Cold rain down on my face, buses hurry on... Work's out, here comes the race... People heading home...

So we are now officially past the halfway mark of winter but this is absolutely no guarantee of warmer happier weather in approximately 45 days.

I miss the warm sun... it feels like forever since she went away...

I even miss the 16 degree days and the 12 degree evenings... we are barely making it to double digits these days

This week we celebrated (or rather, commiserated) the coldest week in years... it rained and it hailed and it snowed (nearby) and the wind, oh dear god, the wind... such a cruel, bone numbing, brain freezing wind.

Waaaaaaaaaaaah... I feel awful... after weeks of subjecting my poor body to its usual rituals of cold drinks and harsh smokes, the added inevitable exposure to the elements courtesy mother nature in all her winter glory, has made my body screech to a grinding halt and scream enough is enough... you are now going to pay in slow, excruciating pain for what you put me through on a weekly basis and which I normally take with nary a complaint!!

The worst part is, this is like the calm before the storm... so I'm rather concerned about what's going to happen after this weekend... since Sunday night, I've had this severe pain in my sinus area and some desultory sniffling from the nose but no disgusting yellow phlegm or horrible pain in the throat which is always the harbinger of that most dreaded of winter afflictions, the mighty throat infection and flu requiring trips to the bathroom every 2 minutes to spit out all the phlegmy mucous and self-prescribed antibiotic tablets all the way from India every 6 hours. But anyway, all that I can deal with... it's awful and it sucks for about 4 days but then I'm always well on the road to recovery. This time, I feel like crap, I'm nowhere near 100% and yet, I have none of the usual cold, flu symptoms except for the heavy head and occasional drippy nose. But if I like do something, like walk from the couch to the kitchen or from work to home, it totally exhausts me which is why I know I am not 100%. So anyway, I am not medicating myself and have been waiting for improvements hopefully the whole week but absolutely nothing has changed since Sunday night and I am almost looking forward to the excesses of the weekend to act as the catalyst to bring on the storm... this false lull I just cannot handle anymore!

What a full weekend I have in store for me also... I have a work cocktail thing tonight and it's very unnecessarily black tie so I have to wear one skimpy cocktail dress now in the middle of winter... if I am not drowning in my own phlegm by Monday, but still feeling sick, I will be very very concerned. Tomorrow night, two housewarming parties to hop between and both are at some opposite corners of the world but such logistical issues will never deter such a hard core part"ier" as me... in the middle of all this recovering from tonight's hangover, getting wasted and party hopping, I must absolutely make it to Borders sometime tomorrow to pick up my new Harry Potter book. I pre-ordered of course but I fear if I go too late, I will miss out on the complimentary stuffed owl Hedwig... hehe! And also, I must make some time to read the damn book this weekend although I will fully savour the book and not read as fast as I can just to get to the end so by Monday, I will probably be the only one who has no idea who is going to die and will have to avoid all media like the plague because already the spoilers are spilling out in the thousands! I do not expect a non-Harry Potter person to get why this is a big deal at all. As much as I will miss the magical Harry Potter world, I read a rumour that next she is going to start writing mystery novels... sniff... my favouritest genre ever... good god, she will kick ass! And to round off this Harry Potter week of mine, I went to the movie last weekend at IMAX because the last 20 minutes had some 3D action... the movie was ok, couldn't come close to the book, but who really cares, Harry Potter is Harry Potter. The 3D was pretty lame.

Then, I'm trying to think if anything of great import happened to me since the last time I posted... I don't really think so... just the usual weekend shenanigans... ooh, one Sat night, we played poker and I kicked ass... we played with money for a change and I doubled my initial $10 kitty. Then, last Sat night, we went clubbing... just the weekend before I had noted that it had been a while since I had gotten to one of my total wasted stages where I am heaps of fun to be around but chances are I will not remember a thing the next day. So that was last Sat night... it could account for my feeling ill this week too!

Add to that, the weather is totally getting me down and there ain't no silver lining in sight... severe case of the winter blues... the fun weekend will hopefully drive them away temporarily!

Cold rain out on the street, I am all alone
With cold rain down on my face
I am heading home

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 ;)

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.

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it...

Oh my god! Tomorrow is the day! I can rush to my neighbourhood Borders store and get my hands on the new Harry Potter. For ages the stores have been encouraging people to be “organised wizards” and pre-order. So obviously I was quite easily suckered into that one! I mean, my “organised wizard” brain said, you’re going to buy the freaking book anyway… it does make sense to pre-order so if they do run out (perish the thought), you won’t be left bookless and Harry Potter less and can pass smug glances at all those non-organised ones as you walk out of the store!

Its been so long since I’ve been so excited about a series of books. When I began reading at the wee little age of 4 or 5 I was obsessed with The Famous Five and pretty much all books Enid Blyton.

Once I was finished with all the happy little Enid Blyton adventures books handed down from my Mom and aunts and had been through all the Famous Fives I could possibly find in the neighbourhood library, it was a pretty young detective named Nancy Drew who caught my eye. God, when I think of her now I realise how annoying she and her stupid friends really were but at the age of 8, she was my idol! All I wanted to be when I grew up was a cool “amateur” detective just like her (they kept emphasising the point that she was an amateur detective in all her books)! I still have a HUGE collection of her books in my room in Madras – such a pity my sister never took to reading.

The next obsession was those all-American identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield who lived in a sweet little all-American town named Sweet Valley, California. Talk about an introduction to American pop culture! We were introduced to such foreign concepts as prom night, jocks, slam books, I even got the idea of maintaining a journal over a diary from that series. We had our own slam book fever and I know that old slam book of mine is still somewhere in my room in Madras – what a laugh that’ll be to read now! The books were really light and slightly obsessive about boys and fashion and best friends and what not and they suited me just fine my adolescent years.

Since then though, there hasn’t been too much. I really loved the Courtney and Ballantyne sagas of Wilbur Smith but they were too few and far between. Lately I’ve been reacquainting myself with those quirky little detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and Lawrence Sander’s sarcastic detective Archy McNally is always good for a laugh and a classic whodunit. But there hasn’t really been a series that I could sink my teeth into and really get lost in since Sweet Valley. Until I met Harry Potter that is.

A few years ago, I read one of the books and enjoyed it but forgot about it later. Two years ago I decided I wanted to see what all this Harry Potter fuss was about so I hinted to S that I wanted to read them all and it would make a very lovely Christmas present and he acquiesced to my wishes and bought them all for me and it took me a few months to get through them all. But I was so hooked. When I finished the last one, I was at such a loss… you know, what now? How long before I get to read the next one? Bloody long I’ve had to wait but now the day is finally here! Since the beginning of June, I read them all again of course… just to remind myself of all the important details before the new one.

Don’t ask my why I’m so addicted. I think it has something to do with how very simple and Enid-Blyton-like it is and at the same time its funny and interesting and has loads of suspense. And the magic… being an overly imaginative child, its so much fun to lose myself in this fantasy world of flying broomsticks and Bertie Botts’ Every Flavoured Beans and unforgivable curses.

The other day I was in Borders because I had run out of books to read at home and I was on my way to the checkout with $65 worth of books when I saw this sign that read “Spend $75 and get the new Harry Potter book for $15”. I immediately ran off to spend $10 more just so I could get the Harry Potter book at half price. Half an hour later I realised that the Borders people were very smart in setting up this $75 minimum… it was almost impossible for me to spend exactly $75 no matter how many combinations I tried… that $9.99 business fucks you up to begin with because it is highly likely you will end up with $74.99 and every book I wanted to buy involved me spending at least $80 which would mean I was achieving a total grand savings of $10! Well, some saving was better than nothing and the bookworm in me convinced me that if I didn’t spend that extra $15 today I’d be spending it two months later anyway (I really need to join a library)!

So I ended up with Ken Kesey’s ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’, Arthur Golden’s ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ and Gregory David Robert’s ‘Shantaram’… all books I’ve been meaning to read for a while and haven’t gotten down to. I’m almost finished with 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'… it took a while to really get into the book. It was a bit like reading Trainspotting or watching A Clockwork Orange… the author has a language of his own. But I have liked it so far.

This has been a really long posts about books… I can’t help it if I’m passionate about reading! If this has been boring, TOUGH… books rule over movies and TV any day! And my sage advice for the day is become a reader if you aren’t one already!!

One day I will write a book!