Happenings Lately

Noticed how my blog posts have diminished lately?

I know nothing new to that. But this time the cause for being so inattentive towards my blog is not because of laziness. It has more to do with 2/7ths of my wishlist coming true. I was feeling a little too happy with the way things have gone this semester, so I decided to give myself a PS3. It has been merely a week since the arrival of the beautiful gaming console. It has become such a big addiction now. Days and nights seem to be just amalgamate into this blur where I find myself glued to the television with the controller in hand, smashing these millions of weird looking demons. Gives me a strange kind of high. So much so, that I have almost stopped playing counter strike now, and I have practically neglected my laptop.

Funny how time seems to just race past you when you are doing something that you like. The semester is over and the holidays have started. I am back at doing what many of us like to do. I now laze around the entire day spending time extravagantly as though I have inherited millions of units of it. As stated above the days and nights just merge into this weird blur. Half the time is gone with the playstation. The remaining half goes in sleeping. I am trying quite hard to rid myself of this habit of sleeping at 4 in the morning and waking up at 2 in the afternoon. It so happened that I managed to sleep the entire day once. I ended up asking my roomie where the day had gone off to?

That felt really weird. One entire day gone within the blink of an eye. Anyways, somewhere in this extremely busy schedule of mine I do manage to work. I get paid for doing some work that my professor asks me to. So fortunately the holidays is not jam packed with the brutal killing of time. I manage to do something constructive after all.

The new year is fast approaching and a whole pack of my friends have headed back home. I know the feeling is just insanely incredible to be back home for the vacations. I sometimes wish I could have headed back home. Well, as the saying goes everything has a price tagged to it. For my wishlist to come true I had to work which continues through the winter break so no complaints. Coming back to the new year, I still do not know what I would be doing. There are plans of heading off on a road trip, or just cool our heels sitting at home. It is always last minute.

I have to mention this here. I attended 'Service' in a Church where our American Family go, for Christmas. It was a rather new experience. The way of praying here is so completely different from how we do it. The family is so sweet that they had us over for dinner. Well they eat at 5 in the evening and call that dinner. After the dinner they took us to their church and finally we went back to their house to finish of the day with some amazing deserts. It was really cool and sweet of them to involve us in their celebrations and rituals. They even ended up giving us presents. They day had a real crazy ending. Me and my friends ended up playing monopoly the entire night. Weird sort of a way to celebrate Christmas.

Well that is what is happening lately. I hope I manage to come up with more posts in the near future, something more meaningful rather than mindless ramblings and day to day stuff. Adios till then.

My Current Wishlist!!!!

One of my very close friend recently purchased a Sony PS3 and I was really blown away by it. I just did a little digging recently and came up with a few games that I would definitely want to get my hands on. So my wishlist for the time being is:

1. I need to get a PS3 first ;-)
2. A proper video output device to go with the PS3 :-D
3. Prototype
4. God of War
5. Uncharted 2
6. COD MW 2 and
7. Assassins Creed 2

I want, I want, I want, I want and I want!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Milestone

Finally its the 50th post for my blog. Pondering about what I have written for the 49 posts preceding this one I kept thinking that to mark this grand post I should probably come up with something really really special. Something on the lines of a poem. But then I guess it was a little too much to ask for from my grey cells. Hence sticking to the usual posting of some random nonsense and bullshit.

Life in itself has come so far. I cannot believe that I have spent a staggering 8738 days so far. Sounds a little insignificant, but it is invariably a large number. Out of which I am sure I would have spent half the time in sleep. So effectively my time on this planet would be 4369 days, of which I do not recollect about lets say 2369 days ( for easier rounding off ). So that leaves me with roughly 2000 days. I digress as I always do. Thats not the basic point that I am trying to make.

Sometimes there are moments in life which just hits you in your face which makes you realize that time has really passed. It makes you feel so old, as though you have experienced so much of life. On the other hand some situations make you feel so nascent, stupid and so inexperienced. The journey so far has been a roller coaster ride. Looking back I can say that I have met a lot of people, made new friends, pissed off many ( bound to happen ) etc etc. I just wanted to take time off and say thank you to all those wonderful people in my life who have made a big difference ( even the small one ), and also say that I am sorry for whatever I did which might have caused pain ( it was never intentional, it never is..thats what they all say!!! ).

Its time I put an end to this deluded rambling for what was supposed to be a very impressive 50th post in my blog. Nevertheless I did take some gyaan out off this laborious endeavor. Never stop writing in between a post. Useless gyaan I know, but I lost flow half way through the post when I stopped for no apparently good reason.

P.S-The writings have taken a literal roll down the hill. I hope that I can come up with some good posts from now on!!

The Master of The Game

The title for this post sounds very small and insignificant compared to the greatness of the batting Legend. After that brilliant century at Hyderabad which almost took India to a victory people have been showering praises on Sachin. Everywhere you see there is talks about Sachin. Its not just the brilliance of the Little Master but it is the way he has projected himself and stamped his class all over cricket. It is The Experience, I quote " It is impossible to outgrow Indian Sports most celebrated Boy Wonder ".

Writing about a person who is considered as almost the game itself is never easy. It is a mutual feeling shared by millions of others who sense the same kind of hope and anticipation every time Sachin takes guard at the batting crease. It has been mentioned that the entire nation comes to a standstill when he is out there at the center batting, and demolishing the best of the opposition. I am quite certain that there will not be a single cricket enthusiast in this planet who will not have 'Googled' Sachin Tendulkar. Mentioning this after having spent literally hours searching for the Man, The Machine and The Legend. The names and the accolades showered upon will never come to an end.

I took a long time publishing this post, thinking and assuming that I can make it better and different from the rest of the writings about the greatest batsman the game has ever seen. But alas I sadly realized that the words that I come up with will always fall short of the achievements and the greatness of the legend called Sachin Tendulkar. To wrap it all up this article by Rajdeep Sardesai sums up the extraordinary talent that India has ever produced in the field of cricket.

Insanely Useless Facts #3

It has been ages again since I posted, so here I go with another post about insanely useless facts. By the way a big congratulations to the page for attracting '100' hits ( eventually ) after I placed a neat little tracker on the page. Without further ado I bring to you more useless but interesting facts.

1. The Chinese are credited with the invention of the first toothbrushes. Initially the bristles were made up of Hog ( pig ) bristles but were eventually replaced by nylon. Sales would have definitely taken a huge blow if it were continued with the current H1N1 scare floating around.
2. A 'face-off' in hockey was originally called as 'puck-off'. I am pretty sure that commentators would have made genuine mistakes replacing 'p' with 'f'. I am sure I would have. ;-)
3. A 'jiffy' as we all say and take an eternity for daily chores and work, is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
4. A 100 pound ( ~45 kg ) person on Earth would weigh 38 pounds ( ~17 kg ) on Mars.
5. A blue whale's aorta ( the main blood vessel ) is large enough for a human to crawl through. Thats really really big.
6. A company in Taiwan makes dinnerware out of wheat, so you can eat your plate. I wish we get that here. Would save us a lot of trouble in washing utensils everyday!!!!
7. A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
8. Austria was the first ever country to use post-cards.
9. Bats always turn left while exiting from a cave.
10. Last but not the least for this particular post, Baskin Robins once made ketchup ice-creams. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!

So far......

Here is where I again come out of the self imposed hiatus and solemnly pledge that I will continue to blog more often than not. I expect that I will be posting many more such topics which starts of quite similar to this one.

Its that period of the semester where I get really busy. Busy in watching all sorts of unwanted series, busy in sleeping, busy in somehow managing to kill time. Well thats how a Masters degree is supposed to be I believe. Whats the fun in completing a Masters while not having fun and killing time unnecessarily. Pretty sure many will beg to differ. Right now I am feeling quite happy. Was woken up today by a call from a very good friend/senior/sister of mine who had cleared her comprehensive exam. The relief ( from having finally completed Masters ) was very prominent in her voice, which made me realize how very close I am in finishing my degree. Another 6-7 more months and I'll be done. Finally the end of the so clearly 'Rosy' picture portrayed, of a MS degree will begin.

On the flip side of all this, there is a very frustratingly funny and irritating incident that happened a couple of days back. It was my cooking turn, which I am pretty sure that most of us dread 95% of the time. Cooking as such may not be that bad, but the cleaning that follows after the cooking is a real pain in all the wrong places possible. Well, as I always do, I digress. Getting back to the incident, I had prepared this wonderful (hypothetical cause none of us got to taste it) rasam ( something similar to a stew ) using Lima beans I guess. Not too sure as to what the beans was though. So taking all the efforts I had brewed this particular stew. Just as I was about to finish I saw a freaking roach taking a happy and pleasurable swim in it. That just ensured that all my enthusiasm (which is usually quite low while cooking) or whatever little was left of it, went crashing down. Nevertheless I managed to somehow brew another pot of stew, this time totally different from the previous one. All this happened within a space of minutes. And Lo Behold!!!! There is another freakingly disgusting roach taking a swim in this stew also. Unfortunately there was nothing that night to go with the rice that was cooked. There was absolutely no way that I could cook another side dish, that same night.

As frustrating and irritating it was at that point of time, me and my roomies did manage to see the funny side of it later on. One of the plausible explanation given by one of them was that, probably the 2 roaches were a couple grieving the loss of their kid. Could be possible as the amount of roaches that we kill per day is quite staggering. It might be that the couple wanted to dive into the stew together spoiling one dish. But then realized that spoiling two would be better than one, hence the consequence.

I know sounds quite dumb when I actually put it into words, but the whole incident was really funny. As stupid as the incident and as a result this post might seem, it sure got to my nerves and finally became a thing worth laughing at.

Insanely Useless facts #2

Alright here is the sequel to the earlier post, and this time I have managed to collect quite a few of them. So here goes some useless stuff!!!!!!!!!

1. 'Insomnia Cafe' does that name ring a bell?? Naah I bet none of us would remember a thing like that. But believe it or not that was one alternate title that was considered for the hit television series 'Friends'!!!!
2. It takes about 50 hours for a snake to digest one frog. That is a shade more than two full days. Would solve quite a lot of problems had we taken so long to digest our food!!!!!!
3. The United States of America shreds about 7000 tons of used currency every year. That is a lot of money!!!!
4. The bite of a leech is painless due to its own anesthetic. It will gorge itself up to five times its body weight and then just fall off its victim. Believe it or not the medical uses of leeches dates back as far as 2500 years. Their saliva contains a property that acts as an anticoagulant for human blood. Very caring I must say. Bite --> Apply anesthetic --> medicate --> fall off. Cheap treatment!!!!!!
5. It is quite well known that female mosquitoes are the ones that draw blood and spread disease. In case you have something against them do not bother cursing them. It seems they are deaf!!
6. Even if the stomach, the spleen, 80 percent of the intestines, one kidney, one lung, and virtually every organ from the pelvic and groin area are removed, the human body can still survive. And even if 80 percent of your liver were removed, the remaining part would continue to function. Within a few months, the liver would have reconstituted itself to its original size.
7. Finally the most useless of all facts for this post-- The wiring in my brains are fried. Any electricians out there?????

The world never ceases to wonder me!!!

This has been a pretty dry season for Bollywood. Apart from Kaminey not many movies have made their mark at the box office so naturally there has been a dearth in the number of hindi movies that I have been watching. That did not stop me from watching a really lame and bull crap of a movie titled 'Jai Veeru - Friends Forever' or what ever the lame ass tagline was. This movie is about 2 friends and blah blah blah....oh let me cut the crap and come straight to the point.

There is this particular scene where in one of the guys aims a gun at the other. There is a freak accident and he fires at the other guy. The events that followed were not at all expected. The other hero gets shot in the forehead. I would say on the very top of the forehead. Who in their right state of mind would dream of a hero being shot in the forehead just about 50 minutes into the movie and that too in Bollywood. What followed though was totally expected. This guy makes a miraculous recovery and in within 6 months time resumes duty as a police officer. Yippiee go Bollywood!!! Go Hero!!!!! Who the hell gives a damn about science and modern day technology and facts?????

This actually prompted me to dig into such things and I came up with the fact that 92% of the bullet injuries to the head leads to mortality. This guy was really really lucky to be in the 8% basket. Fine its a movie and people get to use their luck and imagination as they want. No more comments about it. But the most unusual and startling thing that I discovered was that a woman in America somewhere in Mississippi I believe survived a head shot from a .38 caliber handgun. For those of you who do not know what that means its the gun which is very similar to the ones used in our Bollywood movies, especially the ones with the 6 cylindrical slots. Ok now you got the picture!!!!!

An assistant professor of Surgery after examing her stated that there is a space in the brain it seems through which a missile could pass without causing any damage!!!!!!! So that means the 8 out of every hundred person could survive a headshot. But then again the possibility is very less it seems for the missile to pass through that space. Aaaahhh the wonders of nature or should I say the miracles of doctors nowadays.

Well I forgot to mention the funny part of this story. Firstly the woman actually got shot and then made tea for herself and even offered the police officers who came to her place. And the best part is that this lady is American and residing in US and this information was pulled out from a UK newspaper. Its a crazy world out there I tell you!!!! As proof you can go ahead and check out this link for the real story.

P.S--> I had to come back and add this. It was truly one of the most lamest movies I have ever seen. Its a good thing though, that I paid for it with a few hours of my sleep and nothing else, which I am sure a few people are gonna disagree to. And NO it definitely not remotely close to Jai and Veeru from Sholay. Just the names of a few evergreen characters is not enough to attract crowds to the theaters I guess!!!

Insanely Useless facts #1

Yes yes yes I am planning to make this into a series. Will not bother with the sources, but will keep this coming as and when I can. And for people who know about these facts please "go take a hike" ( thats exactly how my sister would word it !!!! )

• Mr P.J.Tierney, father of the modern diner, died of indigestion in 1917. Believe it or not he died after eating in a diner. Thats what I would call a killer idea. Poor guy though!!!
• A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber. A ball of solid steel will bounce higher than one made entirely of glass. Now who in their right state of mind would go hunting for a glass and a solid steel ball to test that out???
• Candlepin bowling uses 10 small pins and 3 balls and is played primarily in the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island. The ball is 5 inches in diameter, made out of rubber and has no holes in them. Anybody up for a game?? , then meet me in Connecticut or Rhode Island in 3 years time!!!!
• Till date man has invented and classified about 50 million chemical compounds and elements. Talk about over working!!!!
• And last but not the very least, a bad breath is likely to induce a bat to bite someone. Yes thats right a giant mammoth bat will bite if you do not brush your teeth. This could be a much better plot for a toothpaste add though compared to the ones that come up now!!!!

Thats if for this time folks!!!!!!!!

With or Without you

The silence grows day by day

As life is thrown in a disarray

I still continue to wait...

With or without you

The deeds of past is catching on

Some coming undone from aeons

Life is still crawling on

With or without you

Fighting the storm raging by

Unable to say the last goodbye

Time still stops by

With or without you

Sleight of hand, the twist of fate

On a bed of nails she is made to wait

And the wait goes on

With or without you

Hands are tied and bodies bruised

Reasons are low to be enthused

Still you give yourself away

With or without you

Nothing to win

Nothing left to lose

And you give yourself away

With or without you

With or without you

With or without you

I cant live

With or without you!!!!!

Inspired by "With or Without you" by U2

"I put int a few lines from the song without any

changes as they were just too beautiful to edit"

A Marvellous Disney World

Comics has always been a part of everybody's lives. Be it the silly antics of Mickey Mouse and Donald Ducks or the really funny fights of Tom and Jerry. There would have been atleast 8 out of 10 people who would have heard about the likes of Spiderman, Superman etc etc. I have been no different. I have been reading comics right from the time I could probably read I guess. Starting from the Amar Chitra Kathas and graduating to the Marvel and DC world. I would even spend hours watching cartoons of the likes of Scrooge McDuck and Talespin.

For those who have no clue about the desi versions of comics, there are dozens of them ranging from Chacha Chowdhary ( The guy whose brain works faster than a computer ) and many more super hero comics. To be more precise there are comics in India under the title Raj comics that present the super heroes of India. Nagaraj ( similar to spiderman, but as the name goes he has everything to do with snakes rather than spiders ), Super commando Dhruv ( the Indian comic book version of James Bond, with the high flying gadgetry ), Doga ( I really do not think that there is an eq uivalent in the western world to him...he is more like the Dog guy who is all chummy with all kinds of dogs..sounds weird but so is the series ), Parmanu ( very much the same as Captain Atom from DC comics ) are some of the Indian heroes to name a few. Comics in India took a real big leap when the series Pavitr Prabhakar was launched by Gotham Entertainment in collaboration with Marvel. It was the Indian version of Peter Parker aka Spiderman. There were many parallels in the comic book series right from the names to the powers of the the hero. The effort to make him look typically desi made the publishers dress him up in a dhoti as well, which came out pretty well. Sadly there were not many issues printed and as far as I have known the project has been shelved ( I could be wrong here).

Wondering why I am talking so much about comics??

Thats because of the hype generated by Disney having taken over Marvel Entertainment Inc. for a cool 4 billion dollars. The flip side of it would be to see heroes like the Hulk, Spiderman, Ironman, Fantastic Four etc with characters like, Tarzan, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Aladdin etc, under the same banner. I am guessing that Marvel entertainment would be a separate division under the Disney banner. Other wise it would be really lame to see mashups like Iron Duck, Spider Mouse or the Fantastic Four comprising of Mickey, Donald, Goofy and Minnie. Does sound very lame when you actually come to think of it.

On an ending note, I would particularly like to mention about The 99. Published and distributed by Tashkeel comics which is of Kuwaiti origins, from 2006. The entire series is based on the 99 different names of Allah. Who ever said that comics was child's play. Neither creating them is easy nor keeping track of them is easy. Going now to read the first version of The 99.

P.S- I have not mentioned a word about the DC universe which holds characters like Superman, Batman and the Justice League. I would rather not start about my favourite characters else the post will become never ending. Hats off to people like Stan Lee ( Spiderman, Hulk, etc ) Bob Kane ( Batman ) Jerry Seigel and Joe Shuster ( Superman ) for having created such comic book legends.

I guess this much of comic gyaan should do for the time being!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happennings Lately

Lately i get a million ideas to write about, but then they all fizz out similar to the soda cans. Nevertheless I would just like to post about some stuff thats been going on lately.

• ->Classes have started and they are well as classes are supposed to be. Little on the boring side and a little on the interesting side. I know I am a little diplomatic.
• ->We had pest control done yesterday. And I am still suffering from the aftermath of it. My room is in a mess and I have got loads of cleaning to do.
• ->On the plus side we cleaned up the kitchen yesterday itself. Well half the kitchen. The other half is still lying on the counters and on the floors.
• ->The real sad part of the affair was during the cleaning process I managed to spill a lot of rice on the floor. And there was no way it could have been utilised, atleast not for edible purposes. I know very clumsy of me. Not that apologising now would get back the rice, but I apologize to the millions of people who do not have a morsel to eat, and here I am carelessly spilling it down.
• ->A couple of days back we played cricket. It was a practice session conducted by our captain. The session was good but the after-session was bad. I got dehydrated and puked and slept the entire day. Something which I am not too proud of, but still a lesson learnt.
• ->I resumed playing raqcuetball yesterday. I thought I had lost touch and presumed that I would suck at the game after not having played for about 3 months. But thanks to my friend with whom I managed to play I realized I played pretty well ( I am just kidding here, thinking that my friend will come and read this ;-)
• ->The saddest part is that I am still hunting for an on-campus job. Sometimes it just gets to me. Not able to figure out if its just my luck or if I really do not have the necessary skills. Well time will tell. As of now I keep hunting.

I really do not know what to title this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The gyrating sound of the hand towel being pulled out of its container, the familiar odour of cooked meat hanging in the air, the sights of sparkling clean floors and the constant drone of announcements cutting through the air. All very familiar indications of stepping back into the U.S. After quite a dull and boring two flights ( from Bangalore to London and London to Chicago ) these were the welcome signs that I received. Sitting at the terminal sipping a really chilled Sprite and gulping down a barrel of finger chips (pretty soon I might give up on these!!!!-----Alright who am I kidding) I wait for my final stretch of flight before I land in Phoenix.

The flight from Bangalore to London was not too eventful. Well there was this particular guy sitting right next to me who was quite curious about H1N1 virus. Funny how nobody seems to be discussing anything much these days apart from the swine flu. "A few hundreds catch the swine flu and everyone is hankering for a mask, but nobody still bothers about wearing a condom when there are millions contracting AIDS". An aptly put line doing the rounds on sms and emails these days. So this particluar guy was bugging the cabin crew guy as to why they are not wearing masks blah blah blah. Ok I have to admit that the guy was a little freaked out because of my sneezing the entire time I was awake. This was because of the really cold full blast air conditioning that was on inside the craft. First look at him and I thought ok decent guy, but then usually such impressions last only till the person in consideration opens their mouth. That was not the first time I felt such a thing. Moving on, the second leg of the journey from London to Chicago was very very uneventful. Apart from the fact that I got a seat next to a pretty hot Romanian chic. Otherwise my running nose ensured that my head was tilted towards the window all the time I was awake, which was only during the times when food was served.

I never realised that there would be a strange sense of happiness on returning back from India. I would say a stupid sense of excitement and thrill crept up when I switched on my phone and saw the AT&T carrier. But all said and done there is still no place like home and it really is a difficult task to leave behind family and all the loved ones. The feeling really grows large during the long walk from the customs till the point of take off.

No One Knows

Behind closed doors
Is where it all happens.
Beneath the labyrinth of contours,
Lies resting behind the curtains.
No one knows what it is like.

A thousand words spoken inside
In moments that happen to flash by.
What all should one confide
Thus the thoughts naturally die.
No one knows what it is like.

The core of the soul sees it right,
Its sister on the other hand denies.
Wish everything was pure and white,
Will the blues ebb away as time flies.
No one knows what it is like.

"No one knows what it is like"!
Is what everyone thinks alike.
There is a burden that all carry,
Which some are unable to bury.
Still no one knows what it is like!!

Life is a Train

This is another topic that has been probably over used by many bloggers around the globe. I want to post my version of it though. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been in quite the philosophical realm lately. Many would have compared their lives to a train making its journey from one point through to another destination. Metaphorically speaking life itself is a journey starting from the time we are born till we peacefully (for the fortunate ones) move on to whatever lies beyond. Every person or rather every passenger who boards this metaphoric train leaves behind some known or unknown impression in ones life(very much similar to the very artistic creations left behind on the restroom door by all the M.F.Hussains of our country who love to portray explicitly worded and picturised acts which are much better restricted within the four walls of the room). These impressions(very much unlike the ones described above) that are left behind by passengers in our lives (metaphorically transfigured to a train) have an impact on us either consciously or sub-consciously.


I remember reading somewhere that every experience in life has a lesson behind it waiting to be grasped. Quite similar to the stations that the train encounters while it meanders through to its final destination. What I really wanted to say after making you read so much of nonsense is simple. There are people whom we meet in life, who are forgotten the minute they are out of sight. Then there are people in our lives who make an impression but eventually just get off at their respective destination. But eventually there are those people who come along with you almost till the end of the journey. I just wanted to thank all those wonderful passengers who have boarded my metaphoric train and made my life as it has been. And for all those of you who have travelled without tickets please do not let me catch you. I charge quite a hefty sum as a fine.


Recently I managed to read a book by Kushwant Singh titled, "The Men and Women in my Life". Have a really big urge to come up with something very very similar to that. I just hope that in case it does happen, I do not turn it into a yellow pages listing!!!!

Chinese Philosophy

Disclaimer: Very philosophical (At least in my comprehension) and full of crap. Navigate to another page right away if not in the mood for some ramblings.

Its been quite a while since I read a book, let alone a really good book. Its also very rare that reading a book makes the cogs in my brain move so much.
I have been reading "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" by Robin Sharma and have been quite impressed with his writings. Many may beg to differ here but there is something in that book that really gives some food for thought. I usually never pick up a book which is non fictious as in one which is not a run of the mill story about some famous, rich guy or this really svelte babe or about a murder etc etc. This one book was quite an exception though.

Somewhere down the line the book mentions about an ancient Chinese philosophy of human's life being reflected in three mirrors. It may not be the exact statement from the book but the gist was pretty much the same. The first one reflects the image of how one sees himself or herself. The second one reflects the image of the person as seen by others. Finally the third mirror reflects the truth. The philosophy may seem quite silly when you think about it. In reality it does hold a very deep meaning. I am pretty certain that the three images would be quite different from each other for most people, except for those highly gifted people who in fact have the same reflection in all the three mirrors. It is actually quite amazing when you think of it. Everybody has a certain image of their own in their own mind.
Nobody would feel that they are less in any way compared to others. The second image is what the others see in a person. This image is merely a part of the image represented in the first mirror. The second image is not projected by the person round the clock. It only appears when people are around him. The bridge between these two images is what actually defines the person which is represented by the third mirror. The actual person's image which is the third one is what defines the truth. This is the bridge that most of us fail to comprehend. The Chinese sure know what they talk about when they make such philosophies. Its actually quite a simple way of describing a person's true characteristics. Now who defines the characteristics is the main question. The person himself or the people around him?

Finally I tried my hand at something philosophical. Real inspiration kinds the book has been to me for the time being. Its said that the brain processes about 60,000 thoughts in a day. That is about 2500 thoughts every hour. A real fast mean projector our brain is portrayed out to be. I am for the time being stuck in the philosophical realm, waiting for my brain to flash by
to a different realm. Till then bear with my all my philosophical bull shit.

Men In White

The men in white are some of the most feared and some of the most dreaded members of the elite band. These people are feared largely by the group of people who own and ride a two wheeler. I am talking about none other than the traffic police department. Its not that every two wheeler owner drive in fear of being caught by these people. But there are quite a few who keep a look out for these men in white prowling on the roads. Once caught they ensure that you cough up some amount of fine. So it is quite necessary to carry all the documents pertaining to one's vehicle.

I am actually narrating a short incident that happened the other day. This is why I had to give such a big build up and a preamble. I was returning with my friend after watching a movie. I got caught by two policemen standing quite well camoflouged at the corner of the narrow alley. I like most of the bikers was not carrying any documents other than my driving license. Naturally I had to come up with a performance good enough to convince him that I have all my documents safely stashed some where and was out in a hurry, hence not carrying them on me. After about fifteen minutes
of convincing him that I do have them and that I would be ready to come and show it to them wherever they would ask me to come, did they finally let me go. It was infact my friend who suggested that they give me a show cause notice ( I swear I had never heard of that notice before ). I believe its a notice which they give and ask them to show their documents at a later time. I do not know how it worked, but the bluff somehow got through to the guy and he finally allowed me to leave without causing any damage on my wallet.

Continuing on the same topic I remember my friend telling about a friend of his or of some acquaintence of his who had a really hilarious encounter with the cops. It seems he was on his way some place on his bike obviously when he was stopped by one of scores of cops camping on unknown corners of the street. Strangely these cops have a habit of slowing the bikers down asking them to come to the side of the road and then they switch off their engines and take away the keys from the ignition. After successfully doing so they just happily walk away from the vehicle leaving the rider stranded there, not knowing the cause of him being stopped.
This mind you is very irritating, and such actions are restricted to a handful of policemen. It is all the more frustrating if the biker has all the documents and has been on the greener side of the law. So coming back to the incident that I was talking about. The policeman happened to have taken his key and walked away from the vehicle. Now I do not know whether the guy was so fortunate or was he just way too clever ( it could well be that this incident is a figment of somebody's conked up imagination nevertheless it is quite funny ). Apparently this guy had a spare key with him at that very
moment and he happily drove his way out of the clutches of the cops. It sure would have been a funny incident to watch.

The Makeover

A new look and feel for my blog. This does look much better than the previous one. I have to agree that the previous look and feel had a mundane and a rather dull look to it. There is nothing special about the blog now, but somehow I get the feeling that this looks a lot more cooler. There seems to be an added zing to it. Or it could well be the figment of my imagination. After all it has been quite sometime I last posted or even had a look at a blog.

I have managed to find time to change the blog address. So apologies to all those people who had added my blog to their blog roll. I doubt that the link will prevail. So if they do get a "blog not found" error message then please overlook it. I did change the name from a stupid, over the top address of "quest4thezenith" to a simple "karthikjanardhanan". I wonder what 'quest' I was thinking about and which 'zenith' I was going to scale. Well I finally did manage to change the address. Makes a lot more sense now, even though the postings do not make much sense. Aah it does feel nice to dish out some sensible nonsense after a long long time. Hoping to blog more often!!!!

The Surrender

The crunching of the leaves, filled the night around

Footsteps followed the tranquilized breeze downtown

The mind in an absolute state of confound

Hoping the serene surround would clear the rebound.

The scent of the fresh soil lingered in the air

The rain drops descended the heaven's stair

It was a moment meant for all to share

But the place was engulfing him in despair.

As the lightning streaked across the sky

He let out a feeble and beaten sigh

The solitary abandonment he wanted to deny

But the beauty of nature seemed to make him defy.

The rippling of the water captured his mind

Fascinated was he to see the land and water entwined

As he made his way across the bridge, to nature resigned

His melancholy now seemed to have pined.

10 things that I have been doing lately!!!

10) I clean up a lot lately. Never before have I wanted things to be neat and clean.
 
09) I think a lot about the future. ( ok to put this more explicitly--> i day dream a lot )

08) I have been visiting my blog more regulary ( at least 2 a week during a certain class hour such as this one )

07) Playing table tennis. Though not on a regular basis but yeah the magic of ping pong is back.

06) Playing leather ball cricket very poorly. Not that I used to play like a pro before, but off late been playing really bad.

05) I play FIFA 2009, Need For Speed Underground and Counter Strike. Games that my previous system would never have supported.

04) How can I not mention the fact that I cook these days. ( How I cook? That I am afraid somebody else has to vouch for. People never believe me when I talk about my culinary capabilities )

03) I study more than I have ever studied in my life. ( OMG!!!!!! you must be kidding me if u believed this. )

02) There are a lot many other things that I do but would rather not mention them here.

01) Last but definitely not the least I sleep a lot. ( zzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ).

Whats in a name ???

Going by the title one could say that what is this guy writing about a used and abused topic. As a matter of fact it has been gleefully ripped and torn apart by many people. Well what the heck let me also join the long list of those people.

I bet this is one situation that many of us find ourselves in, atleast a minimum of ten times as far as their memory lets them rewind. ( Do not go by the statistics that I use, they are never verified ). So the other day I ran into this guy. Lets call the guy "this guy". This is how our conversation went on :-

This guy : "Hey how is it going ? "

Me : "Going good man. How about you?" [ Hhmmnn who the hell is this guy ? ]

This guy : "Good dude. How are the courses this sem? "

Me : "So far so good man. How are yours ? " [ What the hell man where have I seen this guy before? ]

This guy : " The course work is good, not too much of a load so far. "

Me : "Yeah the sem has just started, so its kinda easy as of now." [ Oh man I have absolutely no idea who this guy is ]

This guy : " Yeah i know, its going to get worse gradually "

Me :" Yep" [ His face does look familiar though. What the hell he is in the same university so obviously he will look familiar ]

ME :" Ok I got to go now, will catch you some other time. [ Crap I still do not know his name ]

This guy :"Yeah sure, good luck"

ME :" Thanks same to you" [ Great I keep having this conversation all the time ]

That conversation might be related to quite a few people around this world. As the saying goes, "Whats in a name?". Or is that my saying? Whatever!!!!

I am pretty sure I will be in such situations many more times in the coming future. God help me and the people like me!!!!!!!!!!

The Return and The Re-return

Its been a while since I even visited my blog. Almost 3 months I guess. I believe the title is aptly given. Finally I come up with a title other than "random", "very very random", "Utter-nonsense" and all the other weird names that I have come up with till date, which barely has any connection with whatever is beneath it. 

Barely 4 or 5 months into Masters life and I got the chance to return back to Home Sweet Home. Not many people get such a sweet opportunity to go back home immediately after the first semester. I did though and all thanks to my father. Phew!!! what a relief it was to be back home atleast for a few weeks. None of my friends expected me to come back and every body was in for a surprise or more appropriately a shock. I bet some of them might have wondered that I had given up on Masters and returned back home. Ok that is a little too much to think. 

Anyways that was the return. I had never felt so much better to be back home and to see my family. I wanted time to stop still, but as it happens time flies fast. This is in accordance with the theory of relativity as described by some great person which is anologous to Einstien's. ( P.S- I assume you do know this theory ). The time to come back to Tempe arrived faster than I could have imagined.

The re-return was not too bad actually. Well apart from the fact that I would miss my near and dear ones the journey back to the university was not bad at all. I was scheduled to arrive at Phoenix from Denver. The baggage carts at the airport in Denver was as horrible and bad as one could imagine it to be. The cart kept turning right for who knows what god forsaken reason. It was as if the cart was rigged to turn right even though I was pushing it to go straight. Before that I want to mention something really funny. I was checked at the airport for bringing in cummin seeds ( jeera ). The funny part was only one packet was checked. The remaining packets went un-noticed. Strange reasoning i felt. Ok here comes the funnier part. I was supposed to come to Phoenix by US airways. Because of the dumb trolley that I was pushing I checked into the first counter that I could lay my eyes upon. But then when I enquired about the boarding pass I was told that I had checked into the United Airways counter. I was assured that I would get my luggage in Phoenix. What I assumed was that they would route the luggage to my aircraft as it was tagged all the way from Bangalore. I waited for about 20 minutes at Phoenix airport only to realise that my luggage was not on that flight. Finally after enquiry I was told that my luggage was in another terminal and had come by another aircraft. The tension surrounding me and my luggage which housed a variety of food and snacks. As they say all is well that ends well.

P.S- I guess my standards in blogging has gone plummeting down just like Satyam's market value. Need to improve and need to continue blogging as much as possible.