just when you thought it couldn't get any better....

Guess who turns out to be in the wrecking business!
What's next? The Delilah franchise of hair salons?
I spoke to soon. They already are.
http://www.delilah-salon.com/

Now your chaetophobia can trigger your trichotillomania. Enjoy.

Back to the womb

fuzzy

sleep-deprived lethargy

late nights

cacophonous mornings passing in a semi-dozing drift

office ac off

warm

moist air

like being back in the womb

or

would be if I were a set up quintuplets

with in-vitrio ipods

Mumbai for Maharashtrians?

Jokes apart - I'm a northie who landed up in Bombay with 5k and nothing else, not so long ago. I got a job and a pg. That grew into a career, a flat, and a relationship. My bosses, co-workers, and friends have been non-Maharashtrians and Maharashtrians alike.

I've never had reason to complain, I haven't been discriminated against, and frankly, I've had an awesome time here. But... this city is drowning in people. Local populace from the hinterland and beyond, it's bursting at the seams with too many dreams, and not enough place for them all.

I'm an immigrant.

But I WILL oppose immigration when I hang out of trains. Pay exorbiant rents. Stand in serpentine queues. Sit in traffic jams. It doesn't matter who comes here. It matters a lot that he comes at all.

Sooner or later, it's all going to come down to economical natural selection. New companies will find it too expensive to set up shop in the city, so they'll come near it - near enough to use the workforce, but far enough to be affordable. The city will grow. And grow. And grow. Already it makes a lot of sense to change your residence according to where you work. Tomorrow, companies will factor in easily-commutable residential slots as part of the package for employees. And facilities and amenities. And the city will be a collection of _____ (insert company name here)-Nagars. Campuses, in the truest sense of the word.

We can't fight it. We can just try and make it easier, without the pressure cooker situations.

boo hoo

Quake Wars won't run 'coz my AGP is underpowered. I can't upgrade my AGP card because my motherboard isn't compatible. I can't change my motherboard 'coz I then need to change my processor as well. I can't buy a 22-inch flatscreen monitor and a 7.1 GigaWorks system 'coz I don't have any games that'll justify it, and I can't buy those games 'coz my AGP won't run them.

For want of a kingdom, the nail was lost.

...and Bioshock refuses to install without an internet connection. For some reason, Tata Indicom broadband doesn't fall into Bioshock's definition of 'internet'.

can I bang my forehead on my pitiful 15-inch CRT now?

A moving story... moved!

For all my loyal fans and faithful supporters who have been avidly following my trials and tribulations at the hands of the financial capital's treatment of it's denizens vis-a-vis translocation of residences, let me serve up to you, gently warmed, a multi-course repast of the aftermath of the move - where we are now.

Starters:

The PC Room

One room has been converted into a combination of gaming centre, server room, laundromat and travel office.

A cupboard threatens to explode from the accumalated pressure of souvenirs, trekking equipment, and half a dozen knapsacks and sleeping bags so tightly rolled up they threaten to achieve critical mass. Especially R's alpine sleeping bag, the best way to picture which is to imagine a regular Kurl-on mattress somehow squeezed into a gas cylinder. I can hear it groaning and vibrating under stress, sometimes.

The rest of the cupboard looks like Lamington road, where my entire paraphenelia of electronic spares and discards, now completely indistinguishable from each other, languish in wait of the Great TurboListing Day, when they shall go up for auction on ebay.

Next to which is a desk which is not actually alive, though you may be fooled by the way it hums, moves, chuckles and chirrups to itself, is warm to the the touch and exhales gustily on your knees when you sit down; that's what comes of having a CPU, two heatsinks, and a subwoofer in one confined space. There's a small hole in the desk which the original owner had intended for a genteel 2-3 cables for monitor, speakers, etc. It looks like a Lovecraftian revenant now, with over 20 cables of assorted thicknesses, colors and tensions coiling out of it. 2 monitor, 3 ext. HDD, 1 USB hub, 1 joystick, 6 speaker, 1 mouse, 1 gamepad receptor, 1 webcam, 2 router, 1 cam cable, 1 cardreader coming out; 1 network and 1 power going in; and don't even think of the interior, where there's also 2 extension boards. It gives local network engineers heart attacks. I counted yesterday - 17 LEDs operate at any point of time. It's a bloody spaceshuttle flight deck.

And while you sit down, behind you the washing machine, if on, provides a pleasant growling, thumping, drumming background score, with the occasional merry splish-splash of overflow when the pipe falls off or the exhaust hose leaks.

At nights, it's like being in a high-tech womb.

aimlessness...

miss trekking. used to give me such a calm, fresh new perspective... too many things happening now, too much to do

Runaway 2

Basically a glorified puzzle-solving game where you need to discover the sequence of using items found, talking to people, and picking up on past clues. What I really liked about this was the intensely rich, immersive experience - from music, to background sound, to conversations, accents, situations, and the extremely... fantasy-type feel. A sense of somewhere, somehow, this can happen, and a sense of being part of a bygone age and place that was fun, adventurous, and relaxed. In fact, everything that a Catalina stands for. Every time that flying boat has entered my life, these are the feelings it brings - from Duck Tales, to Commando comics, to Indiana Jones, to Tales of the Gold Monkey. Wonder if there's a message in the pattern?
At a stage right now where the story's becoming... interesting. I've outsmarted a drunk monkey, a dyslexic marine, befriended a nymphomaniacal waitress, impersonated a top secret government official, brought a cockatoo back from the dead, desecrated a witch doctor's grave, stolen a toy from a child, helped a Hawaiian kahuna rediscover his roots, taught an australian surfer to surf without waves, taught a genius idiot-savant to speak again and learn dentistry, unlocked an alien portal, and am currently avoiding a psychotic killer and a megalomaniacal renegade colonel.
The characters are awesome. Kordsmeier has references to god knows how many megalomaniacal colonels from Hollywood lore. Platoon's Sgt. Elias Grodin, Forrest Gump's Lt. Dan, Apocalypse Now's Col. Kurtz and Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore. A dead Indiana Jones makes an appearance, as does an aged Baloo in a human avatar. Ehrich von Daniken is profoundly present, and a tropical Area 51. This is where it scores over Myst - Myst was too abstract, too alien, too unfamiliar. Here, you can use what you know from modern-day legends. It's an awesomely entertaining experience, and you do need to use your brains.
Let's see what happens next...

the future is now

This. Is. So Cool!

Microtechnologies as come up with an anti-theft system that talks to your mobile. That means anywhere you are, you know what's happening to your car, where it is (they have a web-interface tracker), two-way voice, GPRS and SMS-based tracking, remote arm / disarm, lockdown, and shutdown features.

So the next time someone steals your car, you can lock him in and shut down the whole works, then go over to where he is, and call the cops. And tell him what a naughty boy he's been while he waits for the cops.

Waiting for the next-gen version, which will have internal / external cam, remote control, and a large boxing glove on a spring.

gaming

Why do I game?

It eats away time, money, sleep, healthy eating, good posture, fills the head with nightmares and daydreams, opens your computer to infection risks, overwhelms my HD, and blows my bank balance in associated costs - AGPs, peripherals, networking...

yet I game. Compulsively, obsessively, incessantly. And I enjoy it. I love it. I live it.

I guess one bit of it is... escapism. The same reason you read, or listen to music, or watch movies... or plays, or art... there is a story in here, and it's long, complex, rich, and often fascinating. It's not just shoot-and-watch-the-gore-spatter; the background stories can be expansive and imaginative as any SF. When you read, you don't just look at the words; after a point, there's a direct flow of thought from your imagination to your conscious mind, with the words on the page just the occasional trigger. This can be as immersive.

Entertainment. Adrenaline. Reflexes. Will you rather play cricket on the road, on rock-hard tarmac? You also play with traffic. Or travel for an hour each way to get to the ground, after having booked it in advance, of course? Sad fact of life, but real-world play in an urban environment is becoming more and more inaccessible. And in a city, finding a safe nice place to play in is way easier than finding a nice, safe person(s) to play with.

On the other hand, you can curl up on a bean bag in an AC room, and immerse yourself for a couple of hours.

Ever done puzzles? I'm not talking about the crap that passes itself off as 'puzzle games'. Even stuff like Tomb Raider, like a lot of movies and books, require significant suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. Stand back and look, and you know that Ms Croft can get past the cunning trap in one way and only one way, and that one way has been conceived and created by Eidos Interactive long long before you came on the scene. You're being forced to walk down a corridor, wearing a chicken suit, with a pause every five seconds to sing the chorus lines from Eminem's Stan. If you don't do any of this, you die.

On the other hand, look at cheatcodes, easter eggs, and cracking. You're getting inside. Edit the default values in the config files, and suddenly all your tanks mooove like rocketbikes and fire unlimited nukes, our soldiers wear tank armour, and your buildings are invulnerable, and you yourself can fly, walk through walls, never run out of ammo, and use level 9 weaponry on level 1 minions, the poor creatures. The getting in, figuring it out, trying a hypothesis, seeing it work, applying it for a better experience - dopamine overproduction! It's a high of just using your head to make something happen!

More than that, sometime around 2 AM, when suddenly, everything clicks, and you're past the block, in the zone, on fire... it's a quasi-religious experience. Superego and id in perfect harmony for once, in perfect coordination, needing each other, working together. Higher brain functions shut down, worries evaporate, stress vanishes. It's just you and the game, in a world where none of the constraints apply. And it's amazing what a relaxing feeling it can be for the soul when all your troubles get boiled down to 2 simple counters - your health level and your ammunition level - and your hindbrain, too, believes that with all it has.

Stopping play is like... waking up, or falling asleep, depends on how you see it; between

.

.

Do you really want to quit? Y / N

.

.

and shutting down, getting up, water, roll into bed, drifting off... is a dreamlike, fugue state anyway. As soon as I slide into unconsciousness, REM kicks in almost instantly, picking up where the other side of that Y/N left off. Talk about an immersive experience - like most immersive experiences, this one sticks to you after you've climbed out. The next waking in the morning is even more disjointed.

It's an experience that extends way back in it's foreplay before the actual gameplay. The entire wandering through Fort, leafing through the pavement titles, one eye open for cops, making the selection, the bargaining, the wrapping up of the purchase in the inevitable black plastic bag, quick turn-down of the offer for porn ("saab english / hindi / double / triple / latest") and walk home; and the entire installation adventure, decoding the crack instructions written by a technically gifted but linguistically retarded cracker, and that rush when the game executes perfectly for the first time... this is entertainment that you work for, that you take risks for. Is that why it's that much more enjoyable?

That's it for now - I stocked up on Gears of War, Q4, Bioshock, and Max Payne 2 and HL2:Ep1 is still left with a little to go... have a good Winter-een-mas!

---

Play. Evolve.

Images thanks to Ctrl-Alt-Del and Explosm.net

A moving story - the end

What a day.

I mean, seriously.

Phase 2 - the heavy, bulky furniture - successfully moved, and unpacked. The rubbish sold off. The post-move check for all the stuff left behind, done. Identified. Packed. Moved.

PC set up.

Kitchen functional.

Fridge working, even some food stocked.

Cupboards filled up.

And now - finally - I can sleep.

So tired. So completely bone-tired. But we did it. The most intense shifting experience till date, over and done with.

My roomie's room, after packing. I don't see much difference.

My room - a last look. Strange sense of - a kind of loss. We've moved on, but the room is still there - so much happened here, the last two years. Life changed so much. Everything changed... and every night, this was the room I returned to to rest.

Goodbye, A-7.

Yeah, yeah, movin story, thats right

The Island of Dr. Moreau

aka

Packing the kitchen

I remember the last time I was packing the kitchen - found a full-grown rat, complete with nest. This time around, that particular pleasant little surprise wasn't around, but it was pretty interesting even then. There's an ecosystem in the sink, and the rubbish heap moves by itself at times.

It's also fascinating what a collection of food one builds up. This is a realization that hits really hard when you realize that the fridge now needs to be emptied. In a day.

I can now either stuff myself with rotis like rock, fossilized pizza, and something red and greasy that I can't even identify anymore in a plastic jar.

Another round of luggage has been shifted; there's now a deep, stretchy ache in my forearms and shoulders, and thanks to a minor bike mishap, in one leg as well... but it's 3:30 AM, I've been sleeping four hours in the last 48, and I'm absolutely, brilliantly, completely wide awake, excited, nontired, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the works. It's fun. I should throw out rubbish more often; it's better than amphetamines.

A Moving Story continues...

Laws of Packing

1. Everything is covered with dust. Thick, grimy, cobwebby, full-body dust. The Dara Singh of Dust. Dust that's been working out and wont give up easily without a solid fight.
   
2. When a bag is closed, an item is immediately found that needs to be put in the said bag. The probability of this happening increases in direct proportion to -
   
1. The bag being locked
2. The key being misplaced
1. Corollary - the more essential the item, the higher the probability of the key being lost. In case of self-closing locks, the key has a 98% chance of being inside the bag.
3. Rubbish is infinite.
   
4. Number of available bags will always be less than amount of available stuff.
   
1. This will happen regardless of the number of bags. A Duckback warehouse will be insufficient.
5. The duster, when required, will always be at a distance of minimum 75% on the other side of the room.
1. Corollary - The distance increaes in direct proportion to volume of rubbish obstructing your path to it.
2. There are 3 exceptions to the Duster Distance Theorem.
1. The duster is under you, if you are sitting down.
2. The duster is underneath the large, heavy bag you just packed.
3. The duster is not in the room at all, but has been slyly 'borrowed' when you weren't looking by co-packers.
   

images

... had his eyes closed. Cliff thought he could see a very, very faint glow surrounding him, like a thin mist. There were tiny points of light in it.

He was still standing with his eyes shut, as if he was asleep on his feet.

'Yes,' said Cliff, 'we'll get on out there, will we? Er. Buddy?'

Buddy's eyes snapped open suddenly.

'Let's rock,' he whispered.

Soul Music

Terry Pratchett

A Moving Story, Part VI

Phase 1, round 1... done.
Minor luggage successfully shifted, ECG and blood test done, Aquaguard cleaned, cleaner identified and arranged, security guards pal'ed up, and I still made it to my office on time! And I didn't even sleep in the train!
Next - more smaller luggage shifts, and arranging for movers.

A Moving Story, Part V

Packing, round 1.
15 items.
2 rucksacks.
3 cartons.
1 large duffel bag.
4 medium carry bags.
1 small knapsack.
1 small sling bag.

What any average Great Indian Train-Travelling Auntie would normally carry.

I think it's in control. Most of it can come in a cab. I will have to entice roommate with beer to accompany me and help out with the carrying stuff up. If we can this over to the new place in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, I can dump it, freshen up, get my blood test (the insurance guy had to pick this day of all days, man) done and head to office. Do the review meeting, then back and unpack there all evening, go home, and pack the big stuff. And call a large-size tempo.

The Junking Process has unearthed 15 expired credit / debit cards, a glass model of the Burj-ul-Arab, and 3 mismatched foam earphone covers, pristine new.

And I'm tired but feelin' go-o-o-d.

A Moving Story, Part Fuckit

Where the fuck did I get so much STUFF from???!

More stationery than a kirana store, more electronics than GN United Computers and Spares across the street, and that's without even packing my comp and speakers. I mean, the photos alone have occupied an entire airline carry-on strolley-sized bag!
And my superboss is in town... which means reach office by 9:30, so no morning shifts. And coming back is as late as always. And my damn blood test had to happen on friday... which of course, being an optional holiday, has been promptly commandeered into a working day. Aaugh!
and don't even get me started on the books and DVDs. Just about half of them have filled up another 3 rucksacks. Big ones. I'm fast running out of place to put them, and the idea of actually moving them is...

You know what the trouble with being a superefficient packer is? It also makes a superefficient stocker. I've managed to pack so much stuff into such a small place, through genius-level application of inventory and space management, that taking it all out is like watching the Sorcerer's Apprentice' brooms go wild. Expect a wardrobe-related accident any day now, when I get deluged in the bursting dam of pent-up possessions.

Time for emergency measures. Starting tomorrow, every stitch of clothing goes into the washing machine. Let the dhobi can transport them on the weekend.
No more sentimentalism. It doesn't matter if X was a much-cherished gift from some long-ago girlfriend, if it doesn't work and is falling apart, out it goes.
Promise to self - once I move, I'm going on a donation spree. Books, movies, clothes - give, give, give. After flogging off as many as I can, naturally.
Stop. Storing. Boxes! Please! Billions of camera, phone, shoe, and miscellaneous other containers are emerging like ants before the monsoon. Stop being a packrat! Some cardboard cartons - which are normally subjected to such abuse they never last beyond a single shift - have GIM address labels on them. I've nursed them through 6 moves, over eight years!

On the good side, I've found stuff - mysterious foreign coins. My PAN card. My electric drill chuck, would you believe it? An Alfred E. Neuman poster. Neuromancer, that I was convinced was borrowed and never returned (and won't be lent out again, never fear, and don't even try). A pack of Malaysian cigars. Fifteen different adaptors, and not one, but two cordless headphones, complete with their own transmitters. 2 windcheaters.
And somehow, my external HDD has suddenly started working perfectly. I don't think it's related, but still a good thing.

I need a drink.

A Moving Story, Part III

Last time we moved, we ended up having 43 individual pieces of baggage (including a bucket full of brooms and mops). It's too much to manage. This time round, I think it'll make more sense to do couple of quick trips to the new place and start dumping bags - and emptying them and bringing it back as well.

Advantage -

• It'll do away with the need for superpacking where every available cubic centimeter is utilized, which results in superdense cartons where you have no clue exactly what has been packed where.
• It'll allow re-usage of available bags
• It'll let us set up the new place in phases, so the exhausted period post-move isn't occupied by an even more exhausting re-setup; last time, we were so pooped that stuff stayed packed in cartons for months at a time. In fact, some cartons are going today as is from the last shift.

Disadvantage -

• Multiple trips, so I need to be able to leave early enough to pack, and reach late enough (from and to office) to do a baggage dump in the morning and an unpacking exercise in the evening.
• Finding cabs willling to go short distance, with a luggage rack.
• Anyone in the Andheri West area willing to help and with a big car, and lots of free time?

A Moving Story, part II

yep, that's my room.

cartons, bags, dust, electricals, Jon Bon Jovi, and the bright clean table in the middle is where a chicken patiala rested not very long ago. It's an explosion in a psychotic warehouse, and I'm lovin' it.

All the interesting stuff i never knew I had has started turning up... and will be going on eBay soon. Advance booking open for cordless headphones and an ancient Yashica.

Another fun bit of this phase is imagining where some of all this stuff - so useless so far - will go in the new place. This tiny bulb on a bedswitch? Can it be used to make an illuminated drinks cabinet? Or how about this...2.0 speaker set? Can I wire up the entire house so I get my music in every room? I already have the 5.1 set, the old 2.1 set... and an amplifier... and lookit this, thirty feet of shielded cable... heheh.

in the watches of these dark nights...

...the most innocuous takes on... overtones.

like the laundry. close to twenty shirts hanging in the dark corridor. like a battalion of emaciated, headless corpses.

gently swaying in the wind, like they're giving a chance to let those at the back peer forward.

twitching. crowding around the door.

if I go to the loo, brushing past them all, what will I find outside waiting for me when I come back?

dead quiet... but moving. coordinated, twitchy, random movement. like a silent mob.

it's creepin me out...

moving... again

After 2 years at Veera Desai, it's time to go. I like moving. It's cathartic. A chance to leave behind all your mistakes, your messes, and start over, now that you've learned from the past. A sloughing-off of the dead skin, the ultimate housecleaning.
And while brokers, societies, landlords, and other such blots generally conspire to make it horrendous, this time around, the entire process of closure took less than a day, thanks to Harish.
And now we're the proud owners of... well, just a single key right now, but the next 6 days are going to be action-packed. Packing, unpacking, repacking, scotch tape, cartons, dust allergies, finding things you thought had been forever lost, arranging, buying stuff that had been waiting for a better setting... it's an awesomely fun experience.
Signed off with the landlord, an elderly lady who for some reason has assumed that my roommate is so junior he could be my son; a fringe benefit of the beard, I guess. Roommate naturally is frothing at the mouth.
And the celebration parties never stop.
As I look around at the awesome wasteland of debris that my room is, I can't help wondering how the fuck is it all going to be shifted.