Cricket and Inflation broadcast

Mood : Bored, Pensive, Irritated, Frustrated..awaiting.

Today is the big semifinal. Delhi Daredevils vs. Rajasthan Royals.

I was keeping my fingers crossed for Delhi. They played well in their earlier matches, but were very shabby in the latter. Wondering how they even managed! But now they are facing the Royals who have lost just 2 to 3 matches in total. With the likes of Warne, Pathan and "the younger boys" that they have, they might total Delhi out. I'm not sure what chances Delhi has of going to the finals. Seems like today its sudden death! Many are hoping that Delhi and Chennai make it to the finals like Morkel and me, but that looks to be seen.

In other more important news, seems like price of petrol and diesel may escalate but not to rupees 10....no....its just between rs.2 to 5. Well, isn't that a relief...five bucks...which is now being called a moderate hike ! All this results from what I call the spiralling effect, when our dear Finance minister decided to forgo the farmers loans and did not think of any other way to earn that money...! Then Mr. Gandhi decided to increase that loan further, without thinking about substituting any other means of earning that....this along with the increase in the salaries of the IAS... SUPER..

WELCOME TO THE 8.1% inflation!

The difference between Clench and Grind

I decided to celebrate the end of my exams with a visit to the Dentist. Call me adventurous, but I like to live on the edge. A few months of toothache, coupled with occasional disprins twice a week will make you fret a bit or more. After diagnosis, the result was 4 cavities and the BIG ONE, a Root Canal. Pain I was prepared for, along with loss of liquid cash.
All in all, it did not turn out too bad. Still the last day was eventful, with the assistant dentist, asking me to clench my teeth by which he meant that I should imagine eating food. I mistook that for grinding my food, which I think is the way one eats food. So just to prove that I am right, here’s what my Oxford Genie says :

To clench : when you clench your hands and teeth… you press them together tightly, usually showing that you are angry, determined or upset
To grind : to break or crush something into very small pieces between two hard surfaces or using a special machine (drill).
Turns out, my five years in literature haven’t been a wasting!

2. On the other hand, I just finished reading an easy biography on Al Capone (do not read as Wikipedia entry). It was fun, neutral attempt to capture his personal life and events in a less serious tone. It was fun to read about him, because I haven't seen Scarface but heard just rave reviews. After Capone, I started with an assorted Whodunit series. Lets see how that goes cause I'm a sucker for those. Wondering whether I should buy the Twilight series or just be happy with the movie version...

3. On the sports side, IPL is fun to watch...Delhi being in the semis is a bonus too. The problem is that they'll be facing the Royals; Rajasthan Royals, not the Challengers! Raikkonen's battling with Hamilton for the top spot.....EXCITING...mind numbing to watch Kimi get no points along with driving Sutil out...!! BAH

4. Loved this game called Submachine. Technical and escape/maze game. Start with part one here...very easy....then follow it up with part2, part3 and part4. There's also one called Submachine zero.

5. Started watching Pushing Daisies and Chuck. Interesting mid-exam snack type.

W.H. Auden - Not so much American...

Mood : half-witted and laziness!

Listening to : What goes around comes around : Justin Timberlake

It is always during exam time that I find good books and good poetry and realize that I dont have time to appreciate them. Found Auden, but dont have time to love him.
This entry is under the tag of American poet. Auden was partially an American. Wasn't born there but found refuge and comfort there. I've attached a fragment of his poem called September 1, 1939. A dirge on war. Beautiful and simple, as poetry should be.

September 1, 1939

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

New Year Resolutions

Listening to : Evil Ways by Santana

Liberian Girl by Michael Jackson

Crystal Ball by Keane

Another new year. For me it usually means, a chance to spend more ways learning how to waste time effectively. However, this year I might waste it in much better ways. Firstly, by buying and reading more books. Secondly by watching more televison which includes reruns. Thirdly, by trying to write. This one might be on the threshold, of pain and pleasure, wasting time and actually attempting to come up with what some might label trash.

And lastly, I have decided to finish all Agatha Christie by this year. Given below are all of her works. I have read a few, mon ami.

(the ones in black=done. Virginal and untouched=Blue)

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Secret Adversary

Murder On the Links

The Man in the Brown Suit

The Secret of Chimneys

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Big Four

The Mystery of the Blue Train

The Seven Dials Mystery

Murder at the Vicarage

The Sittaford Mystery

Peril at End House

Lord Edgware Dies

Murder on the Orient Express

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Three Act Tragedy

Death in the Clouds

The ABC Murders

Murder in Mesopotamia

Cards on the Table

Dumb Witness

Death on the Nile

Appointment with Death

Hercule Poirot's Christmas

Murder Is Easy

Ten Little Niggers

Sad Cypress

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Evil Under the Sun

N or M?

The Body in the Library

Five Little Pigs

The Moving Finger

Towards Zero

Death Comes as the End

Sparkling Cyanide

The Hollow

Taken at the Flood

Crooked House

A Murder Is Announced

They Came to Baghdad

Mrs. McGinty's Dead

They Do It with Mirrors

After the Funeral

A Pocket Full of Rye

Destination Unknown

Hickory, Dickory, Dock

Dead Man's Folly

4.50 from Paddington

Ordeal by Innocence (Read a long time ago. Have to read it again.)

Cat Among the Pigeons

The Pale Horse

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

The Clocks

A Caribbean Mystery

At Bertram's Hotel

Third Girl

Endless Night

By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Hallowe'en Party

Passenger to Frankfurt: An Extravaganza

Nemesis

Elephants Can Remember

Postern of Fate

Curtain: Hercule Poirot's Last Case

Sleeping Murder

At the moment I am reading The Unexpected Guest.

(p.s. - incomplete list)

Pre New Year Post

This Pre 2008 post is an attempt to list down a few things learnt from in 2007. This is a very reductive activity but it might help me at the end of the next year when I'm still complaining what I rotter that year's been.



FROM APRIL

1. Post Graduation in English is a big cake
2. Kofee with Karan sucks. (Even though Johar may share his name with my very favourite tragic hero form Mahabharata).
3. Cricket has a habit of springing up on you when you've totally lost interest in it. Especailly if its endowed by handsome guys wearing glasses most of the time.
4. I'm a sucker for Time Travel.
5. I love almost tangible human superheroes. Its their biggest shortcoming and their biggest strength.

FROM MAY
1. American poets are easier to read than their British counterparts.
2. My attempt at Haikus is strained and then when I checked, wrong!

FROM JUNE
1. I love Harry Potter ICON MAKING.
2. I love Harry Potter FANFICTION.
3. I love HARRY POTTER. No contest.

FROM JULY
1. I predicted a few deaths from HP-7, being the pessimist I am.
2. Surprisingly, J.K. Rowling is a pessimist.

FROM AUGUST
1. I experiment more with icons.
2. Entourage is a life saver, post Harry Potter.

FROM SEPTEMBER
1. I decide I may want to become a writer, but being a bigger pessimist than an artist, I think I'll end up un-appreciated.
2. There are many pending books that one has to finish reading to become versatile. And the fact that I'm more lazier than Pessimist has everything to do with it!

FROM OCTOBER
1. Death follows Life. Questions of "why are we here" are very unavoidably raised , never to be resolved.
2. A whole month immersed in movies to escape the dreary life.
3. Kimmi Raikkonen is my hero.

FROM NOVEMBER
1. I find celebrities blogging very appealing. YEAH for Aamir Khan.
2. I'm irritable, suspicious, introvert, cautious and paranoid. HOGWASH for me.

FROM DECEMBER
1. This game or quiz is for everyone who wants to sharpen their abyssmal geography. I'm in.
2. I have to study Literary Critics this month to prepare for an upcoming tutorial. As much as I want to learn what I dont know, I'm afraid they might force me to think about those issues. That never does any good. (Thanks to Mr Foucault-you might want to spell your name the way you write it, Walter B, etc. )
3. Its freezing cold. I might not survive till the next year. My resolution should be to live till the first of Jan, 2008. Then I might make more resolutions that might be more creative. But thats next post then.

Personality Test!

Idea from the wonderful makani

Advanced Global Personality Test Results Extraversion 26% Stability 36% Orderliness 46% Accommodation 30% Interdependence 36% Intellectual 36% Mystical 56% Artistic 83% Religious 10% Hedonism 43% Materialism 76% Narcissism 63% Adventurousness 56% Work ethic 56% Self absorbed 56% Conflict seeking 56% Need to dominate 76% Romantic 50% Avoidant 83% Anti-authority 63% Wealth 56% Dependency 63% Change averse 56% Cautiousness 90% Individuality 83% Sexuality 56% Peter pan complex 50% Physical security 83% Physical Fitness 37% Histrionic 43% Paranoia 90% Vanity 63% Hypersensitivity 36% Indie 63%

http://similarminds.com/global-adv.html

Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

trait snapshot:
introverted, irritable, feels invisible, observer, depressed, does not enjoy leadership, reveals little about self, dislikes large parties, feels undesirable, does not like to stand out, submissive, suspicious, emotionally sensitive, not a thrill seeker, solitude loving, likes silence, fragile, second guesses self, negative, unadventurous, fearful, weird, focuses on people's hidden motives, paranoid, phobic, dependent, cautious, avoidant, semi intellectual

I agree with a few things in this. A lot of things in the Trial Snapshot, which are in italics. Maybe I'll be like those people in Horror movies who are so scared to go out that they are finally killed in their basements by the human vampires or unfriendly aliens.

Random but Important

- Listening to lyrics like these...

I got this icebox where my heart used to be (said I got this)

I'm so cold, I'm so cold, I'm so cold, I'm so cold

Omarion

- Icon with the opening quote from The Departed.

- Watched Lord of the Rings Trilogy. It was a long time pending. Peter Jackson has done a wonderful job along with the animators/special effects team. Loved Gollum and how he was done. Frodo's constant bickering with himself and Sam about the burden he carries is well managed. Have to read the book. But the size of the series weighs upon me....

- Aamir Khan has probably more blog entries than mine. That man...I tell you! He should dazzle us with more screen time too.

- Discovered that I loathe Ekta Kapoor more than I realized. This recent discovery based on the fact that she's got half of my family hook, line and sinker.

-Dreams by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

-and to finish it off... A quote that summarizes my feelings for the language that I have learnt and internalised.
The writer, making every effort to appear innocent and noble, takes his revenge with the pen; while the murderer, less hypocrtical, takes it with the sword.

The Dark Horse Always Wins

Icon from this place.

Feeling Overjoyed. I always wanted Kimi to win. He deserved it very much. And he did it with style. A race that could have easily been won by the talented McLaren team, went to the hardworking Finnish guy. The Ice Man. Steve Slater said that the "spoilt child" finally got his eye on the prize and went for it.

Some would say that between the two great talents, Raikkonen just got lucky. That is somewhat true. Alonso with his attitude problem and Hamilton is just too young to get the Championship (I think). Kimi was just the right guy at the right moment. He worked hard enough and swept the competition off. No one was really expecting him to defeat the McLarens, but he did it and KUDOS to him. I have been worshipping for Kimi to win. The race somehow seems lifeless without him there. I hope he keeps up the performance. Ferrari is so lucky!

They'll be celebrating in Finland now.

A Waste Of A Month

Listening to : Random Songs

Its been a long month of waste, decay and decomposition. And I've covered the following in this time :

BOOKS

1. Boogers are my beat - Dave Barry (My favourite at humor)
2. Sphinx - Robin Cook (First attempt at Cook. He's casually interesting)
3. Body in the Library (Agatha Chrsitie is as always brilliant)

MOVIES (Those with hyperlink are must check outs)

1. RV
2. Shattered Glass
3. Die Hard 1
4. Glory Road
5. Naked gun - from the police files.
6. Ek Chalis Ki Last Local
7. A Nightmare on the Elm Street
8. Stay Alive
9. Die Hard 2 : Die Harder
10. 28 Days Later
11. Cursed
12. Blow Up
13. Jarhead
14. Chashme Baddoor
15. Wolf Creek
16. Flight of the Phoenix
17. The Break Up
18. Gothika
19. The Prestige
20. House no.44
21. The Butterfly Effect
22. Swordfish
23. Stranger than Fiction
24. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
25. Extreme Measures
26. Kill Bill (again)
27. Kill Bill 2 (again)
28. Its A Wonderful Life
29. The Uncanny
30. A History of Violence
31. Superman 3
32. Superman 4
33. John Tucker Must Die
34. A Sound of Thunder
35. Raising Cain
36. Superman Returns
37. Hangman
38. Borat

So...I've mostly wasted time and not covered my M.A. course which is growing despite my watching it. I should learn a lesson from this. I must.

Life But Mostly Death

Listening to : Soulful sound of silence

Feeling : Tired and Reflective

This blog has been delayed long time. I wanted to write a lot on death and how I feel about it. But then I think I certainly can't write about it, because I haven't experienced it as of yet. I believe in the experience of a lived event. One can live a whole life without experience. I think I'd define the act of experiencing as a travelling through circumstance. It may pain or it may feel delightful but in the end, there's always YOU, who knows what has happened. Experience makes you the witness of the event.

Do I feel like I'm living...Sometimes. But then there was this dream I had where someone just pushed me off a building. I woke up with a panic and touched myself to feel if I still was alive. Then I touched the books lying next to me and the iron railing of my bed. It felt cold and I knew that I was just dreaming. I felt relieved but then sad. Becasue surely being relieved of being back suggests a fear of death and when death just overpowers you in its mere concept, how far can you be away from the real deal?

I wanted to write this blog since a long while, as I said before. There was a wedding in my family, but alongside the possibility of making new relations existed the finality of loss. Someone just passed away. Passed Away. It feels like there's another place where someone has gone to live the life they had. Or it might be a place where there's just a silent blank. I could conjecture, but the experience is all that I will wait for.