Random Buddha

So, it has been about 3 weeks since we started that stupid bet thing at work. The first week I lost 4 pounds. The second week another 1 pound and now it is at a constant. I eat like a Somalian and have been doing it for the past 3 weeks. It sucks to eat salad for lunch and then eat half of what you are supposed to eat for dinner. Added to that the stress of work really gets me all screwed up. So far so good, another 15 pounds to go and 2 months to do it. Now is the time to start exercising. I thought of going out for a jog this week but the weather gods said fuck you, stay home and hide in a corner. It is bloody cold out side and if I do go running, I will probably suffocate to death in my own frozen mucous.
Other than that, same shit different day. It is a Friday evening and I am sitting around waiting for my wife to come home. We will probably go out somewhere for dinner or something. Shall see. It is kind of depressing. The nets have lost three in a row on the west coast and they have lost all games they should have won. They lost all the three games to buzzer beaters. Pretty sad that Jason is playing at this level and we are still getting screwed. The basketball gods are watching and something is going to give. Rod Thorn is also watching and his face pretty contorted as it already is, is getting worse. Something is going to give again.
In winter it is pertinent that you own a car that is reliable and that wont die on you. My Mazda is 90,000 miles old. I am in a dilemma. We bought an SUV which wifey takes about 6 months ago. I kind of decided that I would run my Mazda to the ground and then buy myself a pretty 3 or 5 series BMW. Then, I decided that I would buy another crappy Japanese car and also buy a nice 1100 cc for the summer. Now, I don’t know what I want to do anymore. Freaking idiot- the more you make, the more ways you look to spend the money.
Tomorrow we have to go to the mall. I have a closet full of things that I have bought and need to return for either a bigger size or smaller size. I do this all the time. I never try things on in the store. I am too lazy to do it and at the end of the day, I end up collecting shit that doesn’t fit me and I don’t even return the damn things. I am bored.
This ORKUT thing is pretty amazing. I have people contacting me from 2 million years ago. From the time I used to wear tight maroon jeans with bell bottoms and silk shirts which would make a gay man want me even now. I actually used to think I was cool. Coming back to Orkut, pretty darn awesome.
Every where I look around marriages are falling apart. Good friends who had all their shit together when we were much younger are trying to figure things out again from scratch. It is very sad. Marriage is a gamble and has always been. The difference is that these days, we Indians seem to think we have choices that includes walking away. Anyhoo, who am I to comment on it? I don’t probably realize their predicament. It is sad though. People have to work together to make anything work.
Back to bullshit, I am still waiting for her and I am hungry. Maybe I should order for some Tom Yum Soup. My freaking 2nd floor is freezing. There seems to be a problem with the front door and the back door. The insulation isn’t good enough and there is a heavy draft seeping through rendering the heating system useless. The third floor is like an oven. It is a healthy mixture of the draft and the heating system probably not being effective enough. I might probably freeze and die will typing. Work is stressing me out and I need to try and revitalize myself by changing whatever I need to, to make myself better. Maybe some exercise. Same lazy ass procrastination which has plagued me for years.
What else is happening? Global warming is happening. It has been a pretty weird winter thus far and I am yet to come to terms with it. Does anyone know when the Sopranos and Entourage coming back? Maybe I should disconnect cable? The cable bill makes me puke into the envelope and send it right back. Why is everything so expensive? Why is Jersey such a shit hole? Well, she just called and she will be here only by 9. so, there goes our Friday night. A couple of weeks ago, we went to the Buddha Bar in the city. It was pretty damn cool. The music was good and all. The only thing was that it was packed and people were walking on each other. I would rather stay in my jersey and hang out in a place where you have a little more space.
This is a just a freaking random post.

Tendulkar, Jason Kidd, Kumble and Dravid

When Tendulkar, Dravid and Kumble leave the international scene, so will my connection to the world of cricket. When Jason Kidd retires, will I continue to follow basketball?

The Bet

How do you create your past on paper? How do you create a picture that actually depicts every single detail of a certain time in life that was full of fun and crazy behavior? Maybe someday I will gather the patience, the thoughts and then pen it down. Not today. One day, I will probably get there. I am just hanging out by wife as she has been constantly working away with her team off shore which means Bangalore. I have listened to 2 songs from Bas Ek Pal for the past 2 hours on a non stop basis and I will listen to it a few more times till she finishes her work. I need to wake up in the morning as usual and get my ass to work. Since I am just wasting space and time on the earth I might as well talk about the bet that is happening at work. Certain slightly over weight people including myself have gotten together. We (25 of us) weighed in on Thursday. We have three months and we have to lose 10% of our body weight by then. Your buy in for the bet is 25 bucks. If you are the only one who wins at the end of the three months you get to keep 25X25 $ with you and if you have say probably 5 winners, you share the total amount amongst yourselves and so on and so forth. I weighed in at 200 Lbs. for my height I look well built. Well, under that well built look lies a few pounds of adipose tissue and my goal is to lose the 10% by then. The secret lies in eating half of what I eat and finding a connection between my stomach meter and my brain as that doesn’t seem to exist and I eat far too much than I can handle. So, I am hereby activating it and am hopefully will get somewhere close to that weight. I don’t expect to win but I at least want to compete and try and make a difference when I weigh in 3 months now.
I am done for the night. Too much writing and too many mood swings. I have written from treating people like shit because they belong to the Quixtar cult, to my niece, to how I feel today and now about a stupid bet which I am sure to lose as I have no will power. My mom even said it is yesterday and I wholeheartedly agree. I don’t even know how I got to this level in life where I make a decent paycheck and married a sane woman.

Silk Route

Confusion happening. Feeling of melancholy, feeling detached, feeling elevated, feeling disconnected, feeling woozy. Feel like I am in touch with myself. Feel like I am bare as a naked baby. My emotions are on my sleeve.
I love my family and everyone around me. I love my boss and I am thankful. I feel like I just took a whole lungful of euphoria. I don’t know.
I smell the crisp clean evening air of Lusaka. I can feel the wind tipping my ears. I am listening to some soul touching music. I feel the same way when I used to sit in our apartment in Lusaka and listen to Sajda. Maybe I am happy and content. That’s why I feel this way. I used to feel this all the time when I was younger and now it is more sporadic. There is so much shit flying around that it is sometimes so difficult to appreciate what you have. It is sad that happiness is such a rare commodity. There is no time even to feel happy and to appreciate what you have. This constant running is pretty tiring.
I am 30, my parents are with me and I love my wife. My sister and her family stay half hour from me and I can see my darling niece when I please. I have managed to achieve most of the basic materialistic needs at a young age. Sadly, the only constant thing in life is change. Good things will change just like bad. We have to ride it out and keep a strong face and look for the meaning of life amidst all these crests and troughs.

My dearest A

My dearest A,
I love you. You are an angel. You are the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life. There is something about your eyes. There is something about your smile. There is something about your hug. There is something about your kiss. I love you with all my life. Every time I look at you, I forget the bad and feel only the good. I hope and wish that you will always be happy and that you will always be safe. I wish that you always make the right decisions. I wish you make me feel the same way for the rest of my life. I wish I could spend a lot more time with you. I wish you don’t move away from me. I want to see you grow up; I want to see you go through life. I have been with you from the time to you were a few minutes old to now. I want you to be an understanding, loving and happy person. God give you the strength to face everything that the world throws at you. You are an angel, my angel.
Love always,
Mama

Sunday night musings

Sunday evenings are depressing. The ever looming presence of Monday morning and the tension that comes with it. We watched this movie called Ek Pal today. I like Sanjay Suri. There is something sincere about him as an actor. The movie added to the depression. Small mishaps in life can change so many things. Like a domino effect, everything falls apart. Be thankful for what you have. Life can shit on your face in a heart beat.
My folks, wifey and me went to a south Indian restaurant called Udupi . My wife likes the food there and we go pretty often. The owner is a part of the amway/quixtar and tried to convert us a few years ago but gave up after seeing the defiant looking in my eye.
So here we were, my father, mother, wife and me talking away at the lunch table in Kannada and English. I was aware of this gentleman who was eyeing me. I didn’t think he was hitting on me as the good looks days are kind of done with me. Then, I caught the owner’s newly wedded wife talking to all these guys and their wives on the other table. She must have met them at one of their meets and hence this guy was here with his family. He suddenly started talking to me and asked me where I was from Bangalore and I said was from Jayanagar and he said he was from Bangalore too. I always follow up that statement with the fact that even though I am from Bangalore, I have lived most of my life elsewhere and I include the African continent because I want to let them know that in all probability I wouldn’t know someone they know because I lived a nomadic existence even though I lived in south Bangalore. It included friends, relatives and certain places best left unsaid. Anyways, coming back to now, he kept talking to me and I kept getting weary. I left my table to get my second shot of Rasam and he patiently waited for me and continued his questions and answers with me and also introduced his wife to me. He had 6 other people on the same table. He asked us about Zambia and my mom was very eager to talk to them and let her spiel out about how beautiful Lusaka was and all. At that point I decided to turn myself towards my dad who was on my right and had a defensive stance against the man who was from Bangalore and who spoke Kannada. My mom gave her bank account number to him and was about to give mine to him too while I managed to get my wife’s attention and she passed the message on dutifully to her mother in law who at that time kept quite finally and then we collectively as a family ignored them at the other side.
Nothing happened after that. They said bye before they left. Were they Quixtar guys? Were they not? I love people. Did I behave like a snob? I am sorry if you weren’t Amway. I am sorry that I behaved just like any other human being. I am sorry that I didn’t contribute to the friendly earth that I believe in and propagate all the time. I am sorry that I had to make my mother behave like a bad person and not talk to them. To all of you Amway idiots, thanks for creating a world for me full of distrust. I loved talking to anyone and anything and now I am very very careful.

Happy New Year!!!!!!

It has been a while since I wrote. A lot has happened in the past month. I turned 30 and things have changed at work for good or bad. We shall see.
Family has been around in the droves and we have had some good times. It has been extremely stressful at work and I am trying to work my way through it. My folks are here from India and my dad is ok. The nets suck and went for a few live games this past month. It is the New Year and we have made one resolution and we will work towards it. The idea is to travel and I think I should take my wife to Zambia to pay a visit to my past and into the jungles. One of my other resolutions which remains so for the past 3-4 years is to lose weight. Is to get to the 180 Lbs region. I am at least 19-20 pounds high. Sound like an old broken record.
It is 11 at night. The past 10 days have been good. Work has been limited and there has been a lot of food floating around. It is back to the same monotony of work from tomorrow.
The longer you are married, the more you love the person. Or, you walk away. It has been good thus far and shall go on for eternity. In retrospect, life has been good. For all the fuck ups I have made in the past, god has been kind to me and given me a life that is in line with what I would have wanted.
Shane Warne, McGrath and Langer are all leaving at the same time. Great players. Each different in their own way. Langer the silent warrior, Warney, the flamboyant one and McGrath, the worker. Salut to you guys for what you did on the field.
It’s back to work so I shall sign off and hit the sac. Friday was a good evening. I met gawker after probably 4 years and we started off at where we left. Some friends you are fine no matter how seldom you meet. We drank and we ate and then he left. We punched, hugged and then we talked. We will meet soon again.