Of ice and men!

Everyone must have heard the phrase “curiosity killed the cat”. I have too. And I have wondered many times about the origins of the story. I mean, there has got to be a story behind it right? Cuz, why a cat? Why not some other animal? Why not a dinosaur? That would have fit quite nicely.
“There are no dinosaurs anymore man. I wonder what happened”
“They were too damn curious for their own good and that got them killed. Stupid things. It’s sad that curiosity killed the dinosaur.”
“Yo dude...that’s some deep shit man. Write that down. We have to pass such wisdom to our kids and stuff”

That’s a likely ancient conversation that would have made things easier…don’t you think? But no! It’s the cat that got in for no reason!
Why not even the hero of all proverbs Jack...who happened to be so popular at the time the oldies were making the proverbs/poems. He is almost everywhere. So why isn’t it “curiosity killed Jack”? Maybe he was losing his touch with the ladies of the proverb committee by then. Maybe Jill was getting all possessive!!!!

Ok...I digress.

But you have to admit that it is quite ironic I am not curious enough to find out about the origins of an expression about curiosity. Any way what I really wanted to talk about are the winter Olympics. That’s a nasty jump from one train of thought to another. Yes...doesn't get any better! :D

A couple of weeks back one out of every 3 articles in any newspaper (I’m talking about online editions!) was about 'Torino 2006'. Being the totally-cut-off-from-the-rest-of-the-world-I’m-happy-in-my-little-cubicle dude that I am I didn’t bother to find out what was all the hype about. But soon the ‘Torino’ fever was everywhere and I couldn’t ignore it. I was worried that it was a new strain of avian flu that would compromise my daily diet of chicken nuggets. I formed the resolve to educate myself about this possible danger. My curiosity was quipped. I shouted out loud and asked my friend if it sounded like a ‘meow’. His startled NO was good enough to confirm I was no cat and there was no risk of dying. And then by the power of Greyskull and Google I entered the world of winter Olympics...

...that happened to be quite fascinating...

...except, I was wondering if I am the only guy who thinks some of the games are downright hilarious, boring and/or quite silly! Grab your warm winter clothing and follow me into a not-so-detailed and completely biased and stupid look at some of the winter games that demand close attention.

1) First the Biathlon. I had heard of this before I actually looked it up and at that time somehow the first thing that came to my mind was a game involving long-distance skiing (u know...it’s a winter sport and it’s a something-thon) and maybe snow-boarding OR simply running in the snow (which is like a 1000 times harder than lot of other sports) OR something like that. I was half right...the first part is long-distance skiing but after that you shoot rifles! How arbitrary is that! Skiing and marksmanship...it feels so weird to have them both as one sport. The official winter Olympics site talks about this as an evolution of how people in olden days used to ski and hunt as a method of survival. At first that made a little sense to me but then I figured that more people used to run and hunt? Why isn’t that in the summer Olympics (or is it?). A little desperate for winter sports, aren’t we? ;)
I’m sure in the book of biathlon rules there is a little line somewhere that goes......you cannot win the event by shooting your competitors and eliminating them...

2) Here’s Bobsleigh: This sport seems reasonably exciting. Although I really see this as a more professional way of sliding down a water slide in a rubber tube. But that’s not all...take a look at the picture and imagine a nice big white ambassador car in the place of the sleigh and 4 Indian men in place of the sportsmen pushing it. Don’t u think if only we had snow in India we would totally kick ass in this competition. Our men would be quick and strong in getting it moving and would reach 0-topspeeds in a jiffy and also be very comfortable in the cramped up seating arrangement of the sleigh. We would have kicked so much ass it’s not even funny!

3) Pardon me if I am being uncouth and ignorant but Curling is by far the silliest of all Olympic sports. Not to mention boring. Although I must admit I’ve never seen a game myself ever. I am just speculating that it will be boring. Cuz how much excitement can you really expect in a sport where u throw a disc in a really funny/graceful way (almost as if to say...I know this sucks but at least u guys get to see how flexible and smooth I am on ice) and his team-mates run ahead of it sweeping the ice! When did man lose the imagination to come up with new sports that he had to incorporate 'skillful sweeping' as an essential ingredient? Sweeping for Gods sake!
What next? Another biathlon with rock-climbers having to scale buildings upto a certain floor and quickly wash all the windows there and come down! Silly stuff :D

Hmmm...actually that’s all!
If anyone knows about how the curious cat died please let me know.
Until then...keep it cool!
Yeah...that was abrupt. I know...I so suck at handling trains of thoughts!

A quick jog down memory lane...and what do I find?

Last night I just couldn’t fall asleep. I was simply lying in bed with all kinds of thoughts in my head. And for some strange reason I started recalling things from my years gone by. Think about it and you’ll realize that everything we remember is in the form of a time window which is etched in our minds. We rarely remember entire events…just a few memorable moments. Moments making up some event that was in some way significant enough to alter our surroundings and our self. So much so, they’ve remained in our heads almost permanently. These memories, I feel come with the complete set. Sounds, colours, the people present and the environment...everything that you can associate with them.

And last night I had a stream of such memories continuously flowing through my head.

I remembered the time when I was an 8 year old in school and saw a girl being bitten by a dog. I can still recall the two deep teeth marks on her arm that were making her scream hysterically. A bunch of us had simply formed a semi-circle around her and were practically doing nothing but stare. I remember feeling nauseous thinking about it later and spitting out my éclairs that I was chewing on at that time.

I remembered the time of my first operation in my 4th standard to remove an infection from my leg. How the doctor managed to put me under anesthesia by asking me if I had ever blown balloons at a birthday party. My proud 'yes' was met with a smile and he promptly covered me with the anesthesia inducing mask and asked me to ‘blow a balloon’! The interesting thing is that this is the only thing that I can remember from my entire operation experience.

I remembered the time as a kid when I was coming back home from school in an auto and was riding in the front. I had fallen asleep only to fall off the moving auto, badly injuring myself in the process. I can still recall the vision of the moving road approaching me with alarming speed as I fell towards it and can distinctly remember the screeching sound of car wheels stopping behind me once I had completed my glorious fall. (Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night all sweaty and scared: P)

...and so on and so forth. You get the idea right?
So then I started wondering if I could figure out what was my oldest memory amongst all these. Which one of these was filled on the very first page?

And I think I have found an answer. I can be reasonably sure about this being my first memory because of the house that my family was living then. I have no other memory from that house and this was the house that I was brought into when I was born. I was a little startled to realize that my very first memory was that of the death of my paternal grandfather. I always had this array of thoughts in my head but never realized that this particular one was my first memory.
I was 2 years old and I can recall visions of my grandfather’s dead body lying in the living room and relatives pouring into our house to pay their last respects. He had died of a lung disease and his chest was swollen! I remember my grandmother crying on the bed and her sisters trying to console her. Again, I just can’t seem to recollect my parents being around!

The funny thing is that thinking about these memories consciously and writing about them seems to have scrambled everything up inside my head! They just dont seem all that coherent anymore!
Complex, the ways of human mind seem to be.
Unravel we must, this mystery.

I really don’t mean to freak anyone out.
I just felt like sharing.
Nothing deep.
Thats all!

I am Jack’s desire for the perfect lover.

On a certain auspicious day when all the planets were arranged in a spectacular way I was tagged by Kate to list 8 qualities of my perfect lover. But before I put them out there for all to see I thought it befitting to say something about this. And I am willing to bet my left testicle that a lot of those who read this are going to think of me as a big A-hole.

I am not really a fan of memes. Or at least I’ve never come across one which was interesting to me (except the 55-word story one). I can hear the words ‘sour-grapes’ screaming in your head but you only have my words to believe when I say I couldn’t care less. As a blog-ninja ( :D...ok...sorry) I have traveled reasonably far and wide in the blog world and have come across many memes and formed an honorable opinion about them. So IMHO, while some memes happen to be plain boring which hold absolutely no interest to any reader whosoever (eg/: The google image search result, n-th line from some m-th post) many others happen to make an attempt to bring out the blogger’s personality traits (eg/: Fav books, Fav movies, Weird habits etc) which from my point of view are boring too.

This can possibly mean two things:
1) Almost everyone who posts memes fails to make them across my threshold of being interesting (possibly because I put my thresholds right opposite to where I keep my chances of having a threesome with Angelina Jolie and Sienna Miller) OR
2) I am a totally unsophisticated person who isn’t even half as intellectual as a majority of the rest of the world is in order to appreciate their interests.

I am perfectly willing to accept any of the above two as the hard-core undeniable fact.

So yeah, I don’t really enjoy reading memes.
But that doesn’t mean I am going to be an uppity arse about it (just a normal one is good enuff I guess!). I am perfectly willing to play along, all the more because I know there are many things I find to be mind-bogglingly fun to do but others might think they befit the behaviour of person with a room temperature IQ (measured in Celsius that too!!)
The universe tends towards a balance you see.

Thus...
If I were Romeo, my Juliet would be...
If I were Majnoo, my Laila would be...
If I were Anakin, my Padme would be...
If I were King Kong, my Naomi Watts would be...
If I were Golu, my Jenna Jameson would be...

...some one with the following qualities:

Qualities listed are neither permanent nor in any particular order. Depending on the vagaries of my mood, the position of Pluto (the dog) and the size of Ashlee Simpson’s breasts I can rearrange them or even discard/replace them (the qualities I mean :P).

1) She should be totally totally smokin hot. I know I am not Adonis personified or anything even remotely like that but I wouldn’t believe anyone who didn’t wish for a really hot lover irrespective of their own hotness rating. And as long as I am jotting down qualities of my perfect lover, what’s wrong in hoping for the best eh?

2) She should have a bunch of equally hot or hotter friends and she shouldn’t have any feelings of jealousy when I practice my moves on them.

3) She should worship Metallica. I am willing to bend this rule so that one could replace the word ‘worship’ with ‘love’ or (incase she over-qualifies regarding point 1) even ‘really like’. But nothing below that!

4) When I say, “Honey...guess what I brought home today! A leather strap and some handcuffs” she should have a naughty twinkle in her eye and must drag me towards our bedroom immediately. She must NOT look like Marlon Brando and say “The horror, the horror” and run away. In other words, she must be open to experimentation.

5) In particular she must also be willing to [The Google Blogspot Administrators team has decided to censor these particular lines in order to protect the innocence of the kids who might accidentally wander to this blog and read this post. Rohit Sammeta...you have a filthy and pathetic mind and we hope you rot in hell! And yes...we are watching...BITCH! ]

6) She should not be a crazed religious person. I don’t care which religion she practices...as long as she knows there is only one God...ME.

7) And just because I want to stress on this I shall reiterate...she has to be smokin hot! On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the corpse from ‘Corpse Bride’ and 10 being Sienna Miller, she has to be a 10! Cuz I’d really like to go out with you Sienna...that Jude dude is a total fucking jerk. Go out with me and Ill never cheat on you with our nanny...maybe others but not with our nanny...I swear!

8) And finally, in case we decide to get married she should be open-minded enough to pay me a large dowry.

Phew...I finally did it! It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I really hope there is someone out there who fits these qualities (with the liberty of not qualifying for either one of the points 1 and 7). If that someone is reading this, know that I am the perfect guy for you. Make haste and get in touch with me.
And I will give you those things, you thought unreal.
The sun, the moon, the stars all bear my seal.

See how hot Sienna is...someone find her for me!

What's up?

I had written a post a couple of days ago. And it was something inspired from my own life that I had converted into a silly story. Why silly?...well because I am not exactly the emperor of creativedom. (Yes, I know I am a blog-ninja, but that doesn’t really help. Blog-ninjas only protect their honour, maybe fight spam and then take coffee breaks when they are bored...not produce works of Shakespeare...because you should know that blog-ninjas are not a million monkeys put in a room either). So yes...like I was saying...I’m the contemporary Casanova and I know a thing or two about using chocolate...no wait...that wasn’t what I was saying...but that’s true too. So yes...like I was saying before I cleverly inserted a stupid joke...the post turned out to be quite silly and under the influence of a powerful truth potion (the kind that Bill shoots ‘the bride’ with)* I would admit it was a little girly girly. Well…I should have expected that because it was about a gorgeous girl. And gorgeous girls make me weak in my knees**. And as much as I would like to weave a story where I am a devastatingly handsome man who sweeps her off her feet by optimizing her MATLAB code with the use of vectors instead of nested loops, with some awesome car chases and evil overlords dying at my hands added in for good measure...I’m sure you all would find that a little unbelievable. So I wrote a simpler story...and it turned to be a little sappy. And being a blog-ninja*** my blog-sense immediately picked up trials of its sappiness and I verified this fact from a friend of mine. It was put up for about 10 minutes on my blog after which I promptly (but silently...just like a deadly killer) struck with my sword and destroyed it. Of course it still is lying somewhere on my computer. And I just might post it at a later time...maybe even in its original form. But that’s for the future.

So yeah...I deprived you all a chance to make fun of me.

BUT for now, ninja-code**** dictates that I should say something that is apropos to the post title. So let me tell you about this undergrad in my department. He has this most peculiar habit that I am about to explain. But before we go there take a quick look at this conversation...

Person1: “Hey man...what’s up?”
Person2: “Nothing much...what’s up with you?”
Person1: “Nothing grr8...just catching up on some work.”
Person2: “Cool...me too...alright then. I’ll see you later.”
Person1: “Yeah cool...cya later dude.”

Does this conversation strike as being out of the ordinary, weird, inappropriate or lacking in honesty to anyone out there? I certainly don’t think so and in fact I have similar conversations with almost everyone I am acquainted with.

Except when it involves our protagonist.

This guy literally considers the meaning of the words “What’s up?” and eagerly launches into a nice lecture about what is on his mind right then and what he plans to do in the next few hours. And this has happened so many times and it continues to happen.

A few examples (NOTE: These conversations are not doctored):

Example 1:
Me (casually walking past him): “Hey man...What’s up?”
Him: “Oh...I was just here trying to learn this new software that I need to use for this project in that so and so course. But I’ve been having a few problems...I'll keep working on this for a while and hopefully will figure them out.”
Me: “...hmmm...ok...good luck”

Example 2:
Me: “Hey Pat*****, how’s it going?”
Him: “Pretty good...pretty good...thanks...I finally got my senior design project to work so that was cool. And now I have to make sure I do well in my tests so I can manage a good GPA this semester...lets see how that goes.”
Me: “ haah...good...alright then”

And I feel bad now because I have started exploiting the situation. When I am in a hurry I don’t say Hi to him cuz that would slow me down severely. In other times when I feel like having a little fun I go up to him and say “Hey Pat, Just what exactly is going on man...its been a while” and while he sincerely starts telling me the story of his life I sometimes bite my lip to avoid succumbing to the urge of smiling.
One of the many reasons why I am such a dork!
So yeah...that’s all.
It’s time to go now.

And in conclusion I would like to thank my parents, my friends and Pat for making life fun for me and also a certain blogger from whom I shamelessly stole the idea of the starred-references but am too chicken to admit openly.


* If you don’t know what I’m talking about…leave a comment and I will promptly point a finger at you and laugh and take great pride in the fact that I can recall lines from this particular movie better than you.

** It’s a disease called ‘beingaguyosis’

*** I’m kind of overdoing the whole blog ninja thing…right?

****I know, I know...but I can’t help it!

***** His name really isn’t Pat...but I bet you didn’t care. And I promise this will be the last starred reference.