A new experimentation

[Editing this post as per a comment]:
PEOPLE, this post is a song which I recorded in my own voice; the voice has not been loaned from anyone... Also, if you dont see a BOOMP3 player underneath these lines, there is some issue.. lemme know !!

ALSO, just like my blogs, I sang because I love to sing... and not because I want you to hear !! [I always keep saying that... dunno why I still keep posting on the net, though... Oof.. talk about MPD!!]

Just an experimentation... Please forgive the spikes...

boomp3.com

The charge of the juice brigade

A favorite drink at home

Seagull in SFO

This is one of my favorites... I rapidly fired shots when he was circling around; fortunately, I got one in which he struck a majestic pose.

Taken when I was on a boat ride in SFO... very near the Golden gate bridge.

Rubik's Shadow

I recently purchased a Canon S3 IS and have started venturing into the awesome world of photography. I'm just a novice just learning to play around with my camera; I'll keep uploading some of my favorite ones...

This one is of a famed Rubik's cube which I placed on the carpet at a place where there was sunlight filtering in...

Aftershocks of a loan payment

Coming onsite has its own perks; money of course. Within 2 months of me being here, I sent home enough money to finish off my car loan; finally I could say that the car was my own. I was also happy at having dealt with a big burden of more than three years.

But of course, my mum had different plans. As soon as the car loan was finished she was already sending me links to house plots, flats and apartments that were on sale. When we chat, she’ll also tell me the various plot for sale ads in the manorama newspaper. The conversations always followed the same pattern - she was eager to get me to agree on something and start initiating a house loan; me on the other hand downplaying anything she came up with. Some excerpts:

Amma : Da, 10 cents land near nedumbaassery
Me : Just 10? Would’ve been good had it been more.
Amma : I’m not kidding.
Me : Neither am I; there’s a shortage of 10 lacs with me. Will get that in a while; then we can try if we get the nedumbassery airport land also.
Amma : Grrr… Ok, then we can look something near the kaloor stadium.
Me : Perfect; we can then buy the ground also. Long time since I played cricket.
Amma : Ok, fine… I get the idea; then can we look something in Trivandrum?
Me : Sure, why not? I think we should buy a piece of land in every district of kerala. That way we’d be able to counter any price variations across places. Also, it’d help me get settled in any place which might have a probable IT boom. Esp in Idukki - near the dam would be a great place. If we run out of water, we could go to the reservoir and have bath.
Amma : [By this time she’s really getting worked up… she gives me a rendition of some choice words] Ok, do whatever you wish. Don’t later fret that we did not tell you.

Even though I get into this rigmarole primarily to get her worked up, there’s more to it. Buying a piece of land is, to me, akin to getting ready to settle down. Gosh… even the thought drives me crazy; deciding on a place where I want to spend the rest of my life; where to build a home, to come back after work, lie down, close my eyes, and feel contend. I have never planned my life that much ahead; but my mother reminds me everyday of how old I am getting, and the need to do so. I should get some consultancy company to do some work on “The 10 best places to settle down”.

Inspiron

Niche. I remember Geetha madam teaching this to us in her biology classes - something to do with animals finding a unique place in an ecosystem. As the IT sector peaked up, and MBAs spewed up jargons one after the other, niche also found its way into common use…
But what I’m writing about has nothing to do with the new IT definition of niche - I’m going to blabber about a laptop. I’m sure you fail to see the relation; three months before I’d be along with you, but today I’m a changed man.

When I came to the US, I accommodated myself in a 2BHK house with 4 guys; all of them had a personal laptop. Fortunately for me, there was an additional one which was provided to one of the guys for official purposes. I’m basically an outrageously social animal, and for the initial week I couldn’t even imagine how people could spend all their time glued to the front of their laptops. I’d have preferred a game of cards involving everyone; a discussion involving everyone; watching a movie along with everyone - you get the idea… Even though we came from different places and would go away to different places, it’d be better if the time we spent together could be spent as a family. Well, I’m not getting too emotional, but you know, that would have been nice.

Instead, what I see is oodles of time spent in front of the laptop; atrocious!! This prompted me to think about what might be driving this. I then realized it; and it was so plain obvious. Even while all of us thrived under the same roof, and we tried to have a family atmosphere, the laptop was an outlet to their individuality. It was their wife, their brother, their mother; in short it was family. It was the entrance to the internet which would connect them to their loved ones; it was the window through which they satisfied almost every urge. It was their niche, their own place to be, in this "hostel" - somewhere they could let out their emotions, imbibe the emotions from the outer world, and yet show it to no one...the next best friend to man himself (long gone are the times when that description suited a dog; a laptop now rightfully earns that adjective.)

When I had this BIG realization, the natural step for me was to get one on my own. Guess what - I started spending more time on my laptop than the others on theirs… But we still have a happy family in our home.

Oh, BTW, this is titled Inspiron because thats the name of my laptop model. In a way it applies to what it does - it inspires....