Polyphonic Distractions
It's been a long time since the last post, and after much deliberations I managed to convince myself to atleast put down some trash onto here just for the sake of letting all those, who grace this place with their invaluable time, know , that I've managed to stay alive and sane(?).I still don't know what's gonna evolve out of my QWERTY for the next few minutes , but I'll earnestly try to tread the path of sanity.
Summer time.Delhi.My hostel room.One hell of a "HOT" combination.Couldn't have asked for more.I've been on the verge of insomnia (that's my stand;I can,clinically,still be called every other name) for the last couple of weeks, and the main perpetrator has been this irreconcilable troika.The dead-as-a-dodo fan keeps trying in vain to counter the threesome, and opening of the window just didn't help because the 'sunset boulevard' outside my window is the official breeding-house of Mr.'zzzzzzzzzzzzz'Culex pipiens.Wish I could fly away ( and before that, I'd like to exterminate the mosquito species from the face of the earth!).I even tried to get high(c'mon, if something like a broken-heart can be dissolved in the bitterness of the -OH group, this is nothing.... right!) and went to the closest ATM counter (opp. Nilgiri) with this in hand (two is always better,amen!),all this at 2230 hrs, with the sole intention of being left alone for a few precious (cool)moments, away from the 'zzzzzzzzzzzzz' jazz.
But then as they say - Man proposes:God disposes.After almost an hour later, I came back to my hell-hole, with no sanity restored.I wonder what in heaven's name incite people to visit an ATM at 11 o'clock in the night! Or is it just that all of them ( there were 12-13 guys!) suddenly had the brightest idea of getting me miffed by turning up one after another , at regular intervals, with me hopping in and out of the a.c cubicle everytime.And not to mention, the jazz show was still on inside the ATM counter.I guess even they needed to cool-off!Had no more brilliant ideas (thank me!), and so, as it turned out, had the privilege of witnessing the sun rise above the horizon , and then on it's onward journey till almost 8 :00 in the morning for almost the whole week.And then went to doze off I.
Didn't they say, 'early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy,wealthy and wise'.Well, don't I qualify : quite early to bed (8:00 AM, now, how earlier can one get!), and was all risen and wide awake during the wee hours, which certainly qualify as 'early' morning.
Note that the insomniac tendencies have still not been completely flushed out of my system, and any help/ideas( even if half-baked) to rectify me to stable order will be most welcome.
Talking of other things, craziness has been bugging me for long now.Of course 'being crazy' is a mental exercise which most of us should develop a liking for; it keeps the brain sharp (look out for the nerds) and brings the best out of us.OK.Now who want's to volunteer for jumping off MS along with me? No, it's not for any cause, anti-reservation or otherwise.Just plain thrill.
Anyway, in this crazy world of ours the fine line between craziness and sanity has been reduced to nano scale, and sometimes it is better to peek into the other side, to help maintain equanimity when others are hell-bent on carrying on monkey business.
Talking of equanimity, I'm sure many of us might have already lost half of our hairs, and in some cases, fair amount of nails, trying to get that bloody web-page open.For someone, who might have introduced the adage " Slow and steady wins the race", he DEFINITELY wasn't/isn't aware of our pathetic LAN bandwidth.It sucks.Can someone,who treads regularly the corridors of Power, put it across to those dumb-headed Powers that-be, to take a look,atleast!
That apart, I've been dozing off at all the indecent and unholy hours,hearing voices (I heard a Butler chant today, when only he was giving away French fries!), reached the summit of frustration (for doing nothing!),finished FABLE-a fabulous RPG in 3 days flat,got senti 'n romantic while watching Before Sunrise, Before Sunset ,& Some Like It Hot, in succession (and hence the idea of jumping-off) , and reunited with old pals and gals over Orkut.As of now, this has been the best thing to happen for quite some time now, getting back in touch with old-timers,seeing my school community blossom in Orkut.Even came across two friends from std.IV, whom I'd last seen some 12 years ago, when I left that place.Such fleeting moments, which bring back so many feelings and thoughts in a rush, moments which are worth their weight in gold, are good enough to last a life time.The very moment I was busy adding up these friends of mine to my Orkut friend-list, those very fleeting images of them ,in that school, revelling with me, were flashing before my eyes, still so vibrant and clear, so innocent! Wish I was there, now.Re-living all those moments once again, with the same old purity of heart.
No point getting all nostalgic now, I better wind up.Already had too much of incoherent rambling and digressions.Just before the show's over, went through this.The unofficial guide to Queen's Punctuation.Nice read though.Got an excerpt here :
"So what happened to the comma in this process? [...] it became a kind of scary grammatical sheepdog.As we shall shortly see, the comma has so many jobs as a "separator" (punctuation marks are traditionally either "separators" or "terminators") that it tears about on the hillside of language, endlessly organising words into sensible groups and making them stay put: sorting and dividing;circling and herding; and of course darting off with a peremptory "woof" to round up any wayward subordinate clause that makes a futile bolt for semantic freedom.Commas,if you don't whistle at them to calm down,are unstoppably enthusiastic at this job."
"Ever since it came along, grammarians have warned us to be wary of the exclamation mark,mainly because,even when we try to muffle it with brackets (!),it still shouts,flashes like a neon,and jumps up and down.In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly."
Lastly, I finally have a moblie phone now.As I see many a stares, I've never been in dire need of one, and even this one might not have made it to me had it not been parcelled to me by my parents as my birth-day gift (which I received day-before tomorrow, just at the right moment).And now that I've one, yahoooooooo! ( or should I say hallooooooo! )
P.s. 1.For those of you who are still wondering what that panda is doing on the stair, this is what the back-cover says :
A panda walks into a cafe.He ordes a sandwich,eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit.
The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door."Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda.Large black-and-white bear-like mammal,native to China.
Eats,shoots and leaves."
2. I love the panda.A true sybarite.And so lovable.
It's been a long time since the last post, and after much deliberations I managed to convince myself to atleast put down some trash onto here just for the sake of letting all those, who grace this place with their invaluable time, know , that I've managed to stay alive and sane(?).I still don't know what's gonna evolve out of my QWERTY for the next few minutes , but I'll earnestly try to tread the path of sanity.
Summer time.Delhi.My hostel room.One hell of a "HOT" combination.Couldn't have asked for more.I've been on the verge of insomnia (that's my stand;I can,clinically,still be called every other name) for the last couple of weeks, and the main perpetrator has been this irreconcilable troika.The dead-as-a-dodo fan keeps trying in vain to counter the threesome, and opening of the window just didn't help because the 'sunset boulevard' outside my window is the official breeding-house of Mr.'zzzzzzzzzzzzz'Culex pipiens.Wish I could fly away ( and before that, I'd like to exterminate the mosquito species from the face of the earth!).I even tried to get high(c'mon, if something like a broken-heart can be dissolved in the bitterness of the -OH group, this is nothing.... right!) and went to the closest ATM counter (opp. Nilgiri) with this in hand (two is always better,amen!),all this at 2230 hrs, with the sole intention of being left alone for a few precious (cool)moments, away from the 'zzzzzzzzzzzzz' jazz.
But then as they say - Man proposes:God disposes.After almost an hour later, I came back to my hell-hole, with no sanity restored.I wonder what in heaven's name incite people to visit an ATM at 11 o'clock in the night! Or is it just that all of them ( there were 12-13 guys!) suddenly had the brightest idea of getting me miffed by turning up one after another , at regular intervals, with me hopping in and out of the a.c cubicle everytime.And not to mention, the jazz show was still on inside the ATM counter.I guess even they needed to cool-off!Had no more brilliant ideas (thank me!), and so, as it turned out, had the privilege of witnessing the sun rise above the horizon , and then on it's onward journey till almost 8 :00 in the morning for almost the whole week.And then went to doze off I.
Didn't they say, 'early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy,wealthy and wise'.Well, don't I qualify : quite early to bed (8:00 AM, now, how earlier can one get!), and was all risen and wide awake during the wee hours, which certainly qualify as 'early' morning.
Note that the insomniac tendencies have still not been completely flushed out of my system, and any help/ideas( even if half-baked) to rectify me to stable order will be most welcome.
Talking of other things, craziness has been bugging me for long now.Of course 'being crazy' is a mental exercise which most of us should develop a liking for; it keeps the brain sharp (look out for the nerds) and brings the best out of us.OK.Now who want's to volunteer for jumping off MS along with me? No, it's not for any cause, anti-reservation or otherwise.Just plain thrill.
Anyway, in this crazy world of ours the fine line between craziness and sanity has been reduced to nano scale, and sometimes it is better to peek into the other side, to help maintain equanimity when others are hell-bent on carrying on monkey business.
Talking of equanimity, I'm sure many of us might have already lost half of our hairs, and in some cases, fair amount of nails, trying to get that bloody web-page open.For someone, who might have introduced the adage " Slow and steady wins the race", he DEFINITELY wasn't/isn't aware of our pathetic LAN bandwidth.It sucks.Can someone,who treads regularly the corridors of Power, put it across to those dumb-headed Powers that-be, to take a look,atleast!
That apart, I've been dozing off at all the indecent and unholy hours,hearing voices (I heard a Butler chant today, when only he was giving away French fries!), reached the summit of frustration (for doing nothing!),finished FABLE-a fabulous RPG in 3 days flat,got senti 'n romantic while watching Before Sunrise, Before Sunset ,& Some Like It Hot, in succession (and hence the idea of jumping-off) , and reunited with old pals and gals over Orkut.As of now, this has been the best thing to happen for quite some time now, getting back in touch with old-timers,seeing my school community blossom in Orkut.Even came across two friends from std.IV, whom I'd last seen some 12 years ago, when I left that place.Such fleeting moments, which bring back so many feelings and thoughts in a rush, moments which are worth their weight in gold, are good enough to last a life time.The very moment I was busy adding up these friends of mine to my Orkut friend-list, those very fleeting images of them ,in that school, revelling with me, were flashing before my eyes, still so vibrant and clear, so innocent! Wish I was there, now.Re-living all those moments once again, with the same old purity of heart.
No point getting all nostalgic now, I better wind up.Already had too much of incoherent rambling and digressions.Just before the show's over, went through this.The unofficial guide to Queen's Punctuation.Nice read though.Got an excerpt here :
"So what happened to the comma in this process? [...] it became a kind of scary grammatical sheepdog.As we shall shortly see, the comma has so many jobs as a "separator" (punctuation marks are traditionally either "separators" or "terminators") that it tears about on the hillside of language, endlessly organising words into sensible groups and making them stay put: sorting and dividing;circling and herding; and of course darting off with a peremptory "woof" to round up any wayward subordinate clause that makes a futile bolt for semantic freedom.Commas,if you don't whistle at them to calm down,are unstoppably enthusiastic at this job."
"Ever since it came along, grammarians have warned us to be wary of the exclamation mark,mainly because,even when we try to muffle it with brackets (!),it still shouts,flashes like a neon,and jumps up and down.In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly."
Lastly, I finally have a moblie phone now.As I see many a stares, I've never been in dire need of one, and even this one might not have made it to me had it not been parcelled to me by my parents as my birth-day gift (which I received day-before tomorrow, just at the right moment).And now that I've one, yahoooooooo! ( or should I say hallooooooo! )
P.s. 1.For those of you who are still wondering what that panda is doing on the stair, this is what the back-cover says :
A panda walks into a cafe.He ordes a sandwich,eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit.
The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door."Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda.Large black-and-white bear-like mammal,native to China.
Eats,shoots and leaves."
2. I love the panda.A true sybarite.And so lovable.
posted by Himadri at Wednesday, April 19, 2006
6 comments
