28th Dec 2008 - 3rd Jan 2009

Pardon the late post; this has been quite a busy week for me (seriously.) And looking back at it, I just remember a daze. But I know I have to come up with some details, otherwise there will be snide, witless remarks about short term memory loss (I can’t understand why people liked Gajani. Memento was much better.) So here goes.

The thing I remember most about last week was digging into box loads of crap trying to find something that could be reused. Now things like ropes, pins etc. which can be useful were missing (how could anything be made easy for me?) Instead I found dried up paint, biscuit packets from last year (don’t worry, they were appropriately disposed off ) and something with fungus. After that I must have washed my hands enough number of times to give Lady Macbeth a serious run for her money, in an effort to get rid of the stench (I realize I might be coming off as an obsessive compulsive, but I assure you, I am more normal than I sound.)After that I decided that the only way to combat this mortal enemy was to have a bath. At 7 in the evening. Winter. And the hot water had run out.

Which reminds me, I brought in this New Year with an ice cream. As soon as I saw that quality walls cart in the mess that evening, I could feel my throat go scratchy. And then I just had to have it. Well all I can say is that you can expect me to complain about a cold next week.

Anyway, the work I did last week was for this event. So it has been a week full of nagging people well past midnight, making excessive use of smiley’s in chats to make myself sound nicer than I really am and other such interesting exercises. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I had the best deal either. When you go to invite people for an event, you expect them to say “Sure I’ll come” with a fake smile or show you the proverbial middle finger. What you don’t expect is that they will make you sit down and give you an elaborate list of their personal problems.

Come D-day and I found myself on the front desk. So I spent majority of my weekend answering inane questions and trying to look interested in answering these questions. So much so for my New Year resolution. Not cursing. Didn’t even survive a week. But fear not, all is not lost. Not yet anyway. The weekend ended on a bright note, with a trip to KFC. And however much I do crib, it really was fun.

And talking about New Year resolutions, one of my friends to me her New Year resolution was to be happy. Now I would at any given time admit that I am quite dense, but I am sure that a lot of people had difficulty in swallowing this one. So you just order yourself to be happy? But hey, when you really think about it, it’s not that difficult. Now I can almost see everyone’s eyes dance with joy at the mere thought of me running myself into circles, so I shall be brief on this. One can be happy to escape diarrhea ridden birds. One can be happy just to feel winter sunshine on ones skin every morning. There is also happiness in being so exhausted at the end of the day, that you don’t even remember when your head touched the pillow( or your laptop, when you fall asleep in front of it as the case may be.) I can wax eloquent about the so called ‘parabola of joy,’ but then the question remains, why are so many people unhappy? Now since my other new year resolution is to remain useless throughout the year, perhaps this question will be addressed by the more intelligent and expressive( or so she thinks) Flotsam.

Dec 21- 27

I must confess, I have made my most stupid decision in the past two years by taking up a ‘spiritual’ subject. OK, OK maybe not the most stupid, but I was definitely acting like a retard when I made this choice. And no, it is not about to significantly change my life. So while it may sound like an interesting class from the outside to many (Well, with the professor talking about Old Monks and Hangovers!!) but in essence, the class is about as profound as Bozo, the clown. Sample this masterpiece- "Before enlightenment, Rivers are rivers and , mountains are mountains. During enlightenment, rivers are not rivers and mountains are not mountains. After enlightenment, rivers are once again rivers and mountains are once again mountains." So you see, we are supposed to absorb, not think an awful lot to truly enjoy our meaningless lives. But then again, toilet paper absorbs.

On Christmas day, our mess decided we need something special. I thought something was up when I saw what I later realized was a Santa puppet on our mess doors welcoming us. Now you may think why i didn’t realize that immediately, but you see this is Bengal. You see a man with a beard, you see red and your first thought is,’Oh! Karl Marx.’ And well that puppet and some artificial undecorated Christmas trees were the only sign of Christmas in the mess. The food wasn’t special, it was regular, by which I mean horrid as the mess is still not serving chicken.

While consuming a Sizzling Brownie, if you have finished all the ice cream, never attempt to have a go at the chocolate sauce. It’s flaming hot and burns your tongue. (Yes, yes it happened again. But not to me and not this week. Though this happens with me every week in winter. I am dense enough not to ever learn.)

It is so cold here, that I could see fog lift off from a lake. And yet, when you tell people who are not here they say, ”Oh, You have fog there because the humidity is high.” They conveniently forget that it has to be biting cold for all that humidity to condense. With my toes turning an unpleasant shade of blue, I cannot afford to make that mistake.

Watched Slumdog Millionaire this week. Good movie. But I seem to have a grudge against Mr Anil Kapoor( IS that how he spells it still?) So I shall proceed to say, that though he makes an effort in an attempt to not sound like a ‘dehati’,( rolls his r’s and all), his “Who wants to be a millionaire” sounds more like a “Who wants to be a milliner”.

~catchingupwitholdfriendsmakesforagreat week

Apologies

Well it’s been a long break indeed. I would like to say that great earth shaking changes have taken place all because of the effort I have put into my work with such diligence and blah blah…. But I cannot. Some things have changed, though I am not sure what, I say this only because I have been told ‘Change is Constant.’

Anyway, let me bring you up to speed. You remember the exams I was talking about in January? With such a pathetic attempt at preparation, I barely passed most of them. End terms were like the proverbial salt on the wound. But at least they brought the year to a much awaited end and I headed home for holidays.

After this I was off to Mumbai for my summer internship. Time flew fast and again I did absolutely nothing productive as I spent 2 months in the lap of luxury. I made it a point to religiously follow all the IPL matches. Which team did I support? Why, whichever one was winning of course! After all the point of watching the matches was not as much to revel in the excitement and entertainment (by either the cricketers or the cheer leaders, how does it matter?) as it was to kill time in office. Mumbai , inspite of its traffic, I love. It’s safe, the people are nice and (hallelujah) it’s a foodie paradise.

Come June and I was back on campus. Changed my room, but it has not made any difference in the number of bugs that annually visit me. The two mosquitoes from my previous room have also followed me here. And I have finally given them names. The one that hums near my ear to keep me from sleeping is Lup and the one who bites is Dup.

On the academic front, I resolved to undo past sins and somehow study. That lasted about 5 minutes, after that I was back to what I do best, procrastinating, which has been the root cause of such a long break. But fear not. I am back now and you can expect me to spew venom here regularly.

And now for overcoming my inherent laziness, I shall pat my self on the back( no help needed) and treat my self to this ( help needed but only during procurement)-