The unexpected saturation

Has it ever happened to you? You don't need something but you go to a store and are tempted and end up buying something? It maybe something as inexpensive as junk jewelry for 2€ or something as extravagant as that faux fur coat (ok all the men substitute with watches or Xboxes or what not). But I am amused and extremely happy that I seem to have outgrown this phase. I went "shopping" with 3 different sets of people, all because each of them needed to buy something. And on every occasion like this in the past I have ended up with a surplus of something or the other which was "nice" or "not bad for the price" and what not. And now, 3 straight days in a row and 6+ hours of shopping later, I haven't so much as bought a trinket. In every store I went to I saw things that were "nice" and "not bad for the price" and what not but I didn't have that urge to pick it up, try it on even and worse, buy it. Maybe this is an offspring of the reaction of ironing all those clothes 2 weeks ago or I don't know. Or maybe I've just grown up and realized that I really didn't need any of the things I saw. Who knew I would get here? I for one, didn't.

Viral infection

Maybe for me.. but surely for my computer! So I’ve been suffering from a terrible, relentless cold over the past week but that’s hardly worth any internet footage. But what is worth it is the fact that my computer contracted something over the weekend. Something that made it crawl like a learning baby, slowed it enough to alarm me and even went as far as disabling the battery. What was worse is like some haunted movie, it made a sound every few minutes as well. Something that sounded like disco drum beats and lasted a few seconds at a time. It was as creepy as it was crawly, if you get my drift.

 

So the first thing I did was to investigate the Task Manager to see what the heck was sapping all that speed that I had so lovingly configured and bought. Turns out there were 3 instances of Internet Explorer which held a large chunk of memory, even though I haven’t used IE for as long as I can remember. Shockingly each time I “ended” the task, it reincarnated itself and sat atop the memory usage pile, in essence occupying my strong systems’ wholesome memory. Surely it was a virus. My Norton that came with the system had expired a few months ago and lets admit it, how many of us renew it anyway? Neither did I. Big mistake apparently for the second I typed “iexplore.exe”, the default words that followed it were – virus, infection, worm, etc., none of them leaving a shadow of a doubt of what had gotten hold of my poor laptop.

 

The next step was of course to detect where the worm was lurking and so after reading a bunch of forums (which took insanely long), I downloaded something called PrevX CSI. And it was a free scanner only. But under 5 minutes, it diagnosed 93 infections. 93! A frisson of shock later, I tried hunting for a trial version (which wasn’t available) to clean it up. All along my computer’s performance kept declining steadily and this called for quick action… not something to ponder and then regret.

 

30 minutes, 2 restarts and 30€ of PrevX – licensed purchase later, the computer is back up and back running and fast again. All bugs gone. System protected. Sometimes, it is worth buying the good stuff. And I can’t tell how relieved I am not to hear those disco beats again. I swear it felt like the virus mocking me.

It’s just there!

Have you ever done this? Watched something on TV because it’s there? Like some movie you’ve seen many times over. But just the fact that you have to brainlessly only watch it and didn’t have to choose to (for instance if you own the DVD of the very same movie) makes it appealing somehow. I’ve done this more times than I can count. Somehow the appeal of something that was unintendedly chosen for me is way more than me actually going and choosing the very same thing by myself. And this kind of applies to most things for me (unless I hate it – which reverses back to the TV theory as well). What is the appeal then? Just that you didn’t have to dedicate that iota of time to choosing something that didn’t have much significance in the first place? (FYI – this theory doesn’t work well with stuff I really really like – clothes, shoes, bags, etc.) :D I guess so. Or maybe this is the true manifestation of being lazy. But then it’s Sunday morning. What did you expect?

This post didn’t make much sense, did it? Didn’t think so either. Happy Sunday!

Pins n needles

Last night I made the unfortunate choice of making my mom's famous "pudhu vidha kozhambu" with chenai fry. The unfortunate part was not the kozhambu which turned out delicious, the recipe of which will follow sometime down the line in the blog. However the problem was more the chenai. Chenai or Suran or elephant yam is a popular vegetable in India and manifests itself in south Indian cooking as a "fry" of sorts where you simply toss the well-washed finely cut pieces in a bit of oil and roast/fry it or as a masiyal, a mash which is pressure cooked. Having found it at the Indian store last week, I was rather excited and picked it up. And so I opted for the "fry" version last night and patiently spent quite sometime cleaning the mud off and peeling away the thick skin and what not. And appearances-wise it looked pretty good and the couple of spoonfuls I did for the taste test passed too. 

So imagine my surprise when during dinner my throat started hurting. I kept clearing my throat and gulping down water only for intense pain to shoot out, akin to what I imagine a few 100 pins stuck down your throat would feel like. I looked at S to see if he was showing any symptoms. However he was calmly munching and watching some Vadivel comedy. By now with the intense discomfort, I was half-sure that I had managed to somehow exclusively poison myself. With my panic getting more evident, S glances at me and states calmly that throat discomfort and a "cut" feeling of the tongue are common side-effects to chenai eating - something I was grossly unaware of in all those times I've had chenai in India. How could it be? I was pretty certain there was no such thing and after soothing my battered throat with some yogurt, proceeded to read about it on the Internet. Turns out he was right! Apparently though it may irritate your digestive tract a bit, it's very good for your stomach. Yeah right. I sure am in no hurry to buy/make/eat chenai anytime soon. Not after last night. No, thanks.

The “happy” place

So I was on the RER today. Zoned out… aimlessly staring… watching the scenery go by.. Ipod on, you know. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young French lad slide into one of the aisle seats across and in front of me. As the scenery shifted, so did my eyes. Soon though, they darted back to the guy and I noticed him staring at an old lady, seated alone in a corner. She was fiddling with her bags and an Iphone. She looked so old I highly doubted she knew to operate it. But then that’s just stereotyping and in all likelihood, I am wrong. Even as I kept looking at them, the young boy’s eyes darted away and then back to the woman in quick circulation. I was transfixed. What was it? Had she dropped something and he wanted to bring her attention to it? Did she say something and he missed it? Was he trying to rob her? I couldn’t figure it out. And frankly, if he could stare at her, I could stare at him, right? At the next station, she rose, bumbling around with her packages, her phone and her walking stick. He rose too. What was this? Was he going to make a run for it and really rob her? This was like a scene from some bad movie. My mouth was half open as I watched them. The second she crossed by him to head for the doors, he jumped over to where she had been sitting previously.

Apparently that’s all he wanted. Her seat. Me and my imagination. This is why you shouldn’t watch Naan Mahaan Alla at night.

Incidentally, this is the 100th post this year for MindBlogging!  It’s been slow but its still here  Three cheers! :)

Day 1

Of what? The rest of my life, of course! Ok ok... not everyone is that cliché about these things. In fact what I was referring to is that this is the first day I tried walking the 3.2 km from my house to the second-closest train station. The normally 8 minute bus ride took 28 minutes on foot. And I only saw 2 buses go by me. That apart I was able to benefit from the crisp early morning air and the freshness that the morning "exercise" lent. Heaven knows how long I am going to stick with it but I made a sudden resolve, all enticed by the morning freshness to try and do this everyday. My supposedly smart idea to sneak in some exercise through my day. Wish me luck!

The Chinese shotglass

Being the collector that I am, when my Chinese intern asked me if he could bring me back something from his hometown I had no hesitation in requesting a shot glass. After all, who knew when I would go to China? Though I make it a point to collect shot glasses from locations I have been to, I made an exception in this case. It couldn’t hurt to have one from China, just in case. I forgot all about it over vacation and was pleasantly reminded of it when X called one fine morning and asked if he could stop by and drop it off at my office.

He came in a few minutes later bearing a reasonably large package. I remembered that I had jokingly told him that if he couldn’t find shot glasses, he could just get me a Ming Dynasty tea cup. And when he handed the package to me, I was half-certain that it was a tea set of sorts with miniature cups and saucers. Imagine my surprise then when I opened the package and found this -

Carved “cup” from China.

At first sight it was Alladin-esque and I half rubbed it expecting a genie to pop out. But I was truly touched. It was a big gesture and a memorable relic from China. Something I am sure I’ll cherish in my collection. Sure, it was the size of 6+ shot glasses arranged one on top of the other. But that didn’t take away from the fact that it was still a cup. So what if it was in copper and so what of it out-weighed the rest of the collection? Big thanks to X. :)

  Another view of the carved Chinese “cup”.

(F)ear

You know when you're flying and there's a pressure drop in the airplane your ears snap shut? Normally when you forcefully yawn or swallow, you hear a pop and all's well. This time though, thanks to the flu, my ears were already partially blocked. And the plane seemed to wobble more on turbulence than actually fly for a good portion of the flight. Consequently my ears pinched shut. Like entirely. The way it drowns out noise when you put in ear drops. I saw a lot of people around me try to clear their ears and I figured it was normal because there was some major air pressure drop. But to my great panic, my ears kept shutting out every last decibel of sound. And the silence that ensued was louder than anything I'd heard. I couldn't hear S saying something beside me. Nor the baby whose wails had awoken me a few seconds earlier. Rapidly I tried yawning forcefully... swallowing a mouthful of air and trying to direct them out through my ears, gulping water. Nothing worked. I would've started hyperventilating if not for trying the last ditch effort of physically pulling down on my ears. I heard a faint pop on the left one and a gush of sound right after. After a few more minutes of agonizing just as we landed, I got the right one to pop as well. What a relief! That's the beauty about the human body. You hardly ever notice anything when its functioning well. Only when it starts to give you trouble, you give it any attention at all. Much like what we obsess over in life. We obsess over what's going wrong than appreciate everything that went right. Some food for thought, yes?

Roach runner

What India trip is complete without my fleeing a room in utter terror thanks to Mr Muchad? This time was no different. A different house... a different setting. S and I were just going to turn in for the night. I went to adjust the AC and I'd taken off my contacts. So you know what that means. I couldn't precisely see small things. Which means I couldn't see very clearly that the big, brown blob was indeed a cockroach. All may have been well if S didn't actually call my attention to it... as they say ignorance is bliss. But once he did, in a matter of milliseconds I'd fled the room.

A few minutes later, S came out to assure me that he had chucked the intruder into the attached bathroom. After a few minutes of coaxing, I entered the room tentatively, still bleary-eyed. In one quick motion, I dragged the doormat and stuffed it into the crack under the bathroom door. Convinced that the roach was locked in, I went to bed, a cautiously peaceful woman. It was bout 5 minutes later I was jolted into full alert by the click of a light. It was S going to the bathroom. Was he kidding me? I snapped up and grabbed by glasses, this time to make sure my vision wasn't handicapped and trained my eye on the bathroom door. Nothing. But it in that instant, in that second with the light flooding out from the bathroom door, I knew there was something that wasn't supposed to be. Some movement. Some muchad. I spun to my left and realized in horror that my intuition was spot on. I saw the monster cowering by the wardrobe door, shrieked and fled once more. Turns out S had let the beast be and tried to fool me into sleeping. And as I would have it, only one of us could be in the room - me or the roach. Turns out, it was the roach.

Night blossoms

I wish this was some night-blooming jasmine I was talking about. However I am talking about those latent conditions in your body that are seemingly non-existent when you go to sleep at night.. yet when you wake up they almost seem like an integral part of you. Be it a pimple… an infection… a cold or a fever, symptoms seemingly aggravate overnight when your defenses are lowered and you’re sleeping away that “beauty” sleep.

Like I woke up with a swollen eye. And the second I woke up, I knew something wasn’t right. My left eye felt puffy. I figured I’d probably slept on one side forcing the blood to one eye (does that even happen?) And went in to brush my teeth, I could appreciate the full extent of the overnight onset of a ridiculous heat boil. The core at the rim of my eye was clear evidence of what was to come. And sure enough while it seemed to subside through the day, another night’s sleep seemed to fuel it further. I guess the WBCs are busy attacking elsewhere and are too good to fight these tiny 2 day infections. And so what do we do? I guess we apply life and world philosophy to these tiny hindrances. This too shall pass.

Got Milk?

You know that F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode where Chandler and Joey wager the girls that they can guess every item in Rachel's shopping bag because they know them so well? Well if you want a head-start on me, you've got to start with milk. And I'm not kidding. I don't know what it is with my Parisian obsession with milk. I like the milk in this country but that's no excuse to go scouting for different brands when you can't really tell the difference in taste between them. Yet, I do that. I like to try different brands from different stores just to see if my tea tastes any different. Completely weird. And so if you guess there's milk in my grocery bag, full points to you. 

The real reason behind buying milk with every grocery purchase I guess might be rooted in three things.

1. Unlike the US where gallons of milk are available to be purchased, here you have only the option of 1 liter bottles/tetrapacks or 1/2 liter ones (but in packs of 6 so I guess that makes up?).

2. Milk being a staple gets used as often as anything else.

3. The expiry date for milk in this country is insanely long. If the pack/bottle remains unopened it is likely to last for over 3 months and who's keeping milk that long anyways?

Oh and I hate getting up in the morning to discover that we ran out of milk and I have to go out to buy milk to be able to retreat to the solace or my morning chai. That's worth going into any trouble lugging back excess bottles of milk. Hence, got milk? Hell yeah!

The rental car and the mental tension

So going out to rent a car in France? Easy-peasy right? However, paperwork rules in this country and for all it's beautiful landscapes you'd better hope you can rent a car to enjoy it to the best possible extent. As we were going to Quiberon, this past weekend and we hoped to take in the coastal views and a lot more with the help of a rental car of course. So we waded down to the Hertz at the Rennes gare, armed with our reservation. There was a short line of 5 people before us. And a "scene" was just starting to unfold in front of us, given away by the exasperatedly angry voice of the front desk lady battling 3 just-arrived tourists from a different country. They had a reservation, a valid driving license from their country but no International license, so to speak of. And that was the problem. For those who've never heard of an International license, it may sound like a strange thing. But the knowledge of its existence in India gave me the slightest jitters. I too, had only an India driving license and no international license. But according to the French government rules, one can drive with the license of a different country so long as they are a student. Or so I believed. And the various car rentals over the past 2 years stood testament to my belief too. However the lady at the counter was real hardcore, unwilling to budge to any threats by the dissed clients and showed them the "rule book" and eventually the door. I pondered only for an instant if indeed they expected US state driving license holders to have an International license as well. It seemed highly unlikely. But I had better things to worry about at the juncture and painstakingly waited while the other 3 people ahead of us in the queue quickly furnished the required documents and sped away with their keys.

Come our turn. Cold sweat was threatening to appear on my forehead. And in the instant before we handed over my papers and our reservation to her, my mind flashed to me the million possibilities in case we too were shown the door - How would we get to Quiberon that was over 150km away? Take a bus/coach/train? Ditch the plan? Cancel the hotel? Camp around Rennes? Approach another car rental agency? However I smiled and uttered the golden passport - Bonjour to her and passed her all my IDs and documents all at once. And in return she uttered the words that held literally held the keys to our weekend getaway - Et voilà - vous avez tous! (There you go... you have everything that's required!)

Relief crept in at first and then filled all of us rapidly. We hadn't realized that we were indeed holding our breaths. Banished were the worst case scenarios. To top it all, we were given a gorgeous brand-new keyless entry, button controlled 7-seater Renault Scenic 2010. It was a bon voyage. On that finishing note, a picture postcard from Quiberon or the adjoining island of Belle Île shall follow soon... Happy sunshine and hello summer!

Stage-fright

Everyone has been faced with stage-fright at some point or the other in their lives. It maybe something as simple as giving a presentation in front of your peers or something as life-changing as getting married. And very few people are very sure about the consequences. For instance, typically just before any presentation, my legs temporarily lose all feeling and my fingers are icy to touch. I have instant misgivings about the whole concept. At that instant, everything seems to be like a bad idea. It was a bad idea to recommend those changes to the experiment that brought about those new results... a bad idea to accept that it was you indeed who had to give the talk in front of everyone... bad idea to work against the close deadline and even worse idea to actually complete the job in the allotted time. But you know what? When I walk there to face everyone, if not instantly, slowly but surely the warmth spreads to my extremes - my fingertips and my toes. My initially high-pitched voice regains it's natural timbre and my poise and confidence increase exponentially as I make eye contact and start to explain. After all, it is my topic and my choice and I know it best. That reassurance carries me along quite well till the very end and all feelings of misgivings vanish. 

And no matter what the occasion, with every big event, come the nerves and the momentary self-doubt. And I have come to realize that very few people don't have the initial nerves... that split-second of second guessing the choices made. And of course I am not talking just about "presentations" here. Anything big... getting married, buying a house, etc. As soon as you add the "this is it" clause to it, it assumes paramount importance. And it's all in good humor too. According to me, if you didn't have those nerves, it wasn't as important to you. And if you're making a grand decision in your life, you might as well be as sure as you can be. Before you take the plunge and do the best that you can for the decision you entailed. Fair enough.

In case of emergency...

We've all heard of  tourists being robbed (not at gunpoint or anything like that) when they were unaware of their belongings under various circumstances. It could be on a commuter train where the getaway was easy (read this) or in an extremely crowded tourist spot, like the Eiffel Tower on New Year's eve. And until my friend here in Paris, NN lost all her belongings at a beach in Spain, the magnitude of the deed didn't strike me. I mean, while we all know we have to be careful with our things to the best possible extent, not too many of us are prepared for the worst-case-scenario where the thief succeeds. She for one, lost all her papers - her passport, her French residence permit, student IDs, etc., all her keys - home, office, hotel room, all her money - cash, ATM cards, credit/debit cards, her return tickets to France and her mobile phone (which means she had none of her contacts)-  all with her handbag which she had set down next to her for a second while taking a picture of the sunset on the beach. Yes, she shouldn't have set it down. But on a vast, open space of a beach, you think it's fairly unlikely for someone to swindle you of all your belongings in one millisecond. Yet it did happen. What then? Luckily for her, she was traveling with a friend who was able to buy their tickets back and with a police report, she didn't need emergency travel documents for within the Europe. And because of the friend and all their reservations and the common nature of touristic fraud, they weren't required to disprove any illegal entry. She was able to travel back here and in a quick act of non-bureaucracy, she was able to get most of her papers replaced under a week's time. Of course it cost her heavily, but nonetheless.

Which set me thinking. What if you were traveling alone and this happened? And the thought was truly scary. What if indeed all was lost and you were alone, penniless in a foreign country? Sure you could get to the hotel somehow and scarper the rest of your belongings and owe a fine on your credit card for the keys. But what about your way back? You'd probably have to call a friend (on hotel charge) and have them wire you some immediate money to some place known and what not. Everything, a far bigger hassle than you'd want to find yourself in. And not worth any trouble at all. So what do you do?

1. Do not carry your most important papers when you are out sightseeing. Most hotels have safe deposit boxes with locks, the keys of which you can carry. It's probably prudent to stow it away there on hotel property and risk it on their safety procedure than carry it with you in a bag and risk the million thieves out there out loose. Better yet, if possible stash it on the inner coat pocket or something similar which remains close to you at all times (unless you remove your jacket at a restaurant and hey presto, it's gone again). This includes your return tickets, and other things that you wouldn't immediately be using in your short outing of the place.

2. Money matters. Weird as it may sound, it's best to leave some cash (a couple of 100 bucks) taped to your passport (in which case we assume you keep your passport safe) or inside your toiletry /makeupkit or in an equally unlikely place as a backup. And again, maybe it's best to avoid bulky wallets and the likes, which are primary targets anyways.

3.Contacts. Emergency contacts are there for a reason. Like for health emergencies and for situations like this. Either carry their information on some part of your luggage or have them memorized. Or have them stowed away in your email which you can hopefully access freely enough, thanks to all the hotels now having atleast lobby-enabled free wifi.

None of these apply to youth hostels. If you are staying in youth hostels, it's best to travel light, carry all your terribly important things, which should be minimal, on your person.

Is there anything I missed out? Is there anything you'd handle differently? Other than hitch hike your way back into town? Voice up.

New age socializing

It seems like no matter what, we find new and innovative ways of doing good old things... Look at reading books for example. I bet the forests are thanking us now that so many books are going entirely electronic. And with Kindles and Ipads alike vying for the top spot in  the ebook reading experience, things are poised to get as "real" as ever. But that's not what this post is about. Instead it's about how technology has clawed its way into our everyday lives as well.

The other day we met friends for dinner after a terribly long time. And after all of 5 minutes of "catching up", I glanced at the table that seated 10 of us to see at least 5 cell phones, Iphones and Droids alike, whipped out to "share" the latest apps (applications) and cool stuff on the phone. So much for the days of "what's up" and just gossiping over dinner and plain anecdoting and what not. Nope... now it was all about the cool games that the accelerometers on these devices afforded, or that application which acts a constant post-it to remind you of things on the go. Or something else or something else.. there are always new apps and there will be and this has  now graduated to become an excuse to play with one's own gadgets under the pretext of socializing. And guilty as I am of constant Facebook status updating, I would also be amongst the first people to comply with full acquiescence to a gadget-free evening. Game, anyone?

Caught in the act..

I finally "experienced" pick-pocketing first hand. Just that it wasn't my pockets.. It was my rather large  and moderately "heavy" handbag. And it wasn't smooth, suave or subtle. Rather it was brusque and upfront and downright funny if you ask me. You hear tales about the smooth criminals... where the people swindled had absolutely no clue how their wallets vanished or how their cell phones weren't where they were supposed to be. But this wasn't one of them. We were in Metro 1, one of Paris' most popular Metro lines. And it was pretty loosely packed. As I got in, with no reason, given the space around me, this teenage girl threw herself upon me and then as if to steady herself, she grabbed at my handbag. And I saw the whole thing happen as if in slow motion. Customarily I have my hand loosely held on my bag in spite of the fact that the straps remain steady on my shoulder... and good thing too in this case. Because to me what the girl attempted seemed to be a bad rehearsal from a very bad play. And even after she failed once, with me watching on, she tugged at my bag another time. This time I slapped her hand away... and off she jumped from the train, with her 4 companions just as the doors swooshed shut. And here's where the stupid rehearsal would've become the Master plan and the gravity of the situation struck me. Had she succeeded, nothing could have been done to get hold of her in that instant the train departed. The worst part? All she would've gained is some meager amount of cash... but I'd have lost a great deal more, everything from house keys to my IDs, add to that the headache of canceling the credit cards. Whoosh, I survived and now I see reason behind the terribly frequent warnings on trains to be aware of pickpockets. Lesson learned firsthand. And thankfully at a dress rehearsal at that.

The emailers..

Sure.. all of us email. I mean in this age of the Internet, who doesn't? But this title, the "emailers" should strictly refer to people who email for everything. And I've come to believe I am one of them. Often I email my professor who is one floor below mine, rather than simply going over and conveying the information. And this has more to do with practicality than laziness. Before you start questioning that line of thought, let me assert that indeed I got into this groove of things 'coz of Dr P back in UC. Often we scheduled meetings in the stairwell or near some classroom only for me to learn later that he'd either forgotten about it or scheduled something else in it's time slot. "Why didn't you just send me a confirmation email" would often be his chagrined response. In his defense, I guess the email helped him directly put it on his Outlook calendar or something similar to schedule a meeting which would then send him a reminder and essentially set the ball rolling. And so it began. Emails for everything... from meeting for coffee to setting the thesis defense date. From friends to professors to colleagues to family to companies to industries and what not. Email. The easy, comfortable, reassured way of reaching people who remained connected. And so I was hooked to it. I have discovered however, that in Paris people prefer the personal touch. More often than not, it's more of you could've just told me rather than email me. Often emails are forgotten, ignored or trashed without being read and people seem to remember personally scheduled meetings rather than impersonally worded emails. It also helps build rapports with people you haven't worked too often with in the past. I've learned to work with this situation though. These days, I send an email as a correspondence-retainer and then follow it up with a phone call or a personal visit to the office of whoever I am contacting just to make sure they read the email. And here it works out even better because while they can certainly understand my written French, with my spoken French (though I presume I have gotten infinitely better at it), it still leaves room for some interpretation and entertaining dumb charades at times. Finally, communication is the key. And who cares if I had to resort to either actions or English to convey the last couple of words to complete a message? And in time, I won't need those either. Fingers crossed.

Illusions daily..

Yesterday was one of those days. Something f-ed up the trains and there was a minimum 40 minute wait for the next one. And while plotting my other routes to get home, I came up with the most-suitable bus combo that would do the trick. But the grand difference between waiting 40 minutes and then taking the delayed train and instead taking the bus immediately was, get this, at best 5 minutes. Common sense would dictate that I head back to school, do something for half an hour and come back to take the train 40 minutes later. More productive, right? Not exactly. 'Coz here's where your brain comes up with all the implausible scenarios of the world. What if that train was canceled/delayed? What if you lost track of time and missed the train? So many what ifs with very little credibility. And one glance at the clock that confirming that it was indeed 6:30 pm was enough to eliminate the possibility of going back to school at any rate. And hence to give myself the illusion of having done something in the right direction, I took the bus, the concept being, that even though the final arrival time was much the same, I was still going somewhere. There was some movement, translating to vague momentum translating to an even vaguer sense of work done. Go figure.

Slumber party..

The difference between a guy’s slumber party and a girls’…

Guys: Many rounds of booze + some spicy food + a bit of yap, a bit of blab = Knockout nice n early.

Girls: Yap yap yap + Yap somemore , attempt to sleep and fail, so yap just a little more = Sleepless night = Perfect sleepover.

Destiny

All of us at some point of time have made this sagely statement – If it has to happen, it will. In these cases of course, we are all referring to fate taking control. And some teeny part of us wants to believe in something like fate... something that would have a say in the whole cosmic picture of our life... something that lets us believe that though things aren’t in our control, they are taken care of by some power, which is hopefully on our side. And it also acknowledges that some things just aren't in our hands and it precedes from the requirement of making a decision. And why am I rambling on now? Destiny once more proved it's existence in my life yesterday, you know, just in case I forgot.

The moment I stepped out of my apartment yesterday, I saw the bus pull over. And so, I got in, swiped my Navigo, found an empty seat and settled in for the 8 minute ride with the right song on the i-pod. While I adjusted my earphone, my left hand brushed my ear lobe only to realize that my earring was missing it's lower dangling part (this was one of those annoying kokki earrings which you looped into your ear and had no back plug). And so I scanned the ground. Fortunately the bus was empty and I probably didn't appear like a complete psycho as I frequently switched seats to look beneath each of them for the missing piece. After scanning about 5 minutes, I decided that it was indeed lost and it was sheer bad luck. Having accepted my fate, I took off what remained of the earrings, put them  away and got zoned out into the rest of the journey. In my office, as I peeled away my layers, and untangled the scarf from my neck, suddenly, there it was, nestled amidst the folds, the missing part of the earring. The luck had all transformed. Delighted by the unexpected find, I attached the pieces together, rammed the minuscule gap between them with a heavy book for good measure and now certain that it wasn't coming off anytime soon, I wore them again.

And so the day wore on, busy as hell. Back home finally and worn out, I went to splash some water on my face. And that's when I noticed it. The earring was gone. This time in whole. And I hadn't a clue where or when. Fate...