Sunday, June 22, 2008

Of Morning Blogs and Fine Weather

A morning blog this one.. being penned at 1000 in the morning. I rarely do that. Most of my blogs get written under the shroud of starlight and moonbeams(OK, the image doesnt sound so romantic, if you factor in a hairy brown skinned guy in his desi chuddies pecking at the keyboard).
Been a long time since I last blogged and there's been an awful lot that's happened since then.
I sometimes wonder how the happening peepuls around blogosphere manage to capture their every waking breath, office argument, heartbreak, toilet break et al in their blogs every single day. If my life were to match up to the blogosphere standards of "happening", I'd be sleeping 30 mins a day, commuting 4 hours a day with a random hot chick who shares my taste for Haruki Murakami's literature, reading Hemingway in office while my boss drones on, run into Sharon Stone in the loo, discuss Einstein's interpretation of religion with the random hot chick on our way back home, make love to her in the neighbours garden and then finally get back home and all excitedly blog about it.
Since February, I've taken a bunch of vacations which involved climbing active volcanoes, staring into volcano craters, camping inside a caldera, hallucinating prime numbers in a wooden cabin in sub zero temperatures, soaking in onsens, memorising train time tables in Japanese font and castle hopping.
A random sampling of the Japanese vacation below.
This was followed up by a rather long vacation in Thailand on my way back to Bangalore..err. .Bengalooru (spelling it that way is supposed to make me empowered and feel like all my problems are solved as the politicos in reams of newsprint have suggested). It involved tagging along with sis to Phuket and Bangkok ,a solo walkathon across Ayutthaya and Kanchanaburi, fotographing monks, tigers and monks with tigers.


Otherwise nothing newsworthy happening at my end unless you would like to know that the corns on my soles have eased up and withered away. I no longer walk like Jack Sparrow.
I have managed to sew up a few reads on the side, which include The Inscrutable Americans(an average read), Dawkin's The God Delusion(high decibel), James Watson's DNA(brilliant stuff) and in the middle of a couple of other books.

Bangalore is definitely having a spell of swell weather off late.The mercury is hovering around the lower twenties, flowers are in bloom, wind speed just right. Good enough to shut up the panche clad uncles in Brahmins Coffee Bar who cant stop saying "Eevagin Saaftwaare Engineergalige yen gotthu? In 1973, naavu May nallu swaatar haakondu waaking maadta idvi Lal Bagh nalli"(What you scoundrel saaftware engineer knows? In 1973, we all wearing sweater even in May for morning walking in Red Garden")

Have taken a decision to volunteer in an NGO on Saturdays for a couple of months. I have decided to follow Calvin's exhortation to lower my expectations to the point where they are already met. Anyway,let's see where that goes in a couple of months time.
Missing my weekend jaunts into Tokyo, and the feeling of elation when I find the right Japanese word to explain my country, body hair ,religious orientation and alleged mathematical genius to 88 year old Japanese on mountain tops..but yeah...already filed in Nostalgia section .
Until the next blaahg.
Cheers