Well, show me the way to the next whiskey bar... Oh, don’t ask why…

By the way, I was extremely wasted when I wrote that last entry. I’m not sure if anyone picked up on that… skilful that I am at hiding my highness. Haha, as if… you can always tell if I’m high from a mile away. But anyway, I was high on wine so I myself was not fully aware of the extent of my highness. Wine is so strange that way… two glasses pretty much get you to the “I’m so happy” stage and after that it can go either way really quickly for me… feel really sleepy, head starts hurting, bad mood, stomach contents start heading north, etc. etc. OR drink a few glasses more, everything is fine as wine as far as stomach contents go, head buzzes quite happily, and anything goes in terms of dancing, singing, eating, etc. etc. But still at the end of this nice side of wine also my head eventually starts hurting and sleep beckons and all and the next morning always feels like a professional football team spent the whole night practicing in my head. And I know what you’re thinking… ah, it must be all the cheap wine, but no, my wine hangovers do not discriminate. Once, my visiting uncle took us to an incredible fancy Italian restaurant/wine bar and we tried at least three different types of fucking expensive wine and it was the same old saga the next morning. So why do I drink wine you ask? I’m not entirely sure… sometimes there’s nothing else on offer, sometimes my stomach is too full to handle anything heavy like spirits and Coke, sometimes I think “Oh yes, two glasses of wine to get a nice buzz and no more drinking because I don’t want to get drunk”… that plan always fails of course because I can never halt at that nice buzz stage… I prefer to not drink at all or just get totally wasted… There’s nothing worse than running out of booze when you’re halfway there… its really like taking you to the top of the mountain and showing you what you can’t have.

Well anyway, we have established that wine and me are not best friends. Having said that though, I absolutely adore homemade wine and Christmas in Madras is always a bumper season of slamming bottles of homemade wine. Every time I’ve had a wine party at my house on Christmas night, everyone pretty much has a bottle for themselves. Much fun. Must remind Mom to start stocking bottles for this year, now only.

Wine’s close compatriot is beer of course. Mmm… Beer… Come to think of it, beer is possibly the first taste of alcohol I ever had because my Dad was in the habit of giving me tiny sips now and then when I was a kid because I used to think it looked absolutely wonderful… the golden colour and the white froth and all. How funny, I was just typing this and thinking about my Dad and he calls unexpectedly. There are forces at work a lot of the time I tell you. Anyway, I never really enjoyed beer until I came to Australia. And by the way Fosters is a really shit Australian beer and no one here drinks it… how they bloody promote it in India like it’s as synonymous with Australia as Waltzing Matilda.

But there’s a time and a place for beer and again I am limited to what conditions I can drink it in. For example, if I’m starting my drinking on a Friday evening and plan to be out until the wee hours, beer is a big No No because my stomach just feels really full and all the gas builds up and I just feel like I’m going to explode. But if I’m just hanging out on a warm Sunday afternoon in the park playing cards and Dumb Charades and have no deeds to do before I sleep, I’m quite happy to drink three beers and go to bed with a smile on my face and a lovely beer buzz in my head. Its also quite pleasing to sip a cold beer when everyone and everything is winding down after a huge night of partying and all we can afford is a Rs.100 bottle of Kingfisher compared to the relatively expensive Rs.150 for an Old Monk & Coke… I’m just randomly quoting figures by the way, I can’t really remember the prices. But I think that when it comes to taste, there is no other alcohol that is quite as exciting as beer because there is just so much freaking variety. I’ve tried many different beers from different countries and some of my personal favourites are Australia’s own Beez Neez, Belgium’s Stella Artois, Australia’s James Boags, Mexico’s Corona (without the lemon though), and quite recently I was introduced to a very delicious German beer called Hansa Pils. Mmm… Beer…

Moving on to my favourite alcohol genre… Spirits… in all shapes and sizes… well, actually not… I’m quite fussy here also. Let’s talk vodka. Most people I know first started drinking with vodka. I don’t why this was but when I think about that horrible Romanov vodka we used to drink for lack of better options I seriously wonder how it did not just kill us… that too, we used to only take shots when we first started… The only picture this presents in my head is one of acid corroding our insides. But anyway, it was all good fun to get SMASHED on two shots of vodka… so much cheaper and nicer on the waistline also because of no added Coke calories… Since those heady “get smashed on two drinks” days, quality of vodka has improved steadily. All the Absolut and Smirnoff varieties available these days make for nary a dull moment. And has anyone tried Stolichnaya vodka? I’m not sure if its very good or not but I have had a couple of fun nights on this vodka. But still, vodka is still not what really gets my juices flowing. I’ll drink it if there’s nothing else but wouldn’t really go out and buy some for myself… although, there is a very nice ad on TV these days for something called Absolut Cut and the ad is incredibly tempting, so we’ll see. And how about the rumour that vodka causes impotence in men… don’t know how true it is but I do share this tip with any boy I know who drinks vodka. And then there’s that whole “oh, but vodka doesn’t smell so its perfect to avoid letting your parents what you’ve really been up to” but that is such bull crap… all forms of alcohol smell and it doesn’t matter if you take two shots or two sips… anyone with a keen sense of smell (like me) will immediately be able to tell if you’ve been naughty or nice

It seems there is a lot more to cover than I originally thought so looks like this will have to be continued. But in the meantime, do share your views on wine, beer and vodka. White or red? Best beer ever? Drank vodka the very first time you drank? And if you’re a teetotaller, I’d like to hear from you too… and hang on, don’t call AA yet… I only drink once a week except for holidays and special occasions…

To be continued…

Well it's too late, tonight, to drag the past out into the light

It’s been so long since I’ve written that suddenly this whole weekend the words have been tumbling out in my head and sometimes I really wish I had a Dictaphone or something so I could record these things I want to say as they come up in my head. Fuck, that was one hell of a long sentence.

So anyway, lots to tell. Work is really crap and I really want to get out of here but for now I’m just going to chill here because I’m going on holiday and what not. But like seriously, work is SOOOOO crap its not funny. Its just too complicated to get into right now so I’m just going to pretend that everything is hunky dory. And you know what, in my head, everything is really hunky dory because all I can think of is India… Madras… my home… my family… my friends… my dogs… it’s so close I can almost reach out and touch it. But of course I can’t… because there’s still a month and a half or so to get through… But then I think about it again and it’s like, what the fuck is 1.5 months in the greater scheme of things… because in my head, I’ve already planned the whole holiday… and in my head, everything is as it should be, as it used to be…

Last night I went to a friend’s house for a birthday party… and it was at his house, in his backyard… I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I’ve sat around in someone’s backyard… Backyards fucking ROCK! It was just so nice to sit there in someone’s honest to goodness house… normally it’s someone’s shitty rented apartment… Backyards remind me of house parties in Madras… how many have there been… my own house and its “front yard”… what tales it could tell… my terrace too… well if it came down to it, what tales my dogs could tell also… they’ve been there throughout… and I remember people trying to get my dogs stoned… poor babies… as if I hadn’t tried that already when I used to smoke in my bathroom before going to bed… they were just not into it… smart doggies!!

Today I went to a Cuban Jazz festival at a winery in Melbourne’s famous Yarra Valley… it was much fun, I say… there was dancing and bottles and bottles of wine… there were Salsa lessons that nobody followed really, and there were more bottles of wine… and there were grey skies and blue skies and raindrops on my face and the sun shining brightly… it was surreal... you know, that wine kinda lazy high...

It’s been a weekend of U2 and James Blunt… re-listening to U2 classics like “One” and “With or Without You” and discovering new songs like “Goodbye, My Lover” and “Tears and Rain”…

Well its too late, tonight, to drag the past out into the light… Its really quite something else to be going home again… its like a warm glow you can’t get away from really… Oh shit, working 10 hour days… oh wait, going home in a month and a half… its all OK…

You say goodbye, and I say Hello...

This is to announce the early retirement of this blog. My heart is just not in it anymore and I think I'd like to stop now before I lose the urge to write completely... because that would just be not right. So anyway, I am taking a break and I have to say it was a really fun trip. When my professor introduced us to Blogger in 2003 and went on about blogging being the next big 'community-building' tool, we kinda dismissed it all as geek speak. But he was right and I think he would be terribly impressed with the online community that I felt such a part of in the last few months.

I'm sure I'll be back soon. And I'll be sure to look you all up... Don't go anywhere, you hear ;)

Anyway, don't want to get too senti or anything... For now, its so long, and thanks for all the fish :)

Last night I had the strangest dream. I sailed away to China, on a little rowboat to find ya…

Very lazy to blog about anything original so I will give you some random recycled rambling excerpts from the rubbish I wrote three years ago and that I recently rediscovered thanks to recovered hard disk. Wow… that must be a personal best record of number of words beginning with R in the same sentence! I must warn you… a lot of it is really random and makes me wonder what the hell I was thinking back then!

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Sometimes you think about life back home and you wonder what you miss the most, apart from the people and dogs of course. It would be easy to say it was the food and the car and the entertainment, but I think it goes beyond that. It’s the smells… I step out on my balcony here (when it’s warm enough) and I only smell the city – dust, fumes, noise (yes, I can smell noise)! At home I’d often wake up to smells of people cooking… rich, spicy aromas. Sometimes I’d wake up to the wonderful smell of rain. And when I enter my house, it’s the smell of food and dogs… And my room, just the right amount of perfume in the air… it was perfectly balanced. If I smoked, the balance was destroyed and I worked painstakingly to restore it. It never failed to bring a smile to my face whenever I entered my room and caught a whiff of that familiarity…. like an old friend. And my parents’ room, so comforting… And my Dad’s aftershave… every single day I’d smell it in the living room, on the phone and in the car. And strangely enough the smells change as the seasons change. Summer has such a distinctive smell… it reminds me of something musty and old. Christmas leaves the smell of wine and cake in the air. When I first got here I imagined singing “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams”. But now I will be home for Christmas and I can hardly wait.

Last night I had a strange dream… it was me arriving for the first time in a foreign country. However the trams were strangely elevated and you had to take an escalator to get to the tracks. Something or someone informed me it was San Francisco… There were strange people in the dream… people I once knew but didn’t seem to know anymore. There were strange happenings in the dream… things I can’t remember in the harsh daylight of reality, but I do know that everything happened on that strange elevated tram. I wonder if I even bought a ticket!

Saturday, 7 December 2002

Editorial Note: I remember now that I was very very drunk when I wrote this!

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My goodness, I can’t wait to see Holly’s adorable face and Chocolate’s adoring face!! I try so hard to be cosmopolitan and everything but it never really works… when you think about it! Let us be lovers – we’ll marry our fortunes together. It’s so strange sometimes, actually living with people! I am homeward bound and I can’t hardly believe it… everyone looks at being homeward bound as a bad thing. Sometimes it might as well have been the 70’s or 60’s in San Francisco… people are still the same. People are strange but they’re still a part of the 60’s and the 70’s and you don’t get much stranger than that!!

I mean, tonight I was watching Dawson’s Creek and I certainly didn’t have any part to play in any freaking creek – why is high school such an issue? It’s supposed to be the best years of your life but somehow or the other reality gets a grip and you have no choice but to follow the signs… Man, the days I live in are completely awesome.

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My life is flashing before my eyes… I didn’t have the high school years of Dawson’s Creek or the Wonder Year’s for that matter, but I still feel a part of something… strangely enough!!! I love you life… honestly!!

Tuesday, 8 April 2003

Sometimes I wonder about the things I write… Is it really normal for a 21 year old to have such a pessimistic outlook on life? And the constant reminiscing… isn’t that more in keeping with a 65 year old? Or have I already passed through the best years of my life? Life was a lazy race in the sun… How on earth did I get so jaded? There is one thing that’s improved over the years, and that’s my newly straightened hair… Well, not so new anymore but it still gives me such pleasure to look at it in the mirror that I’m convinced it’s going to be taken away from me.

My dreams haunt me terribly… Lately they’re very real and based on people in my life and sometimes I don’t like to wake up. And sometimes I wake up with a smile only to realise it was just a dream. Isn’t life cruel enough without giving us the option of fantasising other versions of it? Some days the lines between fantasy and reality are so blurred, I worry about myself!

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Its understandable why half the population in the world has experimented with drugs at some point in their lives… it’s the easiest form of escapism. Even now, just remembering it all has done enough for me. I am fine… I will be fine!

Friday, 25 April 2003

I think this is the first time I’ve woken up with the urge to write. It’s the dreams I tell you… I can’t escape them no matter how hard I try. I used to think myself lucky that I could actually remember my dreams every time I woke up, but now I wonder about that… The other urge I had this morning was to listen to ‘Wish You Were Here’… We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl… Have we found the same old fears? Wish you were here… Wish they were here. Maybe I should stop dwelling on all that is gone and focus more on what is to come! But, it just seems so bleak. Hmmmm, I wonder if I was so melancholy before I met Pink Floyd… I think I was… I think I was born this way. Maybe she’s born with it, maybe its Maybelline.

Editorial Note: That last line was an ad for Maybelline. I can’t remember if India had the same ad.

We are the girls of a noble school, whose glorious past has made our rule... To its traditions we'll be true

To some tagging business from Rat first...

The instructions for this meme (am I the only one who has no idea what a meme is??) are as follows:

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five people to do the same.

My 23rd post was written on June 29, 2005 and it was all about the time I spent in sunny California in May this year. I actually had a song at the beginning so the fifth line of that was

Nothing's gonna stop us now

The 5th line in the actual post itself was

So time to write about California and Los Angeles and my dear friend J...

I just read it again now and boy, did we have a blast for those couple of days. I wanna go on holiday again :( Ok, I'll stop complaining... my next holiday is coming up in 2.5 months. Yippee...

Right, so what else? I had a rather alcoholic weekend... Remember all that leftover booze from my party? Let's just say, it's been taken care of... And the thing was that I had planned to save myself for Saturday night because I had a birthday party to go to and being as old as I am now, drinking really does take its toll on me... gone are the days of drinking for 4 days non-stop and sleeping for 4 hours in between... now I limit myself to one night of bingeing and at least 10 hours of sleep to escape a hangover. But anyway, it seems once we started we couldn't stop on Friday night.

But I put in a good effort for Saturday night as well... I started at about 8 pm at a friend's dinner to meet his parents who were visiting and who I hadn't met in many years. Then we went to this really cool bar called The Long Room... apparently it literally has the longest bar in Melbourne and it stretches from one end of the "long" room to the other. It also has this really cool tapas area that looks like its been set up for an old-fashioned seven course meal type banquet and there were little alcoves that could be curtained for privacy and there were animal heads all over the place and polished wood tables and it was all rather trippy and Hotel California-ish. From here we went to the birthday party at Bambu bar and I proceeded to get very drunk and my two old school friends and I sat and laughed about all the strange girls we had ever studied with. It was so funny to remember some of them... some of them I'd even forgotten existed. All girl Catholic convent schools have to get the award for putting the most bizarre mix of girls together ever! It's amazing we all just didn't claw each other to death along the way!

My night did not end with the party. We met up with a couple of other people and had a drink at Cookie and there was this Aboriginal AFL player (or so he claimed, I must go investigate if it was really him) who was feeling very partial towards Indian looking people because of the number of racial slurs he's had to put up with with people calling him Indian/Paki... not that his own poor race isn't equally discriminated against! Anyway, then everyone came over to our place and we smoked many joints and I passed out at 5 am from excessive levels of alcohol and weed in my system! But hey, I did manage to make it to work today.

Finally I will leave you with a poem S wrote for me. Suddenly he has discovered some latent talent to rhyme and has been sending me poems left, right and centre. His next plan is to add some bad language and turn it into Hip Hop...

This morning I had to switch off the alarm
And for that, I had to stretch my arm

Then I saw the face I would miss
Couldn’t help but give it a kiss

Looking forward to seeing you tonight
Only then will I feel alright