredibly embarrassed about having called them whilst under the influence.

Something they said though just stuck with me the whole weekend. My 15 year old sister was out a friend’s house and they were on their way to pick her up and they said, “It’s almost like we’re alone now. Its like both our daughters have left home”. When I was 15 and treating my house like a hotel, my sister was always at home. But now she’s started leading her own life too and I can’t imagine how that must be for parents, to come home to an empty house all the time.

Anyway, for now, she’s still there on a part-time basis at least. Apparently she’s playing the “You let my older sister go out all the time” card quite often these days and that is such bullshit… I went out quite a bit but she still seems to be doing things a couple of years in advance and the path is just so much easier for her since I’ve done it all before. I think that after fighting with me tooth and nail about my partying lifestyle (okay, that was an exaggeration, they got over it in a few months) and seeing that nothing really happened to me, its easy for them to be mellow and more unconcerned about my sister. Still, they don’t have too much of a clue of what its really like for a teenager these days and I think that that 15 year old kid sister of mine will warrant some watching in the years to come!