14 April 2006

I'm a crush-ee

I've had a busy week. And I havn't gone out in ages. My schedule now goes : Get up - gym - drink protein drink with breakfast- bathe - go to work late - dont do anything spectacular - get sent somewhere - not get a great story - come back -check blogs - sleep.

Fortunately, the inverted pyramid doesn't apply to blogs (or to TV), so I can start my story now :)

Ok, we have all these interns at office. Two of them are very unfit, and not my type. My roomie, though, thinks they're ok. (Healthy hain yaar!) Anyway, they have an intern friend, who's in another department. Now she, is cute. Not my type, and I'm not interested at the moment. But she is quite cute.

Anyway, now here I am, sitting in my chair. Lounging (yes, i lounge in the newsroom. Sue me). Head tilted back, arms behind my head. Feet off the floor. I happen to swivel the chair a little bit, and there she is. Sitting on a table, just looking at me.

I'm looking at her, but she won't look away. She's just undressing me with her eyes. Ok I made up that last bit, but, you get the point. So, anyway, I wave, and she waves back.

Then later, i'm sitting around, and she'll come sit next to me. ``So, how was that assignment? I liked the story.'' Me: ``er, it was ok, nothing special.'' Pinky *thats what i'll call her*:``Must be really hard. I wish i could do that stuff.''

Ok, the thing here is that the assignment in question wasn't particularly hard. Pretty women are forgiven a lot of things, you know.

Then, again, later, i go to a private-ish place to make a phone call. The three of them are sitting there, chatting and giggling. That's what they do. They giggle. As soon as i enter, stage left, two of them exit, stage right. (If you want to imagine that in your head, you'll have to switch the left and right to match the geographical directions).

And she's just there chatting with me. ``Oh, that day when you dropped us in your car, we forget to ask you if you wanted to come to dinner with us!''
Me: ``That's ok. I had plans.''
Pinky: ``You had plans??''
Me: ``Yes I have a life.''
Pinky: ``Oh thank god.''
Me :``Don't worry, we'll get dinner some other time.''
Pinky:``yes yes... we should.''

Now i try and try, but I cannot, Can Not, get the point of that conversation.

Everytime she's in the room, and i'm walking around, I know that this girl is looking at me. I have no idea why. If I were a woman, i could write a post about sexual harrasment, and 132 comments and a fight. And about how I hate that my body is treated like an object. But i'm a man, so i actually quite am in favour of it.

And, i think that another woman has a bit of a crush on my. But more on that in another post :)

Ok ok, so i'm halfway cute, but i'm not like, a male Tyra Banks or anything. But who am I to complain. So I sit down, lean back in my chair, flex my biceps, and smile. It would have been better if my roomie hadn't suddenly said, ``Dude, you've been working out 2 weeks. You have no biceps.''

I'm not attracted to this intern, but it is a big ego boost to be a crush-ee. Bed time now, I have arms and abs at the gym tomorrow.

By the way, its a little late, but I've discovered LimeWire. Land Ahoy, me hearties.

12 April 2006

ah shoes.

I know that somewhere, this blog comes with the promise of being funny and completly non-serious oftener than non-funny and serious. But i figure two funny posts, followed by one that's just half hearted, followed by two that are serious-ish, are a decent trade off.

If you remember my new shoes (if you dont scroll down to the previous post), they just got done with Baptism. Lots of standing around, some sprinting, lots of soot, some dead people. Looks like a promising start. I still have to get used to this anatomical insole though... feels a little uncomfortable sometimes.

I got sent to cover the meerut fire... one of my biggest spots yet. For you non-reporter types, a spot is when something happens... like salman goes to jail. The opposite of a spot is a special, like what salman and his cell-mate talked about, and the words that the the cell-mate used to describe Katrina. There are more types of stories, like stolen stories and plants, but thats another lesson.

Anyway, so I found myself, on my day off, in the back of an Indica, my photographer next to me, stuck in a traffic jam on the way to meerut. TV crews zipped one way, and ambulances the other. I was wearing what i call my `babe shirt'. Its brown corduroy, and supposed to be worn unironed. I had no notepad, no pen, nothing.

If you don't already know, there was a big fire in meerut, and a lot of people died.

All the way there, for some reason, I had this little cuticle-thing on my finger, and it kept pissing me off. I bit, and i scratched, but i couldn't get rid of it. I swear this is a true, inconsequential, but true story.

Anyway, 10 minutes before we reach the spot, my photographer yells, ``stop the car,'' and jumps out. ``I have to prepare for the night,'' he says.

Prepare for the night? eh? What's he going to do, arrange a room, fix up with a net-cafe to keep it open all night?

``What will you drink, is rum ok?''
Rum? I think? rum? people are dying here, and he wants rum?
`Sir, we're getting late, can't we get rum later?''
``We're already two hours late,'' he says, ``5 minutes can't change things.''

Ok, i seethe. Get the rum. Only later that night did I realise how much more 14 years of experience counted than my 1 and a half, and i thank god for that rum.

I've never actually sat down with a man, and drank alcohol for no reason. Its not something I see the point in. I'll drink when i'm out, wth friends. Here I was, with a 35 year old man in his underwear, and we finished a half bottle of rum.

I think that to get burnt alive is the worst way to die. When you die, your terror is frozen on your face, but every shred of humanness and dignity has been stripped from you. I think that its hell for a dead person's loved ones to come identify them, and seperate them from other people that all look the same. But I think that the after the first couple of times, you get used to it, and dont have to look away and cover your face. The smell though, you can't ever actually get used to.

And as an aside, i realised that if your MotoRazr V3i runs out of battery, NOBODY will be able to help you. They'll just say, ``Nice phone sir, no charger?'' or ``Ha ha ha, you should have got a nokia, then i could give you a charger'' or ``thats why i didn't get this phone''. Yes. Fuck you too.

Unfortunately, i didn't meet any pretty women on this trip.

hmm ok, this was quite a random post. I've run out of things to say.

and I should sleep. I've missed gym for 3 days now because of work. Ah well.

08 April 2006

You can tell a man by his shoes.

For some reason, I have no idea what to blog about. Its not that I don't have anything to say ... I do. I'm not sure if I want to say a lot of this here. My blog isn't really anon anymore. Which shouldn't matter, since I just have an average of 100 people visiting everyday. (I also have someone from turkey!) But it does.
Well, anyway, I didn't have much to do last evening, and I was bored. So I went out and bought shoes and shorts. Its a man's version of retail therapy. I took my 15 minutes, and I spent a fourth of my salary.

Anyway, I thought that you (the reader) should meet my shoes. I suddenly realised that I have a lot of them. There's sporty, cool, and character in them. Shoes, meet the readers, readers, shoes. Now judge me.


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These are my new Adidas shoes. They look like sherpa shoes. If you think that Sherpas don't wear expensive boots, think again. They wear expensive boots, they just buy them for cheap. These babies, I have never actually worn. So they have no history, no character. But they are quite comfortable. As I was buying them, the salesman kept saying things like, ``Sir, comfort insole''. ``Sir, bacteria resisitant.'' ``Sir, High quality leather''. Eventually i realised he was reading off the tag that came with the shoe.

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Now these babies, are a testament to Why. Nike. Sucks. These, when I bought them, were the most expensive shoes I owned. But it took just four months for them to wear out. The right shoe started fraying, and the hooks for the laces tore, and they don't tie well anymore. Later I realised that they began fraying because of the friction with the gear-shift on my bike. (if anyone can guess which bike I had from that info, 10 bucks. Or dinner if you're a girl)(if you already know, then you get nothing. Unless you're a girl, in which case, we can arrange dinner.)
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Say Hello. I know they look terrible. I know they're torn. I know they're not waterproof anymore. I know the suede has rotted at one place. I know the laces are frayed beyond repair. But these are my favourite shoes. They're slightly uncomfortable now, but I love them for the way i feel in them. These are Salomon hiking shoes. My mom bought me these for 3500 bucks, when Salomon was owned by Adidas. They've lasted me more than six years now. I've lost count. And i'm not about to get rid of them anytime soon. I will cry when i have to let them go. They've seen me through so much. Like the time me and some friends got stuck in a flash flood, and I had to run 4 km back to the village, in the pouring rain on the side of a hill. Or the hike in the himalays, where I slipped and fell, only to look up and see a Monal Pheasant (a very very rare bird). These shoes have stepped in pools of blood. They were therewhen I made friends with Maratha Light Infantry Jawans in Uri. They were there when boys my age in Dibrugarh told me why they're so afraid of the army. They were there when we let leeches feed of us in Nagarhole (its just the bad blood that goes, and its not painful). The last time I wore them, my left foot went ankle-deep into a drain in a Delhi Slum, while people around carried charred bodies out through narrow lanes. These are my shoes. These shoes are me.
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These are clima-cool running shoes. There's more ventilation in them than actual shoe. The only place I've actually gone for long runs in these are in Goa, where I realised all the ventilation doesn't do very well with sand. I wear them to the gym. The cool thing about these shoes is, when I walk into a shoe shop wearing them, all the salespeople turn to look at them. I get things like, ``Sir, those are Adidas Clima-cool model number whatever. Beautiful shoes.'' Really. I swear.
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These two pairs are my black shoes. One of them I just bought, cos i realised I didn't have any shoes of this Genre. They're clunky, and not me, but they go with jeans. The other one are the shoes I wear to job interviews. I don't really wear white socks with them (the socks pictured are my roomies). I just put the white socks there cos i used to wear very similar shoes with white socks in school :) (st. mary's boys, by the way). No history here.
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These floaters and chappals... well, the chappals I just wear at home, and get pissed of if anyone takes outside my house. The floaters are partners in crime with my salomons. Except they just accompany me everywhere, and i wear them when I'm lounging. Yes, I lounge. They're adidas too, and torn as hell too. The good thing about floaters is that you dont need to pack them. You cn just hook them to the outside of your backpack, and you're ready to go. You can even lounge at a railway station. The velcro on them isn't so velcro anymore, so they dont stay on very well, which makes them all the better for lounging.
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Those are my shoes. Now i have to go to work, and I think i'll wear my new shoes today. But before I leave you, here's a pic of shoes I would kill for. (sorry for the image-heavy post. But hey, its my blog)

Oakly Teeth

06 April 2006

This is not funny (and some blog reviews)

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01 April 2006

Happy April Fool's day, y'all.

I went to TC, again. For once, I did not actually enjoy myself here. I went for a friend's birthday thingy, but it was not really fun. There were too many people I didn't know, and too few of them that I found interesting.

I did have a certain amount to drink though, and there were some pretty girls, but that's not what this post is about.

For the record, by 1.oo am, i'd drunk about 4 vodkas, and a beer. Then, the birthday boy decided he wanted to leave. Always a bad idea, cos the best music starts at 1, when the DJ is done with the neo-rock things. I wanted to go home, cos i live down the road from TC, but the Birthday boy didn't let me. ``We have to go to last chance, in Gurgaon, and you're coming.'' So i went. I had So driving in the car with me... 2 minutes into the drive, she wanted to be dropped home, so i dropped her home, then i was driving alone to gurgaon, slightly drunk.

*** This is where the zen part of the story begins ***

I though I would drive badly, but I really wasnt. I was driving really well. I was shifting perfectly, always at the same RPMs, (even though i don't have a tachometre, i knew), I was dropping a gear at just the right moment before every turn. I was hitting the turns exactly at the apex, and powering out really well. At a few points, i could feel the rear wheel drive slide out just that little bit, and then find traction again. I saw the police barricades (you know, to stop speeding drunk drivers) and went past them at the perfect angle, so i didn't have to turn at all.

And i wasn't unsafe, I saw red lights, traffic intersections, breaks in the median, all coming, and slowed down the safe amount for them all.

Halfway through the drive, i realised i was going to blog about this. And i've been thinking about what to say since then.

The stereo was playing, but i wasn't hearing it. I was just driving. I know that just 3 songs played the whole way, the last was a live version of `Black Magic Woman'.

Just as i was about the enter gurgaon, i had one of those moments of clarity. I used to have them all the time as a mountain biker zipping down the side of a rocky hill, but this is the first time I've had one driving. I knew i was driving well. I knew i wasn't high anymore. I knew i should be home. ``What,'' I thought, ``am I doing?'' ``Why am going to a place i know i will not like to meet people i have already not liked? I think I began thinking too much, though, cos my moment of clarity went away, and I thought, sheesh, i'm here, in gurgaon, already.

***Zen part ends here, only to continue later***
Then I went to this place, which is on the top floor of a mall. As soon as I entered (i had to pay, more than my haircut), in my leftover-zen state, the first thing I realised, was that everyone at this place was incredibly ugly. (no offence to all the people there, but you all were, except me) The music was bad. The people were pushy. (no excuse me, smile, hello, just push, leave sweat on other person). I bought a drink for Rs. 300. I didn't drink it. I didn't want to, because I wanted to do the zen drive again. I left the drink, gave my leftover coupons to the birthday boy, and left.

As I walked to the parking lot, i knew i wouldnt drive like that again. I knew that was a once in a lifetime drive. It couldn't, nay - shouldn't- happen again.

***Zen part 2 starts here ***

But I was wrong.

This time, I drove back, doing the same things i did earlier. Except, this time, I did them out of instinct. I didn't have to look for the line at the turn, I just found it. I was constantly at 120 (which is a fair amount for a top-heavy 4X4), but at the corners, i was suddenly at 70. It was perfect. I felt like one with the universe. If i were driving to Jaipur, i'd be enlightened by now.

***Zen part 2 ends here***

Also in today's bulletin.
# I think i will drink less. Its part of my new fitness thing, even though i've never been a big-time drinker.
# A chick at TC asked me, ``If a person who loves bikes is a biker, whats a person who loves cars?'' (in my head, i'm still a biker, by the way)
# I have 2 days off. But my moms coming in for a sudden business trip, so i'm going to have to clean the house, get rid of the alcohol and my flat-mate's condoms.

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