High Spirits

Yes, I'm going to talk about alcohol and no I'm not going to apologise for the clichéd title. Moving on then swiftly to the point of this post.

A question I'm invariably asked by non-drinkers is "Why do you drink?". I can see where they're coming from on this one. Let's see... there are no obvious health benefits, it costs quite a bit more than a soft drink, it causes intoxication and lose of motor response and most of the stuff just tastes weird. I mean, beer is bitter, vodka is just concentrated alcohol and tastes like it too, whiskey is like piss unless you're drinking scotch, etc. So what's the deal with it?

I dunno about others, but I'm a social drinker. That is, I drink only when I have company, especially if it's company I like. I find its inhibition shedding effects a great conversation starter (an important detail for an introvert like me) and a profoundly liberating experience at that.

More than that I just love the way that once a conversation has been started, it starts gaining life of its own, writhing, twisting and jumping through various paradoxes, loopholes, digresses, points and counter-points, seamlessly weaving tales of bravura, conflict, hilarity, sadness and wit.

I have lost track of the number of conversations I've had with friends and family members on topics as such diverse as religion, spirituality, science, fiction, music, death, life, books, politics, office, work, evolution, God, physics, biology, maths, food, women (!!!), movies, people, places, et al. And it's perfectly acceptable to talk about the same old things again. It NEVER gets old because no two discussions are exactly the same!

Sure, there are times when you'd rather kick back, close your eyes and let some good music possess your soul. But nothing beats having a bunch of close friends around a table, a bottle full of your favourite alcoholic poison, and a raging discussion on why the existence of the universe proves or disproves the existence of God, or a cheerful reminiscence of the "good ol' days" without feeling like an old git.

Don't believe me? Well, here, have a couple of beers and we'll try that again, eh!

Old wine, new bottle

Ooh, shiney! The new visual theme of this blog I mean, not the disgraced actor. I had actually intended to write a long winded and deeply meaningful post but somehow, somewhere I got happily diverted to picking out a new look for this useless blog. Hey, at least it's something new in here eh? You can thank my short attention span (which is increasingly getting shorter) for that. You're welcome.

Reboot

This blog has been dormant for quite a while now. That's because, true to form, I have been too lazy to keep it updated!

In fact, the only reason I'm writing this is because I'm trying out Windows Live Writer - a tool to keep track of and publish on multiple blogs (if you are the sad sorts who has more than one blog. I am. And I don't update them either.) via a single unified interface that's pretty spiffy to use, as a matter of fact.

Hmm... you know what's wrong with this blog? It's too boring! Lots of words on random subjects but nary a photo, picture or any thing of that sort in sight, for visual relief. Let's fix that shall we!

Oh look! Three happy crispies ready to be devoured and washed down with some splendid whiskey!

That's enough rambling for now. Hopefully, I will be using Writer more often...

I'm loving it... NOT!

No really, I hate McDonalds. The infamous burgers at the Mac have to be the most tasteless, soulless, insipid burgers I've ever had in my life. The burgers I get at the shop next to the local train station are better than these – and they are cheaper too! Lets see, the buns in the burger are like any other – nothing special there; the one tiny sad lettuce they put in it is a joke; the cheese costs extra; and the one thing that actually defines the burger – the meat filling (vegetarians pls excuse) – is the blandest thing on the planet. In a nutshell, the Mac burger has nothing going in its favour IMO. On the other hand, one of my colleagues swears by it. But then he eats his burger with huge globs of tomato sauce, so his opinion doesn't really count! ;)

The other stuff like the salad and fritters might be decent but lets face it, the burger is what the majority of the public goes to the Mac for and that's my bone of contention – why exactly is everyone eating burgers at the Mac when I'm sure everyone knows the burgers are crap? Maybe it's the packaging, the clean shiny counters, or the hallucinating effect (I presume) of the red and white stripes. Or maybe it's the just the brand or the fact that there are hardly any other good burger joints – so maybe in the end it's just down to the lack of options. In my case, I eat at the Mac whenever I need to spend my Sodexho's because sadly it's one of the few places where the coupons are accepted at the food mall where I eat at. Whatever may be the case, I think all of us can do with some options when it comes to burgers. Till as such time, I'll take vada pav over the McBurger any day! Bring it on!

Road Trip

Indica is a small car. I realised just how small when on my way back from Pune, in a private taxi, I found myself wedged between two very healthy gentlemen in the backseat. With the trip time estimated to be around two and a half hour, I resigned myself wearily to being straight-jacketed for the better part of the trip what with my arms being pinned helplessly to my sides by the overflowing flab of the aforementioned gentlemen. At least - I thought to myself with a half hearted attempt at optimism - in the event of a car crash, I would have lots of cushioning (the thought that I could be crushed to death never entered my head apparently).

You think that's bad? Wait till I tell you about the dark, plump gentleman (lets call him DPG) on my right, who decided that it would be a good idea to smoke inside the car as it was such a lovely weather outside. Surprisingly, before he did that, he turned to me and asked "I want to smoke?" with a wide toothy smile. Being not quite sure how to interpret that question, I gave him a "Why don't you just murder me instead?" expression, whereupon he happily lit up a ciggarette and began to puff away.

I looked to my left at the fair plump gentleman (FPG) for some sympathy and consolation but he was far too busy exploring the depths of his nose with his index finger to be of any help. The driver meanwhile was trying his best to mow down every pedestrian on the road but he must not have been feeling himself that morning, for he somehow managed to miss every one of them. He also had the odd habit of leaning into the corners in his seat as the car took the sharp turns at high speed. I'm not sure if it was a pyschological thing or a centripetal thing, but I noticed that everyone in the car was leaning into the turns in tandem with the driver almost as if we were all willing the car to make that hairy turn against all odds.

Anyway, I think I must have passed out soon after that because I was rudely woken up to the sound of FPG yelling into his mobile phone in broken Hindi. "We have to meet the party at 2pm. The maal (goods) will be there. You don't come in because they recongnise you. Leave it to me". I risked a quick glance at him to make sure I wasn't in the company of some famous mafia don I should be taking autographs from. I wasn't, but that didn't stop me from secretly willing the driver to go faster than before - the pedestrians be damned! I mean, there is only so much you can take.

In the end, I did make it to the office in time, in one piece, although I was a little worse for wear.

There is a lesson in all this somewhere. Not quite sure what it is though, but I think it has something to do with the Indica being a small car.

For a cup of hot coffee...

There is nothing like staying in, on a wet gloomy day, with a cup of hot coffee and chocolate biscuits and watching the rain pelt down through the windows. Trust me - I'm doing just that at the moment and it's heaven!

Speaking of hot coffee, I must say that getting a hot cup of coffee isn't all that easy as its been made out to be. For a bachelor anyway. Or maybe it's just me. Anyway, a hot cuppa requires a couple of things - coffee (naturally), milk, sugar and hot water. Now then, I don't have any of these things lying around simply because they are perishables and I don't own a fridge. The hot water situation is easily solved with an electric kettle, but how does one get around the milk-coffee-sugar problem? The answer is, you buy one of those pre-mixed coffee sachets from Nescafe or Bru (minus sugar). Then all you need to do is empty the sachet into a cup, pour the hot water in it and stir with a spoon and, voila! Coffee. Well, almost. Puritans would no doubt argue on the merits of such a faux cafe, but for the rest of us (well some of us at any rate), this is as good as it gets.

There is only one hitch though. The local stores and shops haven't yet begun appreciating this wonderful new invention, and so I have to hunt high and low for someone keeping stock of the product, whereupon I proceed to buy half of his/her stock just so that I don't have to repeat the process again. It can be nerve wracking I tell you when you find yourself running through your last reserves and begin rationing the stuff. Sad but true.

Seeing is not always believing

I've recently noticed that I'm slowly but surely become more cynical about some things I once believed in fervently when I was younger.

I realised this when I was watching the much hyped "The Triangle" on Star Movies yesterday. It's a series on the Bermuda Triangle and cashes in on the mass hysteria and superstition that surrounds the legend (see? I'm being cynical already). The first episode was rather entertaining I must say but I can't say it attempts to demystify BT anymore than X-files attempts to explain the supernatural. In other words, the series merely adds fuel to the fire by playing on the supernatural aspect of it all.

There was a time, as a teenager, when I used to read everything related to the supernatural, UFO's, ancient legends and the sorts. I didn't percieve them then with a cynical eye but with an innocent and open minded thinking that still hadn't got around to forming an opionion on the subject.

I used to watch documentaries on T.V that purportedly "investigated" these phenonmenons but only managed to lend more enigma to the cases they investigated. It was also the time when NDTV's Prannoy Roy used to have the excellent "The World This Week" on Doordarshan and I remember watching news reports on crop circles in Britain in one of them. This before Doug Bower and Dave Chorley owned up to making hundreds of crop circles in England to fool the public.

Every bit of information regarding the legends of the Lochness Monster, the Sargosa Sea, the Tunguska explosion, the Great Pyramid of Gizah, Easter Islands, the Roswell Incident, Spontaneous Human Combustion, the Nazca Plateau patterns, haunted house, et al were all hungrily lapped up and digested as fast as I could.

However, somewhere along the way I turned a cynic instead of a convert and begin to explore material that would explain some of these fantastic theories. Sure enough, one of the best books on BT, "Bermuda Triangle Mystery- Solved" was precisely what I was looking for as it methodically and brillantly dissected the myth about BT through some excellent investigative writing and research. That was the turning point, I think, as I realised that for every fantastic and outlandish theory there is a plausible and beguilingly simple explanation.

It turns out that we, in reality, like to believe in stuff without understanding any of it. For example, why do some of us like to believe that if we change our position on the sofa when Sachin is batting, he would be out? Doesn't make any sense, does it? But how many times have we done this and continue to do it when Sachin or India bats? It's implausible but our belief system can be so strong at times that we tend to put aside all attemps at rationality.

The same case can be made out for our superstitions and beliefs in miracles and even God. I mean, what's the difference between believing in UFO's and believing in God? I don't see much by the way of rational explanation in either case!

Go ahead, call me a cynic.

Channel Surfing

Got my cable connection yesterday and I've just spent 2 days of my life watching mostly utter crap and wondering why I bothered. There was a ray of hope amidst the despair when Steven Gerrard drilled in one of the most fantastic goals in football ever when he hit a 30 yarder to level scores for Liverpool against West Ham in the FA Cup 2006 final with just two minutes to go. Definitely one of the jaw dropping moments on TV.

The rest of the stuff on TV was more of the same with endless boring soap operas, lottery shows, music videos et al. I did manage to catch 20 minutes of Lost before I myself felt lost due to lack of context since I haven't seen the previous shows.

Discovered a wine shop near my place. So it was with 2 pints of beer that I settled down to watch the Spanish Grand Prix that Alonso went on to win comfortably. My first drop of drink in nearly a month! Gave me a nice fuzzy feeling it did.

Went on to watch some more stupid TV for the sake of it before finally giving up. God! I do hope the FIFA world cup is here real soon! Can't wait for some quality action to fill up the screen and to hear the words that every football fan loves to hear: "G-o-o-o-a-a-a-l-l-l!"

Split Personalities

The power of the Internet never ceases to amaze me. In particular, the amount of trivia and knowledge to be found on it is stupendous. Recently I decided to look up people on the Net that I always wanted to know more about - Alfred Hitchcock, Steve McQueen, Rasputin, Bruce Lee et al. And from there I would go on to read about more people that these characters were associated with and so on and so forth forming a complex chain of sorts. It's interesting to see where you end up with. Wikipedia has been my source of information so far and I must admit I'm blown away by the quality and depth of information present therein considering its written by anybody and everybody, if you know what I mean.

For example, I was reading up on Steve McQueen, and from there I was led to an article on Shannon Tate a rising American actress who was murdered by members of the Charles Mason Family in the 1969, alongwith five other people at her home. Intrigued by this Charles Mason fella I looked him up on Wikepedia and so came to know about this strangely warped and morbid man who instructed his "followers" to kill for him leading to 35 heinous murders.

More than Mason I was intrigued by the kind of followers he gathered, many of whom were women. When I think that some of the most brutal and heartless murders were commited by the women who adored him, I shudder to think of the kind of hypotic hold he had over them. His theory (read up!) was certainly one of the vaguest, silliest and most unbelievable of sorts, so it mystifies me that anyone would believe it. But people did believe and to such extent that they would kill for him. Crazy!

Going South

Travelling from New Bombay (Navi Mumbai if you will) to South Bombay (or the “town” as we call it) is a real pain. You need to switch three local trains to get there and it takes a little more than an hour to reach Churchgate. Ever since I shifted to New Bombay, I haven’t felt the need or found the time to go there, but this Saturday I did just that. I needed to pick up a new graphics card for my home computer and as everyone knows Lamington Road is the place to go to if you need computer accessories quick and cheap.

An office colleague who knew the place well enough offered to help me shop for the card and so I met up with him at 2.30 in the afternoon. It was hot and humid, and by the time I reached Churney Road, where I was to meet my friend, my shirt was sticking to my back with sweat and rivulets of sweat were streaming down my face.

It took one and a half hour to finally find the card I wanted. It may surprise some people, but despite the surmise that Lamington Road is a geek’s paradise, the dealers are largely ignorant and unhelpful bunch of sods who are smart enough to survive partly due to the fact that the customers are more ignorant than them and partly due to the fact that they have an extensive network of “referral system”. If one of them doesn’t have what you want or doesn’t know what you are talking about, he will call up a couple of buddies of his and see if they can help. If they can, the dealer will ask the product to be brought over and take a cut of the percentage with the total cost being passed on to the customer. It’s a fine system that works both for the dealer (he gets a cut even though he doesn’t have the product) and the customer (he doesn’t have to hunt everywhere) and everyone goes home happy.

Anyway, my shopping done (for the record I picked up a XFX 6600GT, 128 MB, AGP for Rs. 9,500/-) my friend and I made our way to Churney Road via a shortcut through Lamington Road. It’s a lane that winds through an old Anglo-Indian community with quaint wooden houses that have architecture typical of the community. Almost every one of them had a small porch, a wooden staircase leading up to the first floor of the house, a balcony overlooking the street, and small glass windows with curtains drawn across them. The streets were clean and unusually quiet, even though it was 5 in the evening. However, we did come across a disembowelled rat that lay in the middle of a narrow lane that passed between two quiet brooding houses. We swiftly passed into a Hindu stronghold dominated by the Gujju community. Saffron flags hung everywhere and kids played cricket in the gallis. The contrast between the quiet of the Anglo-Indian community and the hustle and bustle of the Gujju community was remarkable. The main street was entirely taken over by shops selling greeting cards, although a couple of shops that sold the general necessities were also visible.

I eventually caught a bus to Victoria Terminus from where I would get a direct train to Navi Mumbai. The first thing that strikes you about VT is its architecture consisting of grand arches, ornamental railings and high vaulted ceilings. Take a look at this webpage that gives you a 360 degree view of the station including its surroundings, interiors and the courtyard:

http://www.world-heritage-tour.org/asia/in/chhatrapatiShivajiTerminus/map.html.

(Note how incongruous it looks when compared to its present day surroundings!)

I have a strong urge to make yet another trip down South, if only to see more of Old Bombay. There is so much in this city to see and so little time to see it all!

Holi Crap!

It's been one crazy week of deadlines and 12-14 hours of slog at work non-stop except for the one blissful Sunday in-between. If anyone thinks that making a video-game is a ultra-cool, relaxed and fun affair they are right, but only just. There is plenty of hard work and back-breaking stuff that goes on behind the scenes and there are days when you lose track of time, days and entire months! No kidding!

What's all this got to do with Holi, you may ask? Well, one of the days I did go for work was on Holi (15/3/2006), despite being a holiday. Knowing the fanatics that prowl the streets during the day, we (the team that is) decided to come to office post-lunch when things are usually a bit more tame. So it was that I headed out to office on my Pulsar 180 expecting to be ambushed by kids with water pistols or water balloons. Surprisingly, there was hardly anyone on the street. I was even more surprised when I found there was hardly any traffic on the highway as well. What a stroke of luck I thought to myself, and proceeded to enjoy a leisurely drive to office on a nearly empty road.

It wasn't until later that night when my mom rang me up that I found out that there had been some violence in Navi Mumbai due to Holi celebrations going awry. Police had been called in to calm down the situation and as a result life had been somewhat paralysed in that area. I had no idea!

There was more trouble in the same locality today in relation to the same Holi incident and as a result Navi Mumbai had been closed down again. I returned home to find that hotels and shops are all closed as a result of which I had to settle for a packed of Bourbon Chocolate biscuits for dinner. Oh well, it's better than nothing!

So much for Holi and the celebration of colours. Blood runs on the streets now.

Silence of the Mallus

Lazy sunday afternoon and a relative decides to drop in. Nothing wrong with that except that I don't know the relative very well and my Malayalam is passable at best.

As it is I'm not very good at making conversations (as some women I know would gladly testify), so I knew uncomfortable silences were going to be the order of the day. To add to the piquant sitation, I didn't have a T.V that would have helped tide over the lulls in conversation. There was nothing to it but to see the event throught its logical conclusion.

Our man turned up with a friend in tow who turns out to be yet another shy mallu whose name I managed to completely forget 2 seconds after he'd told me.

So there we were - three mallu's in a room trying our best to keep the boat of conversation afloat. In 10 mintues flat we had covered the usual topics regarding life, work, weather and health. After that it was long moments of fidgeting, staring out through the window at nothing in particular, examining the floor and other symptoms of men who wished they were somewhere else. The mallu-whose-name-I-forget seemed to be happy to sit silently throughout the conversation (or lack thereof) with a bemused expression on his face. I'm suprised he didn't burst out in a guffaw at my atrocious Malayalam wherein I defied every grammatical rule and logic in the book.

When we did have a conversation of sorts it was more like a question and answers session with mostly me asking the questions and the other(s) giving the answers. It wouldn't have been so bad if my questions hadn't sounded so contrived and utterly pointless to the point of being ridiculous. There was also a fatal flaw in this type of conversation - I had to constantly think up new questions every few minutes to keep up the conversation, which isn't easy I tell you when you have nothing in common with the other participants.

Anyhow, after 45 minutes of this utter torture had gone by, my relative glanced at his watch furiously (never mind that he'd been doing that for the past 20 minutes) and decided that he finally liked the position of the hour and the minute hand for him to throw in the towel thereby putting us all out of our misery.

"Okay then, I think we'd better be going now," he said. I would have enthusiastically shook his hand at this announcement if it hadn't been for my conscious effort at politeness. Instead, I merely feigned surprise and uttered a word two involving the words "oh" "already" and "okay" in more or less that order.

The exit was calm and controlled consisting of hurried goodbyes and much bashing of the lift-call button.

And so ended a boring lazy sunday afternoon. I don't think I'll be seeing my relative for a while.

The Name Game

Finally! It's mine! It's Mine! IT'S MINE!

After 45 minutes of luckless search for a suitable name for this blog, I finally came across a name that no one has thought of before! It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how clever, unusual, or obscure a name that you can come up with for a blog/username/website, someone else has already thought of it before. For example, these are the name I tried before I hit on riddlersden: reverselogic, strangeworld, doppleganger, gameover, wagtheblog, magichour, et al.
Okay so they aren't spectacularly unusual but what the heck!

Anyhow, riddlersden will have to do. Riddler's Den to be precise. Nothing to do with riddles I'm afraid, but hey who needs riddles when life is full of them eh?

Having said that, here is a riddle for you: Why would someone spend 45 minutes to start a blog with an intriguing name and then go on to post some completely useless gibberish that has no point whatsoever?

Beats me.