Friday, July 25, 2008

Shrill to kill

A & B were having a very intense technical discussion on how to solve some major problem in their Windows project. Then this conversation followed :
A : Wait a min. I heard this song "High and dry" on radio after a long time and it has been playing in my head since.
B: So???wtf man
A: Its by Radiohead
B(expression of a tubelight and it glows finally): oooooo Eureka dood..Thats y the band called themselves Radiohead (followed by a Eureka Hi-fi all around)
A: Now that we have solved the bigger problem, we know that the solution to this stupid problem in Windows will occur to us similarly and so lets head home
B: Absolutely.
So, really this song was playing in my head and I just wanted to sing those high pitch lines (Higggggggh, dryyyyyy ones), but couldn't do that in office. Was weared down by the morose day and headed to the gym after work. Pumped some iron, adrenaline was produced in loads today and I was like totally high and excited. Came back home and the first thing I wanted to do was sing this song. My headphones are awesome, gave me what I needed and as I sang those high pitch lines loudly in my coarse voice, spears and arrows literally rained on my roomies. But I am happy, my soul is having an ice-cream. Gave a beautiful funda to Uru about how future is bright for us and gloomy for the chixx. The adrenaline is still there and thats why I am writing this now. If this seems like forced humor to you, welcome to my world. Was watching Kismat connection (only completed the 1st half)and trying to laugh but none came out.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

So quiet no matter how loud

When you are well and one of the healthiest people around, world is your joystick. Move it around and the game of life rolls happily. But then you are asleep one fine day and something feels weird. The sun is shining down your face and wants to burn you alive. You shout out, Aarghh, shsdwd what the fudge, turn around, pull the blanket on your face and go back to the happy land. A guy wearing a black coat and a fiendish smile appears from nowhere and whispers in your right ear, "Dude, I know that you are happy and riding the Batmobile in your fucking dream, but isn't it the payday. I hope you have the money or I am gonna have to cut your balls off." You wake up startled, hoping to save your balls with a witty dialogue. But alas, the man in black with no face but a smile is gone. You feel relieved and disappointed at the same time. Relieved that you are safe but disappointed coz it was just a stupid dream and you don't have the chance to make that ingenious exchange that you had thought of. And you are back in the stupid real world.

Now I start narrating for myself, rather than allowing the stupid melodramatic loser paint a story around my normal life. So, I wake up and look at my mobile phone cum watch and my eyes pop out. Its freakin 12 PM and its a Wednesday. I should have been at work. I start thinking why the alarm didn't go off at 8 AM and right at that moment it starts buzzing. It was in snooze mode, going off every 15 minutes for a short time. I was confused but decided to ignore it and rush off to work. All along the way, I felt that things were hushed up a little. I could feel a strange kind of silence around me. A chic on bike almost hit me and then stared at me as if it was my fault. I shouted out, "You should have called". She looked back, fired a "Are you Drunk" look and went ahead. All the people around me also started staring. I thought they misunderstood me and tried to clarify by saying that "No, no I am not obsessed with her or anything. I was saying that she should have called, coming on your left so that I could have moved away." Anyway strange things continued to happen and I was feeling as if my brain was working way slower than usual and there was something heavy kept on the left side of my face.


OK enough with the mystery. I was having something which I like to call the "Near Deaf Experience". I had almost gone deaf in my left ear. The biggest advantage of this was that whenever my manager came to me, I would turn my left side towards him so that I don't have to listen to anything he says. Obviously, it would have worked like a charm if I had a nagging girlfriend and wanted to shunt out her boring blabber. But, when you are actually looking to meet new people (read chics), then trust me this situation is not very good and in addition, you are so conscious of the lack of hearing that you don't focus on other things and so keep on screwing things. You try to read their lips and people think that you wanna kiss them. I am thankful that I wasn't slapped. Anyhoo, after about 3 weeks, I thought that I had had enough and went to see a doctor anticipating the worse. But all i can say is, She came, she saw and she conquered. Yeah she was hawt and all, but I am talking about my medical problem here. It was a very stupid hardening of wax problem and she quickly cleared it. I started hearing all the voices in my head again and tried to make small talk with the doc by saying, "If its bad, then why the hell do they sell q-tips" and she was like "Dont be such a baby, want a candy?". She didn't say that actually but could have.

So, it was over and now I can hear more than I wanted to. Would be so nice to have filtering auditory senses. Seems lame huh? Yeah thought so. But then, if you have read till this point, you are lame :)

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Vamos

So, after an epic battle Rafa finally accomplished what was expected of him. While IMO thats the blatant truth, it in no way underscores the enormity of his achievement, as might seem from the statement. Yes, he was expected to win, but then people are worn down by the burden of expectation and people thought that Roger would fight a lil and then yield as he normally does against Nadal. But this was Federer who was hungry to regain his lost ground and to win against an opponent of that quality must have been a very tough act even for the toughest man to wield a tennis racket. For the uninitiated, I am referring to the victory of Rafael Nadal at the All-England club for his first grand slam title on a surface other than clay.

I am a big Roger Federer fan, so I was obviously very upset when he suffered such a hard loss on his favourite surface and was denied a unique place in the record books (it looks unlikely that he would go on to win 6 in a row from here on). But anyone who saw the match couldn't help but say Vamos for Rafa. The dude has come such a long way from his early days as a powerful clay courter. There is a marked improvement in every facet of his game (except for his athleticism...he cant do more than that). But, I have always felt that the key to his success is his phenomenal mental strength. He plays one point at a time and never ever buckles under pressure (4th set tie-breaker yesterday was an anomaly). Thats so hard to do when you are facing break points. Especially in his matches against Federer, while Federer tries to do something extra and messes up when holding break points or gives it away (mostly) meekly when facing a couple of break points, Nadal always seems calm and does well at such crucial junctures.

It also doesn't hurt if you are insanely athletic and can chase down ball after ball from seemingly unrecoverable positions and then turn them into winners. What could have Roger done against this wall of steel. Well what he was able to do was almost enough and thats a tribute to the skill of this man. If he could have cut down on his errors a little bit, its possible that he might have won (not necessarily, just a possibility). It was his chance to get back on all the people who have repeatedly taken swipes at his level of play in the recent few months. I don't think that his level of play has gone down, its just that Rafa is much better than he was some time back and currently he is probably the best player on tour. But the modest guy that he is, Rafa credits Federer with the "best player in history" title even after defeating him so many times and never ever says that he is better than him (Djokovic has got to learn somethin from Rafa). I think even Federer is not that modest. He never ever says that Nadal is better than him, even on clay and expects himself to defeat him on any surface (dude u gotta be kidding me....its almost impossible to beat Nadal on clay).

One more thing which I wanted to add about the "match of a generation" is that although the rain delays were a source of frustration for all the people, I think it was because of the delays that both the players remained physically fresh and could play their best even in the fifth set. I can't imagine them playing the way they did if it was a continuous match (especially Roger). Anyhoo, bahut ho gaya match ka pulao...bas mentos khao aur dimaag ki bati jalao..

ps: check out Jaane tu ya jaane naa...Ekdam mast movie hai...