Morbid Thoughts....and the past weeks and the future.....

Random Quote
"When one by one our ties are torn,
and friend from friend is snatched forlorn;
When man is left alone to mourn,
oh! then how sweet it is to die!"
Anna Letitia Barabauld

According to thedeathclock I will rest eternally from Thursday, March 13, 2059. The funny thing is it appears as the same "date" whether I am overweight or not and also whether I am a smoker or not. Since I am a Gemini I shall humour myself and thedeathclock thinking it is the 'twin' funda.

Was in Goa for less than 36 hours the last weekend. The journey was planned on the spur of the moment. Maybe I should reconsidered it as I was lighter by about 2000 after the 36 hour sojourn. Maybe not, I like entering tunnels even if there is no light in sight.

This weekend being a long weekend has been booked for the family. So we are driving down to Shravanabelagola, Belur and Halebid and from there onto Hampi. I am sure there is some Gypsy blood in us, tending towards the higher end I must say.

Last week I also won a quiz after a long drought. Sai and I (aided by the fact that some sitters decided to come to team four,Aristotle; that was our name on stage)teamed up for the quiz at St. Josephs College of Business Administration and went home with a coupon for Rs 12500 each. The holder of the coupon gets a one day packaged natural healing and stress relieving at Ayurvedagram for a couple. I tried giving it to my parents and was downright refused. Any way its got a validity of 6 months, so that much time to find an eligible lady. - Must try a pick up line with this coupon featuring somewhere. - Or maybe not. The fact that I could get my ears boxed is not something that I might look forward to.

The end of the year fast approaches and I have only about 1616579720 seconds to go in my life. So I shall linger not no more and attempt at getting ahead.

Raising the Bar

Its appraisal time at office. So everyones cross evaluating each other apart from doing their normal work. The thing about cross evaluation is that it allows you to loll around office acting important in front of the computer (sales guys, unlike techies don't have much opportunity to do this). It also makes you think hard about the person who you are evaluating, what you do unto him/her is what will be done to you!
Surprisingly today a colleague from another state, calls and asks, "Dude what are your strengths?" Cant figure out for myself, so just list it out so that I can put it down for you! Also suggest some areas of improvement. The main intention of this exercise I believe is to avoid self evaluation. Ultimately what all this leads to is an annual bonus, a promotion and a hike in my salary, something that I am eagerly awaiting. Economic benefits are most welcome.

Update wise.....had been to Udhagai two weeks back(family trip) and Kerala last week to attend a couple of cousins' weddings. Hectic weekends leave little time to blog and write. Heading out of Bangalore again this weekend to Mysore to visit a certain Mr P at his Infosys campus and if possible head to Wyanad from there.

Need to generate more ideas for this blog. Its stagnating into 'a what I did and what I will do' journal with practically no literary content. More than generation of ideas and thoughts I think its about logging in the ideas when they strike you. Probably need to just write them down on a piece of paper and later add it here or better still get a blog enabled device. Wanted to write something about love's labour lost, my job and people i meet on a daily basis as part of my job. Just cant think of anything though suddenly. Shall blame it on writer's block and lack of time, not to mention lethargy. Anyway shall stop before I continue ranting.

In case of....

.... no posting for sometime I feel good by putting a one liner or adding a photo just to think to myself that this thing is alive. So here it is, one of mine own.
Venue-Casa Picola
Day-Today
Characters-A bunch of girls zonked after their European Literature exam and I(the said ladies not having been zonked by me).
Context- Ms SB is thinking aloud to herself that she is thankful for the number of people she knows from the banking industry.
The 'banking industry' phrase being wrong, I corrected her to mutual fund sales guys and that she should be thankful that she has so many friends to 'bank' upon. Ha!
And to add a photo, for aesthetic sake, heres one from the Pondi trip. I was proud of myself after capturing this.

Where is the love?

Black Eyed Peas performed here sometime back. Though I am not a great fan of theirs, the mix of funk and hip hop do add a certain spice to any playlist. I believe they would be better to listen on the radio or CD than a live show. Live shows are for more mature artistes, like Led Zeppelin who is reuniting with Jason Bonham stepping into his father's shoes(bless his vodka filled soul). Vir Sanghvi explores his Led Zep experiences here. I unfortunately do not at this moment have any such tales.
The only story closest to this kind would be the one where I cycled down to Palace Grounds for the first Deep Purple concert when I was in the 10th. This was prior to the days when my father would trust me with his two wheeler. BMTC would not exist once the concert was over and micro economics worked against me paying an exorbitant figure to the auto guy. So my faithful Avon Montage, a brand of cycles which had eluded most other cyclists in Bangalore was the only go. Company was restricted to drunken Northy guys running around in circles through the crowds and felt that it was their birthright to do the Bhangra to Blacknight. Most of the moments are still quite clear in my mind especially the sing along with Ian Gillan for Smoke on the Water and 1000s of completely out of tune voices. Jon Lord fired from his hammond at will. And Paice was bull dozering through us with his unending drum solos.

More recently I had attended the Sepultura show. Though much of the concert eludes me for various reasons, the highlight for the show was probably a rendition of a famous metal number which I fail to remember. Gosh, what was I doing there?! If someone reading this was at the show please do jog my over strained memory.

In the meantime last month I had been to Pondicherry. I intended to write a travel blog about it, but reconsidered the thought once I realised that it wouldn't look like a travel blog once I look at the whole event from a couple of weeks time gap. The freshness to the whole trip would be missing. The essence of travel writing is to capture the real flavour of the place at that particular moment and engrave it for future reference instantly, not to go on a trip somewhere, return to base, wait for a couple of weeks, contemplate the incident and then decide "Oh lets put it on paper!". Thats why I prefer photos, because they capture moments instantaneously and remain the same for a long time to come unless it is attacked by Photoshop and suchlike. Words can always be meandered your way at any point of time.
And in a couple of days I shall be of to Ooty, Kodaikanal and the rest of the hills for four days. Prime reasons for the trip being listed below:

1. It gets too noisy around here during Deepavali. My ears are of the sensitive type. I am almost deaf as most people who have interacted with me might have experienced. (Though I have noticed that it does not happen at work but only when socialising with friends).
   
2. We have bought a new car, a Zen Estilo. So lets go...Wrong one I guess.
   
3. Thursday is an optional holiday and Friday is a holiday, so no question of leave from work.
   

My only gripe right now is I might not be sanctioned leave in December when the gang ably led by Mr A is heading to Goa. If I miss that "trip" there can be only one comment made, again in the words of the most noble Mr A, "Oh, what a tragedy?".

PS The date of posting this appears to be the day when I started it and left it as a draft till today, November 6th 2007. What have I been doing all this while?

Swinging all the way

Six things that swung all the way....
1 Yuvaraj Singh's 6's in Durban.
2 Sensex crossing the 16000 mark
3 6 years since the 9/11 attacks
4 Today I had my 6th haircut in 6/3 years. (Bad one i guess!)
5 Gold hitting a 16 month high
6 My waist is fast approaching 36. Glad to see that I am still in the OK zone.

Eyeballs :

I have just seen that I have had only 67 profile views since I started blogging. The essential need for a blogger is to be read and appreciated or criticised depending on the need of the post. Like I enjoy reading, writers also live by being read. Hence the need of the hour-more eyeballs. (I love taking things literally and also make things more graphic.)

Of Past Haunts(loves)

Last week was convocation day in college. Had to give it a miss though as I was not in town. So decided to collect the degree certificate today, in the hope of seeing myself finally having achieved the status of a GRADUATE, some fifteen months after I had passed out of college! Unfortunately the concerned person was having his lunch, hence I am still not in mine own terms a graduate.

The time earned thus was quickly diverted to make a couple of calls to old loves and haunts. Love being an emotion (for me) restricted so far only to books, music, movies, food and a couple of other unmentionables and not the fairer sex (apart from the familial subset) as might have been thought of by you my discernible reader. Though I did come close to exploring it.......

The first stop was made at SK Bakery, on that colourful road named after a certain Markham. Two lime juices (sweet and salt) downed faster than I can type this last word, and a quick exchange of gossip about the alma mater with the Malayalee owner later, I parked my bike outside the Kerala Beef Stall near Johnson Market. Though Khazana with their delectable beef biryani and vonderful veal kebabs called out, time constraints, made me dash to Mecca Cafe for that timeless brew of Sulaiman Chai. Lime pips bobbed up and down tickling the lips till they were left low and dry at the bottom of the cup, their services completely used up.

All this brought back memories of the numerous discussions we had at Mecca and SK topics ranging from the latest cover of the Rolling Stones magazine to Britney's tonsured head. All the jokes cracked, laughed at loud and cut short by the killer stares to maintain decorum from the maitre de at Mecca. All the classes missed, all the ego clashes, all the last one rupee coins pulled out to pay for the chai, juice, samosa, et al.

The sepia tinted smoke clears in a flash. The memories remain......

Questions.....

Yesterday for some strange reason someone messaged me, "Are you wearing red?". I replied in the negative, and that was that. Now, I have been trying to logically deconstruct the whole act. The main thesis will refer to why she SMSed the aforementioned message. I believe, the reasons are as listed below:
(1) She saw me, or a person like me, but instead of calling out (and in case of mistaken identity and embarrassment on finding it was not me) she got away by messaging me.
(2) She did not want to bump into me (as I was scaring her?) hence check with me by SMS if it was actually me.
(3) Since I hadn't seen her for quite sometime maybe it was a line to start the conversation with me?
(4) I am fast running out of reasons, primarily because this post was initially written a couple of months back and I do not seem to remember what I might have thought at that point of time.

And apart from that I just did not want to see a 'draft' post as part of the 'post settings'. I like to complete what I start. So here is to Le Fin.

Why?

Why should I go to work in the next half hour? Why cant I just sit around home? Read, watch movies, listen to music or just sleep. Why not take the bike and go for a long ride?
The answer is very simple, I know, but I hate it.

The Week So Far....

Its been quite a hectic week so far, with a new fund offer(World Gold Fund) closing tomorrow. The high point of course would be the rains yesterday I think. The topic of conversation for most people I met today was "Where were you stuck?". They made it sound like it was the great deluge or something. As for me I was below a scaffold near Bangalore Central, being subject to conversations like, why a certain pair of trousers had to be returned without being altered as the bill for the aforementioned trousers were not in order. This from an employee of Central most probably part of the Merchandise Altering Dept. to a colleague from a different Dept. who gave him an exasperated look as if, "Oh I know, the nerve they had to ask you?!". Inane might just be my middle name.

Monday was a good day though. Had attended a kutchery at Odakkathur Mutt near Ulsoor lake. T M Krishna had a delightful voice which deftly wove through various ragas. Though I am not a specialist on the subject of Carnatic music(i cannot identify ragas or anything, except for Hamsadhwani),I enjoy carnatic music, especially the thaniavartanam (percussive duel should loosely describe the word). A rather sad thing I noticed was that quite a number of the elder people find the best time to break for a leak or anything else is during the thaniavartanam. Rather discouraging for the artistes I feel. Anyway a good, rather divine two hours were spent in the Mutt.

Tuesday was the day of the rains. And it was quite heavy to say the least. Three hours stranded near Central and not an acquaintance in sight. Heavy on the legs, not to mention the boredom. The torrents in the silver and gold lights falling on the hoardings did break the monotony though.

Just saw Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo. Truly a treat. A wonderful work of absurdity. Its about a girl who lives a sad real life during the great Depression and longs for the reel life. And out of the blue, the star from the movie she is seeing in a theatre, walks out of the screen abandoning his reel life for the real life. Among the various adventures that they share including the girl's(Mia Farrow, she does a brilliant job as the small town girl forever in awe of starry Hollywood) trip into tinsel town on the black and white screen, dark comedy blends with absurdity seamlessly weaving a magical world, leaving you very warm at the end of it all.

The Simpsons

All hail Matt Groening, James L Brooks, Sam Simon and the rest who are involved in The Simpsons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Eighth Habeet

Its been more than a month since I blogged. The reasons are listed below:
(1) Travelled to Kerala for a cousin's engagement.
(2) Travelled to Goa for obvious reasons. (Break from what ever I am doing, being the prime reason)
(3) Travelled to Mysore with family over the weekend, last weekend or was it the one before?
(4) Travelling around the city as part of work.(That hardly qualifies, but reasons are also excuses.)
(5) Reading
(6) Movies
(7) Travelled to WonderLa(thats hardly a reason, but to make the next excuse an even number)
(8) and finally laziness.
I shall add a few photos from the Goa trip ans Wonder La trip, to conform with the shop- worn phrase, "a picture is worth a thousand words."

One Year Older.....

Yesterday I turned one year older. Messages and calls flowed in, the whole day from all over. Much thanks to all my well wishers. Though it wasnt anything special, the day as such. The usual happened work, chai in the morning, informing my clients that we would be launching a gold fund soon, some gossip on the latest movies, meeting friends for lunch and dinner.

Thought I would treat myself to couple of new books at Premier, but forgot to carry my coupons care of the KQA. That was a disappointment.

Everyone at office was quite gung ho that I had turned a year older. The joke around office is that I turned 32, a reference to my balding pate and other characteristics of what is generally seen in what they term affectionately an "Uncle". Jokes apart I have turned a decade younger than the aforementioned number. As Mr A, a colleague of mine puts it, age, is after all a number.
A first of its kind was witnessed by yours truly yesterday. I cut my first birthday cake! Surprisingly I cant remember having cut a cake during the whole process of having existed so far in my life. Thanks again to everyone in office for that distinction. Apart from having cut the cake, it was me who also the chose the cake, another dubious distinction in professional quarters. The day also left me richer with a Pepe short shirt, slightly in line with shirts worn by Jaswant Singh, the ones with flaps on the shoulder blades. Though his shirts donot have any juvenile slogans and designs!
Birthdays are also a time to reflect on the past and what can be witnessed in the future. So heres to a great year ahead. Cheers.

P.S.- Saw Pirates the Third today. Quite Bollywood in nature with a "Dus Saal Ke Baad" end after the credits. The high point for me would be Keith "Dark Prince" Richards appearing as Sparrow's father, pickin' at the guitar(Spanish?) with the usual aplomb of a sinister wizard. And of course Jack, himself and his dainty moves around the screen.

P.P.S- This made my day. At the back of an auto, "Aunty Joot, Uncle Tus"

Kozhikode Welcomes You.

In Kozhikode right now, had to attend a marriage of a cousin. Came by Rajahamse, the semi deluxe KSRTC bus. Like always I managed to pick a seat which was located in between two windows with neither opening out near me leading to my sweat cells (what ever they are) working over time. Finally having managed to wedge a part of the glass open things started to seem better, but for some guy behind me who was probably returning from a trip round the Sahara, who wanted the window to be shut. Ignoring his frantic nudges at my hand didnot work my way and he finally prevailed, closing the window completely. Sleep was not the first thing on my mind at that moment, considering that I was being stifled to death. Anyway the blood did cool down later, aided by some ice cold mango crush.
I managed to finish a couple of chapters of that infamous book by Dr. Gonzo before nodding off. The first pitstop for loosening bladders and revitalising the senses was some place just before Mandya, a dirty dingy establishment filled with Malayalis on the way to Talassery, Kannur and my destination(also present spot where I am writing now from). Most men after hurrying down their food were heading to the lone cigarette shop, probably their last smoke for some time(eons apparently for them).
I quickly settled back in my seat and let the movement of the bus rock me back to sleep.

Kozhikode appeared faster than it seemed it would. It was also hotter than expected. The pores just let their sluice gates open, they knew they had no control over it. Five minutes in the sun and it was like I had just stepped out of a shower. It was torrid to say the least.
The morning was occupied with a pre marriage ceremony. The rites having the least of anything to do with me, took ages to finish. What saved the day was the food. The food was just wondrous. Rice covered in thick sambar, with a variety of dishes decorating the periphery of the aforementioned rice. The smell of coconut grated and cooked to perfection in ghee, banana chips, rasa kalan, and other condiments. The rest, is a gastronomic journey to truly understand the "naadan sadhya". To top it was the most heavenly payasam I had ever tasted, in recent times.

Post lunch the rites continued, but I had enough of that. Headed for a movie, its essential to watch a Malayalam movie when in Kerala. Saw Vinodayatra, starring Dileep, Meera Jasmine, Mukesh and a bunch of veteran comedians who would basically push the movie through till the interval with various antics and wordplay, essentially clearing the platform for the lead actor and actress to romance around till the end, peppered with various struggles through their lives, some contemporary issues like lawless demonstrators fighting the police and finally like it has always been atleast in most movies ALL OF THEM LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Well that wasnt an exact review of the movie. But it is quite watchable, the second half tends to border the situation where you are about to let out a sigh of relief and get up from the seat under the impression that the movie is over, but NO its not, this happened quite a number of times. But what really piqued my interest was the number of ads for gold and tiles before the movie started. And all of them sounded and looked the same with the same voice overs, hardly bringing out any message or individuality for the brand.

Anyway the marriage was today. Again the notable activities of the day were related to the stuffing of yours truly, breakfast and lunch.
Right now at a house of a relative's relative. Thats another thing to astounds me, how everyone has some kind of a connection with each other.
Waiting for the bus back home, at 21:00 Hrs. Another long back breaking journey ahead of me. Atleast tomorrow is Sunday... Can rest the whole day and then its back to work. That reminds me I need to buy some halwa and chips, quite a number of people are eagerly waiting to swoop down on that oily jelly like sweet which I hate. The chips will not last long though....i can eat most things which are fried.

Boogie Chillun'

Read an article on the blues in a Brit Folk music magazine. Though I forget the authors name, he writes about the new avatar of blues and how the old guys still influence the new breed in much the same way as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters re-created or re-stylised their predecessors music, who were mostly talking of their lives on the "Pickin' Fields". Anyway the author gives a brilliant tail-piece to his article which has been published below-
"There's more blues available to you today than there ever has been. Most of the giants, I grant you, no longer walk among us, and those of us old enough to have seen some are increasingly grateful for the experience. But if you want to immerse yourself in the subject from top to bottom, using all the media available to you, and still go out to get drunk and boogie occasionally, then the time to do it is , as it always has been, right now."
Will try to find the author's name and link soon.

Sat Tzu and the Art of 'Board' room Warfare

Heres a tip to do well, when you face corporate bored(ro)om. Play Monopoly in office! Thats what we did yesterday. The topic of discussion over coffee in the morning was a weird German sounding chess move which was brought into the topic as an analogy as to how Reliance screwed up some other company in the telecom indusrty, which made an abnormal twisted reference to my favourite board game MONOPOLY.
So we headed out to Sapphire on Brigade Road to purchase the deluxe version of the above mentioned game. The first step inside brought back memories of my pre-high school days when I battled alone in my mind with GI Joe and Cobra figures
Those youthful yet violent days have made way to board room warfares, of course these are choreographed on the table in our conference room; our artillery, money(of the fake pound kind) and our business acumen. Though most were not familiar with the nitty-gritties of the game they picked it well and proceeded to thulp the shit out of me, the apparent veteran on the Monopoly gaming circuit.Mr A and Ms AM teamed up to show us how a duopoly works by joining hands and building houses on sites which they jointly held. A considerable investment was made in developing the key sites of Park Lane and Mayfair, which proved beneficial at a later stage when all opponents including yours truly made uncanny rolls of dice to land exactly on the aforementioned sites.
A stupid move on my part to hand away Fleet Street with all its journos to Mr M in exchange for Liverpool Station turned out to be disastrous with the rest of the game slowly being taken over by the joint team of Mr A and Ms AM. Though Mr M made a few decisive blows intermittently, the impact on the financial prowess of A&AM was next to negligent.
The game finally ended with A&AM emerging on top of the corporate ladder with their assets closing at 10K Pounds, Mr M followed at 4K odd, yours truly with a respectable 3.8K and Mr S on the verge of filing Chapter 11.

Some one mentioned Apna Sapna Money Money as a parting shot to the days events. I shall stick to "Show me the money!"

Till the next board meet....

Yeracud and after.....

Drove down to Yercaud last Saturday. The same day as the Maiden show. What a shame. The trip was worth it though. Was dead beat after work for the past couple of months. So it was a good break from the drudgery of work. More on the trip later....Too lazy to type the whole story right now.

Went for a movie screening of Brazil by Terry Gilliam today. I arrived some fifteen minutes late I think, should have made that about three hours! Quite a mind numbing experience, with dystopian rants and according to me never ending final scenes.(It looked like the end but was not, at least five times I thought "Ah finally." but no it just didn't stop there.) Apart from some nice sets and some mildly peppered humour the only thread running was the Brazil song which reminds me of the aerobics classes which happen diagonally opposite to my house. They would play this song at semi full blast at five in the morning when the rest of the neighbourhood were snoring blissfully. The classes continue, frequented by shapeless "seismic" in nature beauties and the songs they cover these days are more of the "nach" variety currently the flavour in Bollywood.
As for Brazil Sai quite summed it up with, "Its 1984 Monty Python style."

Travails of a business quizzer.....

Some weeks back IFMR, Chennai organised a Business Quiz. The key factor of thinking of taking part in it was the cash prize of Rs 24000. (Business quizzing considered by serious quizzers as a trivial pursuit is more for the money and the glamour of winning the big ones like Brand Equity and TATA Crucible.) So the cash prize lured my team mate and me to Chennai. The quiz was ok with a mix of old chestnuts, recent business trivia and decent connects. We missed qualifying for the finals by 4 pts which is a mile in quizzing standards. But what actually made attending the quiz worthwhile was the journey there.
I had no reserved tickets either by train or bus. A flight was out of the question unless sponsored by my organisation. If someone from my organisation is reading this maybe you could offer to sponsor the next time I face such a situation. The solution...travel by unreserved train in the general compartment.

So I landed at the Cantonment station at about half past nine, bought a general ticket(Rs 102 all the way to Chennai) and waited patiently for the first train to Chennai to come. The Chennai Mail came promptly( most trains which start from City are on time at Cantt.) at 22:55. The general compartment just behind the engine loomed ominously and passed me by. (The G8 Make Poverty History concerts had lesser people per square foot than this compartment.) People were literally flowing onto the platform.

The patient man that I am, I decided to wait for the next train in an hour and assumed that people do not travel at midnight. They proved me absolutely wrong. The Cauvery Express which wheezed onto the platform just short of midnight had both its general compartments in the front,full. I didnt bother to run up to the rear and check if the other two were relatively freer. I had no other option but to push myself, Footloose bag and all into the second compartment. There was hardly any space to move my backside let alone standing space. And with two grumpy rotund characters sprawled all over the aisle near the door, stepping onto them was the only wise action to see that I reached Chennai. Choicest of swear words flew in my direction in a sleepy state, followed by them quickly turning around and completely ignoring me and my prodding to make them clear the way. After much persuasion the sleeping Buddhas willed themselves to clear some space for me and some other guys who boarded along with me.

Once inside, the first thing which I came across was another sleeping man. This time well placed in between the two bathrooms, covered with the only crumpled lungi he had on himself, on a heap of shaadi mahal lights(the long connected ones). Having already imbibed a large amount of alcohol, he was in a state of delirium(loud searing with occasional pleas of mercy and occasionally turning over into the toilet and throwing up violently).

Seeing the kind of faces around me, all flustered and sleepy I decided against taking my pod out for fear of being beaten up or something. I found a vacant area on the side to lean on and rest my haunches and tried to get some forty winks. Just as i was about dozing a loud high pitched lady's voice woke me up, only to be followed by angry males trying to box the ears of another in his early twenties. I still dont know what the reason for the commotion was, but the guy who was assaulted made a quick exit at the next station.

A couple of hours later I was still on my haunches, thinking why did I ever decide to travel like this when a couple of seats became vacant. I quickly grabbed my bag and flung myself onto the upper berth. It was already bagged by an elderly but rowdy looking guy who wouldnt budge at first but finally relented to sacrifice some of his space. So I settled down as comfortably as I could with my feet on the opposite berth and backside on four or six cold wooden slats.(Thankfully Lalooji has planned to change these berths to cushioned ones from this year)

After five hours of intermittent dozing and a butt which felt like it had gone through a paper shredder the strong characteristic repugnant smell of Chennai woke me and my nostrilsup at about seven o'clock. Basin Bridge had come. Some more minutes later I was on the platform. The "Ting Ting Ting" welcome note which emitted from the PAS at Chennai Central sounded like the suprabatham, after my early morning capers.

Two hours later bathed and well stuffed with my aunts idlis and chutney it was time for the quiz. Nothing much to report on that front. We didnt qualify. We saw the quiz, went to Spencer Plaza (some kind of relief at last), and caught a KSRTC Rajahamsa from Koyembeedu Bus Station(the place is atleast three or four times bigger than the Bangalore HAL Airport!) to Bangalore.

And with that we come to the end of another unsuccessful endeavour of a business quizzer who won the TATA Crucible Campus version 2006. I like to live in the past! Corporate quizzing is so bloody competitive.
And yes I did get a good nights sleep on the bus.