The gist of it is – about a week and a half ago, I had a fall while cycling, landed on my right knee and may have suffered what the doctor calls minor ligament damage.

This implies, in the doc's own words - no running, cycling, or window shopping for a few weeks.

Argh.

In the process one managed to postpone a not yet planned holiday.

I think my brain is beginning to rust.

... with big beanbags to sit and read on:o

I have after all these years finally figured out what I should have wanted to be when I grew up, while growing up.

I should have wanted to host travel plus food shows on TV. I can travel, and I can say nice things some times... especially about places that somebody else is paying me to eat in. And I can rate restaurants out of 10 too.

And I'm sure I can say stuff like I love Belgian whatevers or the world is my osyter, blah blah or recite extempore poems about obscure highway towns or just sit back and eat and let the finished plates do the talking

*sighs over lost opportunity*

I don’t know about any particular highs this weekend but here go the lows...

I cancelled plans that would be considered active and energetic and hence good, in favour of plans that were less energetic. *sigh*:o

It’s possibly irrelevant to most of you, but one of my favourite coffee shops has done a vanishing act!:((. The Barista on St. Mark’s road, the coffee shop with one of the nicest locations in town and the bestest, most conducive to wallowing in nostalgia brickwork has gone a-missing. The building is still there and there’s clearly renovation happening within it, but the coffee shop per se is not. It's gone lock, stock and tattered, aging, scrabble boards, and there’s nothing to tell you if they plan to return. I’m depressed. I’ve whiled away a lot of quality time there, with a lot of fine friends, including anupma and was looking forward to more of the same.

And ...I tripped over a speed-breaker in the lane near my house, had a near spectacular fall on a fine, hard road, and am now the proud possessor of two scraped knees and one scraped elbow, sundry minor twinges and a tendency to whine more than the usual quota. Sympathy, etc is welcomed, nay, demanded.

On the highs, the weather's lovely. There's a nip in the air, and an afternoon sun to wallow in.

... plain white t-shirts? Are they completely extinct or can we consider them in the endangered list?

What if I'm one of those clearly sad people who do not seek to make statements? Or if I don't like sequins. Or psychedelic flowers.

Since I fit all of the above, I now own a pink tee. It is redeemed by the fact that it is a very pale pink and has a few grey stripes thrown in at random intervals.

In all the while I’ve been in Chennai through countless hopping visits on family holidays en route to elsewhere and through two jobs, the last two years that I spent there were probably the only time I ever, to some extent at least, liked being in the city.

And while I guess most of that was due to the old workplace, I think the only things that stopped me from actually proclaiming a liking for the place were - the weather (humid is a season!), the results of the last assembly election and that one huge negative of where I lived (and therefore, the awful commute it involved).

Getting from home to work or to the library or to anywhere where I could shop, watch movies, have a coffee, or even order a pizza (we were well outside city limits!) was a chore in itself, and actually involved 'planning'! The road I lived on was a stretch of national highway that was at best a country road masquerading as a 2 lane tar road, with potholes at regular intervals, frequented at all hours by trucks in all sizes and shapes at least one of which broke down at least once a day. Just reaching city limits could take the best part of an hour. I don’t need to describe what happened during the rains.

And then I moved to Bangalore.

And now the road outside my parents’ house is a 4 lane highway soon to become an 8 lane one, trucks are barred from 8 am to 9 pm and you can reach the city limits in 20 minutes. and this weekend, the weather there was slightly breezy, slightly cloudy and overall prety decent.

There is a lesson somewhere in all this, I’m sure. But I still don't want to return there.

This weekend and the days preceding it...

I met lots of people, heard a lot of other people talk, became the proud possessor of Scientific Progress Goes "Boink", ate much decent food, attended a party of sorts I hadn’t planned to attend which though turned out to be decent enough in that my colleague and I exchanged much interesting gossip and I discovered the wonder that is vodka + energy drink, had a productive shopping / window shopping outing on Saturday, got mildly drenched in a very heavy downpour on Comm. Street, wandered over to parts of Bangalore I last visited centuries ago, and expounded my not very flattering opinion on branded women’s western wear in India to someone who works in branded western wear in India (in my defense, he asked for it!) and reaffirmed my love for all things Cotton World. And all through varied between feeling only mildly depressed about life to feeling substantially depressed about life.

The above happened because of a seminar that got me out of office for two days. It was also across industry and clients so by virtue of having been in three agencies in three cities over the span of my now glorious career (I have had flatmates who have gasped when they’ve realised when I passed out and ergo how ancient, in their myopic eyes, I am) I managed to catch up with some old friends I was really glad to meet again, some non-friends I would have been happy never meeting again, some old boss types and clients it was nice chatting to and some old boss types and clients I would have happily avoided. It was good fun in part and some of the papers were really worth listening to. But then it got all depressing towards the end when when people started talking of “industry issues” because it doesn’t really help to reiterate that there are issues and then not come up with solutions, especially when everyone knows there’s one excellent solution, but no one wants to use that, and instead they leave you feeling like a fool for sticking on in the industry.

In addition I successfully avoided a party I didn’t want to attend because of acute displeasure with some of the attendees (the number of neurotic women in this city seems to increase daily), jogged plus walked 8.4 kms, met a few more people and had mucho enlightening conversations on breathing, sprinting and my favourite topic of my ever bruised toes, had an unproductive shopping / window shopping / library outing on Sunday, and didn’t work from home all through the weekend as I had ambitiously planned to.

And now I sit, returned fresh from the pointlessness of a HR workshop and wait for the rain to stop so I an go home or for the sandwich stall guy to pick his phone so I can appease hunger pangs, whichever happens first.

I'm pleased to report that my turning up at work on a Saturday is no longer as common a feature of my life as it was in my Chennai or Delhi days. I’ve probably clocked just about a Saturday a month since I’ve moved back here. That’s a state of affairs I could well get used to as I suppose this means I’m finally getting a life. Either that or it’s the return to internet access at home.

Anyway, I am however going in to ze workplace tomorrow. I’m having my copy of HP7 delivered there. So is one of the bosses (she who has been regaling me to Potter anecdotes every other morning, or whenever she’s having a bad time, for the last few weeks), and hence there must be no mix ups. There have been repeated requests given out to the reception along the lines of “Please call me as soon as the courier from Fabmall reaches...” by both frantic parties eager to know what lies at the end of the road.

*is excited*

In other stuff, the offsite at work finally happened today. We clambered down from the dizzy heights of a weekend at JLR’s Kabini resort to a KSTDC run thing at Coorg (interestingly to have happened the same weekend Coorg was cut off by rains) to a day at a resort on Bannerghatta Road, aka one of the worst roads in the country.

I’d contemplated skipping, partly because there were other things to do and partly as a protest against the great comedown from Kabini to someplace unheard of, but was coaxed into it by virtue of other things not happening and the fact that no one else seemed to support the protest. Think I even cribbbed to anupma about it.

Turned out to be fun though. ( Read more... )

Once upon a time there was a little girl who liked to run.

So she ran.

I discovered Runners for Life yesterday, the internet as ever my lifeline in times of boredom and sloth.

They facilitate running. People register with them and then every fortnight meet up at a specified location and then start running. I think they also help time you.

And I have decided to sign up, at least for one run end of this month. The route is the perimeter of the airport so works out even better since the airport is very close to where I stay.

It alarms me though that the idea of people making money by getting people together and then making them run did not initially meet with my utmost disapproval. After all, why do you need someone to remind you to run or to arrange for you to run? But you do. You need the company, if nothing to warn you when there are stray dogs in the vicinity. And it’s difficult to find company, willing to run (as opposed to walk) and willing to wake up at an obscenely early hour to do that.

Anyway, as preparation I woke a lot earlier than I usually do and did a run + walk combo for what I thought was 20 minutes but may have been less. I’m not sure about the distance covered but I know I crossed the 1 km mark.

One hopes to continue the good work over the next few days.

Mondays bore me.

This is unsurprising but I feel compelled to state for the record that a Monday seems to bring with it all the pointlessness of the routine, and a reminder that the work you lugged home for the weekend never got done anyway.

Anyway, one more hike this weekend - to Rangaswamy Hills, part of BR Hills, and therefore a part of the Kaveri wildlife sanctuary, about an hour and a half down from Art of Living on Kanakpura Road.
( Read more... )
Edit: Also saw what was apparently a bear trail - the bushes had been manipulated into a sort of archway, at about waist height. Imagine bear on all fours ambling through the foliage. They apparently have a few regularly used trails which they use to go to the watering holes or to the villages at night, and hence the bushes remained shaped that way. There were no paw marks though.

So, the general update on life is as follows:
• I’m moving to Bangalore next month
• I had a 1 month notice period here, but seeing as I’m joining a competitor, and as I had very little work anyway, they relieved me this week. As of today, I’m happily unemployed. I’ve handed over all my ongoing projects to people who seem clueless about what they’re getting into. I’m amused.
• I have to return to office on Monday for my farewell party. There is to be cake and a gift. I shamelessly bullied people into letting me read emails not addressed to me.
• Systems admin wouldn’t let me transfer my last batch of comics onto a CD. . I don’t think he knows as yet that I have about 8 CDs at home, all full of comic books downloaded while at work. Thankfully, this particular last installment was just the nice to have sort. But I’m annoyed nonetheless.
• I have to be nice to systems admin because he’s the one who will be arranging my farewell gift, which I very smartly convinced them to change from a ‘ladies’ watch’ / handbag / sunglasses to Landmark vouchers.

And that’s about all that’s been happening.

Dear kind people who work or so you call it nearabouts me, if you must keep your ringtones on maximum volume, and if you must insist on leaving your phones lying around in your non-soundproofed bays while you gallivant around with your pals on the other floor, could you please at least display some sense in selecting ringtones that are pleasing to the ear.

These would not include ear-spltting shrieks, or sounds similar to a dozen discordant warhorns.