I had an awesome dream the other evening - epic, actually. It started off with me going to college and getting my attendance from this lady I don't like, so I told her that I'm late cause my mum died, and so she gave it to me (please do not let this shock you, I use excuses like this often in my dreams. It means nothing, I love my mum very much). Then something happened for an hour that I don't really remember too well.
Then, I was vacationing with dad and Mithila somewhere near some beach, and Mithila was like 9 again, and soooo cute (!) and she decided that she was going to go take a swim in the sea, so dad and I took her to the seashore (there was a fort next to the sea, and some steps leading down into the water where we let her off) and she was damn good at it! She went in a fair distance and was grinning in the water, so I sat by the shore and overlooked her safety while dad went fishing somewhere.
Next scene, and Mithila and I were walking down a parth in the forest somewhere just chatting, she was asking me all kinds of questions and I was talking to her etc etc.
Next scene, I'm at the seaside again, and dad and Mithila are sitting a bit far away along the vurve of the fort's sea-barrier watching the scenery and I decide that if Mithila can do it, so can I. So I dive into the sea and swim a niice, long way out, but I am paranoid that the sea will drag me in. The waters are a bit choppy already, and when I get a bit far out my paranoia changes the mood of the sea and makes it rough, with big, strong waves coming in and leaving, pulling me out. I swim with all my might, and I see dad and Mithila walking towards the steps near the fort, watching me every other wave to make sure that I'm safe. I swim hard, but am not making much progress and get a bit more scared, when I see a strong wave coming in and somehow it catches me in it, takes me a bt high in the air and deposits me close to the steps where I swim up and get to dryish safety next to dad and Mithila. Dad asks if I'm ok, and I tell him that I was a bit frightened as we both - nay, all 3 - observe the ever increasing roughness of the sea.
The sky goes from light blue to darker, approaching a storm grey-and-pink as the waves actually start rising fairly high and get choppier than ever before. Dad and I lock eyes, and just as this happens I see thunder storms literally streaking across the sky, above the treeline where dad and mithila were sitting earlier. I point and tell dad to look, and when i look at him he says "I know! I'm writing all this down" as he shows me a thick stack of papers in his hands. "It makes so much sense cause he was a journalist" I think to myself. Dad gets up and goes somewhere, and now the sky has gone deep grey-black, it's Thunderstorm Time. I take Mithila's hand as I see a pretty damn huge wave coming in from the sea and tell her that we have to get to the other side of the Fort's walls Now. We get up and start climbing the steps fast - Mithila's quite fit nad/or energetic, but then I pick her up (she's so light!) and carry her up to the top of the fort.
We reach the top and decide to turn around and look at the wave, which is a lot closer now and so I decide that we have to get to the bottom on the other side of the wall that we are on top of. I see a beautiful Susanne Roshan to my right, about to talk to her child (she has appeared in my dream, most probably, because before I slept I saw a very pretty picture of her in a magazine). I want to know what she tells her young one so I wait a moment, but then I hear garbled words coming out of her mouth and think to myself, how can anyone marry someone with no ability to communicate, even if they are extremely pretty (this thought is vaguely reproduced here, I cant put the feeling in the most accurate words for some reason). Anyway, we take the steps down towards the inner side of the fort, but then I see the shadow of the Giant wave upon the opposite wall, and just shield Mithila from anything that might happen as we press ourselves against our wall.
The wave comes, splashes all over the place, but we are safe and dry, and thanks to our careful positioning we have avoided any personal tragedy to ourselves. The weather is getting no better as I hear more thunderclouds and flashes of lightening - no time to wonder where Dad is right now, I'm sure he's safe, I have to take Mithila to safety. We quickly walk down to the bottom of the wall, and find a set of old rail tracks. I realize that we are at Churchgate (but it doesn't look like Churchgate, it looks like a railroad track emerging from a tunnel inside the fort, but I knew that it was the old part of Churchgate). I know that it's a really dangerous thing to do to walk into the tunnel and risk getting hit by the train, but then I think that no train will be using these old tracks. So I take Mithila's hand and we fearlessly walk deep into the tunnel. Pitch black. Then I see a light inside the tunnel, and I know this is a train. Nothing that we can do, so I tell Mithila to press herself as hard as she can against the wall we've been walking along, and I do the same. Whoooosh! and the train goes past us. When I open my eyes, Mithila's hand is in mine, and we are both very safe indeed. I see two windows on the opposite wall, and it's as if we are looking into the corridor that leads to 5, Heliopolis from outside the first floor windows. I quickly open them, and place Mithila in the safety of the tunnel first, then climb in myself. It is a sort of parallel tunnel, mainly grey marble and not-too-bright white-light. We walk for a bit, and we reach a door with a security guard. Whaaa..? He asks us just what it is we are doing, and I tell him I have no time for this, does he not see the danger that we are all in? I can feel the dream reaching some sort of epiphany, but I'm flummoxed by the guards next movement. He walks towards a door that I didn't notice earlier, with a digital label on it saying "CardRoom". Why would he go to a card room - why would there be a card-room Here? and why would anyone be playing cards right now?! But I know something is wrong with the definition I have in my head - the mystery is cleared soon enough. The door unlocks, and I see the label has the names of the occupants underneath - "Arun Katiyar, Raven". The door opens and it is confirmed! There sit dad and my friend Devika (Raven), discussing exactly how to stop this stuff - dad looks at me as he sees that I've taken care of Mithila, we all smile smiles of recognition.
The scene closes up into a small white dot, and the dream is over.
ASIDE; 20 minutes later, dreaming blackness and nothingness and the white dot suddenly expands again, and I am back in front of the teacher that took my attendance. While I'm wondering if all that really happened, she looks at me and says "I know your mum's not dead - your not getting attendance!" And I wake up.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
A Trip Into Space
Meg, this one's for you.
.
.
.
Can you imagine being able send a catalog of photos and logotypes straight into space. How cool is that?
Welcome to Project intospace.org; these guys (this guy? - Arthur Stubbs) plan to send 300 'rockets'into space, and each rocket will be able to hold upto 1000 'astronauts'. Each astronaut will occupy a space of 1 square centimeter upon a sheet 25cmx40cm. According to the website, the scheduled year of launch is sometime in 2010, barring the occurrence of 'Acts of God'.
'Acts of God' are defined as war, epidemic, natural disasters, armed rising, and acts of authority.
How Chuckie.. :-)
Well yeah, so the story goes that I was talking to a friend earlier on today and was being egged on to write something new on what seems to have become a highly inactive blog these days. I told her that I'd think of something, but I just went to sleep instead. Lo and behold! when I woke up from a light snooze, I found a very interesting mail in my inbox - there it was, an invitation to be a part of this little adventure. I think its really cool to be able to send something - anything thats not garbage (i.e. trash/rubbish/human waste/stuff that goes into an incinerator/garbage dump - into the deep void that is the nothingness of space. I always liked travel, and now I can at least send something to a place that I've always wanted to visit.
The hard part here is thinking of what image it should be. It could be one of me, it could be an image of my family, of friends, or a car, or lipstick, or a wire-hand, maybe a bucket, possibly a picture of Shiva, anything. I gotta think hard about this one, but not too hard otherwise I'll never be happy with my decision.
I personally don't know who the target audience is just yet, but I hope to find out pretty soon. I don't know if that'll affect my choice of image, but even now I'm wondering what I could send that would change something, no matter how small and/or insignificant it might be. Suddenly this is turning into a long-term experiment - Mmm. Yummy.
Given the chance (and you can have that chance as well, provided you have some basic qualifications - read on), what kind of image would you send into space? What is it that you would want others in a different time or place to see? Would it matter to you, or would it be something that you wouldn't think about? Whatever it is, now I can't wait for it to happen. There are two ways that you can join this adventure;
you could a) Buy yourself a ticket ($2), or a group of tickets ($30) or a logotype ($25) or b) you could write about this project on your blog, and send the link and your image to takeme@intospace.org
If your interested, do check the site out - http://intospace.org/ (or click on the title of the post), and if you decide to be a part of it and read about it from this blog, please let him know that you heard the idea from here. My picture grows in size with referrals.
Peace, Shanti, Ssspaceness.
.
.
.
Can you imagine being able send a catalog of photos and logotypes straight into space. How cool is that?
Welcome to Project intospace.org; these guys (this guy? - Arthur Stubbs) plan to send 300 'rockets'into space, and each rocket will be able to hold upto 1000 'astronauts'. Each astronaut will occupy a space of 1 square centimeter upon a sheet 25cmx40cm. According to the website, the scheduled year of launch is sometime in 2010, barring the occurrence of 'Acts of God'.
'Acts of God' are defined as war, epidemic, natural disasters, armed rising, and acts of authority.
How Chuckie.. :-)
Well yeah, so the story goes that I was talking to a friend earlier on today and was being egged on to write something new on what seems to have become a highly inactive blog these days. I told her that I'd think of something, but I just went to sleep instead. Lo and behold! when I woke up from a light snooze, I found a very interesting mail in my inbox - there it was, an invitation to be a part of this little adventure. I think its really cool to be able to send something - anything thats not garbage (i.e. trash/rubbish/human waste/stuff that goes into an incinerator/garbage dump - into the deep void that is the nothingness of space. I always liked travel, and now I can at least send something to a place that I've always wanted to visit.
The hard part here is thinking of what image it should be. It could be one of me, it could be an image of my family, of friends, or a car, or lipstick, or a wire-hand, maybe a bucket, possibly a picture of Shiva, anything. I gotta think hard about this one, but not too hard otherwise I'll never be happy with my decision.
I personally don't know who the target audience is just yet, but I hope to find out pretty soon. I don't know if that'll affect my choice of image, but even now I'm wondering what I could send that would change something, no matter how small and/or insignificant it might be. Suddenly this is turning into a long-term experiment - Mmm. Yummy.
Given the chance (and you can have that chance as well, provided you have some basic qualifications - read on), what kind of image would you send into space? What is it that you would want others in a different time or place to see? Would it matter to you, or would it be something that you wouldn't think about? Whatever it is, now I can't wait for it to happen. There are two ways that you can join this adventure;
you could a) Buy yourself a ticket ($2), or a group of tickets ($30) or a logotype ($25) or b) you could write about this project on your blog, and send the link and your image to takeme@intospace.org
If your interested, do check the site out - http://intospace.org/ (or click on the title of the post), and if you decide to be a part of it and read about it from this blog, please let him know that you heard the idea from here. My picture grows in size with referrals.
Peace, Shanti, Ssspaceness.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Singapore
Well, it has been long indeed. Back to square one, almost. But with a new city, a new country, and a new (well, almost) language, there's always some more to say.
I arrived here Saturday morning, on arguably the worst flight I've ever had. Stuck in a seat that wouldn't recline (it was 30E, the last row - directly in front of the lavatory), and that offered the aroma's of people's choice dumps in the loo. I asked for a bargain ticket and I think I got it.
Meera aunty came to pick me up (at 6:30am, local time), and took me around to Pearl's Hill. This is where it all started to go slightly off-course. We got there, and the woman at the admin office could not find my payment form. Utter chaos, carefully and expertly handled by Meera aunty, ensued. While I could barely understand a word the lady was saying, Meera aunty graciously man-handled her into finding my papers, and a promise to find out, in detail, what happened to my reservation. We were told to come back at 1 o' clock, when another lady would be here that we could talk to.
So we wandered off to the other side of the road, looking for a place to have coffee and something to eat. We walked over some bridges, with Meera aunty giving me tip after tip after tip, until I was fairly confident that I'd been in Singapore for at least a month. We hit up a 7-eleven, bought a SIM card and a NETS CashCard (this whole place is freakin' full of electronic convenience - more on that later), and decided to call it quits.
We went to her place, where I finally met Vivan and Vikram uncle, and I chilled there for a while. Vivan showed me around Dover Rise (the locality they stay in), and we had lunch - very yummy paneer (margarine) masala, rice and dal, and aloo-gobi. While there, I also mailed my friend Nishant (he worked at Microland), and told him what was going on. He agreed to try and find me accommodation until my term with Pearl Hill (Hostel) began. Next, we left again for the Hostel, where a woman called Rain (I think that I'm quite liking these names.. they have a very nice ring to them!) handled my situation. She knew exactly what had happened, and within 10 minutes,my problem had been solved. With a big thank-you to Meera aunty, a new key (and a/c!)to my room, and 2 Chinese-Korean room-mates, I felt relieved, and then hungry (for food and action). We said goodbye to each other, and I went to find Nishant.
Now, though we'd talked about Singapore and it's offerings while at Microland, Nishant really got deep, DEEP into Singapore's skin and found for us "Bird's Nest Drink" at Chinatown's MRT. This drink is made from the nest of a swallow (now I know why they're called that). The thing about this particular nest is that it is made from the saliva of the bird, which sticks it to a wall or anything else that its nest can be stuck to. The first sip was bearable, the after-taste was not. But we did it, and we have a picture to prove it, too. Ugh.
The next day was a lot less eventful, especially because I spent about 1/2 of it asleep. I like my room-mates. They're gamers, and know where to eat. Perfect!
Yesterday, I went to LaSalle (the reason I'm here, did I mention that?) and got myself registered as a student, got photo's taken, and blah, blah, blah. I met 3 new students, Hanne Eriksen (Norway) and Vy (Norway/Vietnam), and Tanay Vohra. After a quick bite of octopus (I could go on and on and on about the food here, my god!), we went our separate ways, me to my bed, Tanay to his place, and the 2 girls to a hospital for check-ups and the like.
Update: 4 Days Later..
Today was the first actual day of college. It was okay, strictly speaking. I'm gonna have to work pretty damn hard if I'm to jump the foundation year and go straight to Level 1, which is the basic plan. The more complicated plan is finding financiers for the rest of my education here. Luckily for me, I don't have classes on Fridays, so I ought to put those 24 (fine, 10) hours to good use... Today, it was boiling hot again, but then at 11:19am, the sky suddenly cooled down for a moment, and then the heavens really let rip. I thought the downpour in Bangalore was tremendous but this, this is truly a spectacle to behold. For 10 minutes it poured tsunami-style all around the building, and I could see sunlight 3 blocks away! What a sight (!). The lady that runs the place I stay in is a real bitch in disguise though. She was very nice to me the first day (ref; para 1), but this evening, after a tiring walk that lasted an hour and a half, she was hounding me for some nonsensical reason. Her name is Rain, and I think it fits her quite well too. Just as quickly as she began to bother me, after seven minutes she abruptly stopped, said 'okay', turned on her heels and scrammed.
I also went quite broke today, and things are looking like they shall remain this way for the next 2 days, until my account opens up and the moneh flows back in. Man, I feel terrible spending dad's cash, especially when i convert it back to rupees at the end of each day. But enough of the rambling - I've walked like 10km today, and it's about time that I went to bed. Gnight!
I arrived here Saturday morning, on arguably the worst flight I've ever had. Stuck in a seat that wouldn't recline (it was 30E, the last row - directly in front of the lavatory), and that offered the aroma's of people's choice dumps in the loo. I asked for a bargain ticket and I think I got it.
Meera aunty came to pick me up (at 6:30am, local time), and took me around to Pearl's Hill. This is where it all started to go slightly off-course. We got there, and the woman at the admin office could not find my payment form. Utter chaos, carefully and expertly handled by Meera aunty, ensued. While I could barely understand a word the lady was saying, Meera aunty graciously man-handled her into finding my papers, and a promise to find out, in detail, what happened to my reservation. We were told to come back at 1 o' clock, when another lady would be here that we could talk to.
So we wandered off to the other side of the road, looking for a place to have coffee and something to eat. We walked over some bridges, with Meera aunty giving me tip after tip after tip, until I was fairly confident that I'd been in Singapore for at least a month. We hit up a 7-eleven, bought a SIM card and a NETS CashCard (this whole place is freakin' full of electronic convenience - more on that later), and decided to call it quits.
We went to her place, where I finally met Vivan and Vikram uncle, and I chilled there for a while. Vivan showed me around Dover Rise (the locality they stay in), and we had lunch - very yummy paneer (margarine) masala, rice and dal, and aloo-gobi. While there, I also mailed my friend Nishant (he worked at Microland), and told him what was going on. He agreed to try and find me accommodation until my term with Pearl Hill (Hostel) began. Next, we left again for the Hostel, where a woman called Rain (I think that I'm quite liking these names.. they have a very nice ring to them!) handled my situation. She knew exactly what had happened, and within 10 minutes,my problem had been solved. With a big thank-you to Meera aunty, a new key (and a/c!)to my room, and 2 Chinese-Korean room-mates, I felt relieved, and then hungry (for food and action). We said goodbye to each other, and I went to find Nishant.
Now, though we'd talked about Singapore and it's offerings while at Microland, Nishant really got deep, DEEP into Singapore's skin and found for us "Bird's Nest Drink" at Chinatown's MRT. This drink is made from the nest of a swallow (now I know why they're called that). The thing about this particular nest is that it is made from the saliva of the bird, which sticks it to a wall or anything else that its nest can be stuck to. The first sip was bearable, the after-taste was not. But we did it, and we have a picture to prove it, too. Ugh.
The next day was a lot less eventful, especially because I spent about 1/2 of it asleep. I like my room-mates. They're gamers, and know where to eat. Perfect!
Yesterday, I went to LaSalle (the reason I'm here, did I mention that?) and got myself registered as a student, got photo's taken, and blah, blah, blah. I met 3 new students, Hanne Eriksen (Norway) and Vy (Norway/Vietnam), and Tanay Vohra. After a quick bite of octopus (I could go on and on and on about the food here, my god!), we went our separate ways, me to my bed, Tanay to his place, and the 2 girls to a hospital for check-ups and the like.
Update: 4 Days Later..
Today was the first actual day of college. It was okay, strictly speaking. I'm gonna have to work pretty damn hard if I'm to jump the foundation year and go straight to Level 1, which is the basic plan. The more complicated plan is finding financiers for the rest of my education here. Luckily for me, I don't have classes on Fridays, so I ought to put those 24 (fine, 10) hours to good use... Today, it was boiling hot again, but then at 11:19am, the sky suddenly cooled down for a moment, and then the heavens really let rip. I thought the downpour in Bangalore was tremendous but this, this is truly a spectacle to behold. For 10 minutes it poured tsunami-style all around the building, and I could see sunlight 3 blocks away! What a sight (!). The lady that runs the place I stay in is a real bitch in disguise though. She was very nice to me the first day (ref; para 1), but this evening, after a tiring walk that lasted an hour and a half, she was hounding me for some nonsensical reason. Her name is Rain, and I think it fits her quite well too. Just as quickly as she began to bother me, after seven minutes she abruptly stopped, said 'okay', turned on her heels and scrammed.
I also went quite broke today, and things are looking like they shall remain this way for the next 2 days, until my account opens up and the moneh flows back in. Man, I feel terrible spending dad's cash, especially when i convert it back to rupees at the end of each day. But enough of the rambling - I've walked like 10km today, and it's about time that I went to bed. Gnight!
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