In Between Lives

Playing host in California

2008-09-02T22:41:00.001-07:00

During the course of my surprisingly long and unpleasantly single life I have played a number of things. I have played cricket, football, golf, tennis, basketball and table tennis – all of them to varying degrees of spectacular embarrassment. I tried to play the tabla and a friend of mine tried to teach me how to play the guitar, but the word “unsuccessful” isn’t strong enough to describe the abysmal depths that I reached. I would like to play the field but I find it remarkably hard to go up to a woman that I don’t know and say something like “Hey. You smell kind of pretty. Want to smell me?” [Line courtesy the cartoon character Johnny Bravo, in case you’re wondering]. However, despite all this playing, I have rarely played host. This is, at least in part because most of the people I know don’t really like me.

All that changed on Friday when three very good friends of mine decided to take a break from dreary old London and visit sunny, glorious, Ganju-infested California. I collected them from the airport and after a quick break at home we headed to Yosemite. As it turns out, all the large, rumbling, painfully slow trucks in the Bay Area had the same idea. It was a pleasant drive.

Fortunately the reward at the end of the drive made it worthwhile. Beauty at Yosemite is one of the few things in life that you can depend on – like the high quality of the songs that Springsteen sings or the inanity of the comments from cricketers turned commentators or the looseness of a stomach after eating gol guppas and tikki chole at Dana Bazaar. Of course since we got there close to midnight and there were three jet lagged investment bankers falling asleep in the car, my energies were devoted to staying awake. The beauty would have to wait.

Next morning we were up bright and early and despite lazing around for a while we were all set to start hiking the ‘Mist Trail’ at 10 am. Since my friends are investment bankers, and as a consequence bound to be unfit I had selected a hike of moderate difficulty. A 12 kilometre round trip which involved gaining (and then giving back) 1,900 feet. As it turns out, I was spot on as far as our relative fitness levels were concerned. Ten minutes into the hike I stopped to take a breath and get my bosom to stop heaving (I’ve always wanted to talk about my bosom) only to find that up ahead in the distance the other three were jauntily skipping up the path, evidently unaware of, and entirely unconcerned by the fact that the path was ridiculously steep. And so, the format of the hike was set. My “unfit” friends would waltz along the path and I would trudge up, looking like I was going to die. They would then stop to wait for me. Ten minutes later I would scramble up, perilously close to collapse. When I would get to them they would ask me in a concerned fashion if I was all right. And in a show of faux bravado I would pull myself up off the ground – heaving bosom and all – and insist that I was fresh as a daisy. So onward we went, onward we went. And when we got to the half way point, the top of Vernal falls I was about as far away from being daisy-like as is possible.

After a half an hour break, during which one of my friends was attacked by a bee the size of a small rhinoceros, we continued with our hike and made our way to the top of Nevada Falls. Unfortunately it’s the end of summer and so both the falls were little trickles as opposed to the full blown torrents they are in the spring, but at least the view was quite beautiful. We decided to be adventurous and take a different route – the John Muir trail – down and we were rewarded with some even more spectacular views of Nevada Falls, which made it worthwhile. More significantly, while I hate walking up, I love downhill hikes. And so, magically I was transformed from a heaving bosomed wreck to a jaunty skipper. That evening, in an attempt to give our (okay, maybe it should be “my”) overworked muscles a break we just lazed around at the hotel and sat in the jacuzzi. Ah, the simple joys of life.

Exhausted - having got to the top of Nevada Falls

Starting our walk down the John Muir Trail. That's Half-dome on the left, Libery Cap in the middle and Nevada Falls on the right

The next day we decided to be less adventurous and drove to Glacier Point. Glacier Point is supposed to have one of the most magnificent views of Yosemite Valley and while I had already hiked all the way up to Glacier Point in May, I hadn’t seen a thing because of the massively thick cloud cover and the heavy snow on that painful day in May. Fortunately this time I got to see all there was to see. I’d use the word magnificent again, but I’ve always used it once in this paragraph.

The view from Glacier point when I went in May ...

... and the same photograph this time round.

More of the view from Glacier Point - Yosemite Valley in the middle and Half-dome on the right

On our way out we stopped by the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias and marvelled at just how gigantic the sequoias were and also at just how rapidly we lost our interest in the trees and decided to drive back to the Bay Area.

As if that wasn't enough the following day, which happily enough was off because it was Labour Day or some such thing, we all piled in to my car and drove to Napa Valley. While I am a minimalist drinker, my friends are the type of people that spend all weekend in a pub, conveniently attributing their behaviour to their attempt to assimilate into popular British culture. I probably shouldn’t have been entirely surprised that they decided to stay on in Wine Country for the next two days!

Taking photographs while my friends taste some wine

And so, after three days of revelry, I bid them a temporary farewell and made my way back to my life. And as I drove back I wondered, when oh when will I escape?

Swimming, weight-loss and other exercises in futility

2008-07-27T16:47:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I decided that it was time I learnt how to swim. I’ve tried on numerous occasions in the past to learn and on each successive occasion my failure has been more spectacular and on a grander scale than the previous endeavour. The nadir was hit a few years ago as I bobbed around like a piece of bloated flotsam in the ebb and flow of the tepid Arabian Sea. I was bobbing, the sea was ebbing (and flowing) and I hadn’t a care in the world. Of course I would have liked to swim, but swim I can’t. So it was really just bobbing and ebbing and flowing on the menu that day. Tragically this rather indolent state of affairs was shaken when an unexpected wave reared up behind me and knocked my lovely glasses off my face, and banished them forever to the murky, sandy, grey-blue underbelly of the sea. And there my attempts to swim came to an end.

However, given that a fair amount of time has passed I decided it was perhaps time to give water one more chance. And so for the last four weeks I have been getting into a swimming pool every Saturday and trying as hard as I can to swim.

Technology has insidiously and irrevocably changed the way we live. I communicate with friends all over the world electronically. I write my diary on a computer. I even do most of my shopping online – books, music, cameras, air tickets and my wonderful blue “ultra comfort” prescription swimming goggles that will hopefully not get washed away quite as easily. I have now decided to take this one step further by trying to learn how to swim over the Internet.

Ah, the joys of being able to see!

Of course I swim with friends and cousins who are nice enough to point out what I do wrong and more importantly what I do right, on the rare occasion that I actually so something right. But most of my theoretical instruction comes from various swimming videos on youtube. Secretly I’m hoping to become the first person to learn how to swim electronically.

The sad thing about hopes is the loud clinking noise they make when they come crashing down. Much as I try I just don’t think I will learn how to swim. I mean I can float (face down) and I can move my arms and legs, but every time I take my head out of water the rest of my body adopts a rapid and linear downward trend. If I were to be traded on a stock market they would describe me as bearish. In effect I can swim perfectly well apart from the fact that I can’t breathe. I am now trying to learn how to inhale by turning my head to the side and that’s just about working. I can manage to swim 12 feet. As I was telling the father, if I get ship-wrecked 12 feet from the coast I’m set. Anything further and I have a little bit of a problem.

As if this whole swimming thing wasn’t enough I have also been trying to play tennis. Every Saturday we start the day with two hours of tennis before getting into the pool. Tennis has been as unsuccessful as swimming; however what makes it vastly more appealing is that if you make a mistake the score goes to 0-15. You don’t actually drown. To be fair to swimming I haven’t drowned, not yet anyway, though I did swallow 6% of the swimming pool last week.

The part I like most about swimming and tennis and the occasional round of golf is that I am now getting much more exercise than I ever have. If nothing else, at least I might control the seemingly wanton expansion of my stomach. The weighing scale indicates that I’m making excellent progress. In the four weeks that I’ve been exercising I’ve gained two kilos.

Life, as they often say, is a lot like a dog of the female persuasion.

To England Again

2008-07-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

On a cold and wintery night in February of 1959 a plane crashed in the shadows of the North American Great Lakes killing Buddy Holly. Twelve years later a singer called Don McLean wrote a song that he called ‘American Pie’. And in this song he paid tribute to Buddy Holly and to the other musicians who were killed on that fateful evening in the light snow of Wisconsin. McLean referred to that evening as “the day the music died”.

It’s been a busy few weeks for me. I suppose the highlight was that I visited England – again. And yes, I know. It’s starting to look like I visit England every alternate Tuesday, but no – life isn’t quite that good. This particular trip had in fact been planned many months in advance. It was the trip in May that had been the “ultra-impulsive, let me burn my meagre savings for no apparent reason because I enjoy being nearsighted and poor” type trip. Heap scorn, if you must, upon the last trip. Leave this one unscathed.

England, as always, was absolutely and completely fabulous. The parents had also made the long trek to Oxford and so I started my vacation with six glorious family days. My nephew remains the superstar and undisputed champion of all my England trips but there’s a tussle for second place between the rest of my family and the doner kebabs in Oxford when it comes to my motives for visiting England. I realise that my friends in London might be a little miffed, but if it helps they were a very close third.

The fun thing about family vacations is that you don’t really need to do anything, apart from the occasional visit to the kebab van, to have a nice time. There is no pressure to visit 1.76 tourist spots per hour and you don’t actually have to click a photograph every few seconds. You just sit around, go for walks, shop a little, consume large amounts of food and wonder why you live so far away from home. Ah the simple pleasures of a simple life.

Oxford's version of the Bridge of Sighs

This simple life was then shelved for a bit and my last two days were spent in surprisingly sunny London. And despite unflattering comparisons with Middle Eastern food it was wonderful to catch up with my friends. Two days really weren’t enough, especially when you throw in a horrendous round of golf (that made me swear never to play again) but I did manage to meet many many friends and eat some wonderful kathi kebabs after a kathi-less year. I would tell you more about the delicious unda shammi kathis but I’m running the risk of letting food take over my life, my blog and the dull grey-blue matter that lies in between.

Flying over Greenland on the way "home"

Of course, the most depressing part of these trips is the sitting on a plane for eleven painful hours and coming “home” to the wrong end of the world. The mild consolation was that I had Wimbledon to keep me company. Wimbledon would provide me with those almost imperceptible, loose links to my happy days in England. But Wimbledon alas, is dead. And may I humbly ask you not to bring it up again?

Yesterday I woke up at six to watch the tennis. Yesterday the tennis didn’t go according to plan. Yesterday I witnessed what I never thought I’d witness. Yesterday, finally I understood what Don McLean was feeling all those years ago when he talked about …… the day the music died.

Snowy, misty, glorious Yosemite (with a dentist thrown in for good measure)

2008-06-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

The problem with this blog is that it makes me sound enthusiastic and adventurous. It makes me sound like a person all set to throw my battered backpack onto my browbeaten back (assuming of course that backs can be browbeaten) and trudge off to explore new and exotic corners of the world armed only with my passport, a pair of underwear in a waterproof pouch and some baby wipes. Alas, nothing could be further from the truth. And while I don’t typically object to inadvertently being portrayed in an exaggeratedly positive light, in this case it did have one entirely unforeseen downside.

A friend of mine having paid careful attention to my blog decided to block out all that she had previously known about me. It helped that she’d been trying to do that from the day she’d met me. And so when she landed in California a few weeks ago she expected that I would be extremely excited at the prospect of hiking in Yosemite. Yosemite, as a great man once concluded, is absolutely beautiful. I loved the idea of visiting it once again. It’s the hike that seemed less appetising.

After a little negotiation, most of which I ended up losing, two weekends ago I found myself in glorious Yosemite once again. We stayed at a charming little Bed and Breakfast just outside Yosemite, and drove in to Yosemite Valley bright and early on a grey and drizzly Saturday morning. Since I was in charge of planning the hike I initially suggested a relatively easy hike – a half kilometre loop around the pizza restaurant. But some research and a wild streak of impulsiveness led us to decide instead on this grueling 16 km hike, rather misleadingly called Four Mile Trail, with a 3,200 foot ascent and descent that would get us to something called Glacier Point which apparently has the most magnificent views of Yosemite.

We started hiking a little before nine in the morning and despite stopping every four minutes we made surprisingly good progress. But since this is my blog it probably isn’t all that surprising that this joy and silent exultation rapidly and irreversibly changed to fear, panic and mental chaos when the steady rain morphed itself first into hail and then into snow as we got higher up. It isn’t that I object to snow, per se – I must confess it really was beautiful. It’s just that we were dressed for a nice pleasant hike in warm and rainy California. An Arctic blizzard was the last thing on our shopping list. However, given that we were more than half way up, onward we walked towards our impending doom. [Actually there was no doom. I just like the sound of that line].

A lovely little spot close to the top

When we finally got to the top, three and a half hours later we were struck by the fact that (a) it was snowing fairly heavily, (b) it was absolutely empty because the road to Glacier Point was closed thanks to the snow [refer point (a)] and (c) despite being promised the most magnificent spectacle that Mother Nature had to offer, all we could really see was a huge grey cloud and a beautifully vivid diagram mockingly showing us what we would have seen, had it not been rainy, cloudy, misty and snowy. And while point (c) was in theory at least rather disappointing we weren’t too upset because points (a) and (b) made the entire place feel quite magical and I found the sub-zero temperatures had slowed my ‘always ready to be slowed’ cognitive processes. So to summarise, despite the rain and the snow and the complete lack of view we really did have a good time.

The diagram shows us what we should be able to see. The cloud was all we actually could see.

Magical, snowy Glacier Point

The following day we drove back into Yosemite and went to something called the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias which had these magnificently massive trees, some of which were thousands of years old. Since it was rainy and we were still tired from the hike we didn’t spend much time there – just enough to take the requisite number of photographs to prove to ourselves that we had in fact been there. Travelling before the invention of the camera must have been a much slower process.

A 2,700 year old tree called Grizzly Giant that is much bigger than what this photograph suggests

The root of an uprooted Giant Sequoia dwarfs the otherwise ample-sized me

Of course the depressing thing about all these little mini-vacations is the getting home bit. As if that wasn’t depressing enough, once I got back I had to go see my dentist again. A few weeks ago I found something dangling in my mouth. In a rare display of decisiveness I went and saw a highly recommended dentist, which is where my life’s happiness ended. The dangling piece in my mouth luckily turned out to be an old filling but that apparently was merely the beginning. After a careful examination the dentist uncovered two more cavities and three other “relatively urgent” procedures that needed to be performed. I have as a consequence spent 6 hours over the last four weeks lying horizontally with an anaesthetised mouth, looking up into a blinding light and saying “Aaaaa” which would seamlessly change to an “Aaaarrgghhh” unpleasantly regularly.

I’d like to ramble on some more about the hike, my tooth and the snow on the hill. But alas the blue packet of palak lying in my fridge expires tomorrow and so cook it, I must. Cook it, I must.

England on a Whim

2008-05-18T01:09:00.001-07:00

Life needs to smell better.

It all started two Thursdays ago when I was sitting in office, just after lunch, continually slapping myself with a wooden ruler in a desperate attempt to look awake, efficient and stream-lined or whatever it is that people who actually get raises and promotions look like. In the midst of all this slapping my sleep deprived mind suddenly processed a rather depressing fact. Apparently in the middle of May, six of my painstakingly (and painfully) earned days of leave were going to lapse. Lapse. As in disappear. Vanish. Like the mint chocolates from my kitchen cupboard. I’d be damned if I was going to let my leave go the way of the chocolates.

I initially considered going to Washington DC. Let’s be honest. I am in America. No amount of denial or eating at Lucky Dhaba or shopping at India Cash and Carry or cooking palak paneer or swearing at my friends in an unpleasantly artificial Punjabi accent will alter the fact that I am in America. And since I have travelled all this way to the country which seriously, and with no attempt at humour or hint of self-deprecation genuinely believes that it is the biggest, brightest, best, most benevolent and in the interest of alliterations ‘beautiful-est’ country in all of class VII-B, the least I could do was visit their capital city. I vaguely considered taking a day or two off and flying there but a $461 ticket for an unplanned weekend seemed extravagant.

Since I was bored [you will recall that it was a sleepy Thursday afternoon] and in the process of digesting my Cheese Enchiladas I decided to, just for the heck of it, check how much tickets to London would cost. British Airways offered me tickets at a very ‘special’ price of $2,730. Virgin Atlantic was even nicer and made me feel more ‘special’. All I would need to give them was $1,710 plus taxes plus a fuel surcharge plus a passenger security fee plus, and here’s where they were really flexible, any internal organ I felt I could part with. Dejected and rather keen to keep my already appendix-less anatomy free from further intrusive extractions I was about to give up when I tried one last website. This wonderful site offered me the very same Virgin Atlantic ticket for a mere $665, which after some amount of mental arithmetic and temporary suspension of the laws of logic and subtraction seemed significantly lower than the ticket to Washington. I now reached a state of near excitement. I could almost smell my freedom – or in this case my escape to England.

At this point I called up a friend in London and the sister in Oxford and asked them, before announcing my intention, what their plans were for the next week. And so having left them with no available escape route, twenty six hours after having first thought about using up my leave, there I was, sitting in seat 41C, watching the stewardess flail her arms about in an attempt to teach us all how to unbuckle our seatbelts and flap our arms really vigorously in the event that the plane lost one of its engines.

Of course I have now spent way too much time talking about the ticket buying process but frankly the “Oh, I may be old and boring, but for once in my life I’m being impulsive” rush was extremely exciting. I suppose, however, it’s time I got to England.

I absolutely and completely love visiting England. It’s not that I love the country per se given that it’s ridiculously expensive (everything costs twice as much as the US and the portions of food are smaller), colder than I’d like it to be, has absolutely awful sausages compared with the fabulous sausages available pretty much everywhere else in Europe and everyone assumes that if you’re Indian, Pakistani or Middle Eastern you either have a van out of which you sell doner kababs and chips or you're a taxi driver. Despite these and other shortcomings I love visiting thanks to the presence of some wonderful friends in London and family that I’m very close to, in quaint and quiet Oxford.

Trying desperately to get into the same frame as Big Ben

Over four days in London I managed more socialising than what typically gets done in a month, ate and drank until I was bursting, flirted with women after what seems like an eternity [California has no single women at all. As in not one single woman. I’ve looked everywhere, including behind the wooden cabinet. But no, not a single single woman.] and generally sat around with friends who I love deeply and talked incessantly about nothing at all. It was a fabulous four days.

London Eye by the river

A solitary boat bobs up and down on the Thames

On my fourth and final day in London, as all my friends got back to their fancy investment banking jobs where they bought and sold companies for fun, restructured debt instruments during their lunch break and helped control the slow decline of LIBOR [London Interbank Offer Rate, I believe] on the way home, I involved myself with more simple pleasures. After a long time I spent all day just being a tourist. I walked all over central London [Google maps’ distance calculator tool tells me I walked 13.5 km], took photographs, did some shopping, ate when I was hungry and allowed the frenetic vibe of the city to wash over me. In case I haven’t already mentioned it, it was a good four days.

Trafalgar Square on my sight-seeing day

I then made my way to the wonderfully charming city of Oxford and spent another four days just relaxing with family. I have the single most adorable nephew in the history of the universe and I spent many happy hours talking to him and getting to know him and his constantly evolving personality a little better.

Wonderful Oxford

And then, after a week that came remarkably close to perfection I was forced to tear myself away from friends and family alike and make my way back to this, my temporary place of residence that I suppose I ought to call home. I open the window and fervently hope that the all pervasive smell of despair wafts away on the gentle breeze.

Life, as I said a short while ago, needs to smell better.

Blackjack in Las Vegas and a Nightclub called Tao

2008-04-25T21:02:00.001-07:00

I suppose it’s my long and unblemished record of being extremely dull and boring that always causes people to gasp in surprise when I tell them that I love Las Vegas. Love for Las Vegas is typically associated with men who wear bandanas, have tattoos of machine guns on their biceps or at the very least whistle at women as they walk by. I’m rather happy to report that I don’t quite fit that image. But that doesn’t change the fact. I do love Las Vegas. Love for Vegas having been established, I believe it is time to move on with this narrative.

The Paris Hotel

Two weeks ago five of us decided to go spend a weekend at the wonderful Venetian hotel and drink in the sights, sounds and spectacles on offer in this strange little city in the middle of the Mojave Desert. We got there on a Friday evening all set to “boogie” or whatever it is that cool people do. Despite its image, Las Vegas is apparently a relatively formal place and so, much to my consternation, I was forced to wear shirts on both the evenings. Since I absolutely refuse to iron two additional shirts on any given weekend, the following week I worked from home twice, to "save" two shirts and to ensure that equilibrium was maintained. But as always I’m getting lost in my own inane tales. Where was I? Ah yes, so on Friday night after having eaten dinner at one of those magnificently elegant places which make you want to stand ramrod straight, speak in a ‘propah’ British accent and then inspire you to cower in trepidation with tears uncontrollably streaming down your face as the bill arrives, we went to what is apparently the most “happening” night club in Vegas. Something called Tao, which conveniently enough was in the Venetian, so we didn’t have to wait in a painfully long line for an inordinately large man dressed in a black suit to look us up and down and decide if we were hot enough to get in.

A copy of Venice's Rialto bridge at The Venetian

I’m not exactly a nightclub person. My perfect evening would involve large amounts of good food, pleasant music, and interesting company and if I’m being a little demanding, India beating Australia in a test match at Perth. Perfection is of course hard to come by but I’m willing to make do with palak paneer and rice in front of the television. There isn’t, in case you haven’t already noticed, any room whatsoever for nightclubs. Anyway. As we walked into Tao we were plunged into a world of near darkness, ridiculously loud music and what can only be described as a horde of people. If it wasn’t for two women dressed only in strategically placed flower petals dancing in a bathtub and a number of strange women rubbing up against me on the dance floor I would have been certain that Tao was the Las Vegas franchise of hell.

The roof of the lobby at The Bellagio

Having managed to survive both the dinner and the torrid experience so flippantly called a nightclub we made our way back to our room and happily I watched India dismantle South Africa, swearing to never again leave the side of my cricket-spewing computer. That resolve, alas, was set not to last. The main attraction of Las Vegas for me, and again this invariably causes raised eyebrows amongst my friends, is blackjack. When I was last in Vegas, five years ago, I had played blackjack without having a clue as to what I was doing and despite at times causing the dealer to laugh, for a few brief but happy moments I was actually making a small profit (which needless to say, disappeared rather quickly). This time I had no intention of allowing luck to play any role in my blackjack and so I had spent many hours carefully learning ‘Blackjack basic strategy’.

I could, at this point, tell you about the casinos we went to, the various blackjack games I played or how I manfully tapped the table and said “Hit me”. Or I could save us all some time, effort and emotional upheaval by jumping straight ahead to the point where I was curled up on the floor of a casino, rocking myself gently, beseeching god to magically appear and give me back my money and while he was at it, a girlfriend, a better job and a fancy sports car wouldn’t be unpleasant either.

Blackjack tables at The Venetian

The excitement of blackjack having vapourised rather quickly, we were left with no option but to turn our attention to the other attractions of Las Vegas. Fortunately there were quite a few things to do. We watched a wonderful show called The Beatles: Love, ate some delicious food and watched these extremely cool musical fountains at the Bellagio.

The Musical Fountains at the Bellagio

And after packing in a month long vacation into 48 hours we were rather unsurprisingly utterly exhausted by the time we got back home. Next morning as I headed to work, I gloomily thought back to Las Vegas – the fancy hotels, the surreal casinos, the amazing food and the glitzy lights. But ever so imperceptibly, ever so gently this sense of quiet contentment started to envelop me. And ever so slowly I started to smile.

My day may be a little dull, my work a little uninspiring. But at least, thank goodness, I didn’t have to deal with a nightclub.

A Tooth, a Rock and a Second Encounter with Springsteen

2008-04-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

I’m particularly distraught because I recently lost one of my wisdom teeth.

It isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. I have two wisdom teeth that I keep on my Malm 4 Drawer Chest (Medium Brown) inside my walk-in closet [I keep the other two in my mouth]. I’m not sure why I keep them on my chest of drawers. All I know is that once I had been through the excruciating pain of a little dentist in ‘Bengalooru’ reaching up into my mouth and tugging and pulling and pushing and prising and almost hanging from my tooth on not one but two separate yet equally unpleasant occasions I thought I deserved a medal of some sort. Apparently the ‘out patient department’ at St. John’s Hospital was unfamiliar with such requests. As a consequence I had to make do with my two half-eaten wisdom teeth.

So these two wisdom teeth that live in my walk-in closet have fairly decent lives. They travel in my suitcase to most of the places that I go to and return to their rather indolent lives once I’m back. I don’t ask much of them and they in turn aren’t too demanding. Tragedy struck when last week I discovered that one of them was missing and the other was understandably looking forlorn. The missing tooth is either behind the chest of drawers, which is painfully heavy to move, or has been stolen by Jose’s Cleaning Services. I’m not sure what to do about it, but if you see a tooth – about 15 mm long, of the wisdom variety, white and shiny on one side and decaying on the other – do let me know.

My sole remaining wisdom tooth (not counting the two in my mouth)

After the pain and sadness of losing my tooth, the weekend offered much needed respite. Alas the respite on offer was shunned in the vain pursuit of exercise. So off I headed to a place called Planet Granite to indulge in a spot of indoor rock climbing. Unfortunately indoor rock climbing is exactly what it sounds like. You walk into a door that looks like any other door in a world full of doors and that’s when things take a steep downward turn. Once inside you are faced with multiple walls between 40 and 50 feet high that look like sheer rock faces. They are covered with little multi-coloured stones that are to be used as hand and foot holds in the process of hauling yourself 40 or 50 feet up with no promise of reward, no medal - not even a half decayed wisdom tooth.

The climbing surprisingly enough wasn’t scary – you’re always tethered to a rope that is connected via a pulley to a person who stands on the ground and is called a belayer. I was a popular belayer with my friends, partly because my belaying technique was fresh and effective since I had just taken the belaying course, but more so because I offered a significantly higher counter balancing weight than anyone else there. I tried to take that as a compliment.

Despite my abysmal fitness levels I actually managed a few of the very easy climbs but the climbing process was made just a little tougher by my colour blindness. The way it works is that the hand and foot holds that can be used as a part of a particular climb are distinguished from other similar looking stones based on colour. It’s an extremely unappetising experience to be hanging on to a little orange stone, praying for your life, and wondering whether the grimy little stone next to your now removed appendix was at one point of time in its distant past painted a dull shade of orange.

Despite the experience I vaguely considered the idea of going back. I would have considered it some more if I hadn’t been roused the following morning from my otherwise restful slumber by an unexpectedly strong pain in my forearms. Evidently my forearms have muscles in them. Even more evidently they haven’t been used for a while.

And finally, after many many years of listening to and loving Bruce Springsteen’s music, this weekend I managed to watch him play live for the second time in the space of a few months. This time it was even more amazing because we managed to get floor tickets and were about 40 feet away from him as opposed to the 1.73 km last time. The music was fabulous, Springsteen was amazing, and as I sang along with his wonderful voice ever so fleetingly a rare thought popped into my mind. It was something along the lines of, “Ahhhh. Perfection!”

The amazing amazing experience of watching Springsteen play live
[Photograph courtesy the cousin]

Social Jousting at the Airport and Other Stories from Austin

2008-03-02T17:38:00.000-08:00

I have a friend. No seriously, I do. I realise it might be a little hard to believe but I’m telling you I do. Anyway – we’re getting side tracked. So I have this friend and two weekends ago, I decided to go meet her in Austin. I got there on Friday night, and there she was at the airport, looking very excited in general but not particularly excited when she caught sight of me. I began to suspect that over email she might have mistaken me for someone else and wasn’t expecting me. This suspicion was furthered when she smiled at me cheerily and said “Oh hi, what are you doing in Austin?” I looked at her warily and told her that I was there to see her as planned. At that point she collapsed into a heap and came up coughing. I think I caught sight of a few tears as well. She later insisted that it was the remnant of a cold she had had and of course she was ‘just kidding’ when she asked what I was doing in Austin. I’m trying to believe her, but personally I’m still unconvinced.

A river in Austin called 'Town Lake' - I really don't know why

To her credit she recovered from this body blow manfully, and proceeded to show me a wonderful three days in Austin. Austin incidentally is the capital of Texas, which may come as a surprise because (a) no one’s really heard of Austin and (b) Texas doesn’t seem like the kind of place that would have a capital. You imagine Texas with large steaks, men in cowboy hats playing with their branding irons and women named Debbie having rather a good time in places called Dallas but you don’t really think of a capital. Or at least I didn’t think of a capital. Anyway.

The Texas Capitol Building

Austin was surprisingly nice. It’s this little university town and has a wonderful feel to it. Over the three days we watched movies, drove around town, visited nice coffee shops and bars and met with some of her friends. In an attempt to be cultural we even watched a play. Now I’m all for plays especially if someone else makes all the effort and I just need to show up. [As I type this I realise that this sort of preference is not limited to just plays. It applies to pretty much anything that involves social activity. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that I typically relate to the word ‘friends’ in its singular form. But yet again I digress.] However it wasn’t quite that simple.

In front of University Tower

Apparently I was required to 'dress up for this play which meant wearing a shirt. I should point out that in the good old ‘Bengalooru’ days I used to wear shirts pretty much every day. When I don’t need to iron shirts I’m extremely pro-shirt. It’s just that in this blessed country, every shirt I wear eats up 16 minutes of the following weekend as I struggle to tame its unwieldy folds and creases under the calming influence of my iron. And so after much grumbling I agreed to wear not just a shirt but also a pair of nice trousers (more ironing - sigh). Once we got to the play we found that the ‘auditorium’ was approximately the size of my walk-in closet and seated about thirty people. Everyone else was Caucasian, in their early to mid eighties and dressed in jeans and t-shirts so we fit right in. On the bright side the play was excellent and that made up for everything else. Well almost everything. I still refuse to iron my shirt and in order to postpone the inevitable I have conveniently forgotten my shirt in Austin.

While in Austin we also went to this wonderful place called the Alamo Drafthouse which is a movie theatre where they serve you food and alcohol while you watch the movie. I am still reminiscing about the chocolate milk shake I had there. We watched Juno, which I really liked and to be honest completely related with. Well not completely inasmuch as I wasn’t pregnant when I was sixteen. One of the reasons why I wasn’t pregnant at sixteen is that it is biologically impossible. Or at least I thought so. For some reason that remains an elusive mystery to me, for the last three months I have been receiving a magazine which I didn’t subscribe to but leads me to question this previously firm belief. The magazine is sent to me, to my current address and it doesn’t look like a promotional magazine. It’s almost as if I had subscribed to it and forgotten about it completely.

I’m just wondering why I subscribed to ‘Working Mother’ magazine.

My latest copy of 'Working Mother' magazine

Pain, Nightmares and an Inadvertently Purchased Enema Set

2008-02-10T18:32:00.000-08:00

There are times in my life when exciting things are happening, like moving to a new part of the world, visiting cloud forests in Central America or hiking in Patagonia. On the other hand there are times when nothing seems to be happening, life seems to be growing monotonous and all I can think of is how I've inadvertently bought an enema set. Yes, it’s been that sort of a week.

It all started with a bit of pain in my right shoulder, right arm and right wrist. In order to assuage this pain I made my way to Safeway and searched the aisles for a hot water bottle. When I asked the people there they thought I was looking for a thermos and so I gritted my teeth and continued my eventually unsuccessful search. I then decided to check at Long’s Drugs and this time since I was determined to get what I had come for I was undeterred by the blank stare on the face of the salesperson at the term “hot water bottle”. I proceeded to indulge in a strange charade where for some reason, known only to my then pain tormented mind I acted out the process of filling a bottle with hot water, screwing on the cap, enjoying the warm sensation of the bottle and using it to soothe my painful shoulder. Remarkably it worked. The salesperson in question said “Ah, you mean a heating bottle” as if I had previously asked for a yellowy pink bungee jumping nostril plug by mistake. I guess this is what life and growing up is all about – miming the act of shoulder fomentation and overcoming the immense urge to fling at an annoying and supercilious salesperson a newly acquired hot water bottle (or for that matter a yellowy pink bungee jumping nostril plug).

The now enlightened salesperson then took me to the appropriate section of the shop and handed me the only hot water bottle available and we both tried to recover from this unseemly episode. It is only when I got home that I discovered much to my shock and horror that the box said Goodhealth Combination Douche, Enema and Water Bottle System. I didn’t know what ‘douche’ meant (tragically enough I knew exactly what enema meant) and so checked online to find that “A douche is a device used to introduce a stream of water into the body for medical or hygienic reasons”. I’m not usually an emphatic person, but I find the need to state rather emphatically that there will be no, I repeat NO introduction of streams of water for any reason whatsoever into my body.

Having unpacked the box I found strange hooks, tubes, screws and other assorted weapons of rectal invasion that sent shivers down my lower spine. That night I did manage to use the hot water bottle but on what could be a related note I had a recurring dream of a rubber tube trying to introduce streams of water into my body.

I’m happy to report that the pain in the shoulder now seems a little better. The nightmare however shows no signs of abating.

The contents of the nightmare inducing box.

My Experiments with Superglue

2008-01-21T20:08:00.000-08:00

I have this mortal fear of superglue. There are a number of stories of people sticking assorted body parts, invariably embarrassing body parts, either to other body parts or to an inanimate object which would undoubtedly make life difficult. I can’t, for instance, begin to imagine what it would be like to have my shiny toaster permanently affixed to my left thigh.

It was with this and other fears in mind that I approached the little tube of superglue with much trepidation. You see I have this jacket. And from this jacket two buttons had fallen off. And while I’m sure there is a more elegant solution to a fallen jacket button than sloshing on superglue I must confess I couldn’t think of one. Surrounding myself with a large number of paper napkins I laid my jacket on a table, muttered a quick prayer, held my breath and carefully squeezed the tube of glue. With furrowed brow I watched the tube, the jacket and the errant button but nothing seemed to happen. Only then did I notice that the tube I was using was still sealed. At this point I remembered to exhale.

Having fetched the open tube from the cupboard I repeated the process and this time I covered the little button with superglue and pressed my jacket down on the button. I know that you’re supposed to hold it down for a few minutes but I was anxious and so, gingerly I lifted the jacket flap only to find that I had over-filled the button and so instead of sticking the button to the jacket flap the superglue was instead actively sticking together the two flaps of my jacket. Mortified at the prospect of converting my jacket into a poncho I quickly pulled apart the jacket flaps and began to dab the excess superglue with one of the many paper tissues I had on hand. I’m not sure if you’ve ever been overcome by the urge to dab superglue with a tissue. If you have, well I would strongly advise you to resist the urge. You see some tissue particles at this point decided to side with the superglue instead of the rest of the tissue and so my now gluey jacket flap was covered with a fine layer of brown tissue. At this point I could have tried to remove the tissue particles with a knife but I didn’t like the idea of having a knife stuck to my jacket and so manfully I stood and watched as the tissue paper forever attached itself to my jacket. Once the superglue had dried I decided to try and scrape off some of the tissue-y parts of the superglue-cum-jacket and to make an unpleasantly long story a little bit shorter I now have a strange, messy blotch on my jacket. And here I would like to end this sordid tale of the jacket, the button the superglue and the tissue.

And if you ever bring this up again I promise I will superglue your eye shut.

The mess I created on my lovely jacket. Sigh.

A Vacation in Costa Rica: A City, a Cloud Forest and a Rental Car to Remember

2008-01-01T20:38:00.000-08:00

Over the last few months a number of people have told me how wonderful Costa Rica is, and so when my parents decided to come visit me I thought it would be a great opportunity for all of us to go take a look at it. Sunnyvale, California for all it’s redeeming qualities typically holds one attention for between seven and seven and a half minutes. By the eighth minute you are already planning your exit. And so on Christmas day we all made our way to Costa Rica.

We changed flights in San Salvador, which is the capital of El Salvador. I know absolutely nothing about El Salvador except for the fact that in 1969 they went to war with neighbouring Honduras over a football match. And I thought I was the only one who took sport too seriously. The airport at San Salvador was small but clean and rather reminiscent of a hospital in India. Well a hospital with shops. And of course aeroplanes. And without any doctors, patients or hairy nurses called Binsy [I’m not making Binsy up. When I had my appendix removed in 2002, through all the pain I remember that there was a malyali nurse called Binsy. And she had hairy arms.] But apart from that it was just like an Indian hospital.

The hospital-like airport at San Salvador

After six rather long hours in San Salvador we caught our flight to the Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose, Costa Rica [Juan Santamaria is a hero in Costa Rica. In the 1850s when Costa Rica was fighting the North Americans he successfully set an inn on fire killing many of them. He was mortally wounded but now is an important part of Costa Rican history]. We then made our way to this little hotel which I had found on the Internet and it was all very depressing. For starters this was the only room available in the hotel and as a consequence it wasn’t very nice. We then went for a walk and not knowing exactly which roads to avoid we walked into some of the most depressing roads I have ever seen. I was quietly wondering why so many people had recommended Costa Rica and I figured they were all from the ‘first world’ and found this backward squalor fascinating. We however have lived our entire lives in India and as a consequence find little joy and beauty in squalor – backward, forward or anywhere in between. Fortunately we quickly found our way to the nicer part of town and we breathed a collective sigh of relief. We then spent a day and a half walking around San Jose. While San Jose isn’t a very small city, we were staying very close to the centre of town and everything that I had seen on various websites and in guide books were within walking distance.

Various portrayals of Juan Santamaria. No one knows what he really looked like.

The courtyard in the hotel

The Teatro Nacional (National Theatre) in the nicer part of town

On our second day in San Jose we happened to catch a carnival. The carnival consisted of a huge number of cow boys and a few cow girls riding their horses down the main road in San Jose. It was also really interesting to watch how things worked. A cow boy, all of whom were clearly admired, would ride up to the side and then would ask a hot girl if she wanted a ride on his horse. The girl in question would squeal in delight and clamber onto the horse in a most ungainly fashion. Her father would look on smiling benevolently and her mother would try to hide her panic with a half hearted smile. A few minutes later the girl was deposited back to her parents and the carnival went on. My camera unfortunately did only a moderately good job of capturing the audio and visual aspects of the carnival. And unfortunately it was entirely incapable of allowing me to share the rare bouquet of beer and horse manure on offer.

The fuzzy audio-visual experience of the carinival

A church in San Jose

On the third day we set out for Monteverde. Monteverde is a little town about 150 km from San Jose which has some wonderful cloud forests. The really interesting thing about Monteverde is that it straddles two continents. Within a few kilometres of each other you can find the vegetation and eco-systems of North and South America. Of course all vegetation looks the same to me – but apparently to ecologists this is quite fascinating. I suppose I would be fascinated if I found a left arm chinaman bowler who could also bowl right arm off spin with equal proficiency but it wouldn’t matter quite as much to the ecologist. But I am jumping ahead. Dreams of cloud forests, ecology and straddling continents were still some way away. We first needed to get there. To get to Monteverde we decided to be adventurous and rent a car.

The problem with the world as it is today is that there are too many ideas, opinions and view points. Every person seems to have a carefully crafted individual perspective on every conceivable topic and the phenomenon of a consensus seems to have been lost around the time that we lost the unwired world where knowledge and instant expertise used to be more than just a series of clicks away. As a consequence I should have been rather happy to find that there was in fact one thing everyone agreed upon – when you rent a car in Costa Rica you have a high chance of getting robbed. I wasn’t.

When we got to the car rental place we were told the same story. It is quite common for people to identify tourists and then slash a tyre on their car. They then drive up behind you and offer to help when you stop to change the tyre. Once they have you engrossed in the tyre changing (for who would not be engrossed in changing a slashed tyre on a Costa Rican highway?) their partners drive up and rob your car. While I often disregard such warnings, it was widespread and consistent enough for me to pay heed to it. However once I was in the car and we started driving I tried to forget about it and headed towards the highway. This state of happy forgetfulness was not set to last. Within three kilometres there we were, parked on the side of the road with a flat tyre and a ‘helpful’ Costa Rican driving up to us and saying “I Mechanico, I mechanico.” Having politely declined his generous offer to help we drove back to the rental place where they confirmed that the tyre had been slashed and changed it for us. And so an hour late and with spirits considerably dampened we were once again on our way to Monteverde.

After the initial adventure the drive to Monteverde was relatively free of excitement apart from the fact that I desperately needed to use the loo. It didn’t help that the last 30 km are unpaved since they do not want too many tourists to visit Monteverde and ruin the ecological balance. While I’m all for ecological balance each bump on the unpaved road took its toll on my bladder and when we finally got to the hotel I breathlessly burst in to the reception and said “Hi, I have a reservation here, but first can you please tell me where the bathroom is?”

Monteverde was very nice and we took a guided tour of the cloud forest reserve. Having spent most of my life in urban India a cloud forest is the diametric opposite of my natural surroundings. As a result it was quite amazing to walk through the forest and look at the various trees, plants, animals and birds that the guide showed us. We even saw a bird called the Quetzal which is in large part responsible for the commercialisation of Monteverde. In 1983 the National Geographic magazine ran an article where they mentioned that Monteverde was the top place to see the Quetzal causing hordes of tourists to make their way there. And it is to keep back these hordes that all the roads to Monteverde remain unpaved.

A leaf eaten away by insects and catepillars

A Quetzal photographed through the guide's telescope

After a day and a half in Monteverde we drove back to good old San Jose and despite the rental car making all sorts of rattling noises we managed to make it back, all along resolving never to rent cars again in Central America.

The beautiful countryside on the way back to San Jose

On the final morning we used our last few hours in San Jose to visit the Museo del Banco Central (Central Bank Museum) which had an excellent pre-Columbian gold exhibition as well as a Numismatic exhibition. It was all extremely interesting and an excellent way to end our vacation.

Gold artifacts at the pre-Columbian Gold exhibition

I guess when I think about it Costa Rica really was very nice. Pleasantly enough it is a country full of pretty girls – which is always a good thing. The only drawback was that I could not freely use my Spanish. You see I have a vast Spanish vocabulary of 17 words (which was surprisingly useful on a few occasions). Within these 17 words I am most comfortable with Hola (Hello) and Cuanto Cuesta (How much). My big fear was that I would smile at a pretty girl and instead of saying “Hola!” I would let out a “Cuanto Cuesta?”

The pretty girls alas remained un-greeted.

Shabu-shabu, Decorative Sand and Orange Towel Fibre on my Face

2007-12-16T19:21:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday I had shabu-shabu food and since then whenever I have a quiet moment to myself I involuntarily say “Shabu-shabu.” In order to try this shabu-shabu food, which incidentally is a Japanese cuisine where they place a boiling pot of water in front of you and then make you do all the hard work, I drove 35 km to San Mateo. San Mateo is a small little town which you really shouldn’t have heard of but apparently everyone else has. As a consequence I had to spend way too much time looking for parking. When I finally found a spot I discovered that I didn’t have enough coins for the parking metre and so I drove to a parking garage. These parking garages usually take currency notes and credit cards. Once I parked my car I went to the “Pay Machine” and discovered that it didn’t take credit cards. Even more happily, while it accepted notes it refused to give you any change. Irritated because if I had change 75 cents would have sufficed, I put in a $5 note but the machine spat it back at me. Apparently I was paying for 20 hours of parking, which exceeded the time limit. I was now unsurprisingly getting late for my shabu-shabu lunch and so I looked around to see if anyone could help. Fortunately I saw a lady and rushed up to her and asked for change. She had two $1 notes and I told her it was fine since I was in a hurry. Unfortunately she wasn’t in a hurry and said she couldn’t possibly take $5 in exchange to $2. I assured her it was all right but she was adamant. Evidently she had all afternoon to chat about this and reach a mutually agreeable solution. The shabu-shabu was now in serious danger of not getting consumed. I finally promised her that I would come to her shop and collect my remaining $3 once I had ‘shabu-shabu-ed’. It was all very trying.

Once I got to lunch I was greeted by my friends, but more significantly by the boiling pot of water. I was then presented with a plate of raw vegetables and some thinly sliced beef. The idea was to boil the meat and vegetables and then consume them after dipping them in various sauces. I am not usually very adventurous when it comes to food, but I had seen this on a travel show and it had looked very promising indeed. Excitedly I set about my shabu-shabu and shovelled all the ingredients into the pot. Unfortunately this is where the excitement ended. You see I had been given a pair of chopsticks. And I can’t use chopsticks to save my life. I can’t really think of a life threatening situation that would be averted with the dexterous use of a nimble chopstick, but you never really know. Anyway. So there was my food, floating around in this boiling cauldron as I sat armed with my chopsticks, trying desperately to fish it all out. Finally, I gave up and asked for a fork. At this point you might be saying to yourself “Ah so he got his fork and ate his shabu-shabu.” Alas not. It wasn’t quite time to shabu-shabu. If you haven’t tried retrieving assorted vegetables from a boiling pot of water aided only by a little fork you have absolutely no idea of how difficult it is. After watching this apparently comical performance for a while (and probably video taping it for his friends) the guy at the counter, in a moment of rare pity, handed me a pair of tongs. By the end of the meal I had the entire cutlery collection of the restaurant in front of me, while little bits of vegetable continued to float tauntingly about in the water. The line between afternoon meal and public humiliation has never been quite as blurry.

After this, the longest lunch in the history of shabu-shabu, I made my way back to my little apartment. While I really do like my apartment, and try my best to keep it neat and tidy I don’t exactly clean it as often as I should. Apparently you’re supposed to vacuum your bedroom every alternate day. Some people are a little nicer and advise a weekly vacuum. I however only aimed at vacuuming once every two weeks. It turns out that I narrowly missed my target. In the last 6 months I’ve only vacuumed once. I decided that enough was enough and so in another unpleasantly rapid step along the slippery path of growing up I engaged the services of Jose’s Cleaning Services to clean my apartment once a fortnight. Jose’s Cleaning Services’ method of operation borrows heavily from the elves that helped the shoemaker. I go to work in the morning – leaving behind my neat, tidy but slightly ‘un-vacuumed’ apartment. When I return in the evening everything in my apartment, everything – carpets, counters, floors, taps and even my toaster – is magically clean and gleaming. I was stunned to find that my bathtub didn’t actually have a brown, artistic design on it and the taps in the loo were actually shiny silver as opposed to a dull copper. It was all very exciting.

Look at how shiny the bathroom fittings are! If you look carefully enough you can even see a reflection of my dangling camera strap.

This home improvement endeavour did not end at Jose’s Cleaning Services. Since I wanted to enliven my apartment I made my way back to Ikea and bought three vases of varying shapes and sizes to put in my living room. Some people believe in things like meditation, yoga and silent prayer to achieve true self-realisation. I just go to Ikea. Each trip to Ikea helps me uncover yet another hitherto unknown facet of what is turning out to be quite an interesting self. For instance, I never quite realised that I was the kind of person that would appreciate decorative sand. If you had asked me, prior to my latest trip to Ikea, if you could interest me in some decorative sand I would, in all likelihood, have condescendingly scoffed at you. I might even have followed it up with a sharp, cutting one liner, something like “Phahh!” [Don’t miss the exclamation mark at the end of the “Phahh!” That’s what adds the oomph.] I was until fairly recently rather certain that sand – decorative or otherwise – had its place on beaches, in the construction industry and possibly in living rooms of people with sophisticated names like Genevieve, Jean-Pierre or maybe even Melba. But here I am, a self-confessed ‘sand phahh-er’ sitting in my now vacuumed apartment and looking adoringly at my vase with its red and black decorative sand. It really is very nice.

The wonderful decorative sand sitting quietly by the lamp.

And one final note on Ikea. Some time ago I had bought some new towels from Ikea. I particularly liked the orange one and decided to inaugurate it. The inauguration however turned ugly when three hours into my office day I visited the bathroom only to discover my stubble covered in a multitude of little orange fibres.

And all along I was wondering why the hot girls were looking at me.

To Patagonia and Back!

2007-12-03T19:02:00.000-08:00

Some people spend their money on big, ostentatious houses with private swimming pools. The less wise people choose to buy fancy sports cars. The really silly people blow large sums of money on luxurious cruises where all they do is lie back, relax and watch the world go by while casting intermittent furtive glances at attractive women in skimpy clothing. But if look hard, really really hard you might just find a group of eight people, eight otherwise sensible, relatively intelligent people, who choose to spend their money travelling to the end of the world, placing all their worldly belongings on their respective backs and walking 70 km in four days. And yes. Yes yes. I am in fact guilty of being one of those eight people. I might during the course of the hike have thought that I was in jail, but the loud clanging emanating from my now empty bank account repeatedly reminded me that not only was I there voluntarily, but evidently I had paid to be there. The silver lining, albeit slightly tarnished, is that I can now honestly say that I survived what is called the W-Trail. And since I’m too exhausted – physically and mentally – to actually say it out loud I’ve bought myself a t-shirt to say it for me. But as is my wont I am jumping ahead. And so I shall now try and rewind to close to where it all started.

It was two Saturdays ago that I crossed the equator for the first time in my life and visited the southern hemisphere [Quick digression: A few weeks ago I realised that since I was going to the southern hemisphere for the first time I must drain a sink each in California and in Chile and observe the difference. Theory suggests that in the southern hemisphere a draining sink creates a clockwise vortex; in the northern hemisphere the vortex rotates anticlockwise. I’m sad to report that the experiment was a failure because (a) when I drained a sink at home it just went straight down suggesting, rather eerily, that my apartment is bang on the equator and (b) I forgot to drain a sink when I was in Chile.]. After changing flights in Miami and Santiago and spending a day and a half travelling we finally got to Punta Arenas and fortunately we were all too tired to debate whether or not we were in the world’s southern-most city.

The Andes from the air

The following day we all stuffed ourselves into a little mini-bus and after stopping for a short while at the Seno Otway penguin colony to, rather unsurprisingly, see the penguins we drove 400 km to this national park called Torres Del Paine (Paine is pronounced ‘pie-knee’). In the midst of the vast open grasslands that form large parts of Patagonia, Torres Del Paine is an oasis teeming with beautiful lakes, rivers and streams, big icy glaciers and magnificent snow capped mountains. There is rare pleasure to be found in standing on a hillside looking out to a lovely blue lake which has little rivers running into it, a glacier in the background and not another human being in sight. Of course an even rarer pleasure is getting lost in the beauty of what lies before you when a sudden gust of wind upwards of 80 kilometres an hour appears out of nowhere and tries its best to blow you off the narrow path on which you have precariously balanced yourself. Suddenly your appreciation for the lake, the rivers and the glacier pales in comparison to the relief you feel at the fact that you are not in fact tumbling down the mountain side and into the lake. Emotion wise it was all ups and downs.

According to the 2001-02 census the Seno Otway penguin colony has 10,729 penguins. We saw 17.

The long road to Torres Del Paine

The very blue Lago Los Patos

The day after we got to Torres Del Paine we started hiking, and over the next four days we covered the W-Trail – 70 excruciating kilometres of hiking, 24 of which were with our full backpacks. That we survived is a minor miracle. The joy and revelry of having completed this gruelling hike is mitigated only slightly by the fact that we, eight relatively young but woefully unfit people have created new records for being the slowest group to hike in Torres Del Paine. Not once in the four days did we ever overtake anyone. At one point of time on the fourth day we thought we might just go by this couple that was dawdling along and so in anticipation we all whipped out our cameras. Overtaking someone was a momentous occasion and we wanted photographic evidence of it. I’m not sure if it was the camera whipping process or if the dawdling couple ‘un-dawdled’, but when we looked up they were gone, and our four day long quest to overtake anyone or anything remained unfulfilled. In near desperation I turned to our guide and asked him if we were the slowest group he had ever accompanied. And while a dithering smile was trying to form on my lips, in my eyes he could see but the last glimmer of hope. So he racked his brains and reached into the depths of his memory trying hard to give us some good news. Suddenly his face lit up. After some amount of effort he had managed to recall a middle aged, drunk, drugged and slightly injured woman who might have been almost as slow as we were.

The W-Trail - 70 km, 4 days - hell!

Jumping across a little river

But slowness aside it really was a memorable hike – truly a once in a lifetime experience, largely because I won’t be doing any such thing again in this lifetime. During the course of the four days we climbed up a moraine (‘an accumulation of boulders, stones, or other debris carried and deposited by a glacier’) to reach the Base of these magnificent granite towers called Las Torres, we walked along the wonderfully picturesque Lago (lake) Nordenskjold, we sat by a still lake and we made our way to this amazing glacier, Glaciar Grey. And finally after four days of hiking we came back to our refugio (hostel) and celebrated the fact that though bruised, battered, achy and painy we had in fact done it. On the last evening we sat in the refugio playing cards when we noticed this man standing and talking to someone while dressed only in a shirt and his undies. Buoyed by the joy of having finished the hike and eager to end on a happy note three of us (unfortunately all men) went back to our room, giggled uncontrollably for about ten minutes and then dropped our pants and went back to play cards. Of course everyone was laughing too hard so we did have to come back and re-clothe our hairy legs before there was any card playing possible, but it was all very amusing.

At the base of the Las Torres Towers

A condor soars over Lago Nordenskjold

The magnificent Glaciar Grey

And one final note. After the four days of hiking we made our way back to Punta Arenas and enjoyed a nice relaxing day there. It was on this nice relaxing day that I was in the shower (yes yes, my stories invariably involve a bathroom) and upon reaching the end of my nice relaxing shower I started to turn the water off. Unfortunately the taps worked a little strangely and for some reason while the cold water went off the scalding hot water burst forth unabated. Experiencing a deep burning sensation I grabbed for the shower in an attempt to direct it away from my ample stomach and in doing so I slipped. Having slipped I fell backwards, out of the bathtub and found myself lying like a beached whale on the floor of the bathroom swathed in the rather colourful shower curtain that had also come crashing down. I survived the four day hike, but almost knocked myself out in the loo – such are the ways of the world. Luckily I got away with a little bump on my elbow and a slightly less hairy paunch. But apart from that all is well, all is well.

An orange ship in the Straits of Magellan quietly watches over Punta Arenas

Warm Clothes, Hiking Gear and a Water-Proof Pouch for my Undies

2007-11-14T22:36:00.000-08:00

I am currently sitting on my sofa with my feet up on the coffee table and Springsteen is singing softly in the background. But this state of quiet contentment will alas not last much longer. On Friday morning, early Friday morning, early early Friday morning (so early that it’s almost Thursday afternoon) I shall be trying desperately to stay awake as I drive to the airport. And from this airport I shall fly to another airport, and then to another and then finally to a fourth airport. And after 30 hours of travelling I shall hopefully be in a little city called Punta Arenas in

Chile

. Punta Arenas claims to be the southern most city in the world. This claim conveniently ignores the existence of a city called Ushuaia in neighbouring

Argentina

. Ushuaia is in fact further south of Punta Arenas, but Punta Arenas is not so easily beaten. The smart people of Punta Arenas carefully studied the phrase ‘southern most city in the world’ and having realised that they can’t really fault Ushuaia’s southern-most-ness they decided to question its city-ness. According to Punta Arenas, Ushuaia is just a town or a village or some such thing and not really a city, and so it can't be the southern most city in the world. I’m not sure which way the debate is going to go, but either way I shall be in Punta Arenas, not Ushuaia. And I shall claim to have visited the southern most city in the world. So there! But as always this first paragraph has rambled on for no apparent reason and the only thing that has come of it is that I can now spell Ushuaia.

I’m not really going to tell you about my Patagonia trip right now, largely because I haven’t been on it yet. What I am going to tell you about is the 6-month long period of preparation and anticipation. On the day I arrived in the US the cousin and his wife picked me up from the airport, took me to lunch and just as I was biting into my first slice of pepperoni pizza they asked me if I wanted to go to Patagonia. I am indecisive to a fault. It had taken me fairly long to decide to have the pepperoni. A decision like Patagonia requires weeks and months of careful analysis on the internet and my excel sheets. Luckily I had to decide within a week, and sound advice from all around me ensured that I signed up. What I didn’t quite realise was that I was signing up for a trip that would bleed me dry of every last cent that I earned, that too before it even started. I’m beginning to think a high maintenance girlfriend would have been more cost effective. Ah a girlfriend. Sigh. But let’s not go there right now.

The first thing that you need when you’re travelling to a place that is 1400 kilometres from Antarctica, has winds of up to 100 kilometres per hour and is inhabited by penguins is warm clothing. So off we went to these fancy stores and I ended up buying:

A sleeveless fleece jacket to wear on the inside.
A long-sleeved ‘wind-stopper’ fleece jacket – to keep me warm and stop winds of up to 60 miles an hour [60 miles an hour is 96 kilometres per hour. I figure I can handle the last 4 kilometres an hour.].
A bright orange water proof (as opposed to water resistant which keeps you dry in ‘all but the most torrential rain’) jacket to keep me dry. It is bright orange so as to attract the attention of the rescue party when I get lost and the hot hiker-girls when I’m found.
Hiking pants which really are just pants but they are light weight and quick drying. An added advantage is that the legs zip off and they become awkward looking shorts. Given that the maximum temperature is going to be 6 degrees Celsius I suspect the pants will remain un-short-ified.
Rain proof pants that also offer protection from the wind.
Backpacking shoes which are different from Trailing shoes, Light Hiking shoes and Hiking shoes because this is America and they’re exploring the idea of capitalism here.
A massive 80 litre backpack which will be stuffed with everything I bought and then heaved onto my back as we walk all over Patagonia in the blistering cold and the gale like winds. Did I mention that I’m really excited?
And of course a sleeping bag to collapse into after our prison-like hikes.

Having now spent all that I had earned in the last six months I thought I was all set for Patagonia. But just as I was about buy myself the last meal that I could afford I discovered a whole new set of expenses:

A little notepad because for the first time in years I will be travelling without my laptop and even though I won’t have my laptop I will still need to write about my day in my excel-based diary and note down every rupee, dollar and peso that I spend in my spending tracker once I'm back.
A 2-gigabyte memory stick for my camera since I won’t have my laptop to download photographs onto, and I want to take many photographs.
An extra battery for my camera because I don’t want to lug around the heavy, unwieldy camera charger. [Unfortunately this hasn’t worked out too well. While ordering the battery online I accidentally clicked on ‘Standard Shipping’ instead of ‘Expedited Shipping’ and so it will arrive at my place at just about the same time that we will be landing in Punta Arenas. As a consequence, tomorrow I will go buy another battery from a brick and mortar shop and return the online one. Since the brick and mortar shop is more expensive and I will also need to pay the shipping charges of the online shop, that one little wrong click is going to cost me $33!]
Travel sized toothpaste, shampoo, shower gel, soap and shaving foam to reduce the weight of my toiletries kit.
Hand sanitizer to sanitise my hands, sun block to prevent me from getting sun burned and baby wipes because, as has been recorder earlier on this blog, I cannot dry clean my bottom.
A wind proof hat, because it will be cold and windy and hats make me look fetching.
4 sets of toe warmers which come in small little plastic packets and will apparently warm my toes at night thereby increasing the chances of my still having them in the morning.
4 quick drying t-shirts because if my toes survive the chill of the night my torso will perspire as I hike the following morning and a cotton t-shirt would remain damp and I would die of a sordid combination of pneumonia and tuberculosis.
A quick drying, lightweight towel because a soggy, heavy towel is no fun to carry, especially after you’ve lost your toes to frost bite and you’ve come down with pneumonia and tuberculosis.
A massive rain cover for my backpack in case it rains heavily and my water resistant backpack can’t deal with the rain.
A small water proof pouch in which I will stash away my passport and a pair of underwear just in case there is torrential rain and wind, and I lose my footing and get blown into a lake and while I am falling into the lake the waterproof backpack cover comes undone and the backpack gets drenched. Life will of course seem miserable at that point, but my dry pair undies will be my silver lining.

I am however rather happy to report that I did resist the urge to buy some of the things on offer:

A travel pillow to be used in conjunction with previously purchased sleeping bag.
Hiking poles which look like ski poles but apparently are quite useful for support on uneven terrain.
Hiking water bottles which are like normal water bottles except that they have the word ‘hiking’ prefixed to the ‘water bottle’ and as a result cost twice as much.
Hiking socks which are a close analogy of the hiking water bottles but, in fairness, due to their thickness make hiking a little more comfortable and a little less blister-inducing.

And now as I sit in near darkness because I can’t afford to switch on the lights I wonder if I should go back and buy those hiking water bottles, the hiking socks, the hiking poles and that wonderfully soft travel pillow.

While I would like to show you photographs of all my new stuff, I have already packed. So I leave you instead with a picture of my suitcase and the sleeping bag which absolutely refuses to fit in. I'm considering draping it around myself and claiming that it's a toga.

A Californian earthquake, a trip to Texas and the Consulado General de Chile

2007-11-11T17:52:00.000-08:00

The problem is that I have too much to say. I suppose I should dive straight in without getting side-tracked with counting my laundry.

The first report-worthy incident is that I have lived through my first Californian earthquake. About two weeks ago I was sitting in my apartment surfing the net when everything started to shake. My apartment shakes from time to time (I don’t really know why it shakes but now as I type this I begin to realise that it is just a little odd) and so my initial reaction was to ignore it. When the shaking continued I figured that this was in fact an earthquake and so I tried to marshal my thoughts. Unfortunately I am not a particularly quick ‘thought-mashaller’ and so as I hemmed and hawed about what to do the apartment started shaking with a vengeance. I decided that the right thing to do would be to go outside and try and avoid getting crushed if the apartment did in fact collapse. I walked out of my apartment door and was about to walk down to the ground floor when I came across the rather cute Irish girl next door. I have already alluded to my limited cognitive abilities and this limitation kicked in once again. Distracted by the cute girl I completely forgot about the earthquake and started talking to her. But of course this is me, and as a direct consequence this is my life. I hardly need to mention that within a few seconds a large Irish boyfriend/ husband appeared and there ended the conversation, the earthquake and this story.

This week I had to go to Dallas (which is in Texas) for a team meeting. On the way there I was sitting next to a strange little man. When the lady sitting by the window wanted to use the loo I stood up to let her out. The strange little man decided that was too much of an effort and so he decided to stand up on his chair and crouched under the low ceiling thereby rolling himself up into a little ball. It was all rather amusing. Once he had unrolled himself the air hostess came around selling food and drink. I get paid very little, practically nothing. As a consequence I believe in ‘living it up’ when the company is paying and so even though I wasn’t particularly hungry or thirsty I decided to ask for a Diet Coke and then asked if they accepted credit cards. She said “We do, but the drinks are free.” Suddenly I lost the desire to drink my coke. I wanted to tell her that now that it was free I didn’t really want the coke – but that was a little too weird … even for me.

Once I got to Dallas I rented a car and drove to my hotel. Of course I had no idea where my hotel was so I rented a car with a GPS system that eventually did get me there despite giving me absurd directions at times. The following day the team met for the first time despite the fact that we’ve been working together for 6 months. I wish some of my friends were more like that. After work we all went for a team dinner and then I gave a colleague of mine a ride back to the hotel. On the way back she said that when she had come in the previous night she had given her car to the valet to park but she had seen a similar looking car outside the lobby in the morning and was hoping that there wasn’t a problem. When we got back to the hotel the ‘similar looking car’ was still there so she walked up to the doorman and asked if that was in fact her car. The doorman looked a little confused and said he didn’t really know, but implied that maybe she should. She said “Oh, I handed the keys to the valet last night and checked in.” The doorman shuffled his feet a little, trying to figure out the gentlest way of putting it and decided to go with, “Eh, actually we don’t have valet parking.”

Oh and the last note on Dallas. In some of our offices you have notices asking you not to smoke, other offices prohibit photography. In Texas it’s a little different.

After three days in Texas I really was quite happy to get back to California in general and more specifically to my wonderful car. The next morning (which happened to be the Friday that’s just passed) we sat in my wonderful car and headed to the Chilean consulate.

We had first visited the Chilean Consulate, more accurately the Consulado General de Chile, a month ago. Having been to embassies and consulates in India I had expected a fortified building with rude officials, nasty visa officers behind bullet proof glass and gun toting guards who would spit in our general direction. This was a little different. It actually was nothing more than a moderately sized room divided in the middle by a counter which could just well have been a doctor’s waiting room or the San Francisco branch of New India Assurance. We got there at 9:15 am (this is still the first visit a month ago) and found that it was locked despite the fact that it’s supposed to open at 9:00 am. A few minutes later a lost yet officious looking woman wandered up and asked us what we wanted. We said we wanted visas. A look of surprise and confusion crept across her face. “Visas?” she asked with large amounts of incredulity as if she hadn’t quite understood what we meant. Never ones to hold back on due praise and appreciation we repeated “Visas” nodding gently in a congratulatory fashion [It really is fun to nod gently in a congratulatory fashion]. “Which country?” she asked and almost involuntarily I said “Chile” which probably wasn’t the smartest thing in the world given that we were at the Chilean Consulate. She now produced a look of derision and said “Yes yes, I know that, but which country are you from?” Sheepishly I looked to the ground and the others said “India”.The mist in her eyes appeared to clear just a little and there were some signs of cognition. Then just to make sure that we were all on the same page she once again said, “Visas” and having received another set of gentle, affirmative nods let us into the Consulate.

As it turned out the visa officer was on leave and so we left our papers with the lady with the now 'un-dazed' eyes and she asked us to call back in 2 weeks. We then spent the next 4 weeks dialling their number every 15 minutes but for 4 weeks they resolutely refused to answer their phones. It is the sort of resoluteness that makes Chile a great country. When we finally managed to get through they asked us to visit them again and so on Friday we all made our way back to the Consulate. The first big difference we noticed was that the little room actually had other people waiting around. The second big difference was that the visa officer was back. The visa officer was this stern little woman who had a computer, a printer and lots of little rubber stamps. One by one she would pick up our passports, look at them suspiciously, consult her computer and then would randomly choose four or five rubber stamps and start stamping our passports with just a hint of fury. The cousin and I found this all very amusing as we stood there giggling like little girls and decided that this would probably be more fun than the actual trip. Despite our deep suspicion we got all four passports back, with four very smudged and just about legible Chilean visas.

And yes yes, your brilliant insight is indeed not misplaced. We are in fact headed to Chile. And yes, it really is very exciting. And yes, I will try and have a great time, thank you very much. I think I’ll now go sit down and digest all the excitement.

My Bathroom Hates me and other tales of Urban Existence

2007-10-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

I started my weekend by doing the laundry, and as I was folding my clothes I counted 11 pairs of socks. How anyone who doesn’t do very much, care too much about changing socks and like to wear socks in general can run through 11 pairs of socks in one week is beyond me. This of course has absolutely nothing to do with my blog. I just felt like mentioning it. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

Weekly over-socking notwithstanding I genuinely believe that there are way too many people who believe in conspiracy theories. The worst lot are the self-pitying louts who believe that everything and everyone is out to get them. Personally I can’t stand them. On a completely unrelated note, I’m fairly certain that my bathroom hates me.

It all started this morning, when I was on the pot. [It is quite remarkable how my pot is the canvas upon which so many of my stories are painted.]. Reaching the end of my .. eh … well let’s just call it my ‘pot-time’ I filled my previously-featured mugga and started the cleansing process. Five months of uneventful cleansing will lull you into a fall sense of security. But just then, just as you have lowered your guard and you are at your most vulnerable – both figuratively and literally – that’s when the cruel bathroom will strike. Alas, unbeknownst to my unsuspecting bottom [wow, I never ever thought I could use the phrase “unbeknownst to my unsuspecting bottom” in two successive posts – but there you have it – the vagaries of life] the bathroom had decided to fill my mugga with piping hot water. Let’s not get into the specifics and hastily summarise all proceedings with the word ‘ouch’. With my rear end scalded a little and my faith shaken, a lot, I continued on with my ‘getting ready for the day’ process.

Things were now looking up. I had opened a new can of shaving foam – and once I had removed the facial hair, undoubtedly I would be gorgeous again. The shaving foam however had other ideas. As I pressed down on the button I felt this freezing cold spray of air on my outstretched, expectant hand while the shaving foam flew all over the bathroom – everywhere that is except my outstretched, expectant hand. At this point I realised it was going to be one of those ‘blog-worthy’ days and so I paused in my shaving process to take a photograph of the shaving-creamed mirror.

Shaving cream, shaving cream everywhere nor any drop to drink. Oh wait. That means something else.

Despite all these morning adventures, my day was only just beginning. Fortunately this weekend I had a wonderful excuse to not accomplish all the things that you are typically expected to accomplish over American weekend – 1 no.s. The cousin and his wife felt that being 21 km away from me wasn’t quite enough and decided to shift cities. Of course this is the Bay Area – and so despite the fact that they have shifted northward by five cities – they are still only about 40 km away. Well tried but I’m still right here – hah!

Anyway, being the splendid chap I am – and I really am a splendid chap – I immediately recognised an opportunity to fill my weekend with a socially acceptable activity. I spent most of yesterday hovering around them as they packed and did my bit by providing them with a deluge of inane witticisms. Today was the actual move and having felt that my contribution yesterday was just a little on the short side I got there bright an early, just in time to watch the movers finish loading the truck. Once we got to the new place the three of us stood around looking sheepish as the movers did all the moving. When it was all done I really didn’t feel like the moving had been that bad. Possibly this was because I hadn’t actually done anything, but I’m still undecided. In order to make up for it I spent the afternoon rearranging boxes with the cousin. Once the boxes had been rearranged I realised that I didn’t have a photograph for my blog. And so here is a painfully ‘staged’ picture.

The picture may have been staged but the box was full and heavy. Ah the price of show business.

And finally, I suppose it is worth mentioning that Friday evening was the single most amazing Friday evening that I can recall. I watched Bruce Springsteen play live. It was so utterly, tremendously, mind-blowingly, excruciatingly amazing that I don’t even want to try and blog about it, lest I trivialise it. Let’s just say that for a spiritually sceptical, non-believer it was a remarkably religious experience.

Password Resets, Butt Clamps and a Naan-maker called Claudia

2007-10-12T23:20:00.000-07:00

A direct fallout of this networked era that we live in, is that we are surrounded by a plethora of passwords. It wouldn’t be quite as bad if I could have just one password like hellokitty which would work for everything. Before I proceed, I should point out that I am using hellokitty merely for illustrative purposes. Do not bother trying to log in to all my bank accounts and email accounts using hellokitty. Actually even if you were to log in, you shall be greeted by $27, a few mails on golf and a deluge of mails from people with names like ‘Fernando Long’ offering me the secret to ‘enhanced manhood and greater happiness for my partner’. But I digress. What I really was getting at is that every portal, online system and application has its own incomprehensible set of password rules. The worst in this regard is of course my employer. My work password needs to be changed every three months and unfortunately yesterday was one such day.

In order to meet the requirements of the password lords in my company you cannot use any of your last 6 passwords; the password must not contain any part of your name or username and the new password must contain at least 12 characters, an upper case letter, a lower case letter, a numeric digit, a special symbol, the name of an arboreal mammal and syllables originating from war cries of indigenous tribes from at least three different continents. One of the more popular passwords in my company is Mswati#Wo0lowooloo*BurritoB0L9966#$*123baboon.

As you can imagine setting passwords can fall just a whisker short of being fun. As I tried to set my new password the system rejected my first three options. I finally managed to change my password and in the interest of efficiency forgot it within twenty minutes. Despite much brain-racking I could not for the life of me remember it and so, sheepishly I called the helpdesk and asked them to reset my password. It was all quite messy.

But no. No no. No no no. This wasn’t the nadir. Not yet. Not by a stretch. You see unbeknownst to my unsuspecting bottom, in the midst of this password-resetting carnival, a little metal clamp or pin or hook or whatever it was had cleverly worked its way onto my sofa, and as I sat down it dug its unforgiving teeth into my fleshy posterior. The bottom stung. The mouth let out an involuntary yowl. The legs sprung me up, off the sofa. The metal clamp on the other hand, as can be expected from a pointy and cold piece of metal, had nothing to say.

The Butt-Clamp, seemingly unmoved by the altercation.

Having had two life altering experiences in one day was proving too much and so I made my way to my home away from home, Lucky Dhaba. While I have mentioned Lucky Dhaba in passing it certainly deserves more than just a pass. Lucky Dhaba is an authentic Indian restaurant. Happily enough, the authenticity does not end at the food. It continues on, all the way to the dirty, dingy bathroom, the stingy people trying to cheat you out of half a spoon of mattar paneer and the overweight and grumpy proprietor who always seems rather inconvenienced when called upon to collect your money. Actually what could have been a happy and lifelong friendship between afore-mentioned proprietor and oft-mentioned self was nipped in the proverbial bud by the fact that I hate little coins and his cash register does not subtract. Maybe I should elaborate.

Little coins, you see, are the arch-enemy of a happy ‘unbulky’ wallet and so I go to great lengths to avoid collecting them. I don’t particularly mind ‘quarters’ since I can use them for the laundry, but any other coins are just an inconvenience. At most places I pay with my credit card but Lucky Dhaba and its grumpy proprietor frown upon credit cards and insist upon cash, “if you have it”. This wouldn’t be quite as bad if either the proprietor or his cash register could subtract. Unfortunately they can’t. I mean they are both fairly good at subtracting from multiples of 10, but anything more complicated and it sends them both into a tizzy.

A few weeks ago my bill came to $6.48 and since I didn’t have 48 cents in change I handed him what seemed like a fairly acceptable $7.23. His face immediately contorted into a frown as he grappled with subtractions, carry overs, dividends and differential calculus. He finally looked at me with a mixture of contempt, defeat and desperation. I quietly suggested that he owed me 75 cents. This unseemly episode almost certainly dented our mutual affection.

The death-blow, I fear was delivered last week, when my bill came to $7.56 and I handed him an even more straightforward $20.06. But this time while there certainly was contempt – large amounts of it – writ clear upon his face, there was no sign of defeat. He was determined. This time he would do it. He would, he would, he would! And remarkably, he did. Well almost. After an interminable wait during which all the eyes in Lucky Dhaba had turned to him (“Will he be able to do it? Won’t he?”, “Does he have it in him?”), he triumphantly turned to me and handed me 12 dollars and two quarters. And just as all of Lucky Dhaba was about to breathe a collective sigh of relief and break out into warm applause, he dithered, re-worked the problem in his mind and added six more cents to my change. Sigh – so close. I gently suggested that he only owed me $12.50. Defeated once again, he handed me my change and dejectedly called out, “Claudia, one naan – to go.” Which brings me to Claudia.

Claudia is a wonderful name. Claudia. The name Claudia invariably, and without being too specific about it, conjures up images of drop dead gorgeous models that traipse down catwalks in limited clothing and date illusionists typically named after Dickens’ protagonists. This image was unfortunately immediately and irreversibly impinged upon when, on my first day at Lucky Dhaba, the proprietor (who at this point of time still had the potential of being my ‘Best Friend Forever’) bellowed out, from the very depths of his soul, “Claudia, one naan – for here.” You see, while I don’t really have a set image on what Claudia should be like – I honestly am quite flexible on just how gorgeous a Claudia can be, and just how limited her clothing – there was little room for negotiation as far as naans are concerned. Naans can be made by Dabbus, Ramus, Meenus and even Buntis, but no – not Claudias. A Claudia who makes naans is just not a Claudia. Sigh. It is unlikely if the sun will ever shine quite as brightly as before. And so, shaken by these tribulations I try hard to trudge on.

Well … at least I have Claudia’s naans to make it better.

Paintings, Working Late and my Office Nemesis

2007-10-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

On the bright side

If you’ve been fortunate enough to read ‘Asterix in Britain’ you might recall this rather proud looking Brit, twirling his moustache and saying “A man’s house is his castle.” While that is a wonderful thought, no house (well actually flat) of mine in Bangalore has been very castle-like. I have in the past been derided by a surprisingly diverse group of people for the fact that my flat in Bangalore had a large empty living room with one table having assorted newspapers, bills, keys and other odds and ends on it and another larger table that was covered with all the washed clothes in the house. I still don’t know why it was so weird, but anyway.

I had decided long ago that as soon as I moved into a flat-mate free flat I would keep it nice and tidy; and I think I have managed that to some extent. Quite happy with my new flat, the only thing I missed was some sort of ornamentation. Everything was stark and empty, just like Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. And so I decided I would get some paintings.

My recent visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts reminded me that I really did like Mark Rothko’s paintings and so I ordered two wonderful Rothkos online. As soon as they arrived I rushed back to Ikea and bought nice wooden frames for them.

The next day I started the framing process, and while it was not difficult it was unpleasantly repetitive. You have to painstakingly prise open about 25 little metal pins, carefully place the painting into the frame and then go about tightening the 25 metal pins back into place. As I said, it was all very painstaking.

After half an hour I had managed to frame one painting and as I flipped it over I was congratulating myself on a job well done when I noticed one of my many leg hairs along with a little piece of lint from my carpet had trapped themselves between the Rothko and the glass pane. I have never quite yelled at a painting as I did at this point. The entire framing process was undone and then repeated in a hairless and lint-free fashion. Beaming at it, I placed the framed painting against the wall and watched in dismay as the painting (which was smaller than the frame and had been placed at the correct position inside the frame) slid down to the bottom of the frame along with my spirits.

Just typing out this story is making me frustrated and so I will quickly jump to the conclusion. I rushed to Safeway, bought lots of cello tape, taped the paintings to the frame and voila, three ghastly hours later I had two nicely framed Rothkos hanging on my living room wall. I now spend a few minutes everyday admiring the paintings but ruefully think to myself that if I have paintings in my house I might just have grown up.

Well, at least the paintings are nice.

The Mark Rothko-ed Living Room Wall

On the moderately lit side

In Bangalore I had acquired a reputation of not working very hard. I strongly rejected that reputation and was always happy argue it out with anyone in office, as long as we did it between 10:00 am and 3:45 pm.

But just as everything else seems to have changed, here I seem to have quite a lot of work. Strangely enough I really have been enjoying the work, even though the last few weeks have been very hectic. A few days ago I was leaving work at 9:30 pm and as I drove to the gate I found it was locked. I then drove to the “main gate” but found the there was a locked gate in the middle of the road that blocked my way. I then tried to make my way to the “other” main gate and had to zig zag my way through this maze like parking lot [Each row in the parking lot is a one-way row and the direction of the rows alternates]. As I got close to the other main gate I found another locked gate on the road and had to turn back again! I eventually found my way to the first main gate after driving in circles, squares and all manners of shapes for about 10 minutes. It was suitably irritating and just a little scary as I imagined myself driving between locked gates all night long.

But late night car-park confusion aside, at least I’m enjoying my job.

On the positively dingy side

I hate vending machines. In my office there is this vending machine that dispenses chocolates and chips of varying descriptions. I typically break the monotony of my work day afternoon by making numerous visits to bathroom and the coffee place (for my mint tea, of course) but once I have reached by bathroom and mint tea limit (which are not, in fact, unrelated) I go to this vending machine and buy myself nibbles. It has on occasion consumed my money without giving me anything in return, but that I wrote off as a lesson in life, love and the limitations of technological advancement.

On another particularly trying afternoon, in the midst of a task of immense importance I tore myself away from my computer, made my way to this machine and decided to cheer myself with a ‘mega-sized’ Hershey’s bar (with almonds). The mega-sized Hershey’s bar (with almonds) costs $1.15 and so I tried to put in a one dollar note (the Americans call it a “dollar bill”) but for some inexplicable reason the blasted machine absolutely refused to accept any notes. It was extremely frustrating because I could see the Hershey’s bar, in all it’s mega-sized-ness just sitting there, luring me towards its obesity-ridden charms – but I just couldn’t get to it. The word “aaaaarrrrgggghhhh” sprung to mind.

It may seem silly now, but when you desperately want a chocolate bar, and that too a mega-sized version of it, it is surprisingly hard to go back to your powerpoint presentation. Mustering up every ounce of adventure that I had in me, I set out across the office to get to the other vending machine – a full 5 minute hike away. As soon as I reached it I pressed up against the glass pane, fingering it gently over the Hershey’s bar – there it was; I could almost smell it. Excitedly I put my “dollar bill” into the machine and it swallowed it gratefully. It worked! It worked! Ah, just a few seconds to go now! I fumbled in my wallet and took out a 25 cent coin (the Americans call it a “quarter”) and stuffed it into the machine. Hastily I punched in the code for the chocolate bar and as I was reaching down to collect it the machine beeped angrily at me and its display said “Insert exact amount. No Change.” I am not typically prone to extreme emotion, yet I found my fists clenched in rage and I looked at this impertinent machine with a mix of desperation, disillusionment and desire - specifically, the overwhelming desire to hack it to little pieces with a machete. [I like the word machete. It has a nice feel to it. Try it. Machete. Machete. Machete. Anyway, I digress. Well actually this isn’t even a digression.] I would have sworn at the machine but alas – ‘Office Ganju’ does not swear.

Since I did not have the exact change, dejectedly I hit the ‘refund’ button and heard the machine spit out five “quarters” at me. Resignedly I started to collect the quarters when I realized that I had done it! I now had enough coins to use at the first vending machine. And so it was with a jaunty skip in my step that I headed back to the first offending machine and got my Hershey’s bar!

Physically exhausted and mentally frazzled I slumped into my chair clutching my Hershey’s bar (with almonds) and swore to myself that I would never ever ever ever use that nasty vending machine again. But it didn’t really matter – the chocolate was being consumed. And life was good again.

The Men in my Life

2007-09-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

I have now been single for an unpleasantly long period of time. I am beginning to wonder if I will ever find the right woman. Statistics can be worked either way. One way of looking at it is that there are three billion women in the world, how hard can it be to find one? The flip side however is less rosy. A surprisingly large number of people believe that there is one right person for you. Well if ‘one in a million’ is hard, can you begin to imagine how hard it will be for me to find the ‘one in three billion’ woman?

But no, this blog wasn’t intended to bemoan the lack of women in my life. It’s actually supposed to be a celebration of the men in my life. So here goes, a list of men who help gloss over the fact that there aren’t enough women:

Roger Federer: For those of you who have had the rather unpleasant experience of knowing the ‘brick and mortar’ me (as opposed to the ‘virtual’ me) I am sure you will recall occasions when I have obsessed about various sports on television, following them with what can only be described as fanaticism. For those really unfortunate ones who have known me for two decades, you might recall that I once broke my hand while watching a football game on television [Spain v Yugoslavia during Italia ’90. The crucial moment was when Dragan Stojkovic equalised for Yugoslavia with a wonderful free-kick. But that, as they say, is another story]. It is probably not an understatement to say that I take sport seriously. I suppose it is but a cruel twist of fate that I can’t play any sport to save my life. Anyway, so during my rather long association with sport there have been a number of sportsmen I have loved. [I did deeply love Steffi Graf for a while, but most sportswomen are not worthy of my love.] And if I were to attempt to find the one sportsman I have loved the most, the one who holds my heart above all else, you might think it would be a tussle between one M. Schumacher, one Sachin Tendulkar and one Anil Kumble. But over the last few years another contender has emerged. Roger Federerererererer is simply the most wonderful tennis player I have ever seen. He is nothing short of a genius and I feel truly lucky to watch him play the way he plays. After watching the US Open finals I announced to the world that I would like to be Roger Federer. If that isn’t love, I wonder what is. [A dissenting voice pointed out that his girlfriend is chubby. A quick comparison ensued – Chubby Girlfriend v No Girlfriend at all. Decision stands.]

Bruce Springsteen: My love affair with Bruce Springsteen’s music started more than a decade ago. To be honest my love has been directed more at his music than at him, but let’s not underplay his role – he did after all create the music. And as if to cheer me up, he has decided to play at Oakland (about 45 minutes away from where I am) next month and I am most excited about it. A cynical investment banker friend of mine [Working 17 hours a day for billions of dollars would make anyone cynical.] asked why I was already excited. I just figured that if I’m only going to be excited for the 2 hours that he’s actually singing it hardly seems worth it. I intend to savour the excitement for a month and more! The tickets went on sale this morning. I logged on half an hour before they went on sale and clicked ‘Refresh’ every 30 seconds. Finally, 3 seconds after they went on sale I tried to get tickets and ridiculously enough they weren’t very good tickets. But not so good tickets are better than no tickets at all. [Wow, what an excellent analogy to go with the girlfriend analogy a little earlier. Scatological AND analogical – look out ladies, I now have it all!] And so to summarize, I am going to watch him live!!!!! Oh I’m so excited!

The Concert Ticket!

Borat Sagdiyev: All right fine. I don’t really love him. Actually he is positively offensive. But my goodness he’s funny. I (finally) watched the Borat movie last week (after having seen most of it on youtube) and I absolutely loved it. It was so remarkably irritating and so ridiculously funny that I still laugh when I think about it. As a direct consequence I have decided to start all my formal meetings with ‘Hallo, I am Borat Sagdiyev. I like you.’

And so we reach the end of this odd list of men in my life. This wild 'celebration of men' having concluded I suppose I shall now go back to fretting about the lack of women. But at least John Mayer’s being quite nice to me. He keeps telling me that my body’s a wonderland.

Ganju vs the Three-Day Weekend

2007-09-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

And so, yet again I came face to face with the quintessentially American pursuit of the weekend. This time it wasn’t just a weekend but a three-day weekend. Three-day weekends, if it’s possible, generate even more mass hysteria than the run of the mill two day weekend. Your social standing is determined in large part by your plans for the three day weekend. While some people drive out for a trip, people higher up on the social ladder fly. At the highest end people strap themselves to cannon balls and have themselves shot into space.

As is hardly surprising I had no plans whatsoever. To make matters worse, every single person that I know within 1,000 kilometres decided to go out for some exotic weekend or the other. I’m sure your mathematically gifted minds would have helped you reached the appropriate conclusion: Weekend hours – 72, people to meet – 0, net result – boredom. After many weekends which involved excruciating pain and hard labour (all right fine, they were just hikes) you might imagine that the prospect of boredom wasn’t an all together unpleasant one. I didn’t quite mind the idea of sitting at home and vegetating, but it soon struck me that there were many things that could be done.

On Saturday I headed to San Francisco and decided to start with my annual dose of culture, in this case the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts. Unfortunately photography was only allowed in the lobby area, but this too had more colours than my colour-blind eyes could process. Luckily the colour riot was broken by this dangling fan which was swinging all over the lobby. I’m not sure if it was modern art or good old faulty engineering – either way I liked it.

The lobby of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts. Note the dangling fan in the right corner.

My knowledge of art is limited. The hackneyed phrase ‘fit on the back of a postcard’ comes to mind but a postcard would probably be too large to list out all that I know about art. A playing card would suffice, specifically the four of clubs. That said, I do enjoy these all too brief visits to museums and I happened to catch a rather interesting tour of the sculptures by Henri Matisse. The Matisses and Picassos notwithstanding I found the Contemporary section far more entertaining. One piece of ‘art’ consisted of a solitary blue tubelight affixed diagonally on the wall and suddenly I realised that I too could be an artist. Another piece consisted of three blank canvases hung side by side which was eerily reminiscent of a play called ‘Art’. My personal favourite however was a large display that consisted of 18,000 blue shirts, folded and stacked at the centre of a large room. The stacked blue shirts were intended to represent the plight of the Indigo workers of Charleston, South Carolina or some such thing. To add to the effect, for four hours a day an ‘attendant’ dressed in the indigo clothes sits next to the display and erases pages from some book of Naval laws to highlight how one person can take on the system or something to that effect. I’m fairly certain I misunderstood it completely but everything considered it was quite interesting. It also struck me that being that ‘attendant’ would be a fabulous job. You see the whole display was aimed at highlighting the plight of workers. Surely an ‘attendant’ hired to highlight the exploitation of labourers could not be an exploited labourer himself. He probably gets paid large amounts of money, with medical benefits and a company car and his job is only slightly tougher than mine. I have to apply for that job!

After spending 3 hours in the museum I headed to this place called Coit Tower which though not very tall offers some wonderful views of San Francisco. As I have mentioned before, parking in this city is an absolute nightmare and after I had managed to find a spot close to the museum I refused to un-park and then spend the rest of the day looking for a spot closer to Coit Tower. As a consequence I decided to cover the two and a half kilometres on foot and to be honest it wasn’t an unpleasant walk apart from the last bit which was painfully uphill and brought back memories of all the prison-like hikes! Once I got to Coit Tower I realised that all of San Francisco had beaten me to it. After waiting for about half an hour I managed to get into the rickety lift which groaned its way to the top as the lift operator made pleasant conversation with us and said something like ‘sooner or later the lift will probably fall’. He didn’t quite mention how he had done in his marketing class but I think he must have got an A+.

Coit Tower

Alcatraz Island from the top of Coit Tower

The tower was all right. It was quite crowded and I was unhappy to find that at the top we could only look out of grimy windows and as a result the photographs were not that great. On the flip side that did give me a chance to put the camera down for a minute and actually look around for a bit! After Coit Tower I walked around the North Beach area and then made the long walk back to the car.

In the course of any given weekend Saturday night has the most pressure on it. I decided to reward it with what forms the centrepiece of every weekend of mine – my laundry and ironing. I haven’t actually blogged about my laundry and ironing but the ironing at least deserves a blog to itself. Every weekend I spend two or three hours labouriously ironing my office clothes and a few weeks ago I accidentally burned two fingers as I absentmindedly reached for the iron without looking at it while speaking on the phone and touched the hot side – ouch! Anyway. The reason it takes me so long is that I have these wonderful shirts that I wear to office, made from the finest Egyptian cotton which look very nice indeed. The only problem is that when it comes to ironing these nasty shirts they are only slightly more appealing than a large hairy bottom that smells. Hang on – I didn’t mean the smelly bottom would be ironed. What I was trying to say is that the ironing of the shirts was to be preferred to a confrontation with an odoriferous posterior, but only just. Enough with the shirts and the bottom. Apart from my laundry I also inaugurated my new vacuum cleaner to give my flat a long overdue cleaning and I was stunned by the amount of filth that came out of it when I was done. As you can see, it was an exciting Saturday night.

Not satisfied by my adventures on Saturday I decided to go even further on Sunday. Napa Valley produces some fine wines, or so I am informed since all wine tastes quite putrid to me. Given that Napa and the adjoining county, Sonoma are only 2 hours away I thought it was time I visited. The drive there was quite lovely and despite the fact that the company was inexorably dull (I had only myself for company) I had quite a nice time. I also went for a tour at one of the Wineries. It wasn’t as exciting as I hoped since they didn’t really take us to the vineyards or the place where they actually make the wine but only to a viewing gallery. Of course they also plied us with wine, but that was hardly what I was looking for.

Domaine Carneros Winery

A long drive home followed and after two hours of relaxing at home I figured I wasn’t quite through with my wild and lonesome weekending. (The adjectives wild and lonesome don’t seem to go so well together, do they?). And so off I went to watch the latest Harry Potter movie – which was only all right I must confess.

And that brings us to today, Monday – the last day of my three-day weekend. The day has been spent doing absolutely nothing. And I loved every minute of it! And now I am mortified at the prospect of going back to work.

Good lord, is the weekend really over? Sigh.

Yosemite: The Beauty and the Pain

2007-08-22T20:38:00.000-07:00

Nestled somewhere in the middle of California is this rather wonderful place called Yosemite National Park. The word ‘park’ conjures up images of a little patch of green surrounded by narrow streets in an upwardly mobile colony of Delhi, full of aunty-jis who pull your cheeks a tad too aggressively and comment on how your health has increased. Yosemite (pronounced Yo-Sem-it-ee) National Park is a little bigger. Actually at 3,081 square kilometres it is almost as large as the state of Goa, and it is one of the most spectacularly beautiful places I have ever seen. Which brings me to my point. This weekend I went to Yosemite. It was a display of unmatched beauty, magnificence and splendour. And that’s just me. Yosemite was really nothing short of breathtaking. I am not what you might call an aesthete but I was blown away by the raw natural beauty of the place and I was constantly frustrated by how remarkably inadequate the view finder of a camera was to capture even a fraction of what lay before me. But I am jumping ahead. Let’s start from somewhere close to the beginning.

We got there on Friday night and after 5 short hours of sleep we were awake and ready to start our hike. Of course I use the word ‘ready’ loosely. A little bit like the word ‘ready’ is used in the context of being ‘ready to eat the raw octopus’, ‘ready to have his appendix removed’ or ‘ready to pluck out his nasal hair with a pair of tweezers’. The hike we had chosen (and I must sheepishly confess that I had a role in choosing this hike) was the Upper Yosemite Falls hike. Upper Yosemite Falls is the 6^th highest waterfall in the world. Getting to the top involves a 6 kilometre walk up and an elevation gain of 2,700 feet. Then of course there is a 6 kilometre walk back down. However, the views were supposed to be amazing and that seemed to make the decision easy.

All happy soon after starting of the hike

We started the hike at a quarter past nine and walked non-stop for …. (and here I would like to say ‘an hour and a half’ but actually it was ….) 20 minutes. We then proceeded to take breaks every 10-15 minutes and finally huffing and puffing, 4 hours later we reached the top. Oh wait wait, I seemed to have glossed over the interesting part. At various points of the hike I would decide to walk on ahead of the others but I would invariably find my own company unbearably dull and so I would wait for everyone else to catch up. When I was close to the top I decided that I may as well walk to the top and enjoy the wonderful view while waiting. I reached a little clearing and looked around confused. I am unpleasantly unobservant and so it's hardly surprising that I couldn’t see any path anywhere. Then I spotted something that looked like a path and since I couldn’t find any other option I decided to proceed down this, the only path that I could spot. Of course this is me; it isn’t hard to imagine that I had taken the wrong path. I walked on for 10 minutes and found that the scenery had drastically changed from open rock to deep dark forest where, if fairy tales are to be believed, you find bears that eat porridge, wolves dressed like grandmothers and my personal favourite, pigs with varying degrees of skill in house construction. Fortunately I came across none of them. However, I did come across some rather eerie looking trees which had been uprooted and the intermittent flow of hikers that I had earlier crossed dried up completely. I must confess I was just a teeny tiny bit concerned. I had visions of spending the rest of my life roaming this scary forest while the cousin called up my parents and said “I’m really very sorry, but we seem to have lost Ganju.”

At this point I turned back and worked my way back to the confusing clearing where I did see the correct path just as the cousin called to confirm that I was in fact lost. It was with more than a little relief that I saw familiar faces and we made our way up to our top. The views were absolutely breathtaking and suddenly the entire hike seemed worthwhile. Buoyed by the beauty of Yosemite Valley and re-energised by the power bars we had carried we decided that we must go on. A further 2 kilometre walk would take us to Yosemite Point which was even higher and the views were correspondingly spectacular-er (shouldn’t ‘spectacular’ have a comparative and superlative form?). And while now, as I sit in front of my computer and my physical activity is limited to two fingers lazily making their way across the keyboard, an extra 4 kilometres doesn’t seem inconsequential, when we were there the promise of even greater sights made it seem but a hop, skip and jump away.

The top of Upper Yosemite Falls

Yosemite Point was, as promised, even more amazing and having spent half an hour drinking in the view (All right fine, there was little or no drinking in of the view. We looked at everything through our respective cameras and were clicking away like tick-mark tourists at the Louvre) finally at 2:30 in the afternoon we started our 8 kilometre descent. Of course now it began to hit us that on a lark we had extended our hike by 33% without a thought to our food and water supplies. Needless to say we ran out of both halfway down the mountain. At one point things began to look incredibly dim when one person in our group got dehydrated and we were genuinely worried about being stuck on that mountain as darkness fell. Luckily some people gave him water and he managed to make his way back down and all was well.

Yosemite Valley as seen from Yosemite Point

As I have previously recorded, I am a hog. I feel hungry at the best of times. After having consumed two energy bars all day and having walked 16 kilometres I was ravenous. I swallowed my pizza in but a gulp and then consumed a plate of pasta, almost entirely by myself. I justified all this to myself rather easily. A long hike deserves a lot of food. Of course I wasn’t going to let one little pizza and some pasta suffice as compensation for that entire hike. Five days on I continue to devour chocolate doughnuts for breakfast!

Next day we drove to this wonderful place called Tuolumne (pronounced Two-All-a-me) Meadows and stopped many times on the way there to take photographs and admire the view. And finally, quite exhausted and hungry again (we always seemed to be hungry) we drove back home.

Tenaya Lake in the Distance. Picture take from Olmsted Point on the way to Tuolumne Meadows

Tuolumne Meadows

After this utterly exhausting ‘vacation’ I have re-affirmed my distaste for hikes and sworn never to subject myself to such torture again. But ever so slowly the mind wanders back to the wonderful views, to those 243 photographs I took, to the joyous pizza, pasta and chocolate doughnuts and as the memory of the pain, hunger, thirst and exhaustion dims it all starts to seem just a little worthwhile again.

A Strange Fortnight Begets a Strange Blog

2007-08-10T23:33:00.000-07:00

I don’t really know what ‘beget’ means. It just seemed to fit. Like a pair of trousers that are a size too small but I bought in a rare moment of wild optimism. Anyway.

I read somewhere that bullet points allow for crisp, concise and lucid communication. I never claimed to be crisp or concise and I’ve never ever been accused of being lucid. I don’t really like bullet points, largely because they are invariably preceded by a sentence of singular dullness which ends with “as follows:” which to be honest is just a silly thing to say. I mean, how many times in your life have you been in the middle of an animated conversation and said “Oh oh and we went and met him and we were talking and I was so excited and my thoughts were as follows:”. But there are things to be said, disjointed things, so I have decided to give these bullet point thingies a try. Let’s not waste time on the pleasantries and dive right in, shall we?

The happenings, worthy of note, over the last to weeks are as follows:

I went to watch Sania Mirza play tennis. She was playing in the semi-finals at the Stanford Classic or the ‘Bank of the West Classic’ or some such thing. They were many Indians. They are many Indians everywhere. Every time I go anywhere I see Indians and the word “teeming” always springs to mind. I wonder why? I don’t like being stereo-typed as ‘one of the many Indians’ so I pretend that I’m from Djbouti. This doesn’t work very well. Americans think that Djbouti is just baby talk. Indians think it’s a swear word. It really doesn’t work. Anyway, Sania Mirza was playing well. And the Indians were imaginatively yelling ‘Go Sania’, trying to cheer her on while not letting the imperialist overlords scornfully think that Indians are boors. I sat quietly and discussed the intricacies of tennis with one of the overlords. In the middle of the ‘Go Sania’ cheers I suddenly had the urge to yell ‘Sachiiiin Sachiiiin’. I regretfully report that I resisted.

Sania Mirza in action vs Sybille Bammer. Sania won this match 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 but then lost in the finals.

The very next day I went to watch the San Jose Grand Prix. Don’t let the “Grand Prix” at the end fool you. It is not Formula 1. It is actually made up of people who could not make it in Formula 1 ... and Americans – who don’t really know what Formula 1 is. Despite it not being Formula 1, it was just like Formula 1 – it was unpleasantly loud, extremely tiring and yet fun. Before the race we walked through the pits and onto the grid. After the race we went up to the podium and saw Robert Doornbos, Neel Jani and Sebastian Bourdais at close range. Yes yes, you don’t know who they are – it doesn’t matter – just pretend to be impressed. Anyway – it was all great fun. The only boring part was the race.

Standing in front of the pole sitter on the grid of the San Jose Grand Prix, just before the start of the race!

A friend of mine was in town from Bangalore. Walking through Palo Alto downtown late one evening we had a strange conversation. We decided we weren’t exactly friends. She said that we had no common interests and don’t really like each other. I think there was a hidden message there somewhere. She then said we’re more like sisters. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Last Friday I drove to San Francisco to meet her. It took me an hour to get there. I then spent half an hour driving around looking for parking. And it took another thirty minutes to walk from the parking spot to where I had to meet her … by which time it was time to leave. Did I mention that I like going to San Francisco?
On Monday two women asked me to marry them. It was a good day – marriage proposal wise. The excitement of this marriage proposal riot was mitigated in no small measure by the fact that they both asked me on Google Talk. Is it me? Do I emanate (Doesn’t the word ‘emanate’ almost demand that the word ‘odour’ follow it? But no, I do not emanate odours, and we are not discussing it, no matter what you think.) a vibe which says “Ah I am so inconsequential in the larger scheme of things that if you really must go as far as proposing marriage then chat shall suffice.”? Or is it just a degeneration of our generation. Neither of them was serious though. At least I don’t think they were.
The loo closest to my office cubicle is flooded. And before you even think it – no, it wasn’t me. In fact the flooding happened last Tuesday (when I was working from home – smart ass) but the loo and the coffee place right outside are still cordoned off with yellow police tape which makes it look like a murder scene. I now need to walk five minutes for my mint tea, a glass of water or a piss. In the interest of efficiency I gulp down my water and then quickly pee before coming back. The walk is very long. I have also discovered that my bladder’s capacity is variable. Specifically it varies in relation to the distance from the closest loo. In case you were wondering, they are negatively correlated.
Last night Tendulkar was batting on 48. This morning I had this recurring dream that I had woken up and I was checking the score. At times I wasn’t sure if I was awake or if I was still dreaming. I dreamt this either three times or four times. The first three times I am sure it was a dream. The fourth time I woke up, found he had got out for 82 and swore at my computer. I think the fourth time I actually woke up but I’m not sure – you see I still am awake. But it feels exactly like the first three dreams and I have no way of being certain. I did try pinching myself – but it didn’t really hurt. That could also be because of my layers of fat. However, (I like the word ‘however’. It adds an air of officiousness to the sentence. I didn’t think this was an officious blog. Apparently I was wrong. Anyway) during the pinching process I did get some of my arm hair stuck in my nails. It hurt. Maybe I am awake after all.
This evening I went to Lucky Dhaba to pick up dinner. As I waited for my order I sat down and then found that I was sitting directly below the sole TV in Lucky Dhaba. Before I figured out where I was in relation to the television I was quite flattered to find all the hot girls looking in my direction. All right fine – there were no hot girls – just a whole lot of engineers. All of them were grandly mustachioed. Some of them were men.

All good bullet points are followed by a short paragraph which provides closure. But in this case bullet points aren’t very good. Let’s just hope the paragraph is better.

Oops.

There’s a Vibrator in me Toothbrush and other Horror Stories

2007-07-31T22:15:00.000-07:00

Despite a multitude of women assuring me that I am grossly mistaken I have, for the longest time, desperately clung on to the belief that I am special. I think I am now vindicated. You see, I have inconclusive proof that I am clairvoyant. It was but a few weeks ago that on this very blog I ended a post with the seemingly innocuous attempt at humour:
Now the dust has settled, literally, and I sit on my wonderful Lilleberg Sofa – Birch Veneer, Alme Natural Fabric – mulling lazily over my life … wondering when the sofa will fall apart. “Soon” I hear it whisper, “Soon!”

Ah well, humour (just like superstardom, happiness and the yummy taste you get after burping up maggi) is short-lived. I sat down on my sofa last weekend (I’m a little uptight and hence find the need to point out that when I say ‘last weekend’ I am actually referring to the weekend of July 21^st and 22^nd) and heard a crack. It was not, as you might suspect, the crack of a noxious emission from my rear end, but a crack from lower down – somewhere in the depths of my painstakingly built sofa. But I am an optimist at the best of times (At the worst of times I verge on being delusional) and so I assumed that all was well and continued to sit and read. Alas, all was not well – two more cracks later I could bounce up and down on my sofa and by now my razor-sharp brain had figured out that something was clearly amiss. Closer inspection revealed that a wooden beam which held the sofa in place had a large crack running across it. And as I can almost hear you snigger contemptuously at my incompetence I find the need to point out that the collapsing sofa was NOT caused by my poor workmanship but by the lousy quality of Ikea wood. But this victory (if breaking my sofa can in fact be termed a victory) was bitter-sweet at best. If my workmanship is exonerated the weight of the blame literally falls on my rather ample bottom. Cleared of incompetence but charged with obesity! Sigh.

On the bright side, the poor quality of the wood and my over-sized bottom worked rather well from a timing perspective. They ensured that the sofa broke 43 days after purchase. Ikea, fortunately enough, happily exchanges anything within the first 45 days. And so off I set to Ikea with the offending wooden beam and returned with a nice new one. The pain and frustration of re-building the sofa was immense, but I suppose it is to be preferred to a bouncing bottom.

The Offending Piece of Wood

And the Sofa in Pieces

The menace of the weekend (still on July 21^st and 22^nd) did not unfortunately end there. On Sunday evening I was driving through Oakland making my way to Berkeley, confident that I would get there with the help of my Google Maps print-out. I was heading down Highway 580 West, happy in the knowledge that I had another few miles to go when suddenly, and with surprisingly limited warning Highway 580 West tapered off almost lazily to the right and I found myself heading full-pep down Highway 980 West. What seemed like a small inconvenience was suddenly magnified by the realization that I was heading nay hurtling towards the Bay Bridge that would lead me into San Francisco, causing a detour of close to 15 kilometres. ‘Sub-optimal’ screeched the afore-mentioned razor-sharp brain and so I decided to rush to the first available exit and turn around. Somewhere during this rushing towards nearest exit process I thought I read the words ‘Last Oakland Exit’ and so I continued onto the exit, happy that I had avoided the ridiculously long detour. But what was I saying about happiness two paragraphs ago? Ah yes, it’s short-lived. This exit which initially seemed like it would save me from much inconvenience had more fight in it yet.

Once I was on the exit and looked around I noticed that it had large signs saying “FastTrak Lane” and if that wasn’t enough it was followed by the even more terse “Buses Only”. And of course there was no way out. For those of you who have been saved the rather unpleasant ordeal (can ordeals be pleasant?) of driving in the Bay Area, the “FastTrak” lanes offer you the option of pre-paying the toll for various toll bridges and so you can just zip through without stopping. But no, it isn’t as nice as it seems. You see when you pre-pay the toll (which of course I had not done. Why you ask? Because I never intended to cross the Bay Bride. Keep up will you!) they give you this little electronic device that you stick somewhere in your car and this ‘informs’ the sensor on the bridge that you have paid the toll. If however, like me, you have stumbled upon the FastTrak lane by mistake, or you are just trying to diddle the evil capitalists out of their $4 then they take a photograph of your illegal action and mail it to you along with a $25 ticket and the $4 toll ticket of course. I am still waiting for the photograph. I hope they got my nice side.

Oh but wait, there’s more. The $29 ticket, while tiresome is not untowardly expensive. But unfortunately there’s more to come. You see I had mentioned in passing that I was in the “Buses Only” lane. And while my Toyota Camry is certainly closer to a bus than my red Zen ever was, I suspect it might not pass the "Bus Test". Now thanks to this ridiculously snap-happy FastTrak contraption they have photographic evidence of me being in the Bus Lane. I should at this juncture point out that the minimum fine for driving in the Bus Lane is a not insignificant $341. Ouch!

I suppose the weekend could only have been salvaged by my new toothbrush – my nice new toothbrush which had more colours on its bristles than stars in the sky, than people in the world, than the hairs on my right arm. I had picked up this happy looking toothbrush without much scrutiny – it was after all a toothbrush – how wrong could I go? However, after having unpacked the toothbrush I noticed little buttons on it. As I pressed the + button it started to whirr and vibrate with what can only be described as gay abandon. My jaw fell a little in awe and fear and then snapped shut lest this whirring, buzzing, awe-inspiring device try to make its way into the oral orifice. Setting aside my suspicion I decided to give it a whirl and so tentatively I tried to brush with the nasty little thing vibrating away. It was not pretty. The lips were numb and the teeth felt violated and so I’m sorry to say this vibrator has seen its last.

Sometimes weekends are nice. This time I was just happy when it was over.

Hiking up Mission Peak: A Story in Three Parts

2007-07-16T22:10:00.000-07:00

Part I: Prelude to a Hike

I walked into the shoe shop and I was quite overwhelmed. I was surrounded by a zillion pair of shoes. The words “plethora”, “shoes”, “indecision”, “expensive”, “poverty”, “choices” and “noodle soup” rushed through my head. (I’m not sure why I was thinking about noodle soup, but the mind wanders where the mind wants to wander). A salesperson with a fake smile plastered upon his face walks up to me and asks if he can help. I clear my throat and yet all I manage is a feeble squeak, “Eh, I’d like some … shoes.”

Having freed myself from the salesperson I worked my way to this wall of shoes. I suppose I should have mentioned that we were planning to go on a hike. Never one to miss a trick, my lightening quick brain figured out that it would probably be just a little uncomfortable to hike in my beautiful shiny leather shoes. And so here I was at the shoe shop, at this wall of shoes looking for shoes to hike in. I looked at the wall, and yet again I achieved a heightened state of agog-ness. You see I was expecting to find a few pairs of shoes in the shop. I would then point at a pretty pair. The salesperson would show me the pretty pair. I would pay for them and get on with the rest of my life.

Alas, things are never that easy, not here anyway. All the shoes were categorized and sub-categorized using a system which was a little more complicated than the Dewey Decimal Disaster. On one side of the wall the options were ‘Walking’, ‘Running’, ‘Trailing’ and ‘Basketball’ and on the other side were options like ‘Classic’, ‘Performance’, ‘Training’ and ‘Spirituality in the Age of the Internet’. (All right I may have made up one of the options, big deal). This was really quite confusing since I was sure that when on the hike there would be elements of walking and running and all this would be done on a trail (I was sharp enough to eliminate ‘Basketball’ fairly early on in this cognitive process). But what if I wanted to ‘perform’ in a ‘classic’ fashion while walking, running and trailing? As I said, it was all quite overwhelming.

I looked around in a lost fashion until the salesperson came back to rescue me. I explained the purpose of the proposed shoe purchase and he was rather helpful, picking out a particular pair of shoes and handing them to me. I examined them carefully and they looked rather nice – quite pretty, really. But suddenly I sat down. It was amazing. It was too much of a coincidence to be true. I may even have been flabbergasted (to be honest I’m not sure if I was flabbergasted. I haven’t been flabbergasted in a while now. I think I’m forgetting what a real flabbergast feels like. Anyway). On the price tag, following the ‘$’ sign was my exact annual salary. How could they have known!

After having recovered from this initial shock I shoo-ed away this sinister salesperson and proceeded to look for shoes which were closer to the ‘style I had in mind’ (read that as closer to ‘what my rather small pocket could afford’). I managed to find a nice enough pair of shoes – which cost only as much as a week’s salary and walked out happily. Here I was, shoes and all, all set to hike.

Part II: Onward Ho, into Excruciating Pain

Weekends are quite odd here. Back in Bangalore people would wait for the weekend anxiously and after five long hard days they would take time to collapse, watch television, bond with friends and not do very much. Here things are just a little different. Weekends are looked upon as projects, as missions. And unless something significant has been achieved the weekend is deemed to have been wasted. On a typical Monday morning a colleague will bound up cheerily and enquire about what I did over my weekend. I mutter something about reading, meeting friends and relaxing. Immediately a look of scorn and disdain appears on afore-mentioned colleagues face. “Oh” he/ she utters, “well I went sky-diving in the Galapagos on Saturday. Then we played with sea turtles. Saturday evening we swam 17 miles and then on Sunday we climbed Mt. Kaboobie.” I shrink into quiet corner and pour over my computer. Mental Note to Self 1: Next weekend do something more exciting … or else just lie.

Well this weekend I did something more exciting. Much too exciting! On Saturday morning I was awake at the ungodly hour of 7:15 am and a few hours later I was at the base of Mission Peak. While people all around the world like going for walks, they usually have a leisurely stroll in the country side in mind. Over here it’s called a hike. A hike is defined as a long and excruciating walk which makes you want to die. The primary aim of a hike is to later talk about it and add it to the list of your life accomplishments, a little like eating caviar or having a rectal probe.

Mission Peak is one of the more odious hikes. It is a 10 kilometre round trip where you climb up 2,000 feet and then walk back down. And to all you hikers who think that it sounds very easy – well it wasn’t. Oh, and you are no longer allowed to read my blog!

In all it took us three hours to complete, not counting the 20 minutes that we stood at the top and pretended to enjoy the view while we panted and tried desperately to get our breath back. One of the many misconceptions I had was that I was young and fit. I am beginning to think I am neither. At various points of the hike I decided to push myself a little harder and walk up faster. Each of these occasions was followed by a burning face, rapid heart beat and just a hint of nausea. Mental Note to Self 2: Do not try to run up the side of a hill. Do not try to push yourself. Unless it’s off the hill.

A number of my muscles had not been used in years. After the hike I could feel all 138 of them. Something needed to be done. Something.

Atop Mission Peak - Pretending to Enjoy the View

Part 3: Archimedes and the Freezing Knees

I cannot swim. I suspect I’d be extremely good at drowning, but I have had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to put that suspicion to test. However these were extreme circumstances – the muscles were aching – so I threw caution to the wind, held my breath and dove into my bathtub. All right I lie. I didn’t quite dive. I gingerly put my left foot into the water and withdrew it immediately with a yowl. Cold water added. Process repeated. After much foot dipping, rapid withdrawal, yowling and cold water adding I finally managed to get the water to the correct temperature. The left foot is a little singed, but at least the bath water was nice.

The last time I was in a bathtub was 23 years ago. I must confess I have completely forgotten the operational procedure. Luckily I did remember that Archimedes had caused his bathtub to overflow, and since I wasn’t in the mood to run around town naked, I ensured that the water level was well below the edge. I carefully lowered myself into the tub with the intention of lying down in the soothing water and letting my aches and pains melt away. Alas there would be no lying down. I am 5 feet 10 inches long. The tub evidently is not. And so when my legs were straightened, the rest of me was bobbing about above the surface of the water. Not ideal, one would think. I started bending my knees and adopted a strange cross-legged posture in a vain attempt to submerge myself. I got as far as my neck, which wasn’t bad, but my knees had bobbled out of the water. It was impossible to get all of me into the tub (I had by now given up on the fear of drowning) and so I just lay there, like a scrunched up crustacean and let the warm water soothe the muscles.

This lasted for about a minute and a half. By then the knees had started to dry and so were freezing. I re-jigged my position in an attempt to get the knees underwater but then the torso was un-watered. Oh it was all very trying.

Half an hour later I decided I was through with it and drained the water. And then it struck me, while this is called a bath, there had been no “cleaning action” whatsoever. I had just marinated myself in my own filth. How could that possibly have helped? And so I followed up my bathtub bath with a shower. It’s all very odd.

I may go back for another hike. I remain a little sceptical about the bathtub.

Growth Spurts and Greying Woes

2007-07-12T18:58:00.001-07:00

Despite the fact that I am called Ganju I am quite hairy.

I started shaving on April 6^th 1994 at the age of fourteen. Frankly I should have started much earlier – I was sufficiently hairy at thirteen. Delays notwithstanding my shaving adventure gave me a tremendous sense of accomplishment largely because I have accomplished remarkably little in the non-hair production scheme of things and also because I was the first person in my class to shave. (I may be wrong here. I seem to recall a particularly hirsute girl who might have pipped me to the post. Either way, I was the first boy to start shaving). All the boys came and looked on (yes, I think they were agog) as I displayed my splendidly bald upper lip. Surprisingly they all passed up the opportunity to point at it, laugh and say “Hahaha – Ganju!”

Anyway, so as I was saying I was suitably excited at the prospect of shaving but 13 years on the euphoria seems to have dulled just a little. Somehow shaving isn’t all that exciting and almost no one is impressed by the baldness of my upper lip. Sigh – super stardom is so short lived. And so it is now quite a chore as every morning I engage in this not-quite-tedious yet not-exactly-exciting ritual of follicle removal before continuing with the rest of my day. But all is not well. All is not well.

My facial hair is responding rather strangely to America. (I should at this juncture digress to point out that I can’t really blame my facial hair. This is a country where everything is weird and different. I’d almost judge my facial hair if it didn’t respond strangely). Now I have always been hairy (and if you haven’t got that already you aren’t reading this very carefully, are you now?) but for some reason my facial hair seems to be re-appearing at an alarming rate here. I am now shaving 7 days a week (unlike the odd Sunday I would take off in Bangalore because it seemed ‘passable’) and my 6 o’clock shadow now appears somewhere between 11:15 and 11:30. What is even stranger is that my left cheek seems to re-hair just a little quicker than my right cheek. While this doesn’t seem untoward it causes quite a problem when I run into the hot German girl in the corridor. I don’t want her to think I forgot to shave and so I insist on standing to her left and point my right cheek at her. This might strike her as being just a little odd but alas it doesn’t really matter. She recently talked about her massive boyfriend. I may be hairy, but even that doesn’t help me take on massive boyfriends. Anyway, moving swiftly along (“Not swift enough” do I hear you grumble?).

Alas my hair woes do not end at the overly-haired face. I started greying some time on December 16^th, 2003, a few minutes after noon, I think. (My goodness I remember all sorts of dates). It was the final day of the India vs Australia test match at the Adelaide Oval and despite all expectations we were winning. I sat in that almost-broken cane chair clutching the arm rest and didn’t dare move lest it cause us to lose a wicket. And so thanks in large part to my immobility we went on to win a test match in Australia. As soon as the match finished I rushed to the loo (the superstitious lack of mobility had prevented me from peeing – I once got Tendulkar out for 98 because I went to pee. Still haven’t forgiven myself, but that’s another story.) and was washing my hands with unmitigated glee (because of the match result not because I had peed) when I noticed the first few grey hairs in my other wise lovely black hair.

Over the last few years I have of course found more grey hairs – and it’s all right really – it makes me look older and smarter, but yesterday as I was shaving suddenly … wham …. it hit me like a large jar of marmite being tossed out by a drunk Englishman in a narrow street of London. There on my chest – my hitherto black-haired chest – was a little grey hair. Bouncing around and waving gently in apparent oblivion like a care-free blade of grass in the wind. Sigh.

I suppose if you’re called Ganju ‘bad hair days’ are just a way of life.

My 11:15 Shadowed Left Cheek

[Please be grateful that I'm sparing you the photograph of the grey chest hair :)]

Agog and the Furniture with the Screws

2007-07-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

I stood there before the truck. Agog. Can one stand before a truck agog? I’m not sure it’s been done before but I assure you I got pretty close. Standing. Agog. You see I, little old me (all right I have a paunch, let’s get on with it) was standing before this ridiculously large truck. Actually it wasn’t ridiculously large by truck standards, possibly not even ‘large’ but compared to me it was, large that is. In case you missed it, it was large. Oh, and I was agog.

You see it was a new life in a new country in a new apartment. And new lives in new apartments often require new furniture. And here I was at the truck rental place to rent a truck (which really is what truck rental places are best for) to transport my new furniture from Ikea to my new apartment. As I have said in the past I like driving and I’m a fairly confident driver. However, as soon as I sat in that large truck, all my confidence seemed to vanish. Somehow I managed to find my way to Ikea without killing anyone. At least I don’t think I did. I then drove around looking for a parking spot. I eventually managed to stuff the truck into a spot and found its butt was hanging out. I fear the truck’s modesty was done a disservice but it could not be helped.

I was met at Ikea by the cousin (of “Male, Married , 1 No.s” fame) who then helped me in making critical, life-altering decisions like the colour of my plates, the design of my cutlery and the colour of my bathroom accessories (in America apparently it is ‘silverware’, ‘color’ and ‘restroom’ – I wish they spoke English here). More importantly he then helped me lift all the unpleasantly large and heavy furniture including my 48kg bed (Ramberg, Medium Brown, Full Size) onto a trolley and into the truck. We decided that there was no way we were going to manage to get everything onto 3 trolleys and so we decided to leave behind the non essentials. It was all very Titanic-ish. “Take only what you really care about! The rest must be done away with. Fare thee well Poang Chair, with Footstool – Birch Veneer, Alme Natural fabric, fare thee well!”

And so there I was in a new apartment with new furniture. Well not really furniture, it was more like flat cardboard boxes that filled up the living room. Ikea, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, seduces you with its wonderful furniture in its wonderful showroom. But then you go to pick up the furniture and there are just these boxes. And the boxes have many pieces of wood – large and small, with many big screws, and many little screws and a few medium sized screws. And you look around bewilderedly, in a bewildered fashion, one might even say with much bewilderment and ask “Where’s my Malm 4 Drawer Chest – Birch Veneer?” Anyway – I digress – so there I was in my apartment with my new …. well my new cardboard boxes and suddenly I felt most grown up. (Luckily it didn’t last. The consequences could have been dire.)

The next two weekends were spent in painstakingly assembling the furniture. It’s all very simple (and I stretch the facts just a tad here):
Step 1: Screw screw A (no that isn’t a typo the first ‘screw’ is the verb the second ‘screw’ is the noun – maybe this is why Americans go to great lengths to avoid English) into Hole B on Wood Panel C.
Step 2: Please repeat 37 times with the remaining 37 screws and holes.
Step 3: Oops we forgot to mention. Before you begin Steps 1 and 2 place Wood Panel D between Wood Panel C and aforementioned Screw A.

And so after much sweat and toil I had all my furniture up and running. The greatest achievement (well actually the biggest pain in the nether regions of my bottom) was my bed. This joy was tempered slightly when I ripped open by Benno Coffee Table – Birch Veneer to find that hidden inside was actually Benno Coffee Table – Black Brown. Apparently I had picked up the wrong box– damn boxes. Luckily to my colour blind eyes the Black Brown coffee table goes nicely with the rest of the Birch Veneer furniture.

Now the dust has settled, literally, and I sit on my wonderful Lilleberg Sofa – Birch Veneer, Alme Natural Fabric – mulling lazily over my life … wondering when the sofa will fall apart. “Soon” I hear it whisper, “Soon!”

Broccoli, Cauliflower, Carrots, Salty Palak and 36 Rolls of Toilet Paper

2007-06-28T18:50:00.000-07:00

I am a bottom-washer and there are no two ways about it. My bottom is at its happiest when it’s washed and dried. I don’t go to the extent of soaping it (unlike a ‘certain’ friend of mine) but the washing is essential.

Unfortunately the western world isn’t particularly helpful in this regard. The prevalent practice of dry-cleaning your posteriors seems remarkably archaic and unpleasantly unhygienic. I usually make it a point to carry my trusty mugga with me every time I leave the bottom-friendly shores of Mother India, but this time significant space constraints prevented me from doing so. As a consequence, while this was my second visit to the US, it was my first mugga-less adventure. Luckily the hotel I was staying in had a conveniently shaped and sized measuring jug, which admirably stood in for my mugga. I wouldn’t necessarily want to do much baking in that particular room now, but as I said, at least the bottom is happy!

The problem really arose when I moved to my new apartment. While I can be uncaring and unfeeling enough to degrade a measuring jug, I would never quite stoop to stealing it. And so I walked the aisles of the supermarket searching for a mugga-substitute and eventually had to make do with a rather large, blue, Rubbermaid jug. But this really wasn’t supposed to be a blog about my mugga. Let’s move on to the Toilet Paper. You see I continue to use large amounts of toilet paper, most of it for cleaning my glasses. And over the weekend, while at a shop, I happened upon a pack of 36 Rolls of Toilet Paper. I am both cheap, and bottom-conscious – the decision was pretty much made. And so I walked out with a 36-pack of ‘Ultra Quilted Northern - Our Softest & Thickest’. It had me at ‘Ultra’. It had me at ‘Ultra’!

My new blue mugga and the 36-pack of Toilet Paper – seemingly in a tussle, vying for the affection of my bottom.

The sharper ones amongst you would have noticed that this particular blog is not called “My Bottom and its Admirers” (which in retrospect would have been a wonderful title) but “Broccoli, Cauliflower, Carrots, Salty Palak and 36 Rolls of Toilet Paper” and as a consequence I now find myself compelled to talk about the Broccoli, Cauliflower, Carrots and Salty Palak. You see, despite being a hog, my culinary attempts till now have been limited to food that comes out of a plastic packet or a chocolate wrapper. But as a part of this whole “new life” nonsense I decided it was time for me to try and cook. I have in the past successfully boiled pasta and heated pasta sauce and even mixed the two (Applause? No?), but this time I wanted to do more. I love watching chefs on television toss things into a frying pan, jiggle them around and 30 seconds later lay out a magnificently inviting looking dish. I also like the word sauté. Somehow when you prefix anything with the word ‘sautéed’ it just tastes nicer.

So sometime last week I tossed large amounts of ingredients into a pan and sautéed some Broccoli, Cauliflower and Carrots (or at least I think I was sauté-ing. I may very well have been roasting, frying, boiling, poaching, smoking or burning – I wouldn’t really know). Apart from the fact that I over-carroted it really wasn’t bad. Inspired by this limited success (some men are born to greatness, others are destined to oscillate between ‘limited success’ and ‘abject failure’) this week I made myself some palak. What no one bothered to inform me was that you do not need haldi in palak. Haldi excesses not withstanding, it was with the pride of a creator that I sat down to my yellow-streaked over-salted palak. And I enjoyed it!

Shakespeare once said, ‘Palak in any other colour would taste just as yum’. Or at least I think he did.

The over-Carroted Broccoli and Cauliflower ….

.... and the yellow-streaked Palak

Just Another Sunday Afternoon

2007-06-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

Sunday afternoons are most unpleasant. They invariably lead into Sunday evenings which are followed by Monday mornings with an alarming regularity. But it was on a happy, pleasant Sunday afternoon in May that I arrived in San Francisco all set to take on my new life. This new life taking on process was aided, in no small measure by the presence of Cousin – male, married, 1 nos. and Cousin’s wife – 1 nos. Though I had asked them not to bother coming to the airport it was with much joy and relief that I found familiar faces to greet me.

What is the first thing that one would do in a new country? I’m not sure about other people but my first task was to look for a money-changer to change some traveller’s cheques into currency notes. My company believes in making things tricky. I am fairly certain I will spend more time on this blog talking about just how tricky they make it, but at this point I should point out that having sent me to a new country with limited amounts of money they proceeded to give me all of 3.3% of it in cash and the rest in traveller’s cheques. While I didn’t quite try, chances are I could have spent all the cash on a large meal. As it happened the cheques were not changed.

Having successfully failed at my first task in America I decided to venture forth to the next task – failure, I am reliably informed, enjoys company. I am brave, stupidly so when it comes to driving. I have in the past, and shall probably continue in the future to over-estimate my driving skills. Here I decided that I must rent a car straight from the airport and drive it to the hotel. This impeccable logic (and it’s starting to look just a little ‘peccable’ now) involved the belief that exhaustion coupled with the calm of Sunday afternoon traffic are probably better than an awake but crowded Monday morning for my first drive on the wrong side of the road. I will not bother you with the details (all right fine – I admit it – I drove badly, including at one point of time brushing the kerb!) but let’s just say I am glad the cousin was with me in the car and helped ensure that we both got back in one piece.

Later in the day we went for a pizza lunch and in the evening I decided to drive to work just to check out the route (pronounced ‘root’ not ‘rout’). Finally exhausted, jet-lagged, nervous and a little excited I collapsed into bed.

And so my adventure had begun.

Arriving in San Francisco - tired, but happy.

My first slice of pizza! Recorded by Cousin - male, married, 1 nos.

I’m Back Baby, I’m Back!

2007-06-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

And so after 11 months and 4 days I return to the world of blogging. And this time I have something to blog about!

On May 13th, 2007 – my fifth anniversary with this current employer of mine I landed in San Francisco ready to take on the world in general and Silicon Valley in particular. Such extremes of disguised unemployment were achieved in Bangalore that I suppose it was only a matter of time that someone noticed I spent all of my 6 hours in office surfing the net and chewing bubble-gum. And while my chewing bubble-gum was right out of the top drawer they thought I wasn’t doing enough, and shipped me off to the other end of the world.

And so I find myself, happily ensconced in my nice new flat in Sunnyvale, California with my lovely Toyota Camry parked downstairs and I shall now share my life with you – bit by bit, blog by blog. I know they say that the beginning is the place to start but I will disregard conventional wisdom and happily jump back and forth as and when I wish. Exploiting this liberty to the fullest I will end this first entry with a little video of my little apartment as it is today. In a bit, I will go back to when I first got here. Until then …..

… Hello new world, I’m coming …. At least I think I am.