What is this I think I feel... I wanna feel the sunshine all the time...

I wanna feel the sunshine lift my head
I wanna see your face when I wake up
I wanna be the light that’s in your life
I wanna feel the sunshine all the time

Today I remember Goa… the music brought it back… party shuffle all the way… this time it was the Ministry of Sound Annual 2006… the only CD we had… not even both discs… just disc 1… well, there was another CD… a mish mash of all the songs I hurriedly downloaded when I got to India and realised I had no music at all for the car… so there was also Dakota and Scissor Sisters… driving back drunk late at night in our dodgy Tempo Traveller that seats 12 but should only be allowed to take 6… and there was Kat playing the Pussycat Dolls to perfection… Dontcha think your girlfriend is hot like me… Kat is a guy…

But the thing with Ministry of Sound is you gotta listen to it over and over and sometimes its hard to tell one song from another until you’ve listened to it enough times to pick out your favourite parts and then you actually pick up song titles and track numbers so you can rewind and fast forward at will…

So we listen as we drive 16 hours from Bangalore to Goa… we listen to other stuff other people have too but nothing else registers… tracks 5, 9 and 13… we wind our way through the Western Ghats… sometimes at breakneck speeds… the hazy layer of smoke in the air… the gentle buzz from the ready mix in my head… there is no fear… the music lulls us to sleep and wakefulness again… we stop for chai and chocolate fixes…

There’s nothing quite like the start of a trip… anything can happen… funny things funny people say and do are happening already but you know the best is yet to come…

Here we are in crowded Calangute all of a sudden… along the way we pass Angel Resorts where we stayed 2001-2002… what a time… what a trip…

Goa is the same but everything else is different… maybe it’s everyone else who is different… maybe I’m suddenly too old and tired to drink as much… I definitely know I’m too tired and sick to smoke so much… the sore throat I’ve been avoiding for a few days by diligently gargling with salt water is finally catching up with me… so passes the first night in Goa… desultorily drinking at Tito’s…

The bright sunshine the next morning makes the world look beautiful again… and that first glimpse of the bright blue Arabian Sea makes it all worth it… we claim a shack as our own and spend the next six hours sunbathing and swimming… we keep up a steady stream of orders for drinks and food… and then the long awaited sunset… this is the Goa I know and love… the beach, the shack, and the sun setting…

That night we drink up and head out… we try one place after another but nothing feels right… and whoever heard of such exorbitant cover charges in Goa before… and where have all the raves gone… I’m not the world’s most enthusiastic raver but once every couple of years is alright… but no dice… everything’s busted… are we in Goa or Madras?

Today is the last day of the year… the sun is shining again and we luck out with a shack that has deck chairs that we lie on all day… before I know it, the sun is setting for the last time this year… so many memories flash before my eyes… the years that have been… tomorrow, a new year… a new beginning?

Is it 11:30 pm already? I am happy… I am with the one I love and surrounded by near and dear friends… the music at Nine Bar is loud but not intrusive… I am quietly high on life and Bacardi (with a little bit of Old Monk thrown in to make it interesting)… the organisers ask us to move away from the wall as they set up the fireworks… someone gives me a little taste of their ecstasy pill… my blocked nose clears up for a glorious 10 seconds… people hugging kissing laughing… Happy New Year… so, now what?

By 3 am, I have reached my peak… I have danced and drunk and smoked… I am in a curiously violent mood and ready to punch anyone who invades my space… the curious part is I am most disappointed I don’t actually get to practice my Kung Fu Kick… by now we have walked a lot and moved between a couple of places… word on the street is the Hilltop is where its going to go off as the sun rises… in my alcohol fuelled enthusiasm, I am all set to last until then… alas, by 5 am I’m back in my bed and pass out in seconds…

I wake up in the afternoon of the new year and my head feels like I got punched the night before but the unbearable pain in my throat clues me in on what is really going on… we head to the beach one last time but for me there is no swimming, no drinking, no smoking… all I can do is sit in my chair and gaze out at the wide expanse of sea in front of me… the air is still warm and the sun is still shining but today I am shivering… I remember the last time… I wanna feel the sunshine all the time…

There are many things I’ve forgotten over the years but there are some moments that stand out and that I will never let go of… like that moment on New Years Day 2002… it was nearing sunset… there we all were sitting around on the beach… maybe it was the same beach I am sitting on now 4 years later… coming down from our first (and last... for me, at least) ecstasy hits of the night before… a swim in the warm water… someone finds a little starfish on the sand… stomachs pleasantly full… two Bacardi and watermelons down… at that moment, I felt more content than I’d ever felt before or have felt since… anything was possible… we were young, healthy and the world was our oyster… I knew everything in the new year was going to be terribly different… I didn’t know yet if it would be good different or bad different… but I knew that whenever I just needed to feel good I could go back to that moment and feel that same warm feeling of contentment wash over me again…

So I look around now… most of the faces are different… one or two from the first time… the missing ones are overseas or otherwise occupied… and half of these new ones are fresh faced 20 year olds… the same age I was the last time… they are now coming down from their best ever high and are already planning their next visit to Goa… same time, same place… I smile in amusement at this rite of passage… maybe they will come back and maybe they won’t… and if they do come back maybe they will find what I have found… a place may never change but how it makes you feel can change because of the way you have changed…

I’m so tired… all I want is to sleep… I close my eyes and go back to that moment all over again… it still works… it still makes me feel so good inside… I realise that I am still young in a relative sense but of course that doesn’t stop me from feeling old… hopefully I am still healthy… but is the world still my oyster… is anything still possible… anyone with a gung ho live-life-to-the-fullest attitude will say of course it is… I’m not so sure… I know now that there are some things that are just not going to be possible… there are some dreams that I just have neither the time nor the inclination to follow through with… but that’s the real difference between then and now… then it might’ve seemed a horrible betrayal of myself to give up on anything… now, I accept what is and what can be and am learning to let go of what will never be… and now there are new dreams… and so that’s the same between then and now… I still dream…

There isn’t much else to tell… we leave later that night… I sleep all the way back to Bangalore… it’s a dreamless self-medication-induced stupor… I wake up to stifling heat, crowded roads and polluted air… it’s a brand new day and a brand new year… whatever will be will be…

Maybe the last two weeks of my vacation will be fun fun fun with wedding madness, Mexican themed bachelorette nights, Wild Wild West parties and six year anniversary celebrations… maybe I will return to Melbourne and walk about in a daze of homesickness and job dissatisfaction for weeks… maybe these things will pass… maybe I’ll get a better job… maybe I won’t write a word for 6 months… maybe I’ll chop my hair to half its length after 3 years… maybe before I know it, I’ll reach the halfway mark of the new year… maybe winter will go by quickly with the aid of layers and heaters… maybe there will be planned trips overseas… maybe visitors from overseas will plan to visit me?

What is this I think I feel… why do I love the sunshine… because its not always shining… that’s when we go to the secret places in our hearts where it is shining… and when it is shining, well, that’s as good as it’s ever gonna get…

I like to party... Everybody does...

I can't believe Christmas has come and gone... with everything else that was going on, I had absolutely no time to do Christmassy things like sing carols and since I finished all my bloody shopping in Australia, there was no real urgency except of course to wrap all my presents at the last bloody minute as usual. Anyway, I got to sing carols in church and went home and had cake and wine and then went off party hopping at some 3 in the morning to go wish all my friends who were partying the night away!! There was also annual drinks and dinner bash at my house on Christmas night and much wine was drunk by all and much fun was had by all...



I can't believe Madras... It's like I never left. Last year when I visited, I knew no one whenever I went out except for the people I was with... This year, I'm amazed at all the old faces I'm seeing again... the same old faces who used to be at every party and every disco on every Friday and Saturday night when I lived and partied in Madras. Friday night was a very random getting wasted night where I met like some 100 people I hadn't met in years in the one crowded pub and the next day I was still remembering more and more people I'd met or seen... Madras is quite uncanny!

I can't believe I've been functioning on less than 10 hours of sleep every night in spite of being out until all hours every night. Tonight has been the first night I forced myself to stay home so I could recuperate slightly before leaving to Goa tomorrow. Last night was a very wild bachelorette party for a friend and it was a full on 70s theme and her sister and Rat's sister just did a very brilliant job with the decorations... Just like the brilliant job Rat's sister did for Sista T's baby shower... Good job good job ;) And please don't miss my cool pink 70s sunnies on the bar table...





I can't believe how much fun I'm having... I really don't want it to end...

Hey, who's this handsome motherfucker... I just love him to death!



And here's my dear little Chocolate... so old and tired and slow... I really fear she's going to drop dead any second...



So hope you all had a Merry Christmas and I'll see you all in 2006... I could reflect on the year that's been and what not, but fuck that... Happy New Year!!

I'm so love in love with you...whatever you want to do is alright with me...Coz you make me feel so brand new...And I want to spend my life with you

So after all that anticipation, I’m finally here and haven’t had even a single moment to really take it all in with everything going in. It’s been brilliant so far. We started partying as soon as we got off the plane and I think I must’ve slept for about 15 hours in total from the night before I left until Sunday night. Of course now I am making up for many months of insufficient slumber and it’s incredibly peaceful.

What have I done in five days and six nights apart from drink and smoke… I’ve hung out with all my favourite girls and boys and I’ve just laughed and laughed. Some things will never change… (and thank god for those people). I’ve bonded with parents and sister and dog Chocolate met the new dog in my family Rusty… he is sooooo handsome… and such a sweetie… when we first met, he went a bit psycho, but now he’s used to me and is such a darling…



Madras is the same and so different at the same time. So many new places and buildings but instinctively I still know my way around and if I were to close my eyes on a drive and open them five minutes later, I’d still know where I was… She has taken me back so willingly in spite of me ditching her all these years…

Driving here again has been a real trip as always… the way even the slowest autorickshaw will refuse to move out of the right lane and you have no choice but to overtake rather recklessly from the left… Love it… And the noise and the traffic and the potholes and the smells… it’s just all so very real… so very home…

The rain of course has been crazy. I love it and all but it was promising to be a real dampener on the trip. Now I understand all those depressive Bay of Bengal statements… she’s been good today though so there’s hope yet.

And the absolute best part is that S is here with me and its been three years since we’ve been back together… back to where we started and where we had the absolute best time of our lives… Since we've been together, loving you forever is what I need... let me, be the one you come running to... I'll never be untrue

Anyhoo, don’t know when and where I’ll have the time to blog again. But the thing is I want to write as much as I can so I can read it three months from now and remember how awesome it was. So we’ll see…

Cheers to Rat, Sista T, Lavi, Snoop and all my other non-blogger buddies like N, S and all the boys… please continue to entertain me in the same fashion for the next four weeks… Woohoo!

Life I love you… all is groovy…

But I Still (haven't) Found What I Was Looking For…

If you're reading this, then Rat has very kindly put up the post for me. I'm trying not to publish anything to the web at the moment from work and so that's why I haven't been commenting either, but I have been doing my regular reading rounds. Anyway, this is only for another week and then I go home so I can pick up from where I left off.

Right, so the biggest news on my horizon is that I managed to buy tickets to watch U2 live in March after continuously clicking my mouse button for an hour. It was an incredibly nail biting experience… finally I managed it and of course it was sold out soon after, but I think they're doing an additional show now. Anyway, I'm really quite excited because there are such few people I really would like to watch live in concert and U2 is one such band. Now just four months of waiting to go…

Everything is just flashing by damn fast and I don't have even a single moment to just sit back and relax until I get to Madras and even then its going to be Party Central. Friday night was my work Christmas party and it was crazy fun. Every single one of us got unbelievably wasted and kept getting told off for smoking indoors or taking our glasses outside when smoking outdoors. We had a small after-party at our house and I think I managed to sleep about five hours that night before I was rudely woken up on Saturday morning by friends trying to pick up their cars from my basement.

I spent the entire weekend shopping. My room is like a disaster zone with the number of bags lying around. I have NO CLUE how I'm going to fit everything very neatly into one little suitcase that should only weigh 20 kilos. And speaking of gifts, its just getting harder and harder each year. I've bought my parents some real nonsense because I've totally run out of ideas. I'm hoping to finish my shopping inMadras only.

Oh, and apparently Goa for New Years is definitely on so this holiday is really set. Time in Madras and a mad trip to Goa.

Yuletide Tales Episode 2

I read something on JR's blog about how she didn't know that Christmas trees in India were all fake!! Well yes, they were (mostly) and feeling similarly excited at the thought of being able to buy a real tree, two Christmases ago, I decided to get a real tree. First off, it was a real bitch fitting it into the car and I'm not really sure how we managed to carry it up from the basement to the apartment. All I know is, there was a nice trail of pine needles the whole way and we cleaned it all up out of consideration for everyone else in the building. I don't know why we bothered… a few days later someone else brought a real tree home and didn't bother cleaning up.

But anyway, the tree refused to stand up straight. It had a very stubborn list no matter what we tried. Once the decorations were up, they kept slipping off… every day I'd have to rearrange the ones that had fallen off and vacuum the area around the tree because of the constant pine needle debris. But still, we put our many gifts under the tree and went to Midnight Mass (this time I was dead sober) and opened all our presents and had a small party beside the tree on Christmas Day.

Christmas passed and New Years passed. We considered how to get rid of the tree. We couldn't just dump it out front with the garbage cans, we had to go dump it at a garbage tip. We searched and searched online and couldn't find a single tip anywhere even on the Melbourne Council websites – we were quite obviously looking for the wrong thing! Finally one day in early February we decided we absolutely had to get rid of it and planned a dump and run strategy. First we stripped the tree of all its branches and put them into many shopping bags and then S tried cutting the trunk into smaller pieces with our kitchen knife. The knife actually broke or got chipped and poor S got hurt quite badly by a stray branch… he still has the scar. Somehow we managed it and packed it into the car and set off to dump the tree.

The first instalment of bags we dumped near our DVD library because we went there to return DVDs. After we did it though though, we noticed a surveillance camera exactly over thestuff we'd just dumped. Ah well, we didn't get into trouble. The second instalment we dumped near the garbage cans of some apartment building near ours. And the final instalment, wewent to a shopping centre that day and the car park was nearly empty when we left, so we dumped the remaining bags in a shopping trolley and dashed off.

We tried to do the right thing but well, the tip was almost impossible to find. I still don't know where it is. So last year, we went to Kmart and bought a very beautiful faketree that stood straight and didn't leave behind a trail of pine needles and held onto the decorations firmly and very nicely fit into a small box at the end of the season withminimal manual labour. I'm all for real over fake but when it comes to Christmas trees, its definitely more trouble than its worth. And that's all I have to say about that!

Christmas is coming… all the bells are ringing…

Starting December 16, 2005...

...I will sleep for at least ten hours every night
...I will not to do a single household chore
...I will feast on chicken and fish and cutlets and prawns and the best part is, none of it will have to be made by me
...I will enjoy the luxury of actually wearing ironed clothes for a change (I stopped ironing about six months ago… its amazing how you can get by without it)
...I will have dogs in my life again however briefly
...I will get high everyday and get drunk every other day
...I will bring Christmas cheer to all and sundry by singing Christmas carols incessantly (oh boy, are my friends in trouble when I’m drunk)
...I will soak in the heat of my beloved Madras and not worry about how many layers to wear everyday
...I will rest, laze, play, read, blog, catch up with my near and dear ones, exercise a little (maybe), party, talk, dance, laugh, sing…

It’s going to be so good. I’m always worried that a holiday will never turn out as anticipated but this time I just feel its going to be perfect. And its almost like my holiday has started already starting from last Wednesday night… my housemate’s sister is visiting from India and we’ve been smoking like mad and drinking almost every day. This week we did Tuesday night (what a raging wine hangover I had the next morning) and last night and tonight is my work Christmas party so more drinking. And the pace isn’t going to slow down until I leave. If I didn’t have so much to occupy my time, I’d probably be sitting at home and staring at my calendar counting down the days.

Speaking of counting down the days, 24 days till Christmas… I can hardly wait. You saw how excited I was about my birthday… Christmas is that ten times over… the excitement, the anticipation, the homemade wine, the food, the presents, the Christmas tree, the parties, the family, the friends, the shopping, the gift wrapping, the carols, the red and green, the candles, the Mass, the Secret Santas, the red nosed reindeer, the stockings, the holly, the baby Jesus…

So I’m going to start writing a little collection of Christmas memories from now until Christmas in every post. I figure I’ll start with last year since it was most recent…

Yuletide Tales Episode 1

Last Christmas was really quite rocking. It was my second Christmas away from home and depression was bound to set in at some point so I made an effort to party extra hard and not feel too sad. The lead up to Christmas was filled with Christmas parties, boat cruises, lots and lots of Bacardi Limon, lots and lots of carol singing, shopping, Christmas tree decorating, etc. etc. Here’s a picture of my Christmas tree from last year… since we only have each other to buy presents for, we go all out and its not even S and T’s festival but I kinda force them to celebrate it with me… they’re very sweetly adjusting that way… and anyway, who’s not up for presents and parties…

So Christmas Eve dawned bright and clear and we chilled out that day at work and blared carols and Pink Floyd (what a combination) from our speakers and had a couple of drinks when work let off about 2pm. Then I went home and there was a full bottle of Limon to finish and we did just that. By about 6pm I was wasted but it was a very good wasted… People dropped in bearing gifts and drank and smoked with us. In the midst of all this, some random person called me and poor fellow got abused because I thought someone was playing the fool and then I called my Mom a few times… why why do I keep doing this, I don’t know… and all I did was laugh and tell her she sounded different… she thought I was mad… I was just smashed. At about 10pm, I started watching Carols by Candlelight on TV and of course the tears almost came out in my drunkenness and I absolutely insisted we go to church for Midnight Mass because I’ve always gone every year. So I dragged S and my friend from work and three extremely smashed people sat through the whole thing and I even sang along to all the carols very joyfully… I like to think that it wasn’t too sinful what I did… I did sober down during the Mass…

After church we went home and continued drinking and ripped open all our presents… it was such madness and so much fun… I got some cool presents like a mobile phone and an LP player and lots of other random stuff. I don’t even remember when we finally went to bed… but we woke up again on Christmas Day after only a few hours sleep because my friend had invited us to her house for lunch… so we drunkenly drove to her farm about 2 hours away and had a very pleasant time on the farm.

She had cooked up a storm so we ate nicely… she got me a tequila roulette thingie as a present so we all had a few shots of tequila in spite of the hangover and then headed back home. There were phone calls from family the whole day which is always a highlight and when my Mom spoke to me she asked me if she still sounded different… I said No, but I sure sounded different from the night before. We ended the night watching Shrek 2 again which was one of my Christmas presents… god, how I love Donkey and Puss in Boots.

It was a very lovely Christmas in 2004 and I can’t wait to see what happens this year…

That's just the way it is... Things'll never be the same

Isn’t it just the irony of life that when I had no wish to stop blogging, when I had so many exciting things coming up like Christmas, trip home, weddings, babies, bachelorette parties, etc. to blog about circumstances forced me to take a break…

Update: Everyone scared me slightly about how much detail I put up so I have taken down most of the bitching. Here is a gist for anyone who missed out ;)

My boss was fired. Him getting fired set off a crazy chain of events… No one did any work for two weeks… everyone just stared blankly at their monitors, most people took 2 hour lunches everyday and at least thrice a week there was alcohol involved at these sessions, people fucked off whenever they felt like it and took it in turns to call in sick, people picked up fights with people they believed had been involved in getting him fired, people threatened to quit, people did quit, and of course every Friday night was a major regroup and re-strategise campaign at the pub …

I had a little work drama of my own in all this… but now that has been sorted too and the person I was really pissed off at got exactly what he deserved!

So now we’re trying to pick up the pieces and move on from everything that happened in the last three weeks. People will be missed, like my ex-boss and a couple of other friends who also left… I think that we all had a really good time in the last two years and now the party is really over! Well, nothing lasts forever…

Also on that note, my friend from Madras who came to Australia the same time I did and who shared my first apartment with me and S and who washed and ironed his own clothes and cooked his own meals for the first time ever at the same time as me, is returning to Madras for good in a couple of days. I will miss him… his turn of phrase is really quite like no one else’s… we could publish a book on all the funny things he has said in the crudest manner possible… The three of us lived together for 1.5 years and it seems like such a hazy dream now… None of us had lived away from home before, we were all spoiled rotten with never having done chores before, we missed our friends (and family) terribly and tried to recreate our alcoholic party Madras lifestyle in Melbourne and realised it wasn’t quite the same…

But we had our fun and games and wild nights on the town and quiet, reflective nights in. We also had our share of fighting and hating each other, there were car troubles and university troubles and financial difficulties and struggling to make ends meet. Everything was so new and strange… like smoking in our apartment, whenever we wanted, wherever we wanted (I’m so glad we stopped that dirty habit)… That whole first experience of living away from home is really quite something and its impossible not to form this incredible bond with the people you shared it with. And its also impossible not to pick up some embarrassing stories about each other along the way… I’ll hold my tongue though, don’t want embarrassing stories about me to get out!! So anyway, we hung out this weekend one last time in Australia and it was good. The cool thing is he’ll be there in Madras when we visit and he’ll be as jobless as us so we have someone to hang out with during the day like we used to…

I’ll come around and visit everyone real soon, ok? Must get back to work now!

How much is that doggie in the window? I do hope that doggie’s for sale…

Yay… I have been tagged at just the right time when I wasn’t sure what I felt like writing about. So here goes…

Seven Things I Plan To Do:

1. Skydive
2. Learn how to play guitar
3. Get fit
4. Tour Europe
5. Get a dog
6. Buy a convertible
7. Design my own house

Seven Things I Can Do:

1. Sing sing sing
2. Survive quite happily on a diet of rice and curds and fried fish/chicken/mince/prawns/potato
3. Sleep for 12 hours at a stretch
4. Drink like a fish
5. Shine academically
6. Smoke like a hippie
7. Make people laugh

Seven Things I Can't Do:

1. Eat anything that has long slices of onion in it (or even any other kind of vegetable)
2. Get out of bed without snoozing
3. Drink gin
4. Play particularly well at any sport
5. Spend another Christmas without my family
6. Spend my life without a furry four-legged companion of the canine variety
7. Stop eating chocolate

Seven Things I Say Most Often:

1. Fuckin’ hell
2. Chooth (Hindi)
3. Ey Watha (Tamil! I have no idea how the second word is spelt)
4. As if
5. Whatever
6. Yeah right
7. That only

I’m not tagging anyone but everyone is free to do it if they want… it’s a lot harder than it seems!

So then I analysed my things I plan to do list to see if I was close to any of them and I believe I am to some of them.

Skydive – just waiting for the right time or a trip to New Zealand

Learn how to play guitar – I can play notes E and F now. A friend gave me his old guitar which was very kind of him and he would’ve taught me more if everyone else present didn’t prefer him playing the guitar to me learning it. But I shall persevere…

Get fit – Been at the gym for almost two months now. Rather scared to check my weight and measure my waist because what if there hasn’t been any improvement?! Still I do feel slightly better so here’s hoping…

Tour Europe – Ideally, this will happen next year or the year after. But its just so expensive and I can see my entire life savings being blown away on the one trip to Europe. But I think it will be worth it… and its time I stopped spending every holiday of mine in India.

Get a dog – This one kills me the most. Right now I don’t have the house and backyard but more than that I keep wondering what the poor thing will do when I’m out of the house 50 hours a week! The dogs in Madras always had someone for company and when we returned from a holiday they’d let us know exactly how lonely they’d been by barking up a frenzy. Hey… that’s what my next post is going to be about… the story of all my darling dogs (and there were a few)

Buy a convertible – I really want to do this next year but there are many obstacles along the way like getting an Australian drivers licence (I’m quite certain I will fail the test – everyone does at least once) and of course, the big one – money! I could just buy any old car for less money but I think that since I don’t really need a car, it’d be fun to buy a cool car now at the age when I can do cool stuff and not want these things later in life when I am bogged down by shopping bags and car seats!

Design my own house – This seems the furthest away. In fact, I don’t think it’ll happen in this country in this lifetime (I’ll be lucky to even afford an average house off the block) unless I win the lottery… but since I don’t even play… I guess I can hope that I get a super high-paying job in India that will allow me to fulfil this plan…

So there you have it! Let's hope I make them all happen...

Living life the easy way... And sippin’ on Bacardi Rum

Oh joy… summer is almost here. We’re on Daylight Savings Time and that always puts me in a holiday mood since the sun doesn’t set until 9 pm or thereabouts and as a result I always feel like I have some few more hours in a day and take things much easier. We have also had two gloriously hot 30 degree plus days this week and it was simply blissful… especially since the first one was Tuesday and a holiday for the Melbourne Cup of all things (public holiday so we can all sit back and watch the horse races is something else, but I’m not complaining… its our first public holiday since JUNE), and the second one was yesterday and I just couldn’t wake up in the morning so took a sickie… Have I ever mentioned that I love to sleep and once I’m asleep I really really hate waking up but falling asleep is a big big problem for me these days… Ah well, we can talk about my insomnia another time. Lets get back to talking about alcohol instead…

So with spirits we also have the whiskeys and the bourbons and it seems that as people get older they’re drinking more of these but this is one kind of spirit I just can’t stand… not that I haven’t drunk this also when really desperate but its not something I particularly enjoy. I remember that when I first came to Australia I drank a lot of Jim Beam because S and my housemate at the time preferred it and we were poor students so we couldn’t always choose what we drank so I just went along with it and drank it and the thing about it is that it doesn’t really get me happy high… it just gets me into that mode where I know I’ve drunk a lot but can’t really feel the fun effects of it… like when you smoke too much and reach a kind of zone… So anyway, one night in particular stands out when we the three of us drank Jim Beam the whole night and then S passed out and my housemate and I continued and suddenly it was 7:00 in the morning so I thought, “oh, what the hell, let me just go for my 9:00 am class now instead of missing it’. So I went… hahaha… what fun it all was. And it wasn’t my fault my stupid course had a class EVERY Saturday… did they not take into account that people like to get smashed on a Friday night!! But yeah, the whiskeys and the bourbons are so not my thing…

So is Tequila my thing? I think not… although I have always had shitloads of fun every time I went the Tequila route. But its not something I would be up for every weekend… its more a once every four months experience. At the last one, three of us slammed almost two bottles over a few hours and I yelled at everyone at the party and told them they better come to my birthday party the following weekend and on the way home I used up all my credit calling Rat and Sista T and apparently all I kept saying was “Yeah maaan, I’m coming next month maaan… yeah maan” and then just kept laughing hysterically of course. Good times good times… :)

So before we get to the grand finale of my favourite type of alcohol ever (and which you should’ve guessed by now if you know me even a little or if you have been following the alcohol posts closely ;)) lets talk about sweet tasting and some not so sweet tasting liquors and such. I’ve always been a Baileys on the rocks fan for just a quiet dinner and night in type thing and I’m very attached to Kahlua for sentimental you me and you reasons. So guess what… it is also possible to get extremely fucking high on this deadly combo particularly if you are slamming them both together… So one sunny AFTERNOON, four people slammed a bottle of Baileys and Kahlua and guess what me and my friend slammed next… we finished a whole disgusting bottle of Sambucha… oh my god, that stuff tastes GROSS… but we slammed it… and I was very very high, I kid you not. We also went clubbing that night after all this and I had a good time dancing for a while and then went stumbling to find a bathroom and instead I went into some employee area and literally stumbled down a few steps and twisted my ankle and just lay there in a heap for some unknown period of time. I really have no clue how anyone found me or helped me out of there… the next thing I know I’m in the lounge next to the ladies bathroom and there’s an ice pack around my ankle and all the ladies who came in kept asking me if I was alright and if I wanted anything… so I bummed a couple of cigarettes and lay back on the couch with my leg lifted and smoked away until S found me (and I don’t really know how he found me… I was rather out of it to realise that people would be wondering where I was)… That was such a fun night… even the whole ankle experience… at the end of it all on the way home, in extreme drunkenness I started crying for my Mommy and its so funny that I started crying for my Mommy because my Mommy is not the ‘oh you poor thing, how did it happen’ kind of Mommy… she’s more the ‘serves you right… this is what you get for going out at all hours and drinking and what not’ kind of Mommy.

So this of course brings us to the end… the best kind of alcohol ever… (drum roll, please)… RUM… sweet smelling, molasses fermented rum… rowdy, ass-kicking, rum… Ah rum, how I love it. I’m very glad that I got off the vodka in the early days and switched to rum… what a whole new world it was… I’m at a loss for words right now… I should probably be under the influence of some rum to write more eloquently about it … my favourites are Old Monk (I hate Old Cask for some reason) and Bacardi Lemon (affectionately called lime juice)… but I also like plain ol’ Bacardi Superior and Bacardi Oro and Reserva… I’ve had some lethal Jamaican Coruba rum and I think after Old Monk, my favourite Indian rum is good ol’ Kodais (I don’t even know how its spelt… I am referring to the Bangalore one)… But has anyone tried Bacardi 151… I think its 60% alcohol or something and I almost threw up slamming half a shot and couldn’t even drink it when it was mixed with coke.

But I’ve drunk rum at the oddest of times and the oddest of places and it has always delivered a good time… I’ve drunk rum with coke and orange juice and sprite and pineapple juice and I’ve even drunk it with fucking water whenever we’ve run out of coke at a slumber parties at my house… Old Monk & water is just fucking foul by the way… we’ve finished a whole bottle of Bacardi at 5 am as we watched the sun rise and the train glide into Londha station one hazy December morning… … we’ve drunk it in paper cups in backseats of cars with no ice and warm coke and we’ve sipped it in style sitting in beach house gazebos… we’ve mixed it in 500ml bottles of coke to quickly slam on the road on the way to a party (the ever present “ready mix”) and we’ve drunk it in Pina Coladas and Mai Tais… I’ve finished a quart of rum in my room one night by myself and sneaked down and stole some of my Dad’s to keep the buzz going one jobless night.

Under the influence, I have professed my love and undying friendship to many a rowdy rum compatriot… I have danced till the cows came home and sung till I couldn’t sing another note… I have pretended to be sober with family and how many times have I driven home in such a state… I have puked my guts out and laughed my ass off… I have cried like the world was ending and I have eaten like there was no tomorrow… I have yelled at anyone who would listen (including my boss) about my current depressing work situation (this actually happened last Friday in a marathon Bacardi session – I think I had at least 12 drinks in total) and I have karaoke-d like it was going out of style… all in all, I really do love that little drink called rum. Remember that Bacardi ad with all the people chilling and drinking in the tropical island type place and on a yacht and such and singing this song…

Be what you want to be
Taking things the way they come
Living life the easy way
And sippin’ on Bacardi Rum

I used to love that ad before I started drinking and I’d actually forgotten all about it until now. There may not have been yachts or a tropical islands but we have had some very good times sippin’ on all sorts of rum… May the good times roll on… Cheers!

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…