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.