She is currently masquerading as a resident muse for a Seattle-based hip hop crew

Good catchy stuff, Blue Scholars! Especially that bit, tumi aamake, ja ja jaano naa…. Probably some Seattle-based Bong kid with a bad Shahrukh Khan hangover. Seriously deadly combo that

Personally prefer Hussein though.

Err, The Skyline

Some buildings are meant to be useful. Some others are meant to look good. Some though are meant to look like friggin’ spaceships liable to take off without a moment’s notice.

Now, as with most buildings of such type, there is no dearth of notable notables willing to grace such places with their august presences. The Oriental Pearl Tower is no different. There are signature panels of all the eminences, grise or otherwise, who have deemed it fit to visit the place. India, if I remember correctly, was represented my Messrs. Somnath Chatterjee and A.B. Vajpayee. SC’s panel was fine; ABV’s though, was slightly more interesting:

Signature(s) Panel

Seriously guys, Shreyas, Jaydeep and Ashvin, well well done! Must be an incredible feeling, really, to know that of all the panels in the place, the only one which has been defaced belongs to our country. And hey, we live in democracy, who is to say that you fellas are any less important than Vajpayee!

Nits.

On a completely unrelated note, total time spent at the UKBA queue at Heathrow this time was 97 minutes! I counted!! Swear that had I been made of less sterner stuff, I might have actually considered hot-footing it back to DXB on the next Emirates flight. Fortunately, composed as I am of a high-density titanium alloy, the thought briefly crossed my mind, took one look at what it was up against, and then ran screaming for its dear life!

What utter, infallible gunk! Defaced brick and mortar structures might hold their charms for the casual passerby, but its just a wee bit difficult to go gaga over stuff like this:

Graffiti - Turnstile - Dubai Style

Dubai arguably offers as much material in generating cutting edge visceral stuff as any other city on this planet! And, this is the best that our urban graffiti Yoda (who fortunately for him/her/it remains unnamed) could come up with!! At times, anonymity sure does have its virtues.

Or perhaps, I am just being a tad too unkind  here. Bet this must be the handiwork of some poor Transformers groupie, with a bit too much time and spray paint at his/her/its disposal, who:

1. Does not quite appreciate Optimus Prime’s grandiloquent gyaan delivered in operatic baritone;
2. But is still in awe of the dude’s awesome awesomeness

P.S. Check out the special effects at 2:31

Funny thing is thunder seemed to be in mute mode (or perhaps it was just all that sand in my ears). And the rain drops were surprisingly big! You know the ones which just go splat, without any preliminary pitter-patter!

What is infinitely funnier is that I wasn’t even sure it was the real deal when the skyline started flashing up! Thought there were some slightly evolved versions of fireworks going off! See, that’s what the desert (especially, this version thereof) does to you!

Locked myself out of my apartment this morn. And The Hipster’s back in London! Good fun!

Currently clattering away at a cafe. Which probably has one of the cheesiest playlists I have heard. EVER. Sample this: Kelly Clarkson; Backstreet Boys, Leona Lewis. Well, to give credit where it is due, their hazelnut ice latte is pretty decent! And they did have a Don McLean thrown somewhere in that playlist mix!

Coming back, I was recently trawling through all the gunk I have saved away on my lappie. Given the rate at which the darned thing is crashing these days (and displaying a sense of foresight which I/you would have scarcely considered me capable of, woohoo!), thought it made sense to check if I had anything useful saved anywhere!

And I discovered what follows

Little background first. Mooting is huge in Noojie-land! Has always been; shall always be! Which is good, mooting is one of the cooler things you can do in law school. Well, apart from of course, not doing anything at all! The only thing I never really liked about mooting was preparing those blasted memorials. Just too much opportunity cost, man!

In any case, once I was asked to help out with a memo, for a moot, I wasn’t even part of. You can imagine how thrilled I must have been!! Well, it wasn’t much, just drafting a Statement of Facts and the Body refused to leave my room till I said yes. And in a temporary bout of insanity, I agreed!

It wasn’t fun! At all! So being the nice, good-natured chap I am, decided to spice things up a wee bit You know, I thought to myself, poor Prats, slogging their guts out, why not bring a smile to their sorry, careworn faces! Exhibit 1 sets out the original facts, and Exhibit 2 is what I came up with.

Exhibit 1_Page 1

Exhibit 1_Page 2

Exhibit 2

Things of course got infinitely more interesting when these Prats submitted the bloody memorial with just a quick cut-paste job of my stuff! Imagine, not even looking at my handiwork, despite: (a) knowing me/the kind of stuff I was capable of; and (b) having bloody told them to check it because “I was sure they would find it enjoyable”.

Fortunately, the Skulker, privy as he was to these going-ons, discovered what these Prats had couriered across in the nick of time. And promptly fell off laughing whichever chair he was sitting on! I was away home that night but was given to understand that the Prats’ expressions at that moment were strongly suggestive of a collective coronary!

That, of course, was the moment when the Body gave me a call which began with these truly immortal lines: “Dude, I thought you were a friend of mine!”

P.S. The courier was intercepted in transit. (I think someone was deputed to do a sit-in at the courier office till the Prats got their courier back!). Otherwise, Noojies might have again created mooting history, albeit of a slightly iffier variety

And I used to suck at this! Royally! The only way I had a shot at winning one of these things was to swerve, err accidentally of course , into someone else’s path, and force him/her/it to dismount. That apart, I did not stand a chance.

When I walk home from office everyday, I usually have to pass through this covered, turnstile like thingie. Couple of days back, there were three women in front of me, who were doing their own little, slightly evolved version of the aforementioned bicycle race. From what I could make out, it probably entailed walking from Point A to Point B as slowly, and and moving their feet with as minimal a distance between them, as possible.

In other words, (and this is puting it kindly), wherever these three were headed to, it might have been faster for them to stand in one place, and let the continental drift/tectonic plates do the rest!   

Exchanged a decent number of high fives last night And, Yuvi and Raina, seriously well, well done! Bloody brilliant partnership. If any of these two had gone, no friggin way we were winning this match. Now of course, there is the big kahuna on Wed   

I like weekends. Even though, they might be conked out and begin on weekends The agenda for this week is pretty simple though: bum around and then finish This is Not That Dawn. Can’t believe the darned thing has taken me so long to finish. I think I might have actually even crossed the record set by Foucault’s Oscillating Little Thingie

(Memo to self: Bit of an Adele overload at the moment!)

Reminds me of this:

And this

P.S. First day in a brand new city by the way.

P.P.S. I should be damn kicked about this.

P.P.P.S. Actually watched Dubya-Man on the flight today (Fair Game; recco: great movie!) How unbelievably cool is that!!

Blogs are equally nifty. You can write the darndest things in them. At times though there are things so intensely personal, you just can’t think of them as being meant for public consumption. But write you have to, write you must! So, you decide to condense memories over a decade and a half into a miserable little blogpost. And you just have to end up asking, a few reams of printed space, is that what all these memories are worth? 

All the times you spent together, laughed together, cried together, and were upto your necks with your usual brand of nonsense! Remember that broken window-wala incident (heh, we really did have to scoot that day, didn’t we? Poor Srinivas, or rather poor Srinivas’ window!) Or those late-night cycling tourneys, and that time where you made me crash into a car (err, ok, it was my fault! But, I was talking to you!!). Or, being pretty sure we had broken the Nerd’s leg in that 7th floor deuce ball cricket session! (I still can’t get over the sheer number of varieties we used to come up with to play cricket!) Or those insanely long TT sessions. Or those nuggets of wisdom Kaku used to let loose with at the pool table. Or for that matter, just randomly gallivanting around Golf Green. I could just carry on and on with this!

Oh, by the way, I still take exception to all the grief you used to give me over my Durga Puja attire! Pajamas and tees are perfectly good stuff! And not everyone, has your sartorial sense!

All I can come up with is Pickles, yaar, NO!

Thanks for having been always there for me. Seeing me off at 4 in the bloody morn when I was about to leave for my job; and last time I was in Cal, coming to visit me straight from your dialysis at 11 in the friggin night, just because I had an early morning flight the next day. I was bloody pissed then. I still am pissed now. But thanks man. Thanks for every single thing you have done.

It has been a privilege and an honour to call you my friend.   

Pickles, bas ab aaraam se rahiyo.

In plainspeak, kal kaand hone wala hai! In 2 x 20 kgs cartons, straitjacket-level duct tape and A4 size address labels (which I am not entirely sure about!).

As a minor aside, I have noted most of my previous posts have been filed under faff. Ain’t my fault, patient and long-suffering reader! Such, at times, is life