of ghosts and cops

met up with a ghost from the past this saturday and we exchanged some rather old memories. we were in school together till the ripe age of 8 or 9. caught up on old things like how we both thought divya unni's mom was hot. before the bugger denies this lemme say that he did distinctly nod his head and say that its an inappropriate comment to make. but hey... u don't remember a lot of things from that long ago. so u'll have to do with whatever u can get.

after that went on to meet etv (which is something asif should play down :-), etv being a low-world gult channel). and then we went on to a beach around here and after that a hike on a paved road... so i guess a walk. oh forgot to mention that daku had dragged along too with her car :-). now the ghost and i being in a new place and getting to see all this new stuff, one would have expected an unquenchable thirst for the background history and such stuff. well as things were, such queries or discussions were conspicuously absent all of us preferring instead to "chori" (malayalam not hindi) daku who despite such orchestrated effort, i must say, held her ground. the central question throughout the evening was about where to have dinner! it was like this big eternal question about life, the universe and everything with daku pressing for udupi!!! why would anybody want udupi! so the burden of the decision fell on me and i could but suggest the only restaurant i had been to in belmont.

well all that is behind me. been here hardly a week and i am already switching hotels. woke up early in the morning today and thought i would call up the front desk and let them know that i was checking out. and imagine my surprise when the lady who answered replies "911 emergency". she was heavily accented and i was just shaking off sleep, so i thought i hadn't heard right and asked her to please connect me to the front-desk. this really worked her up, which sort of had a bad effect on her accent (probably spanish), and she started letting me know that this is an emergency service and how one should not be misusing it. so i wished her a good day too and hung up now properly awake. i was really disappointed that the hotel would put their front-desk at extension 9112. dashed unthoughtful of them i felt... but then on closer inspection i found that the number had somehow managed to change itself to 6112!!! well i was coming to terms with this dirty trick the hotel had played on me when there was a knock at the door on opening which i found a concierge who was all eagerness to find whether i was still breathing, no fires, nobody molested me or anything and on being informed of what happened, he gave me this rather patronizing smile which i really didn't care for :-(. i think hotels should stop keeping tabs on the numbers you dial. i mean! whats this world coming to with all the snooping around!!! a little more privacy people!!!

crossroads

my previous post seems to have created some kind of confu amongst fans ;-) (/me smiles deprecatingly, the very personification of humility) and one always endeavours to clear up things. so i'll go on record saying that i'm "livin it up" in san francisco - the happy city. and the experience is pretty good except for when u hit the roads on foot. the whole system of traffic signals for pedestrians wishing to cross the bally road sort of goes against my soaring free indian sentiments. whats the fun in life i ask, if we don't cross the roads at our whims. the sheer empowerment that an individual feels when he crosses an indian road, stopping cars and buses by a mere outstretched hand is lost here.

the worst part of the pedestrian signals is that they make one hurry up and get the job over with. one simply is not able to revel in the joy of sauntering across the road in front of an impatient motorist and giving him or her the languid look thus twisting the knife in. i was just walking across my first crossing signal here and i was plumb in the middle of the road when the damn signal went red. and to add insult to injury a woman in a convertible with the screen up (which kind of beats the purpose in my opinion, but hey, never said the female was smart) hooted at me. i was about to scorch her with my wait-u-low-life look but changed my mind. ok, the female was darned cute :-)

anywayz here i was, sitting pretty, thinking i had the system under control and along comes daku, under the guise of a friendly visit, but with the hidden agenda of scaring the living daylights out of me by describing how dangerous it is to walk the streets here with scary urban legends of cars materializing out of nowhere and hitting people. even as i cringed she went on with the gruesome narration till i broke out in sweat. sigh... /me prepares for a walk home...

i'm off

after a lot of last minute hurry, i finally did manage to get all my stuff packed. thankfully the bags were big enough so i didnt have to bother with folding up clothes and such unspeakable inconveniences generally associated with packing. and here i am blogging from a free internet terminal in singapore airport. thats the state to which lack of sleep and anything to do has reduced me to. had a philosophical argument with my manager the day before, or is it ideological? whatever... he accused me in not so many words of course of being, of all things a communist!!! i admit that being from kerala it might seem likely that i have socialist (not communist, for the communist party in kerala is more of a blight on the name of communism) tendencies. but i've never really subscribed to those. my idea of economic reform being that if u create enough money at the top it would trickle down to the poor. but thats neither here nor there. the matter was that i found it really tickling that somebody should think i, a guy working for a big bad corp, am a communist :-)!!! now sood would probably understand how it is that such things might spring out of the blue when one's dealing with his former manager... speaking of sood there's another interesting bit of juicy gossip i've to share... but that can wait. /me smiles but the seemingly becoming smile fails to mask the evil glint of mine eyes.