a little this... a little that...

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as i walked through those familiar cubicles, the tagged employees, the pillars, the chairs, drank the insipid tea and munched on a couple of chapatis with a brown liquid for side-dish, i wondered if i missed it... if i had missed it... if you could actually miss something you'd never liked... well, to make things a tad clearer, i was at a interview sort of thing at a big blue company and even before i'd been 'test'ed, i had such a strong urge to run away as fast as i could from becoming one of 'them' again...

anyway, moving on to lighter issues... my head's in a clamp again... probably coz of all the excel programming i've been indulging in... how i wish i still had that 'Lord of the Rings- Return of the King' game on my laptop...  i had to delete it during my exams... i got stuck at at the penultimate level and couldnt finish... no tips on the internet... no cheat codes... nothing helped... finally, i had to delete it in order to get some closure...

swimming's going great... since it's february and most normal people prefer to not shiver in the chilly breeze at 9pm, the pool's sparsely populated... never more than a dozen swimmers... of varying shapes and sizes... from the skinny ones to the rhombus shaped ones... young ones still in school to the old ones with kids in schools... some come for a casual swim, while some seem to be here for a 'purpose'...
we've finished the float and kick... now with the hand movements thrown in, it almost feels like swimming... we just have the breathing to learn....
as i kick off the side of the pool, float a while and begin to kick and swim, i find the only place where i can get away from the worries of the day... seriously... your head's underwater, you've probably snorted in another quart of water into your brains through your nose because you wanted to make your breath last longer and took that last gulp of air too late...  your only worry is to not fill your lungs with chlorinated water and floating leaves...and thus you reach that blissful state...

and now i'm back... i call up a couple of aquarians and wish them their b'days... talk to a friend who's partying and ask him to save some cannabis for future use... for me... he refuses point blank... says he's not comfortable with indian jails, where he'll land if he's caught... hmmm... yehi teri dosti???

and now i curl up on my bed, with my feet up the wall(warning: not to be attempted by amateurs) and read a little of 'Dilbert Principle'... it's like pickle... you can only read a few pages of it at a time... must read something else... maybe that book on China i've 'borrowed' from J's sister...

so, that's it for now!!!

swimming... sinking... drowning...surfacing...

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for reasons that have nothing to do with reason, i have joined swimming classes... though i know enough to not drown within the first five minutes, i thought i could do better than splash around like a baby whale stranded on the shore... but then i did something characteristic of me and chose the 9-10pm batch... what makes it so special?

well, a usual day goes like this... i drive down my activa to the pool... loiter outside the gate until 8:55 when the guard lets us in... change into the swimsuit... take a very unwilling cold shower, cursing the day i enrolled for the classes... and then step down into the pool... the damn thing's probably 4feet deep so my upper half starts shivering uncontrollably while i watch the clock on the opposite side of the pool drag its hands around... not half as fast as i'd like them to be... we have some exercises... float... kick...dip... the trainer, a hitler's cousin barks orders at us 'don't splash'... 'put your head down'... 'cut your nails'... etc, etc... finally when the clock does creep to 10, i race to the shower stalls... the water now seems much warmer... but the shivering comes back as soon as i leave the showers... i shiver as i dress... the 5-min exercise taking 15mins or more... and then, i take a minute or two to get the keys out of my pocket, some more mins pass as i try to insert it into the suddenly tiny keyhole and finally drive....the chill wind freezes my ears and nose... i cannot keep the visor down coz it's dark and lights kinda scatter on it... i've survived the last two days... maybe i'll survive a few more...

disappointments...

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the kpsc results come out today... though the interview panel gave me a 150/200 which people around had claimed was impossible without the regular bribing, my total adds up to a measly 958 because i'd screwed up my mains so bad... the last seat went to 1006 and though i'm almost unflustered, my dad seems to have taken a worse hit than i... he cannot imagine how his precious daughter could fail at anything... i convince him it's ok... there's always a next time... i wouldnt have taken up the KAS thing anyway... and finally after convincing him that the world wasn't coming to an end, i hang up... and browse my own list of friends to see who'd be best suited to get me out of my own dump... who'd feed the same BS to me.... and help me remember that life would indeed go on...

freeloading (part 1)

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just back from a hearty meal at an aunt's... another free loading exercise... i seem to have quite an expertise at free-loading, and years of experience has only allowed me to fine-tune it to an art...

for example, right now, i am in the big city, staying with a friend... she cooks most meals, gives me free career advice, wakes me up in the mornings, nags me into using trains (long story), etc... but on rare occasions she leaves me to fend for myself... (she's a career woman with loads of people to meet, parties and weddings to attend and in a relationship... whereas i haven't had a career in a while, don't understand the point of parties, am phobic to weddings and haven't been in a reciprocated relationship for... hmm.. hmm... )

so, i woke up today to the quiet house... dragged myself to make my ginger tea... and wondered what to eat... you'll be amazed at the huge portion of my brain that revolves around food... i vetoed all ideas that involved my cooking, drew up my chart of people i know who live close by... i was already quite ravenously hungry... so finally i chose my closest aunt(geographically, if not genetically) and arrived on their doorstep, announced myself, ate my meals... i then asked them for today's newspaper, read it... made notes on a borrowed book with borrowed pen, both of which i brought back with me... and then after i coaxed a light snack and coffee out of them and a little television, i bid them adieu! and thus, today's foraging for food was quite well accomplished...

free loading isn't all that difficult... some tips though if you're planning to try it soon... friends or murky relatives... nearly same rules... here they are... not in any particular order...

 - try to laugh at all their jokes... if you don't get them or you think they're not funny, drink beer until you find them funny... but stop drinking before you have to throw up...
 - act offended when they ask you plans that require your leaving their flat... like what are your plans for next month/year/decade/life etc
- in case of anything that needs your getting out of the apartment, do not walk out without a spare key... you might be 'accidentally' locked out... i have had bitter personal experiences...



 - cooking in their kitchen is ok(not on the first day!!!)... but they seem to take exception when you burn milk in three different pots on three consecutive days... i now have another vessel with about an inch of milk-carbon on it... i am not sure what the best way is, to show J that...

 - do not criticize them...no sitting in the another's glass house and throwing stones around... refrain from all constructive/destructive/creative criticism... not their food, not their pets, or their children or their other friends, their cooking, their choice in movies/reality shows/k-serials... NO! NO!!

 - try not break too many stuff... glasses, plates, spoons, CDs... if you do, pretend it was the first time you were seeing the broken pieces...in the same category, vases are dangerous... stay away from them.. if they have flowers in them, you might knock them over and as a result, you'll have
          1) broken vase with dangerous pointy shards
          2)water on the table which will drip down
          3) to ruin the most expensive carpet in the house
and while you run around to find towels to soak the water, hang the carpet out to dry and congratulate yourself on removing all evidence of crime, you'll discover
          4) the only copy of original divorce papers where some nincompoop had signed with the world's last fountain pen....


that's good enough for starters... if there's anything more, i'll probably tag on a second part later...

swimming binge...

yesterday had a little bump in the usual static lines of my life... we(J & I) decided suddenly that we'd go swimming... so since it was the first day of the month and the classes, we decided to join right yesterday... so we went shopping... for me... J already has a swimsuit... after sifting through a myriad of swimsuits... where most of them looked like they were dipped in barrels of industrial waste, i finally found something to my liking... and with a matching cap, i was rearing to plunge into the deepest pool!!

all that was needed was for me to find the swimming pool, pay up the bill and get the IDs which would allow us access... so, i set off on my trusted activa... drove halfway through before it coughed, spluttered and died in the middle of the road... i'd have gone into mechanical details but it just makes me neurotic to even think of the scheming, unreliable junk that is my activa!!! and after all that loving care... there's hardly a scratch on the damn thing... you'd have thought it would reciprocate a fraction of it... but no! it's only a selfish, brutal *#&^%... anyway, before somebody comes running with a bottle of sedatives, i shall finish the story... i called up my cousin and my brother... the latter towed the vehicle while i rambled beside cursing, stomping my foot and acted out the other theatrics... on slopes, he suggested i climb on, but i was so dissillusioned and disappointed with the whole thing, i wanted nothing to do with it...!!

so, there went my swimming classes... and today i have no partner to go... J calculated that Feb had 28 days... and with 4 days off(wednesdays chutti) we'd have just 24 days... and we'd already missed a day...

i was heartbroken... my brand new swimsuit... which had two designs and could be worn inside-out too... lying there in the cupboard, never to be taken out... i felt like a school kid who'd dressed up all nice and clean for the first day of school only to be told Vajpayee had died and so, there'd be no school that day!

i'm considering going today... but all that complex calculation about feb has me confused... will know only when i know...