A Bug's Life

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?

2009-12-31T10:07:00.007+01:00

For the first time in about five years I am going to be spending New Year's Eve at home. I have absolutely no plans whatsoever, and I plan on sitting up and watching re-runs of my favourite cartoon show and eating ice-cream all evening. Then I am possibly going to get dragged out to watch fireworks at night. I suppose this is not what most 22 year olds are supposed to enjoy doing, but what could possibly be a better way to start the year? I am surprisingly looking forward to this plan muchly.

As mentioned before, I have never been too fond of the arrival of another new year because I always feel the pressure to do better than I did in the previous year. Also, as you get older I have found that this gets harder to do. However, I do think I will survive for another year, maybe with a little bit (or a lot of) of whining ahead.

I hope everyone else has managed to do something substantial this year; I would like to think that I have! I do know a lot more than I knew at this exact time last year, and that sufficiently satisfies me. I have never been good with resolutions, so I am going to steer clear of them. World peace can wait for a couple of more years, for now. I don't have any agenda for the year; I am going to try to worry less about things and see how that works out for me. From my relatively brief life experience I have learned that things mostly work out for the best at the end of it all.

I am going to approach the new year with high spirits (the exams I have next week can be damned) and I hope that the year goes well for everyone else as well.

And now, bring on the ice-cream!

The first noël, the angels did sing...

2009-12-25T14:24:00.017+01:00

Milan under snowfall

Its Christmas and my favourite time of the year, which is weird because I have never once celebrated Christmas in my entire life; being a good, little convent educated school girl that I am, I can't help love this season as much as I do. I am one of those people that everyone gets sick of because I start listening to Christmas music since early December and have an embarrassing amount of it on my iTunes. This is my first Christmas away from Milan. I have completely missed the snow storm over Europe last week and I can't help but be a bit sad about this because snow in Milan is quite rare. I really love it when it snows, the city seems so beautiful even if it does mean suspension of all means of transportation within the city and mushy sludge all over the roads, in addition to the freezing temperatures. However, I shouldn't really be discussing the weather because it has been 25°C in the place where I spent most of of time last week and I am now sporting an awful tan.

I haven't been away for a vacation with my family for almost two years now, so I have been looking forward to the mini-trip we had around South East Asia last week. I just got back to Hong Kong this morning actually. Travelling with my parents is one of those things that is exhaustive and so much fun at the same time, and I am in much need of sleep. I will write more about the trip later on, but for now I just wanted to wish everyone happy holidays and a merry christmas!

As we go on, we remember, all the times we had together...

2009-12-03T01:24:00.003+01:00

Last weekend was my graduation ceremony. I was really not looking forward to it because university graduation is one of those days that you just have to spend with your family, and mine currently lives a continent away and could obviously not make it. So, I was all whiny about it for the last month and was generally not looking forward to it, but it ended up being such a great day and I had a good time. This is because my friends are the coolest people in the world who not only sat through the boring ceremony, but also spent the rest of the day hanging out with me. I really just don't deserve to have such awesome people in my life, and I should be nicer to them!

Talking about my family, I am seeing them next week! I can't wait to see them and get back to Hong Kong again. I haven't seen them for three whole months, and I know this isn't a big deal to most people, but I have always been a clingy person who is overly attached to her mum and dad. I blame it on the fact that I am an only child and HK is generally very awesome. This also means that I have to pack this weekend and have so much to do that the best thing for me to do right now is to just avoid thinking about it. Avoidance is the best solution to your problems! Please, do not take my advice, as you can see, I am awful at it!

I am also very excited because I am probably going on a family vacation to Vietnam and Cambodia sometime over Christmas. There shall be more information on this when my dates and tickets are fixed, but traveling in South East Asia has been like a dream for me ever since I was thirteen and read The Beach (yes, go ahead and make fun of me, I am beyond all caring because I know how pathetic my teenage taste in most things was).

But I shall not think about vacations and fun for now! I have a week before I leave and too much to finish in this short period. I am full till the brim with work and my week consists of me traveling back and forth from uni. If I am feel particularly adventurous and hungry, I might venture into the supermarket, but this has been the extent of my travel for the last couple of weeks. In addition to this, the highlight of my week, which was my Korean drama series, has come to an end, and now I literally have nothing in life to look forward to. There, that is a paragraph of Pan whining, since I haven't been doing it for a while on here now!

I have been listening to 80's music all day long and have spent the day making an epic, generally awesome playlist on my itunes. This has also been my only accomplishment for the day, apart from realizing that I know the lyrics to Total Eclipse of the Heart creepily accurately without even consciously ever trying to memorize them.

I love how this post has deteriorated to a random collection of paragraphs with absolutely no link between them, but it is almost half past one at night and its been a long day, so I am unable to be coherent.

Student life

2009-11-19T23:00:00.002+01:00

You know what I hate about being a student? No, its not the perpetual poverty, although that is also pretty bad; its the fact that your day never truly ends. When you work, however awful your job is and however long your hours are, you can be sure that once you get home, you don't have to think about it any more until well, the next day. The problem with being a student is that I have a ten hour day at uni filled with all kinds of stressful things, and then I have to come home and actually study or finish my projects. The day doesn't officially ever end because you constantly have to be thinking about your lectures, projects, etc.

That said, student life has all kinds of perks! I am lucky enough to have at least two more years till I graduate and I suppose, I should really make the best of it, right? And I know I complain about uni all the time, but to be honest, I really do love student life. I figured I haven't done one of my trademarked lists in a while, and as I always like to say, one can never have enough lists in life, so here it goes: I like being a student because:

I can go out on a weekday and come back home at four in the morning because I have afternoon lectures the next day that can always be skipped if my headache is particularly bad.
I can go out on a weekday, come back home at four in the morning, still end up going to a 9 a.m lecture, and actually manage to follow most of it.
I get a discounted price for most museum trips.
I also get a heavily discounted public transport pass.
I can go to the gym at completely odd afternoon/morning hours to find it absolutely empty, at my disposal and pretend that its my private gym.
I get almost three weeks off for Christmas, one for Easter and two months worth of summer holidays. Its worth going to uni and working hard just to enjoy your vacation time!
I can have lunch/dinner standing up at some shady street stall without getting odd looks from people because you can't expect any better behaviour from students, can you?
I can efficiently multitask, i.e work on two different assignments, chat with three different people, while talking on the phone with my mum.
I can fly with Qatar Airlines, FinnAir and Aeroflot half way across the world without being embarrassed or laughed at.
I can have meaningful and un-ironic discussions about Pokemon, the Flintsones, politics, America, Ralph Fiennes, stock market crash, Britney Spears and the Lisbon Treaty with the same set of people.
And one more because we all know how great prime numbers are: I love being a student because I am awesome at talking knowledgeably about things I have no idea about. This, my dear friends, is an art that can be mastered only once you have attended university.

And she was...

2009-11-13T19:29:00.011+01:00

I know, I know, its been a while, but fear not, your beloved narrator is not going to give up on her blog so easily. I have just been really busy this semester with uni. Grad school is such a torture, and I would whine so much more about it if I did not actually enjoy most of what I am currently doing. But it does keep me crazily busy, and I don't think I have ever been this busy in my entire life. I have always been a one-day-at-a-time kind of person, but right now I am literally living from one project deadline to the other, and for some strange reason, I don't seem to mind.

I can't believe its almost mid November already, and that the year is almost over. Guangzhou and China seem like a world away even if I was there just a couple of months ago. To be quite honest, I love China and had such a great time this summer, even if I was cooped up in an office looking at Chinese tax regulations for most part. I know its hard for most people, but I have always found it easy to adapt to new people/places/food etc. because I am a ridiculously easy person to please. I know, a lot of my friends will laugh at me for saying this, but its actually true. Give me a laptop with an internet connection and a bed, and I am pretty much satisfied wherever I am.

I am also living alone this year, which is really great. I have the tiniest flat in the world in the middle of the city, and I love it so much even though it is a perpetual mess. I try and be as neat and tidy as my mum but somehow I just can't manage to keep it half as nice as my mum used to keep our home while battling an annoying teenager, an unhelpful husband and a job with long hours. One day, I promise to reach that level of efficiency, but for now I am happy being my lazy self and lounging in bed all evening.

By the way, if anyone is wondering why Pan is being pathetic and making blog posts on a Friday night, its because I have sprained my ankle in the most painful manner while coming home from uni this evening. So all I can do is lie down still in bed and limp painfully around the house. My dinner consists of cereal and an apple, and I am taking the evening off to catch up with my favourite television show. Life is pretty much good for now, I think! But its Friday and after the week I have had, there is absolutely nothing (not even my life threatening foot injury) that can bring my mood down right now, so I am going to enjoy it while it lasts.

You make me sick

2009-08-24T10:00:00.000+02:00

Has anyone ever had one of those weekends where you need a day off just to relax and get over your weekend? I just had one of those, and it didn't even involve hard partying, drugs, alcohol and all the things people do these days during their time off, no; it was because I have the most awful sore throat and cold. I don't know why it seemed like a good idea to go out for a day trip even with my illness yesterday.

The problem with living in tropical climates is that even the most tedious of activities require double the effort because of the sweltering temperatures. I'd totally be able to handle the heat, you know. Its the humidity that just drives me crazy, and I'm not just being biased against humidity because of my permanently damaged hair. There are days when by the time I leave my apartment and reach the front of my building, I'm already sweating and the whole point of having a shower before leaving home is kind of useless.

Also, I have learnt that being out all day long in the heat when you have the most awful cold in the world is a really bad idea, not only for you, but also for other people around you. This morning when I woke up, I was pretty much unable to breathe because of my blocked sinuses and my voice sounded that of a 60 year old man, and I think at this stage there was nothing left to do but call my boss and ask for a day off. So I find myself on a Monday morning at 10.00 am in bed, sipping tea, with music blaring loudly on my itunes and lying next to a pile of dirty tissues. This would actually be my ideal Monday morning (sans the tissues and coughing, of course) if I wasn't so ill. This how I should have spent yesterday instead of going on that stupid day trip, but the little tourist in me couldn't have missed out a day of Chinese palaces.

I should probably get up, have a shower, get out of my pyjamas, clean up the mess in my room, have hot soup in the restaurant downstairs for lunch, and buy medicine for my cold; but all these things involve me getting out of bed and everyone knows what an effort this is for your dear narrator.

The one where Pan has swallowed a gallon of coffee

2009-08-12T02:59:00.003+02:00

Its 2.30 a.m. in the morning and I have to wake up at 7 tomorrow for work. So one might ask why your lovely narrator is up at such an ungodly hour writing blog posts instead of being in bed in deep slumber. I think this should be a lesson to anyone who thinks drinking vats full of coffee with infinite spoons of sugar at 4 in the evening is a good idea. I have been trying to sleep since 11.30 and have finally given up after getting all the way through the 'zzzzs playlist' on my ipod; and mind you I have never ever gotten through this playlist before because I always fall asleep less than halfway into it.

Last night I was sitting in a small Chinese restaurant on the street having dinner with a friend, and it suddenly struck me that I am getting used to living in a random city in China that is not Beijing or Shanghai. Who has even though that China has other places to live in? Its like thinking about India beyond Bombay and Delhi, and nobody does that. China is such a big, big country and I do wish I had the time to travel over here, but for now I am going to have to be satisfied just staying over here for the time being. I had seriously expected that I would be miserable over here all summer long, but I've been surprisingly having a good time.

I was away in Hong Kong last weekend to visit my family and just got back to Guangzhou on Monday morning. I had a great weekend, but what can I say, it almost felt like coming back home when I got back to my little room here. Plus, I love living on my own. Sometimes, it scares me how much I like it because it just confirms my awful suspicion that I am never going get used to living with anyone else in my life. I just think that its one of those things that I will eventually have to deal with in the future, and what is the use of having problems if you can't push them away for another day, right?

So as I was saying, I've been having a semi-decent/almost-good time over here and its really weird to think that I've been here for almost a month now. It really doesn't feel like that long. I'm so not looking forward to go back to Milan in September because Milan = university = lectures + exams = misery, but I kind of miss my home and my bed, especially my bed. I also miss having good hair days because the humidity here kind of makes it impossible for my hair to be decent no matter how hard I try. Sometimes I'm such a girl, aren't I? But hair has always been a touchy issue.

Its almost 3 a.m. and I really must try and get some sleep otherwise I am never going to wake up tomorrow morning (which is in 4 exact hours).

On the world's favourite boy-wizard

2009-07-31T17:00:00.012+02:00

Its 31st July, also known as Harry Potter day to most of us nerdy HP fans and I've never done a Harry Potter related post in all the years I've had this blog, so I thought I might as well. Even though I don't talk about it much at all, Harry Potter has always been a big part of my life ever since I can remember. Its something that I have pretty much stopped being embarrassed about (hey, at least its not Twilight, ok?) because once you become twenty-one, all the things that used to embarrass you so much when you were a teenager don't really seem that important any more. Also, when I started reading HP, none of my friends even knew what it was, and so I never bothered bringing it up. Even when I was a kid, I used to have this irrational fear about talking to people about things that were important to me because I used to be terrified that they were going to use them against me or ruin them for me by dismissing them. I, unfortunately have this ridiculous fear even now, which pretty much stops me from having meaningful relationships with people.

But as usual, I digress, I stared reading Harry Potter when I was about twelve. A few years later the first film came out, and suddenly everyone was a fan. The other day it just struck me that there are going to be a whole load of children in the future who are going to grow up reading all the seven books back to back and miss out on a painful, yet exhilarating anticipation of waiting for each book to come out. I must admit that as I grew older the wait did start getting less painful although I did spend a week of having HP related nightmares/dreams before Half Blood Prince came out because of sheer nerves.

I must absolutely point out that even though I used to be and still am, to a certain extent, quite over-invested in the series, there is a slight difference between being a decent fan and being creepy and I'd like to categorize myself in the former case because creepy!HP fans are just really creepy. So no, I haven't attended fan conventions and written porn about underage fictional people (reading it totally doesn't overstep into that creepy frontier, by the way). I don't have some hidden HP related tattoos up my sleeve, haven't stalked the actors from the HP films and I don't listen to wizard rock (which is a genre of music bigger than you would expect it to be!). I don't even listen to the podcasts from fan websites or post/read deep, meaningful discussions and editorials on forums. So, from HP standards I'm a really terrible fan actually.

All that said, I'm still a pretty big nerd when it comes to HP related trivia; or at least I used to be until a couple of years ago. I may not know how many sickles there are in a gallon but I do know all about Ali Bashir and his magic carpet, and who the hell Euan Abercrombie is. Harry Potter has been an important part of my adolescent life and I have come to accept it without any shame at this point of my life. Even though I never got tortured by my friends, my parents have always given me so much hell for liking Harry Potter as much as I do. Who needs crappy friends when you have parents at home to tease you about your nerdy obsessions?

It was a good phase, as far as phases go and it was awesome growing up right in the heart of it. I literally grew up with the books, reading the first one when I was twelve and the last one when I was nineteen. Also, I do have awesome HP related stories to tell people now, like that time in Barcelona where we basically spent three days searching for a theatre that showed Order of the Phoenix in english (which we eventually did manage to find) and stumbled onto the best beach of the city (with the least number of tourists) or the summer that I was in New York when the 6th book came out and entire America went psychotic about 'Snape killed Dumbledore' or the night spent in a youth hostel in Lisbon reading the last book (which we bought at midnight after queuing up behind 10 year olds) when we had a whole day of sightseeing early next morning. Incidentally, I also dragged/tricked my mother to watch Half Blood Prince, after a fifteen hour flight the night I landed in Hong Kong two weeks ago.

As far as teenage fads go, I'd like to think that mine was not that bad after all. I always thought that I would have been really upset once it was all over, but I think what I had when I finished the last book was more of a sense of relief that it was all finally over. There was no nagging sense of I want more, and I was quite ready to grow out of it slowly and steadily. I'm not going to count the films because I am quite indifferent to them, but still religiously watch every one of them during their opening week, if not on the opening day itself because that is what a good fan is supposed to do. I would also like to think that I'm forcibly going make my kids read one book a year, but I know what I'd do if my parents ever told me not to read something until I was older.

Another week gets over, and its finally Friday night. No work for two whole days, YAY!

PS: I watched The Big Sleep last night with Humphrey 'I'm so cool, I don't need an umbrella, I have a raincoat!' Bogart and Lauren 'why are we wasting our time talking when we could be in bed right now?' Bacall. There is absolutely nothing better than a black and white thriller on a rainy night in and I have always been such a sucker for old Hollywood.

10 things I have learnt this week

2009-07-25T02:35:00.015+02:00

Chinese people move around with their umbrellas open everywhere they go. They use an umbrella when its sunny and also when it rains. It really disconcerting to go out on a bright, hot day and see like a sea full of open umbrellas everywhere. No one wears sunglasses. You are more likely to be stared at if you wear sunglasses rather than if you have an umbrella open in the hot sun.
People in my office take power naps after lunch. They put their head down on the desk and actually SLEEP. Its really, really weird to come back from lunch and find half the office dosing on their desks. Some of them even have little cushions to be more comfortable while napping and the 10-year-old in me wants to make my mobile phone ring and wake everyone up one day just to annoy them all.
Lunch is officially for an hour, but unofficially its for an hour an a half which always ends up extending to mostly two hours. I love our lunch breaks; they are awesomely long. People eat for an hour and then nap for 30 minutes or so.
Most of the people don’t actually know what they are eating half the time when they eat out. So, if you order a dish and you ask someone (even the waiters) what is in it they have this blank expression. Also, everyone eats out, the concept of cooking food for yourself doesn’t seem to exist.
Everyone has an obsession with visiting cards. Everyone has a visiting card. Even the bartender in Starbucks has a visiting card! Hell, even I have a visiting card (which is totally the best thing that has happened to me here, by the way! I actually have my name printed on a card, OMG!)
Chinese people have Chinese names for everything including Coke, Sprite and McDonalds, which are not mispronounced words for the original names, but different words altogether Kekoukele, Xue Bi and Mai Dang Lau respectively.
The Starbucks here puts coffee jelly in their frappuccinos (which I am kind a slave for, by the way). I know it sounds really awful, but it tastes so much better than it sounds and I might even venture to admit that it actually tastes good with coffee jelly. However, ever since I was a kid, I have never been rational around jelly, so my judgement is pretty biased.
When you go to restaurants, they ask you whether you want ice water or hot water. There is no in-between; you are not allowed to have your water at room temperature in this country. Its either frozen and makes your throat numb or is tepid and tastes of pee (don’t ask how I know this!)
I am one of the few people in this world that think that the Chinese accent is great. However, after spending a week here, I find myself talking in it at times and that has started bothering me.
A lot of restaurants shut down at 10 at night and the underground stops at 11. I’m assuming Chinese people like to go to bed early. This will teach me to complain about the Milanese metro that shuts at midnight.
And this is a bonus one: Cigarette packets warnings have the sign ‘smoking may cause impotence’ instead of death because impotence is so much worse than the fear of death.

PS: I'm really sore right now all over because I was forced to go out and play gaelic football for two hours straight on thursday. I'm really awful at it and yet I ended having such a lot of fun but my muscles are dead.

WTAF China?

2009-07-19T17:56:00.004+02:00

How stupid do you think people are? No, like seriously? Do you think blocking YouTube, Blogger and Facebook in your country going to stop people from getting around this in any case? I'm not going to say any more because I don't want the government tracking my blog or anything, even though the idea of the Chinese government secretly monitoring my blog to see if I'm divulging state secrets is quite funny considering I haven't seen anything worthwhile in the 12 exact hours that I have spent in this country.

I am currently in city of Guangzhou (look it up and be ashamed if haven't ever heard of it!) sitting in the bed of my expensive-but-really-crap-quality-room (I shouldn't complain, at least I have a working air conditioner and satellite television which has exactly 100 channels in Chinese, and none in any other language!). Growing up with an OCD mother has given me extremely high hygiene standards, which makes every other place that is not my home not good enough for me. But I am determined to survive for the next two months and yes, there will be a lot of whining from Pan but she will surely but steadily make it through.

Work starts tomorrow, and I'm kind of looking forward for that becasue I am possibly the only human being in the world who looks forward to work (since it is still a novelty to me!). For the first time in my life I was throughly checked through by Chinese custom officials who opened my suitcase because they couldn't imagine why anyone would need five pairs of shoes for two months and the conversation went something like this:

Official: You have shoes, yes?
Me: ummmm...yes
Official: How many?
Me: I dont know, maybe about four, five pairs.
Official: You sell shoes?
Me: UH...no they are all mine.
Official: You have five shoes for two months?
Me: But they are my shoes. I need them!
Official: Why you need five shoes? Can we see your shoes?
(which is when I had to open my suitcase and prove that the shoes were indeed mine! And mind you this was when I had removed like two pairs last night because the bag was getting too heavy. That will teach me to carry so many shoes around the world)

Updating Updates

2009-07-09T10:08:00.000+02:00

We finally bought a table and some chairs for the balcony, which is awesome but pointless because we are leaving for the summer in less than two weeks. This leads me to the next thing I am going to say, I just have ONE more exam left for the year; its one of the harder ones and I seem to be having no inclination to study for it. All I want to do it lounge about in the balcony drinking iced tea and read. Why is this not possible?

Before this post disintegrates into one of those Pan's-life-is-so-hard-and-she-is-going-to-whine-about-it-for-the-next-five-paragraphs posts, let me stop myself. Its not really that hard, to be quite honest. I'm still enjoying the summer, sitting under the fan, listening to Michael Jackson and drinking iced tea as I type this out, so I promise no whining around on this post. I wish I could travel around for the holidays but I am no longer the free teenager that I used to be and if I want to have some sort of a future, I need to use my summers to do internships and build up my near-empty resume.

I'm going to be working this summer for the next two months in China. I'm a bit nervous about it but I'm sure its going to end up being a great experience, so I am kind of looking forward to that. Plus, no more studying for the next two months, so I'm hoping to catch up with all the books, movies and tv-shows (English and Korean!) that have been accumulating for a while now. I haven't seen a decent Bollywood film in a year and I think its about time to come out of the rock that I've been living under.

I was in the gym this morning and there was a Michael Jackson video marathon on MTV. I had kind of forgotten how amazing and emotional his videos used to be. I was literally running on the treadmill watching Man in the Mirror almost in tears and had to switch off the television for Earth Song because I would have started crying in that scene when the elephant dies (and I don't even like Earth Song!). I know, I know its probably a CGI elephant, but I am but a victim of my unstable emotions and just can't help myself around Michael Jackson videos :(

Somewhere over the rainbow

2009-07-03T23:15:00.002+02:00

After having given exams for more than than a decade of my short lifespan, you would think that it would become easier to go through them, right? But I think it just seems to be getting harder each time for me. The lack of sleep, the gripping pit of fear in your stomach, the dark circles and not to mention the after tea/coffee breaks. Ugh!

I was pleasantly surprised to read about this a couple of days ago. It was pleasant because well, its about time that the law was changed and surprised because I really would never have thought that this would be possible in India, at least in my lifetime, but there are a few occasions where I love being wrong and this is one of them.

I also never thought there would come a day where I would be internally celebrating and being grateful over a ruling that gives people civil rights. These are rights that people are inherently be born with and should not have to struggle for. However, things like this give me hope for the future and even though I'm not naive enough to believe that this is actually going to end discrimination or hate crimes, I would like to think that it is a step forward in the right direction.

I would also like to add that anyone who thinks that this law should still be upheld is not only an idiot but also one of the most lowly forms of human beings to exist on this planet. I understand and even respect, to a certain extent, people's religious or personal beliefs about the matter, but if you think a whole subset of the human population deserve to be treated lesser than other humans based on their sexual orientation or race that is something that goes against everything human beings have struggled to achieved since we started existing.

PS: I've had the soundtrack of Hairspray on repeat all day on itunes and its made me ridiculously cheerful all. Have I ever mentioned my love for musicals before?

A Room With a View - Part Deux

2009-06-04T19:56:00.010+02:00

Since I did one in winter, I think its only right that I post pictures of how the view looks from my window in summer. Plus, I'm looking for a distraction to keep me away from studying. Its 8.00 p.m right now and look how bright it is outside! Sometimes, I think its really worth living with eight months of winter only to experience these four months of European summer.

The photos are not the best photos in the world, but I'd like to think that they have come out quite decent, considering how I terrified was that the camera was going to fall from my hand.

Glee!

2009-05-23T21:57:00.032+02:00

Keeping up with my tradition of reviewing the obscure, I will now go ahead and talk about something that has the potential of either fading into obscurity or becoming the next best thing television has seen in a while. I kind of knew that the pilot was going to be awesome when I watched this trailer before the show premiered, and was quite excited about it.

Before I start gushing, I must confess two facts that can be potentially used against me in the future. But, my last post was on the Gmail Fox and I think I have kind of lost all my sense of shame after that. So, I shall go right ahead and confess:

I love musicals. No, I unironically love them all. I even liked the movie version of Rent. This is how shameful my love for musicals is.
I also love Journey, you know the band, Journey. What can I say? It all stems from my teenage love for power ballads. I promise to get over these songs one day, but I suspect that day is not going to come very soon.

The pilot of this show has somehow miraculously ended up involving both the points listed above, and there was no just no way that I was going to end up not liking this show after that. The show is a kind of mash up between Bring It On meets Election meets Mean Girls meets High School Musical meets Fame. Considering how amazing each of these films are, the show has not only a lot to live up to, but also a big possibility of becoming into some of the other not-very-good high school films that are out there, and believe me there plenty of those around.

The American high-school move genre is a very precarious one to invest into because 95% of the films it generates are simply awful. However, if well made, and mind you decent movies in this genre are extremely rare, the films have a potential of becoming into something special. There is a very thin line between the high-school films that are good and the ones that are not. Of course, you are going to make fun of me because I watch high-school films, but I do, and I love the good ones. I mean, how can you not? They are not just chick flicks; I like to look at them as a plethora of wit that give us a deep insight into American popular culture. Regardless for my blind love for this genre, I have to admit that the bad ones are simply painful to sit through. However much I would like to continue and point out the differences between gems like Clueless and the awful ones like The Prince and Me, I am well aware that I am digressing from the initial subject of my conversation.

Glee is not a high-school film. No, it is much more than that. It is a high school television show, which makes it pretty unique from everything else that is out there. What I mean by unique is that the show does well in trying to distance itself from other high school dramas that are currently airing like Gossip Girl or 90210. Plus it markets itself as a musical comedy, and not one of those musicals where people talking suddenly burst out into song and dance routines, but a musical where the music numbers actually make sense and are limited.

The premise of the show is pretty simple, it revolves around a teacher who is trying to train a bunch of high school misfits to participate in a national competition, which involves singing and dancing. To top it off, there are evil blond cheerleaders, evil dim-witted football players, rival schools and a whole set of quirky teachers (who are fit for everything else apart from teaching) involved in trying to make the lives of these six teenagers as hard as possible. All the want to do is perform on stage, dammit! Why should this be so hard?

Since it has the pretty conventional high-school plot, the show will probably have to do a lot in the future to make sure it remains quirky and witty, which is going to be hard. They also have a lot of expectations to live up to in terms of the music, epsecially after the amazing rendition of Rehab performed by a rival school and Don't Stop Believing that were used in the pilot. All this gushing aside, the pilot was not perfect. Few high school films are perfect, and I have yet to watch a high school show that is perfect. There were a few parts that made you go meh along with the traditional stereotypes of high school characters complete with thin, blond cheerleaders and a fat African American girl who wants to be Beyoncé.

The pilot was just a preview and the show is going to start airing later this year in September/October. I thought the pilot was pretty decent, and good enough to make me continue watching it for a while, but pilots rarely tell you all there is to know about a tv show. If the epic failure of Kings (which I thought started out as quite well, by the way) is to be taken as an indication, all we know is that audiences are fickle and unpredictable. I loved Glee, but I love Journey and watch all my television shows online, so my demographics and opinions don't really count in the big scheme of things.

PS: The lead actress has an amazing voice and I love her character so hard. She puts gold stars next to her name every time she signs it somewhere. How could you possibly not love this girl?

The grass is always greener

2009-05-17T21:37:00.013+02:00

I love Google and everything Google related. But I have to admit when they came up with Google Themes to customize your Gmail, I was a bit peeved off. I am not much of a fan of customizable web sites (and yes I'm talking about you, MySpace). In any case, I swore off against them because I thought layouts were silly and preferred the original inbox design. This was until I was introduced to Google's most adorable creation in the whole world, the Gmail Fox.

The Gmail Fox, also known as the Tea House Fox comes with the 'Tea House' layout, which is an interactive layout that changes throughout the day according to the time. As time passes, you can see what the Gmail Fox has been up to all through the day. The Gmail Fox always makes sure that he is busy all day long. You'd think he would get bored all by himself in this little tea house and not do a thing all day, and yet, every time I open my inbox, he always seems to be up to something.

Is it wrong that I wish I could live the life of the Gmail Fox? He's a good little fox living in his adorable home by the lake. He has friends over all the time for tea parties, goes rowing with them in the lake, practices tai chi in the mornings, does his chores around the house diligently, has actual hobbies including but not limited to bonsai, and if all that was not enough, he even plays the flute and the mandolin. I know a lot of people would find this kind of a cyclical life that is full of routines dull, and yet I seem to find myself longing for it, especially these days.

I love opening my inbox and looking at what the fox is up to and checking up on him from time to time. At 3.15 AM every night, the Gmail Fox is visited by the spirits of is ancestors, who come each night and play Go as the little fox sleeps. I first actually noticed this when I was in Hong Kong because I hadn't changed my Italy timezone. I am such a ridiculous geek and even found an article that explains the backstory of these ghosts that visit him. I don't care if its not true, I am totally going to believe in it because it is just so cute, and everyone can go ahead and tease me to death about this.

Funny Face

2009-05-05T22:41:00.005+02:00

The problem with Hollywood actors these days is that they are trashy and cheap, and there is nothing more to be said on this. Most people in old Hollywood were just as messed up in alcohol, drugs and cigarettes as every other person in Hollywood right now, and yet they did it with class. How can Lindsey Lohan and Megan Fox ever compete with this?

In which Pan gets butthurt

2009-05-01T09:00:00.019+02:00

I've been living in Europe for long enough to not let these things bother me because I know that asking for things to change would be asking for too much. I let things go by without trying to let them affect my mental state. So, its okay if I am always called aside when I'm travelling to have my documents checked and double checked. Its fine if I get shifty looks from old women on the tram or while I'm going to pay the bills. I've even had someone asking me what vaccines they need to take if they are going to Malaysia for a holiday (it was because India and Malaysia are so close to each other, you see!) I don't let these small things bother me, not because they are okay, but because I really couldn't care less. However, when I see full blown advertising campaigns like this one, I get really irritated.

These are some of the pictures from the new India themed Zegna campaign that are plastered all over Milan lately. There is this huge blown up version of the picture below at the airport here that I saw a few weeks ago.

If you show the above advert to any other person living in this country they will not find anything wrong with it, but it seems to be making my blood boil. Look at the sari clad native woman welcoming the handsome white man in a suit and his Indian sidekick (who looks like Mohinder Suresh, by the way). Why is she bowing down so submissively, unable to even look him in the eye? Am I the only one who is overreacting at this advert? No one else seems to have noticed it apparently if they've covered half the airport in this city with the picture.

The thing is that I don't think that the adverts were made with a malicious intent. The Zegna marketing department didn't wake up one morning thinking that all Indian women are shy and submissive. The problem is that they don't even realize that they are being inherently racist by playing up to the Indian stereotype or that there is something clearly wrong with their ad campaign. It is them having some ridiculous notion that there is nothing wrong in showing subjugated Indian women bowing before their handsome European saviours. It is a classic form of white privilege, and white privilege bothers me so much more than the most obvious forms of racism because its so much scarier.

Look at this other picture from this campaign. Doesn't the above picture bring back fond memories of the Raj? The natives playing a wonderful game of polo on elephants while the Europeans enjoy the show in the gardens of their palaces. This blatant display of Raj nostalgia is just really creepy actually. I don't know how to put it in more eloquent terms. The above advert actually scares me. It scares me because it is celebrating a period in my country's history that no one is proud of, at least not so openly. I am just astounded that other people are unable to notice these things given the fact that everyone seems so keen on being politically correct these days. If this campaign was a German 1940s retro military themed advertising campaign, the world would have exploded right now. I am not trying to compare Nazi Germany with the British Raj, but trying to show how the campaign is a romanticism of a terrible period in the history of my country.

I know that I'm probably overreacting and making an issue out of something so trivial. I also know that if I was living in India right now, I wouldn't have even noticed the racist undertones of this campaign. I've read so many articles written by Indian journalists about how proud India should be that international fashion designers are turning to our country to film their campaigns and are seeing India as a new consumer market. But, you don't wake up one morning and start noticing these things, its more of a gradual realization which comes with experience. Although, I have to say that I haven't yet experienced any humiliating forms of racism yet because I simply tend to let things go and am generally out of tune with what is happening around me.

There seems to be this trend on the internet and also in real life about fetishizing the Orient and anything else that is seen as exotic from western standards, and this is frankly disgusting. We just seem to be unable to get over racial stereotypes. I do know that stereotypes stem from facts and everyone uses stereotypes, even without realizing what they are doing. I probably do it too. However, I do feel that it is our duty to try and overcome them and not let things continue the way they are. The problem is that no one seems to be trying, people are just really worried about being politically correct, but that isn't changing their way of thinking or the things they actually believe. Realizing that we are faily idiots is the first step towards trying to work on the problem, but how are we going to get people to admit that we are all racist assholes?

Randomisms

2009-04-27T17:27:00.005+02:00

Ah, after almost 20 hour of travel I am finally home and too tired to be coherent, which is why I shall resort to one of my favourite forms of communications: lists! They're a great way of communicating a large amount of unrelated information using few words and this is why I love them so much.

I have a new found insane love for German airports. They have free coffee/tea machines and places where you can plug-in electronic devices. What more could a tried traveller who has to kill three hours with a dysfunctional laptop whose battery doesn't last for more than 20 minutes want? Ok, there wasn't any free internet, but that would just be asking for too much, right?
I totally stole tea packets from the airport tea stash. I'm Indian, hoarding freebies is in our blood, and this makes my behaviour totally excusable!
Why hasn't anyone mentioned the awesomeness of Battlestar Galactica before? I have gone through almost three seasons in less than three weeks and I have no idea why I hadn't bothered with it for all this time.
I have a crazy lecture time table for this week and I can think of so many things I'd rather be doing than attending lectures. Why can't I stay at home and watch BSG all day?
After you've been out for a while, its really good to be back home. Nothing makes me happier than sleeping in my own bed after being away for long.
I am officially immune to jet lag and can fall asleep at any given time at any given place.
I hate unpacking more than I hate packing. I also hate putting the clean dishes away or folding up clean laundry so much more than washing dirty plates and putting wet clothes to dry out on the clothes' line.
I have been desperately craving for something fried and unhealthy for the last few days, but I shall be strong and not give in to the pressure.
I watched High School Musical 3 and Twilight on the plane. I'd like to think that it was time well spent. The guy next to me kept giving me odd looks at my hysterical laughter from time to time.
This swine flu pandemic is really scaring me. I used to be a crazy dystopian fiction reader when I was younger, and a disease pandemic is like the start of every decent dystopian novel. If we are all going to die, I might as well skip lectures for the week, right? Right?

Meh, I should really be working on my thesis.

Buildings

2009-04-21T14:57:00.007+02:00

I've mentioned it before and I'm going to say it again, I love skyscrapers! This is the fabulous view of the city from the terrace of this house and the pictures barely do it any justice because of my muchly lacking photography skills.

Y HALO THAR

2009-04-20T10:07:00.001+02:00

I know, I know, its been a while, and I haven't been updating and I have no actual excuse for my absence. I am currently in the lovely city of Hong Kong, sitting on a sunny terrace, under an sun-umbrella looking at a spectacular view, which looks even more spectacular at night by the way. Growing up in a city of more than 10 million people doesn't seem to have put my off big cities. On the contrary, I love them. I love crowded places, traffic, congestion and all the things that people normally hate. This could be because I don't drive because apparently your perceptions of traffic and cities change when you learn to drive. Plus, I've always been attracted to bright lights and tall buildings, so I do suppose that I'm being very biased in my appraisal.

Hong Kong is as fabulous as one can imagine it to be. In fact, I'd like to say that its even more amazing than one would expect it to be because the food here is simply delicious, and its full of restaurants that are filled up with people eating at all possible hours. Food has always been Pan's biggest weakness and its very easy to bribe her with good food to make her like a place. But it is actually crazy here, and there are people everywhere, at all given hours, and it makes me wonder what all these people actually do for their living because all they seem to be doing is shopping all the time. That said, the best thing about being on holiday is to see other people going to work, and I get much pleasure out of watching people going to work in stuffy suits in this humid weather while I'm happily sightseeing all day long.

I'm going to be all girly and squeal right now about all shopping the that I've done, so go ahead ignore me! I have no idea how I am going to manage to fit so much stuff into my suitcase while going back home. I love shopping for junk and other things that I am probably never going to wear more than once but that always seem like a good idea to buy at that time. Of course, the things that I actually need are long forgotten. But after living in Milan for almost seven years now, everything seems inexpensive here when things are not even that cheap and how can I possibly stop myself?

I have no idea why but I haven't been taking too many photos. I think its because now that my dad lives here I know that I'm eventually going to make it back sometime, so I'm not feeling the need to have a lot of photos. But, I should really get around to charging my camera because this city has some of the most amazing signs that I have ever seen and everyone knows how much yours truly loves those.

I am going back home on Friday and I can think of lot of other things that I'd rather be doing than returning to uni because the next two months are going to be absolutely terrible. But duty calls, and I must get back to work, right? At least its spring in Milan right now, and that is already cheering me up a bit.

PS: Ever since my previous post, the amount of people getting redirected here by google searching for the term 'A Bug's Life porn' is most disturbing. But this is the internet, nothing seems to surprise me any more.

PPS: I had gone to the hairdressers here today and I must absolutely write a post about my enduring fear for that species.

Food Porn

2009-03-21T20:00:00.003+01:00

I'm so hungry right now, and there is nothing edible in sight. I could of course, get up from the couch and walk to the fridge and get something to eat. But that would mean having to actually get up from this couch, which much harder than it sounds because I am the laziest person in the whole world. This is why for the last 10 minutes, I've been doing the next best thing apart from eating food, which is looking at pictures of food!

Last summer I spent some time in Singapore, and I have to say that the best part of the whole trip was the food. I have no idea how this was possible but every single thing that I put in my mouth was delicious, and everything was such a novelty to me that I couldn't stop taking touristy pictures everything I ate.

Lastly, how can anyone visit Singapore and leave the city without having an authentic Singapore Sling?

And now I should really go get that apple from the fridge, shouldn't I?

and yet another post where Pan whines...

2009-03-18T17:45:00.003+01:00

I've been so busy that I don't even have time to think how busy I am, and this is when I don't even have exams (those are still two weeks away). I know how silly that sounds, but its absolutely true. I'd like to make one of those amazing lists that I'm so fond of lining up the things I have to do, but I think looking at them might just freak me out, so I'm not going to do that.

No one ever told me university life is this difficult. Everyone always keeps mentioning how much fun it was for them, what an amazing time they hard, best days of their life and all that rubbish. Why do people forget to mention the important parts? Like standardized testing, lack of employment opportunities, impossible expectations grad schools combined with impossible fees and trying to handle your courses and exams through all this pressure. Its like the universe is trying its hardest to make your life as difficult as possible, and mind you, I'm one of the lucky ones because my life isn't even all that hard! I know I complain and whine all the time, but at the back of my head, I know that I don't have to struggle half as much as other people.

Its March already! MARCH! How did we end up in March? In fact, we are more than half way through March and I just noticed today that we were already in March and its almost spring, which is the most fabulous season of all time. I think the best time to enjoy Italy is spring. Its one of those periods where you are walking on the road and it suddenly strikes you that you are actually living in Italy. Who the hell even lives in Italy apart from the rich people and people photographed in postcards? At least that is how I imagined Europe to be when I was young. Its way past 6 in the evening and there is still daylight outside, and absolutely nothing that can make me unhappy right now. How can one possibly be unhappy in this weather? Its even making someone as grumpy me cheerful lately, even though I have absolutely no reason to be cheery.

Actually, I do have a reason to be cheery. I have exams until the 6th, but after that I'm going to go visit my dad half way across the world for two whole weeks. I'm really excited because I can't seem to remember the last time I had a vacation. I still have to work on my thesis during that period, but I shall conveniently ignore thinking about this for the time being. Two weeks in Hong Kong, what more could anyone want? Plus, I haven't seen my dad since January and I miss him! I also suspect that he misses me too, which means that he is going to pander to all of my irrational whims, and I'm really not going to be complaining about this.

Jai Ho!

2009-03-05T18:13:00.017+01:00

When half my city was taken over by terrorists, there was not a single person who asked about what was happening or if I was doing okay, but now that Slumdog Millionaire has won a whole load of Oscars, I have random people asking me about Bombay at least once a day for the past week.

I don't want you to get me wrong, regardless of what I feel about the film, I totally wanted it to win in every category it was nominated for at Oscars. Its a weird Indian solidarity thing that we are just born with. And yes, I do know that its not actually an Indian film, but who really cares about these small details? Plus, I cannot think of anyone in the Indian film industry apart from A.R.Rahman (I love it how every person who reads the nominations out in award shows is unable to pronounce his name right. If you are called out to read the nominations of a certain award category, the least you can do is take some effort to get the names right!) who deserves this kind of recognition. The funny thing is that his soundtrack for this film isn't even one of his best works and yet, incredibly it seems to be getting crazy recognition.

All this said, I actually liked the film. I do think that it is overrated and the second half of the film was quite weak due to the inability of the two lead characters to act. This is really sad because I love Dev Patel and Freida Pinto. They're adorable in interviews, and Dev's next role is going to be as my favourite character in my favourite television series of all time, and I can't help but be ridiculously excited about this. In any case, my pleasure while viewing the film was muchly diminished because I kept getting distracted by Dev's fake Indian accent and Freida's pretty smiley face.

The first half of the film is fabulous. Its very Danny Boyle, and kind of reminded me of Trainspotting, which is an awesome film (I'm not not just saying this because Ewan McGregor has a naked scene in it!). As a side note, I'd like to say that I really do love all the Danny Boyle films that I've watched. Sunshine was amazing, and I don't care if I'm the only human being who liked it. I thought that it was really well made. Also, I know The Beach was awful, but I was going through a post-Titanic, Leonardo Di Caprio phase at that time and have fond memories of that movie. But I digress as usual, coming back to what I was saying, the first part of Slumdog Millionaire is really good. The child actors are brilliant, the colours, the imagery, the music, and the story have a great flow, and I can see why exactly the film was considered Oscar worthy. Then suddenly something happens, and I don't quite know what.

Actually I do know what happens, the kids grow up, the lead kid grows up into an awkward Dev Patel, who has this blank expression all through the film as if he doesn't quite know what he's doing there. His Indian accent kept making me cringe and distracting me from the actual film itself (Its a big budget Hollywood film, the least they could do is make sure they hire someone to help the lead actor get the accent right). Then, there is Freida Pinto, who smiles prettily all through the film. She barely has around 15 to 20 minutes of screen time in the film, so I suppose its hard to judge someone in that short a period, but she doesn't seem like a girl who has been sexually molested, almost sold off into prostitution and grown up in the most deplorable of circumstances, i.e the slums. You don't feel anything when you watch her on screen, apart from the thought at the back of your head about how way out of Dev's league this girl is in real life. The best adult actor in the whole film is the boy who plays the lead character's older brother on screen, the actor who has gotten the least publicity and recognition out of the entire film.

I know I sound really critical of a film that I claim to have actually liked, but I did like it. I'm just being knit picky about things that bothered me. There is also this whole part where the first half of the film is in Hindi with English subtitles and the actors randomly start talking in English from somewhere in the middle of the movie which I found a bit weird. But I kind of understand why they needed to have most of the film in English for international audiences.

The film tries hard to reach to the hearts of audiences and show them a kind of poverty, lifestyle and imagery that is completely different from what they have imagined or experienced. Everyone hears about poor people living with bad sanitation, children being sold off into prostitution and these kind of things, but here you get to see it first hand and are actually able to relate with the main characters even though they are so different from yourself. They are just two people who come from nothing and still end up being happy despite their lowly circumstances. What could possibly be a more heart-warming chick-flicky plot?

I suspect that I'd have enjoyed the film much more if I was a stranger to the country, rather than someone who has experienced and seen things like poverty, religious clashes and slums in Bombay. The people in India understandably haven't warmed up to the film. I think this is because the film hits on a nerve by portraying an aspect of the country that we are clearly embarrassed about. Do you know how slum viewing has become the next big tourist attraction in Bombay? Guided trips through the slums for foreigners to get a first hand experience of how poor people live. I hate this, and yet this is what is getting the slums the attention they clearly need from international organizations, charities and from the Indian government.

The Last Generation?

2009-02-27T08:43:00.007+01:00

The other day I was talking to someone and he mentioned to me that we are one of the the last generation of people who remember growing up without the internet. Once I got over my initial flashes about the end of the world, I kind of started feeling nostalgic and old. The point is that this is kind of true, isn't it? I remember growing up without the internet, but just barely. I think we got internet in our house when I was in the 7th grade, which makes me around 12. I didn't even know what it was or what it did. I think I only started using it properly (and from properly I mean using it to send ridiculous chain forwards, to download MSN messenger to chat with friends that I met in school every day and to use Napster, where it took me about five hours to download a single song) when I became fourteen.

I'm so glad I didn't have a blog, facebook or something equivalent when I was fourteen because there is nothing more embarrassing in the world than thinking about yourself at that age. If that wasn't enough, looking at pictures and your 'meaningful' thoughts displayed all over the internet will probably be quite mortifying later on in life. My friend's little sister has a facebook page where she keeps going on and on about her love for Nirvana, AC-DC and The Jonas' Brothers. This poor girl is going to die of shame when she's older.

Right now, I don't even know what to say about my dependence on the internet. The only thing I can say is that it is quite deep to the extent that I'm not sure if I could even live with a dial-up connection. Remember how much time you have spent waiting for the dial-up modems to connect to the internet? It wasn't just waiting for your internet to connect, even going from one website to another used to take at least 5 to 10 minutes. Every thing is much easier now, I suppose. Although, if we didn't have the internet, I'd have a lot more free time to do the things I've always meant to do but never quite got around to doing. I'd also not know a whole load of things about the world and live in my blissful bubble of ignorance.

Come to think of it, there are so many things that we take for granted now that we didn't have less than a decade ago ago, like mobile phones, ipods, dvd players, wireless, broadband, etc. We have adapted to these things pretty quickly and now find it difficult to even think of surviving without them. It hard to imagine that less than 6 years ago, I used to have boxes full of home made mixed CDs that carried not more than 20 songs each. Mixed CDs felt like such a digital revolution, as did owning a portable CD player (a 'diskman' as we used to called it) at that time. Plus, my CD player didn't have a shock absorbing mechanism, so even when there was a small movement, it used to literally fall apart and stop. It wasn't very portable at all actually.

New things will keep on turning up as it has always been happening from the start of human civilization. There is a whole group of people who grew up without television, moving further back into time, there was a whole group of people who grew up without things that I can't even perceive being without. I've always been quite open to technological change. I don't like people who don't want to learn how things work. I don't understand how they can just life their lives without the desire to learn something new. It goes against fundamental human nature! If I see something new, I get pretty excited and want to mess with it until I know everything there is to know about it, regardless of whether its going to be useful to me or not.

Its like using predictive text while sending messages on your mobile. It is a ridiculously simple mechanism if you bother finding out how it works. Yet, most non-teenagers I know are unable to use it, and send messages typing every single letter of the alphabet. It is so easy if you only put in a couple of minutes of effort in understanding how it works, and even if you don't send text messges regularly it slashes your message typing time by half. Its okay to not know things, no one is born knowing everything, but its extremely silly to not want to know how things work.

Somebody told me

2009-02-17T18:12:00.013+01:00

Someone on facebook had tagged me to do a meme called '25 random things about you'. I thought that it would be better to do it over here rather than on facebook because I'm not actually friends with even half the people on my facebook and meh, I'm not sure how I feel about having random, known people know about the irrelevant details of my life. So here it goes:

I don't have too many friends because I'm not a very sociable person, but the ones that I have are awesome. I don't think I could do without them, and I really should put more of an effort to keep in touch with them.
I'm a bit of a book snob, but I can't help it! I just judge you by the books you read, but I'm anything but a snob when it comes to films. Its just that watching something is a passive activity, so in my mind I am totally excused for sitting through bad films.
I'm mildly addicted to reading celebrity gossip websites. I do feel totally trashy when I do this, there is a strange sort of fascination in watching rich people looking pretty and making a fool of themselves.
I love television shows of all sorts, but more specifically, I love Korean and Japanese TV shows. Not many people know this and the people who do know this are either vaguely creeped out or think that I'm making it up.
I'm not very fussy about food but there are some things that I am unable to eat: I cannot eat peas in any form (just thinking about peas is making me feel ill right now), boiled carrots and cauliflower. I like meat, but I don't like eating meat or fish that looks like its original animal form.
I suspect that I might have done better growing up in the 70s.
I'm not really sure if I can live without my ipod or laptop. I know this is a contradiction of the above point, but I'd like to think that I'd have happily made it through with a gramophone and a typewriter if I had grown up in the 70s.
I'd like to think that I'm a good listener because people are always unburdening their troubles on me, and I don't mind hearing them out.
I don't like talking about myself. I never talk to people about the things that are really important to me. Its not because I'm modest or because I have something to hide, I'm just insanely private about my life, which is another reason why this meme is not being done on facebook but on my blog.
I am such a not-so-closeted-romantic. Its not like I believe in romance in real life as such, I just wholeheartedly enjoy it on television.
I am very confrontational when I'm annoyed with someone. I blame this on my family! We like to make scenes and argue in loud voices.
I'm an alone person. I need my space. I'm not sulking, I just like being alone.
I hate people touching my hair, ruffling it or playing with it. Its just something that irritates me to no end.
I've bullied one person in my entire life, and this was almost a decade ago. To be fair, the girl I was mean to was really terrible. Of course, that didn't give us the right to treat her like the way we did and I still get guilt pangs about this from time to time.
I had a really happy childhood. I was the only child and got practically everything I wanted, except that I was never a very demanding kid. I was a little bratty and extremely stubborn, but never in a spoilt, obnoxious manner. Whatever my shortfalls are, they are my own. I cannot blame my upbringing for any of them.
I love chocolate in all forms apart from ice-cream. I don't like chocolate ice-cream. I've always been more of a vanilla person.
I have an irrational, insane hate for Nicholas Cage.
I like being on time. I'm always 5 minutes early and people who are meeting me are always 10 minutes late. This is where having an ipod becomes a must!
I don't like dogs. Dogs don't like me either.
Reading fanfiction on the internet has been my dirty secret since I was 15.
I secretly love frilly dresses. I have no idea why. I've never owned or worn anything with frills, but I love them because they bring out my inner Scarlett O'Hara.
I am obsessive about this show. Go ahead, tease me, I don't really care!
I hate ellipses...no one uses them in the way they are meant to be used...if you get what I mean...
It is really easy to make me happy. You don't have to try too hard!
When I was thirteen or fourteen I decided that I wanted to be a philosopher. I liked the idea of sitting around and thinking all day long, while having other people write about my wonderfully insightful thoughts about the meaning of life. Unfortunately, this isn't as simple to do these days as it was during Socrates' times.

Praha

2009-02-09T19:38:00.016+01:00

I am suitably bored and unable to think of anything to write about so I'm doing the next best thing, putting up pictures! I had gone to Prague last year during Easter hols. The weather was terrible, it was full of tourists and Italians (because Italians really do deserve a separate category of their own) If you thought that Mozart was oversold in Salzburg, you must see how they treat poor Kafka in Prague! But regardless of all this, Prague has inevitable ended up becoming one of my favourite places in Europe. It is so beautiful in such a conventional European way, and looks like a picture postcard that my mediocre pictures don't do enough justice to.

PS: The last two pictures were taken from the camera on my phone, which explains their low resolution

PPS: We also passed through Liechtenstein on our way back. It is the most disappointing little country ever, but I've always wanted to have the satisfaction of telling people I've been to Liechtenstein, so there!

Cartoon Heroes

2009-01-27T11:25:00.007+01:00

I've always been addicted to cartoons. I used to watch Cartoon Network all the time. I know a lot of kids who find them inane (what is wrong with these children?). I also knew a lot of kids who weren't allowed to watch more than one show a day or had some sort of a television time limit. I'm really lucky that my parents didn't bother much about setting similar rules for me.

The only rule I actually remember having was bed time at 10 p.m. I used to like to read before bed, and never followed this arrangement, irritating my parents immensely. I remember crying so hard when my mum had threatened to lock up the book cupboard if I continued not following this rule. What kind of parents threaten their children with keys? They were evil, I tell you!

In any case, I kind of had a free reign over cartoons when I was young, which means I've watched everything there is to be watched, especially it was produced by Hanna Barbera. You name it, and I've probably seen it. It was a time where there was no Disney Channel, and all these creepy Disney child stars didn't exist. No, Hannah Montana, High School Musical, Camp Rock etc. It was all hand drawn old school animations. I really, really loved cartoons and there isn't any explicable reason for this because I find them silly when I watch them now.

There were these shows that everyone loved and I hated for absolutely no reason. Of course, it didn't stop me from watching them, but I remember them just irritating me immensely. I hated Popeye , Johnny Bravo, Pinky and the Brain, Dexter (I hated Dee Dee so insanely), Powerpuff Girls, Coyote and the Roadrunner, Johnny Quest. I also have insane amount of love for some other shows that other people didn't particularly care about like Captain Planet, Space Ghost, Josie and the Pussycats, The Fantastic Four, Top Cat, or The Jetsons, which is the most underrated show ever created. I love The Flintstones and everything, but The Jetsons is so much better and no one apart from me realizes this. There is even a special episode called The Flintstones Meet the Jetsons, which was aired every New Years' Eve and I've seen it at least five times. This channel had the most awesome shows ever, and I can't understand why kids would want to watch anything else.

It just annoys me to see my little cousins watching Disney channel all the time with its ridiculous shows. I knew I had reached the end of my patience with my 9 year old cousin when she started explaining her love for Zac Efron and the Jonas' Brothers to me. Its not normal for 9 year olds to have crushes on human beings. When I was 9, I wanted to marry Aladdin, which is a perfectly normal underage crush to have. I didn't actually want to marry Aladdin. I wanted to be Jasmine, so Aladdin could marry me. When I told this to my older teenage cousin, she looked at me aghast and told me, 'Do you realize that what she's wearing is not even a proper bra?' and I could never look at Jasmine the same again.

The only shows that I never had much of an opportunity to watch was animé because they didn't show animé in India when I was younger. I suppose this is a good thing because it looks really addictive and I get obsessive about things quite easily, but this does mean I have no idea what people are talking about when my friends have entertaining, meta discussions about Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Naruto etc.

I was just mentally going through the shows I used to watch as a kid and I have just realized that I watched a lot of television, which explains a lot really. This is also pretty weird because nobody in my house actually watches television. I still do watch a lot of television shows and have been forcing myself off them for the last couple of months because I have the tendency of getting obsessive about things and ignoring everything else that I have to do. I'm so glad Heroes has become crap because now I don't have to watch it any more, and that feels great. I'm just trying to stick to films but the awesomeness of The West Wing isn't really helping me keep this resolution.

NB: The title of the post is the name of an obscure song by Aqua. I must write a post about the joys of Europop one day. Its one of the most awesomely frightening music genre ever!

Because I Can

2009-01-20T22:10:00.002+01:00

Lost in Austen

2009-01-11T10:00:00.034+01:00

It irritates me to see people of romanticizing Jane Austen. She is one of the most over rated writers I've read. That said every teenage girl I know has gone through a Jane Austen phase. Every teenage girl I know has also fancied Mr. Darcy at some point of her life. I, like millions of others succumbed to temptation and went through this phase when I was fifteen. As far as phases go, it was a good phase, filled with sentimental romances and cheesy endings. However much I love Jane, I just don't think she merits the attention people give her (Watch Becoming Jane and The Jane Austen Book Club to know what I'm talking about)

Persuasion is my favourite Austen; I unashamedly love it so much that thinking about it gives me warm, fuzzy thoughts enough to make any male within two meters of my presence to make gagging noises. Most people I know prefer Pride and Prejudice, I do love P&P (who doesn't ?), but most of the time I felt like smacking Elizabeth Bennet hard all through the novel. She thinks herself to be the paragon for virtue and righteousness, and just irritates me for some reason. Of course, this hasn't stopped me from watching the entire BBC series (and flailing over Colin Firth; if there is anything better than Colin Firth, its a wet Colin Firth) or the 2005 Kiera Knightely film.

Lost in Austen, is a 2008 British four part mini-series. What is it with U.K and mini-series? They're all so underrated and really good! You know how there are some book are just ruined when they are adapted for television/films? This is valid the other way round as well. If Lost in Austen was a book, it would have been a ridiculously bad one, however it surprisingly makes a humorous and an almost endearing television show that I, being the hopeless romantic that I am, really enjoyed.

Which girl hasn't dreamt of meeting Mr. Darcy in real life? Which girl hasn't dreamed of attending balls and wearing ballroom gowns? Lost in Austen brings every girl's fantasy come to life by transporting Amanda Price, an avid Jane Austen fan, from modern day Hammersmith, London into the Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Lizzie Bennet from her world into our world through a mysterious portal in Amanda's bathroom. Amanda lands up in the Bennet household right at the time when Mr. Bingley first arrives in the neighbourhood (which is the start of the actual novel).

Poor Amanda tries her best to get everyone in this newly found universe to stick to canon (i.e. follow events according to how they went in the book), but she always ends up doing the wrong thing, which leads of events such as Mr. Bingley falling in love with Amanda instead of Jane, Jane marrying Mr. Collins, Charlotte Lucas going to Africa to be a missionary, herself falling in love with Mr. Darcy instead of managing to set him up with the absent Lizzie. She also realizes that the characters aren't as two-dimensional as Jane made them out to be in the book and have a minds of their own.

What I really liked about the show was that it didn't end up being a P&P adaptation with Amanda as another Elizabeth Bennet. There were pleasant twists and turns all the way through, and it was quite different from the actual book, which is something I didn't expect when I started watching it. I'm also glad that Amanda is not as annoying a character as I initially suspected of her of being. I cannot watch shows/films with irritating lead characters, its just something I am unable to do.

My favourite scene is when Darcy confesses his love for Amanda, instead of replying, asks him to go the lake fully clothed and says after looking at him, 'I'm having a bit of a strange post-modern moment over here.' and Mr. Darcy adorably asks, 'Is that agreeable?' and Amanda replies, 'Oh yes, very agreeable indeed' You can just see her mentally drooling. I'm not sure who the actor playing Mr. Darcy is, but he is really good looking when wet. I do have a thing for these wet types, don't I?

The best thing about this story is that Elizabeth Bennet is missing from the scene for almost the entire time, until the final episode. I don't know if anyone noticed, but she is played by the a very pretty, Gemma Arterton. P&P without Lizzie Bennet has always been my dream, so I suppose I enjoyed the show more than most people would have. For something that had a potential of being redundant and simply awful I thought Lost in Austen was quite well done. It doesn't try to be serious, and is a good if you want to stay in for the evening and watch something lighthearted and funny.

A Room With a View

2009-01-06T10:29:00.006+01:00

Last night when I went to bed it was cloudy and cold, and this is what I woke up to this morning! Its not snowed in Milan in four years and all I want to do is go out for a walk but I have two exams in three days and must absolutely force myself to study.

Of Handwriting and Fonts

2009-01-04T11:59:00.013+01:00

It has just recently been pointed out to me by someone that my handwriting is cursive. I never realized that this was a big deal as such, but apparently no one writes in cursive any more and it is barely taught in schools. I also never realized that my handwriting was outdated, but now that I think about it, no one I know writes in cursive. But that is how I was taught to write when I was in kindergarten and that is how I've ended up writing all my life. Most of my friends print their letters, i.e when they write words, all their letters are separated. Printing looks much neater and is so much more easy to decipher unlike my cursive scrawl.

My handwriting is not what anyone would call neat. I can be neat if I want, but most of the times I'm quite messy, especially if I'm writing fast. A lot of people always tell me that my handwriting looks very childish because most of my letters are connected and my 'k', 'g', 'f', 'l', 'j', 'y' and 'z' are all loopy. The only letters I print are 'e', 'z', 'b' and very occasionally 's', and I only started doing this a couple of years ago because I was accused of having a handwriting that could rival that of a five year old child. Most of my capital letters are block letters apart from my 'L' and 'S' that are again cursive. In fact, the cursive capital letter 'L' is my favourite letter ever and I love writing it. I've always had a thing for loops, what can I say?

I'm so jealous of people who have good handwriting. I have a friend whose writing is like typeface. It is really incredible to look at. I used to sit next to her in almost all of my classes in high school, which gave me a big complex about the condition of my notes. It made me consciously put in some effort to make my scribbles look presentable. This is why my lecture notes even now are neat and tidy. This particular friend also introduced me to the wonderful world of colour coding, sparkly pens and highlighters. I always knew that there was a reason why I love her so much.

Since my handwriting isn't half as legible as I'd like it to be, most of my assignments are typed up and I'm very anal about the fonts I use. I like to do all my assignments in Times New Roman because nothing says 'formal' like the use of serif fonts, doesn't it? Plus, I'm such a traditionalist that I can't help but love it. Keeping my love for Times New Roman aside, no other font will ever be able to live up to my affection for sans-serif fonts like Arial and Trebuchet MS (my blog's typeface is Trebuchet, by the way).

I sound quite obsessive about fonts, don't I? At least, I don't go around claiming that my favourite font is Comic Sans because I know people who do this and use it to do their projects and essays (I don't want to get started on my Comic Sans hate because I can do posts filled with rants about how much I dislike Comic Sans).

Happy New Year

2008-12-30T16:38:00.019+01:00

NB: This is one of the trams in Milan that has been decorated with lights. Its really fabulous to see it passing by at night!

It is the dawn of another year, and every year during this time, I go into a sort of panic. This is just partly because I'm getting older, but mainly because of the fact that I feel the need to press a rewind button in my head and go through the things or the lack of things I've done this year. It always makes me feel utterly unaccomplished and useless.

However, that said, I do feel as if I've come somewhere this year. Of course, I could have done so much more, but its these little things that count in the long run, right? I worked in an actual office for the first time in my life, and survived without being a complete klutz. I don't get cramps of crippling panic in my stomach when I have to phone unknown people to ask for information any more, I can successfully deal with meeting new people without making a complete fool of myself, I am not as bad with directions and navigation as I suspected myself to be, I don't mind asking people for help when I have completely and utterly lost my way (pride be damned). I can also navigate through almost any given public transport system in the world (because once you've managed to do it in Bombay, how hard can anywhere else be?). Oh, I am also super competent at filing documents, sending faxes and making databases of addresses and phone numbers of random companies on excel.

It just took just three months of office work for me to learn such important life lessons. If I ever manage to get a full time job, I just might write a book entitled 'Pearls of Office Wisdom - 101 ways to make your work life bearable and almost pleasant'.

Resolutions? I have a lots and lots of resolutions starting from: consume less chocolate, sleep for shorter hours, eat healthier food, less procrastination, more hard work, and ending with: more studying, watching less TV shows, reading more real books, learning to cook, learning to drive, being less grumpy, winning a Nobel Prize and solving the problems in the Middle East. I think it makes more sense to have a list of 'feasible' resolutions and 'infeasible' resolutions. But when I tried to do this I came to a very unpleasant conclusion, wherein I realized that most of my resolutions fell in the 'infeasible' category. So I think that it would be better if I just steered clear of resolutions this year.

So overall, I think its been a good year for me, in any case. I'm not sure what the coming year is going to bring, but I'll deal with it when it comes. When you become twenty one, you expect the universe to suddenly show you your place in the big scheme of things. Its very disappointing to note that this does not actually happen, so the only thing us lowly mortals can do is to go on living our lives and realize that its all going to fall into place eventually.

I wish everyone a super year ahead! Don't take my advice and go ahead make some resolutions :)

It's the Season to be Jolly

2008-12-27T16:44:00.004+01:00

For the last few weeks, I haven't had a proper internet connection because we had to move our internet and telephone line from the old apartment to the new flat. So most of my days were spent hovering around the house with my laptop trying to find other people’s unsecured internet connections. Let me use some more space to complain about how horrid and selfish this world is. Is it actually necessary to secure your internet line? What is wrong with sharing it with lesser human beings who have internet problems, I ask you? There is one spot in my old flat that has almost fifteen different internet connections, where not even one is unsecured. Its just not fair, I tell you! People should be kinder to people in need, especially if I am the one who is in need.

Well, all this does not matter any more because I can now officially use my own internet connection in the new house without resorting to underhand internet stealing tactics. Now that we have finished moving to the new flat, I have to admit that it is beginning to grow on me. We have something that I like to call ‘the most comfortable couch in the world’. Once I sit on it, I am unable to get up from it. Its really not healthy for such comfortable furniture to be created. Its one of those low rise, new age, sofa/beds that is ridiculously comfy to sit on or sprawl over with a laptop or a book. Also, since its a relatively small apartment, the central heating actually makes the house into a tiny oven. The other day, I was happily moving around in a tank top and shorts when it was about 2°C outside.

I’m not actually sure how I’m going to manage to get any study/work done in such a comfortable environment. Of course, there are certain drawbacks I have to live with, like the fact that putting my mum and me in such close confines is a really bad idea. Luckily my dad’s here for the holidays, so its been quite nice lately. Pan’s dad hasn’t made much of an appearance on this blog, has he? Well, I should really devote a post on him one day because he is a super dad who puts up with all my childish nonsense and spoils me rotten, so I don’t have too much to complain about him (most of the times).

Milan is really beautiful for Christmas this year. I think the financial crisis has hit Italy pretty hard, and the city has taken extra efforts to make itself seem festive. The lighting and the decorations have outdone themselves, and I really ought to go out and take pictures to post them up, but I’m such a lazy, lazy human being that this is probably never going to happen.

I don’t have any elaborate plans for New Years’ Eve, but most people know what a grandma I am when it comes to parties. However, its nice to have some sort of plans once even a while, even if it just involves a dinner with school friends at someone’s house, getting drunk on champagne, inane gossiping about people we went to high school with, making home videos that no once actually remembers being on the next day, and then crawling off to sleep only to wake up with a headache the next morning. Its actually more fun than it sounds and I get to catch up with friends that I barely see once a year.

What the Dickens?

2008-12-15T08:24:00.011+01:00

I am of the view that every person must try and read at least one obscenely large novel a year. You get bonus points if its Victorian and/or written in particularly difficult language with a lot descriptive paragraphs and long sentences that don't make sense the first time you read them. Its a good character building exercise, and gives you an immense amount of self satisfaction when you are done.

I've had some sort of an unhealthy obsession for Victorian and Edwardian literature since I was twelve. I think it started when I watched a heavily edited, cartoon version of Oliver Twist. I loved it so much that I had to read the novel. I remember it being really hard; I took such a long time to finish it and understand what was actually happening. I was scarred for life by how the real book was so different from the cartoon. Some years ago, I went through a huge Dickens phase in my life where I ended up reading Our Mutual Friend, David Copperfield and Great Expectations in a row. It was a year where I had decided that only Victorian novelists were worth reading in this world. I always go through these insane phases. There was one year I read only dystopian fiction, another where the only thing I was reading was Gothic literature.

Most of these Victorian novels look like blocks of bricks rather than books. I think Our Mutual Friend is one of Dickens' longest novels (and my favourite, along with A Christmas Carol - because we all know what a sucker Pan is for Christmas stories). I had had such an overdose of Victorian literature that year that I completely gave up on it for the last two/three years. Last month, on an impulse, I started reading Bleak House. It was lying abandoned in my bookshelf for the last couple of years. Even though I was burdened with work, I started reading it on a passing whim, and it made me recall all the reasons why I fell in love with Dickens in the first place.

I revel in other peoples' misery in books, but I do love a happy ending. Also, I have a fetish for books with long and complicated plots, pitiful damsels in distress, a flawed hero with good intentions who ultimately saves the day, life threatening diseases, grotesque, over-the-top villains, and Victorian London. I do realize that this sounds like the makings of a cheap, Victorian romance, but if written well, it has the potential of becoming into a David Copperfield or a Dracula.

Of course, there are a lot of things about Dickens that I don't like, especially his penchant for oppressed, beautiful female characters and miserable, ill treated orphans who more often than not end up dead. Of course, occasionally we do come across women like Estella Havisham, (who Pip so does not deserve) but even Estella is reduced to a pitiful state by the end of the book. However, I do realize that not everyone can be as cool as Becky Sharp, and I can live with that. Dickens also has a very annoying habit of rambling and being wordy about unimportant, minor characters, but I have yet to read a novelist who can tie up a plot as neatly as him. Plus, all Dickens novels have amazing illustrations, and he has a wicked sense of humour.

Bleak House is more than 950 pages long. I'm on my last 100 pages, and I almost don't want it to get over because I've become quite attached to it. I love lugging it around the house, trying to find a comfortable, lighted spot where I can sit on the floor next to the heater and read it (on the floor because presently, we don't have any furniture in our house) I don't like reading in bed because I invariably end up falling asleep, not because the book is soporific, but because my bed is so warm and comfortable that I can't help dozing off. I know some people who actually study in bed. How they manage this feat is something quite beyond me.

Moving Woes

2008-12-10T18:08:00.009+01:00

Everyone knows how much I whine, but moving house is really something worth whining about. If it wasn't a painful process already, my family, as usual, has complicated things even further.

The problem is simple enough: we (my mum and I) are moving across the street to a new flat, but my father has to move to another country for reasons regarding his job. Well, my dad actually already moved two months ago. Thus, our current household has been split up into three parts - one part that went with my dad, another part that has gone to the new flat, and the third part, which is currently in this house has but has to eventually move with us to the new flat. Also, our new apartment is quite small, so most of the stuff has actually ended up going with my father, including but not limited to MY BOOKS.

If this was not complicated enough already, this division of stuff has taken place in three different time frames. The stuff that had to go with my father went about two months ago. The things that had to go to the new flat went two weeks ago, which leaves my mum and me currently living in an almost empty household until the end of this month.

My bedroom has no study table, but a bright lamp; my living room has a table, but no lamp. My mother keeps telling me how my grandfather used to study under candle light for his exams when he was my age, and that I should try doing the same. We don't even have a fridge in this house, which has led to my mother keeping milk and other things outside on the window edge. I don't know what everyone in our apartment block thinks about us, but as my mum cleverly pointed out, we are leaving the apartment by January, so we don't have to face these people again.

Why are we not living in the new flat and why have the movers already shifted our stuff to the new apartment when we are not actually living there yet, you might ask. This is because even though Italy pretends to be an OECD nation, it is secretly worse than a number of developing countries. The company that does the transfer does not have enough people working in December, so they had to move our stuff in the last week of November. However, we can't move into the new flat because the people who are supposed to fit the sink, the bath tub and kitchen appliances are unable to do so until the last week of December.

My stuff is sprawled around three houses and two continents, and I have no idea where anything is anymore. I sent more than 90% of my books and DVDs with my dad, yet I find myself with two huge cartons filled with books and another two filled with university textbooks with absolutely no space to keep them anywhere. My mother is understandably livid. I keep finding things that I had tucked away years ago randomly turning up, and am unable to find things that I was using less than a week ago. I never even realized that I owned so many things, and I haven't even started sorting out my clothes yet.

In other news, I have an important presentation and an exam on the SAME day next week. Additionally, I also have exams all through January and partly through February; you know those life changing, final year, end of semester university exams that your future depends on? Yes, those kind! I also have to give the GRE in March, and have a lot more things in between that I'm avoiding thinking about right now.

My mum and dad are behaving like lovesick teenagers, and it has stopped being cute after the first week. I wake up to my mum talking to my dad, and go to bed while listening to my mum talking to my dad. They have such scintillating discussions on topics ranging from the freshness of fruit sold in supermarkets in the respective nations of their abode to curtain measurements for the new flat. Its so domestic, and would have been adorable if I didn't have to live with it all the time and listen to how country X has fresher and more variety of apples than country Y.

Its snowing today, and this has cheered me up! Milan is such an odd city. We haven't got any snow for the last four years, and then suddenly it snows twice in less than a month. Of course, its not real snow; its more of a sludgy, makes-you-slip-while-walking kind of snow, but I'm not complaining. Plus, I'm at home right now drinking tea and listening to Christmas music on my itunes, that I have way too much of on my hard drive. Its hard to be grumpy when you have Frosty, the Snowman playing loudly in the background.

And it continues...

2008-12-01T09:17:00.012+01:00

Once the drama is over, we have to face the backlash, namely in the form of politicians. Maybe I'm too cynical for my own good or maybe I've just learnt from the bad experiences I've had from the governments in my own country, but I don't have any faith in politicians. When you see the so called leaders of your country making statements like, "minor incidents do happen in big cities" you need to take a step back and think about what has gone wrong. This morning, I just found out that the Chief Minister of Maharashtra went to survey the damage done inside the Taj with his son, who is a Bollywood actor and a film director (who specializes in making crime movies). Ram Gopal Varma claims that they just happened to be there, and it was not a planned visit, as if I or the rest of the country are going to believe this pitiful excuse.

I know that these people have resigned, but that isn't going to help, is it? Its not like we have anyone else who can do the job better. I don't see how the Congress is going to be re-elected into Maharashtra or India this way. So who are we left with? The Shiv Sena? Yes, all we need in this mess is a neo-radical, racist, militant (and I'm running out of adjectives to describe them) organization to lead us. Why don't we start going around, and burning the city down ourselves instead of waiting for them to do it for us? We just don't have anyone we can depend on, which is weird because you would think there would be a lot of people in the nation to choose from.

The problem in India (and well, the rest of the world) is that we seem to be unable to produce able politicians. Its not that we are lacking intelligent people. I mean, there are one billion of us out there, so by just taking probability into account we have ended up with a lot of smart, capable people. The problem is none of these intelligent, capable people want to deal with politics, and a part of me doesn't even blame them for this. So all we are left with are the likes of Narendra Modi and L.K Advani, and even someone with my limited knowledge and feigned indifference to politics can see this is never going to take us towards development.

Mind you, I'm not one of those people who likes to sit at home and complain about how they don't support either side and are not going to vote. I dislike the people that refrain from voting because even if you don't support either side, you need to make a some sort of a decision. Sitting at home, complaining and writing angy blog posts about how you hate everyone is not going solve anything. Either you vote for someone else or you take charge yourself, stand for elections and do things the right way, which is something no one is willing to do. Voting is a right, no its a privilege given to you in a democracy, and its your duty as a citizen of your country to exercise it.

If all this wasn't bad enough, we just like to pull out our trump card in situations like these and blame Pakistan. Lets just ignore the fact that you are unable to pay attention to all the warnings that you've received about some sort of an attack that was going to take place, unable to control and guard the borders of your own country, and blame another country who is in a pretty shit shape by themselves and really doesn't need you to bring them down any further. I'm not saying that Pakistan is or is not responsible for what has happened, I think that we should first sort out our deficiencies before putting all the blame on someone else. Pak bashing is and will always used to appease the nation when its angry, but this should really stop because its not a solution to our problems.

All I want is someone to tell me that they have messed up and that they are going to try their best in the future to make sure this is not going to happen again. Why is this so hard to do?

What are they doing to my city?

2008-11-28T18:08:00.007+01:00

I've spent the last hour going through pictures, and I just can't seem to understand what is happening to the city I know and love so much. I have never seen Bombay like this, and its been really hard for me to see it in this state.

My uncle and aunt live on this street and I spent three months here this summer, its unbelievable seeing it this way.

While I am unable to handle what is happening, people around me are happily ignorant. Yesterday, not a single person at uni asked me how I felt about the fact that terrorists had taken over my city. Its not like my friends don't care; all of them are happily living in their own little bubble, with their own lives and problems. People just do not care about what is happening in the world, and I hate this indifference more than anything else.

.

2008-11-27T08:28:00.010+01:00

Just less than two months ago, I was sitting in the Oberoi lobby for more than an hour, getting bored out of my mind, while waiting for my work delegation to arrive. I saw a video last night, where the entire lobby that overlooks the sea is blasted apart, and I just keep thinking about how I was sitting in that exact place such a short while ago.

We used to go to Leopolds' so often while I was there. In fact, on my last day at work, we went there for dinner, and I know how crowded it is in the evenings. My mind is unable to even imagine how this can happen in a restaurant that I've been so many times to.

I watched The Dark Knight in the Metro cinema, and complained about the quality of their popcorn. This is where three high profile police officers were killed in cold blood, I used to pass this place every day while going to work.

My grandma took a train from CST a couple of hours before the shootings occurred. She didn't realize what was happening until she got home and saw the news.

The Taj Mahal hotel is one of my favourite buildings in the city. Its so beautiful, archaic, built in the wrong direction and sticks out like a sore thumb in its surroundings; I just can't imagine Bombay without it.

My aunt and her family could hear gun shots all night long. They live less than 500 meters from all these places. They also live right next to the Colaba Fire Brigade, and can still hear the trucks and sirens passing by.

The point is that this is not something happening in a random city somewhere in the world. Its happening in my home, around the area where I was living less than two months ago, in the places that I used to walk past every day. I keep seeing footage showing the streets around where I was living, and I'm in a state of disbelief. Those streets are so familiar to me, and I can't seem to accept all what is happening. Bombay is just such an amazing city, the people there work very hard to live and survive, and the last thing we need is something like this.

I have an important homework due in this afternoon, and I am unable to concentrate. Last night, I was watching the news and trying to solve finance equations at the same time. It seems so shallow to be doing homework when something like this is happening, but what can I do?

5 Centimeters Per Second

2008-11-21T11:10:00.011+01:00

I'm not much of an anime fan. I know that if I tried, I'd probably really love it and be one of those crazy, otakus. However, anime is such a big, big genre that I'd be so lost if I tried getting into it, and twenty one is really too old an old age to start obsessing about cartoons, isn't it? There are some things in this world that are just too vast and scary for me to venture into, even though I know that if I probably tried I'd love them like manga, graphic novels, Discworld, anime and the list is quite long.

That said, the only anime films I have seen are by Hayao Miyazaki, who also happens to be my favourite Japanese man in the word, and no, not even Kimura Takuya's adorable smile can take my love for Hayao away. I have seen almost all of Miyazaki's films; Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivary Service, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso, and My Neighbour Totoro. In fact, the only non Miyazaki anime film that I ever watched is the one that I'm going to write about below. I don't even know how I stumbled across it and ended up watching the trailer. I think it was the music and the amazing animation that made me want to watch the film.

The trailer doesn't do much justice to the animation, but if you watch it in higher definition, the artwork just fabulous. I have never seen such beautiful animation before, and it just pulls you into the movie. The movie itself, I have to say that I would have probably loved it if I was fifteen and sentimental, but watching it now just made me feel a little sad. The film is divided into three subsections of 22 minute each and is relatively short.

The first section starts when the narrator, Takaki is a child in middle school, where he befriends the new girl in school, Akari and they become very close. I'd have liked to say that they fall in love, but I know how silly that sounds because they are twelve. The whole section is narrated in a series of letters between the two children, and we find out that Akari has now moved to another city with her family. We also find out that the Takaki's family is also soon going to be moving far away to a small town in the country. However, before he has to leave, he decides to go and meet Akari once more.

There is this lovely sequence detailing his journey about how terrified and anxious he is, how the train is very late, and every moment passing is only increasing is anxiety about the fact that she is not going to come to meet him. When he finally reaches his destination, the station is deserted, but she is there waiting for him. They spend the night sitting up and talking in a barn and he leaves the next morning. Before he leaves they share an innocent kiss, but what could be an potential 'awww' worthy moment is really a sad one because it is at that time Takaki realizes that their relationship is never going to work out. Instead of being happy, the only thing Takaki can feel is sadness and grief because he knows that nothing in his future is ever going to measure up to the happiness felt when he was with Akari that night.

We then move on to the second section of the film, which can actually be seen as independent from the first and third part. Most people thought that it wasn't very relevant to the film, but I think I disagree. This is told from the point of view of Kanae, a girl in Takaki's new school. Several years have passed by, and Takaki is now a popular teenager in high school. Kanae has been in love with Takaki for a very long time, and everyone else apart from Takaki knows this.

However hard Kanae tries to get Takaki to notice her, he just doesn't seem to pay any attention to her or anyone else around him because he is so involved in his own thoughts. There is this poignant scene where Kanae finally realizes that no matter what she does Takaki is never going to notice her because he is searching for something that she will never be able to give him. Takaki lives in a world that she is never going to be a part of, and she has to learn to move on with her life.

This is when we go on to the third and final section. This section has almost no dialogue, but we find out that Takaki is now an adult working as computer programmer. He is still unable to open up emotionally to anyone, even his girlfriend, who breaks up with him. He inadvertently seems to be searching for Akari whenever he sees crowds. We also see Akari who is now engaged to another man. It is clear that over the years, Takaki and Akari have lost contact with one another. Yet, we see that they are both thinking and pining for that moment of happiness they shared as children. However, the only difference is that Akari seems to have accepted this and has moved on with her life, when Takaki is clearly unable to.

Takaki finally realizes that his youth is almost over, and that he has to let go of his longing and nostalgia for his childhood days with Akari, but whether he is able to do this or not, we never know because the film ends. The music used in the last section is amazing, and I love the song that plays in the final scene of the movie.

As I said, if I was fifteen, I would have probably loved the film because there is nothing I understand better than teen angst. I would have probably written long posts about how Takaki and Akari were soul mates and meant to be together, but seeing it now just made me want to slap some sense into Takaki. A part of me can understand his feelings for Akari, but there is a bigger part in me wanting to bang his head against something hard and make him realize all the things he has lost or never even noticed, like Kanae, because of how self involved he is. The only reason why Takaki is unhappy is because he has made himself unhappy and not because of the fact that Akari is not in his life.

NB: Ok, this post has become way longer than what it should be because I have a tendency to ramble, but today is Friday, my week-from-hell is almost over and I'm cheerful enough to talk about things of no consequence.

The joys of being a student

2008-11-12T22:17:00.015+01:00

After three years at university, I've become quite used to being burdened with work, so its not that much of a big deal. But I don't think I have ever had so many things to do in such a short period of time. I have so much to do that when I start thinking about it, I end up feeling a bit ill in my stomach. As most of you already know how fond I am lists, I thought that I might as well make one in order to make myself feel worse than I already do for wasting so much time.

The things that need to be urgently done are:

A homework in corporate finance which is due on this Friday (yes, I am well aware that this happens to be in less than 48 hours). This is supposed to be time consuming and involves me reading and understanding three chapters worth of something that I have no clue about.
A super important, twenty page, group report that is due next Friday. Currently this is consuming 50% of my time because of my anal group. I mean, its pretty hard to find people that are more anal than I am in this world, and I had to end up in the same group as ALL of them!
Another super important, time consuming, group project in corporate finance that is also due in on next Friday, based on those three chapters that I have yet to read and/or understand. This was given to us yesterday and one of the guys my group has already contacted me telling me that he's dropping out and another girl has written me an email telling me that she has no time to come for our project meeting on Friday and will do whatever she can to help us on it from home.
A detailed project plan which is due on the exact same Friday as point number 2 and 3 for another course that I'm studying. We have no idea what we are going to do our project on and have no time to think about it, so we're going to leave this until the last moment until we freak out about it and work under pressure.
A midterm on a course that I have yet to open my text book for on the 20th of November, which is a date much nearer than I would like it to be.
Catching up with my French homework and the more than dozen French lectures that I have missed while doing other things (namely having group meetings for our project where we spent time arguing on whether our project should be in British English or American English)
If all this was not enough, we are moving house sometime in December, so I have to start sorting my seven years worth of accumulated stuff as soon as possible. I foresee a lot of arguments with my mother in the near future.
I also have to go to a birthday party of a person I couldn't care less about on Friday. This means that I have to find time somewhere in the next 48 hours to go buy a present.
My mother is coming home on Sunday after being away from the house for almost a month. So, I have to do some crazy house-cleaning on Saturday because right now, everything is a mess and my mum would probably have a heart attack if she saw the house in its current condition.
The fridge currently has one squishy tomato and three carrots. I have to go to the supermarket as urgently as possible, but I've been going to university at 8 in the morning and coming back home well after 7 at night for the last three days. I'm so glad my mother is coming back!

I am seriously not sure how I am going to survive this month. If all this wasn't bad enough, the weather has been terrible lately. I have forgotten what the sun looks like because we haven't actually seen the sun from this city for the past month. All I want to do is read my book in bed and marathon The West Wing, which is my new favourite TV show. Ok, now that I'm done whining and feeling sorry for myself, I feel a little better. I should do angy ranting more often, shouldn't I?

Yes We Can!

2008-11-06T23:58:00.011+01:00

I admit it, I sniveled a bit when I heard him talk. It was one of the most touching speeches that I have ever listened to. After staying up for most of the night nervously watching BBC, I actually thought I was hallucinating when they finally announced the results.

And as a side note, I have to say that BBC has come to be my favourite news channel. The night had some truly memorable moments.

To Autumn

2008-11-03T22:05:00.014+01:00

I know I'm no Keats, and so my poetry writing skills might fall short while describing my love for this season. However, I absolutely love autumn, and it is definitely my favourite season. Growing up in Bombay didn't give me much of an opportunity to experience the phenomenon of seasons (unless you count four months of torrential rainfall as a season), which is why I think I enjoy them more than most people.

The other day when I was going to lectures in the morning, it was a beautiful sunny day, the temperature was about 15°C and the sky was bright blue with not a single cloud in the vicinity. I love it when the weather is like this. I would happily be able to live in this climate all year around. Its warm enough to wear a short or a long sleeved tshirt when you're indoors, but you need a jacket and a scarf to go outside; its too cold for sandals, but you can wear open shoes/pumps without any problems; its too cold to feel sweaty and stuffy, but not too cold for ice cream.

Autumn in Milan is beautiful, especially when the day is sunny. The trees are all red and orange, there are leaves everywhere, vendors have started selling roasted chestnuts, you can see the old trams moving busily along their tracks, people seem to be going about doing their work, the shops are changing window decorations to autumn clothes, schools and universities have just started, and people are out on the street in the evening catching up with their friends after having been away for the summer. All the summer heat and irritation seem to have faded away, and the weather is pleasant enough for you to enjoy without freezing to death.

Spring is lovely, but you always seem to expect more from it. Each day in spring brings you closer to summer, closer to freedom, closer to holidays, and happiness. Its not a season that you can sit back and enjoy, but a season where you are busy with exams and deadlines. I barely even notice spring passing by. Winter; lets face it, winter sucks! I wouldn't mind the cold because I like cold weather, but its the darkness that just depresses me. I can never get used to the fact that the sun in winter sets at 4 in the afternoon. By the time I get out of my lectures at 6, its pitch dark and the town seems empty and quiet. Summer, what can I say about summer? It is never long enough! It passes by too quickly for you to even remember where the days have gone, and before you know it, its autumn already.

NB: I wrote this post a couple of days ago, and its been raining continuously ever since; the sky is cloudy and dark, and there is no sign of any sunlight. It has also become much colder. I think my post has totally jinxed the weather. I've been listening to Edith Piaf all day in my dark house; all I need is some coffee and cigarettes, and I could pretend to be an artsy brooder contemplating the deeper meaning of life and relationships.

Son of Rambow

2008-10-30T23:31:00.013+01:00

I have to admit that I teared up a bit while I was watching this film. Ok, it doesn't take much for me to cry while watching movies because I tend to get overly emotional. I mean, I cried while watching You've Got Mail (even though I am never going to admit this in real life, and before anyone gets all judgemental on me, I'd like to point out that I was thirteen when I saw it), so I get sensitive quite easily during films.

However, I was quite impressed with Son of Rambow. I saw some adverts promoting the film when I was in London last year on the public transport and mentally laughed about the title thinking it was some sort of a B-movie, you know like The Loin King, Romancing the Bone, Forest Hump, Saving Ryan's Privates, etc. A couple of months ago, I read a review and found out that it was actually an independent film that premiered last year at the Sundance Film Festival. I have always had a certain love for indie movies even though I pretend not to care much about them because I don't want people to think I'm a hipster.

Son of Rambow is is not a life changing movie, and nor does it pretend to be. It is a coming-of-age film about two boys coming from different backgrounds growing up in 1980's England trying to enter a film competition by making a sequel to Rambo. Its got all the elements an indie movie needs - a good soundtrack consisting of unknown bands, quirky characters, bizarre minor characters, a deep and meaningful message at the end of it shown by a minor incident that occurs during the film, and a feel-good finale.

What starts as a small movie project between two friends slowly envelopes the whole school because of a certain French exchange student and ends up straining their friendship. What I loved about the film was the changing dynamics between the central characters, where the shy kid (Will) suddenly becomes cool throughout the school and the aggressive bully (Lee Carter) is the one who wants their film to stay between the two of them. The film has some really lovely poignant moments particularly in the scene where Will's mother tells her bossy, overbearing priest to literally fuck off or the scene when Will and Lee Carter decide to become blood brothers for life, and the scene when Lee tells Will why he always puts up with his older brother's bullying and defends him. There are some great scenes that show Will's imagination running wild. It kind of reminded me of the time when I was a kid and my imagination used to flit from one thing to another before I could even realize where my mind was going.

The in-between filming scenes of the documentary are most amusing especially the ones after Didier (the French exchange student) and his troop join in. The final product is utterly hilarious, and I love the bit when Lee's brother leaves him a serious and deep message while playing the Scarecrow in the final scene. In short, this is a cute movie that you should watch when you're in your house, on a rainy day, wanting to watch a light movie without any deep subtext, and can't think of anything else.

PS: One of the boys in the film is going to play my favourite character, Eustace Clarance Scrubb in the next Narnia movie, and I can't wait for it to come out!

PPS: An additional reason to watch this film is because its got Chuck Bass, playing Lee's older brother (with an adorable British accent that takes time getting used to even though that is Ed Westwick's actual accent), and anything that has Chuck's approval is definitely worth watching.

9 to 5

2008-10-22T18:48:00.005+02:00

I always though that I wasn't cut out for nine to five jobs, but working for three months in an office has made me realize that I don't mind them all that much. Ok, there is the whole 'Oh god, I hate this mindless drudgery' factor, but how many people can boast of earning money while doing something they genuinely like?

To tell you the truth, its not like I earned any money while I was working, since it was an unpaid internship. All I got was university credits and an experience to last me a lifetime, as the internship guide said. The problem with working in an office that is not paying you is that they don't care much about what you're doing, which is not always a bad thing because it gives you a lot of time to do other things that you've always meant to do but never got around doing (i.e blogging, catching up with tabloids, looking at universities, wasting time on wikipedia etc.)

Being the lowly intern that I was, I arrived at office in the morning at 8.45 a.m and was given some menial tasks for the day. I browsed the internet, did the crossword and/or sudoku, worked for a bit, had lunch, chatted with my colleagues, made a few calls for work, updated and charged my ipod, worked a bit more and then got ready to leave by 5.30 p.m. That sounds like a nice day, doesn't it? I don't know why people complain about their jobs so much. This lifestyle suited my lazy self muchly. Most of the day was spent hanging around and waiting for my boss to come to office, which was mildly irritating in the beginning, but I got used to it soon enough.

It wasn't a bad life, but it wasn't a particularly stimulating one either. The week used to pass so quickly that I didn't even have time to think where time was passing, and by the time I realized I was tired, it was already the weekend. If I had a choice I'd probably not get out of bed for two days straight, but my friends wouldn't hear it otherwise, and I used to occasionally be dragged out in the evenings by either my school friends or work colleagues. Before I had time to even think about what was happening, three whole months were already over!

I had a good time at work, but this could be because I wasn't burdened with work to do or because my colleagues were really fun or maybe because it was the first time I was working, so I was over-enthusiastic. Sometimes, when I am drudging through exams and finance calculations, I happily think back about the time where my day used to consist solely of writing emails, making phone calls sending out faxes, and then a nine to five job doesn't seem all that bad!

On the most underrated city ever

2008-10-14T23:33:00.013+02:00

The minute I stepped into this city, I knew I was in love. Maybe it was because I hadn't slept in over forty eight hours, or had just come from one of the hottest cities in Spain where the temperatures were 40°C into a suitable, temperate climate, or because of the fact that we were booked in a hotel for once, instead of shared dorms where I had been living for the previous fortnight, or it could have just been because the town was just so overwhelmingly picturesque; I knew that I was going to love it before I had even seen it properly.

I haven't travelled half as much as I would want to, but I've been around Western Europe a bit, and in spite of all my travelling, Porto caught me completely unaware. Portugal is a beautiful country; it has everything from good looking men to delicious food and fabulous buildings, and I expected it to be nice before I went there. But I had spent the previous week in Barcelona and Madrid, and its pretty hard to be impressed with anything after visiting these two places. I never thought that Porto would actually be comparable to anything we had seen in Spain.

I was very pleased to be proven wrong, because Porto was just beautiful. Its too small a place to be even labelled as a city, but too big to be called a town. Its one of those places that sits right in between a city and a town, where you can enjoy the pleasures of a big city, while having the calm, lazy atmosphere of a small town. It is a sort of place where you don't even need a map for navigation because all roads take you from the main square to the riverbank and vice versa.

The first thing that struck me about this city was that it was just so colourful. I've never seen a town more colourful that Porto, and I live in Italy, so I know about colour! Sometimes, I think that European cities look more vivid to the eye when you look at black and white photographs because they are so ancient, monochrome and made of stone, but in Porto, it is the colour that makes this city come to life.

The city is positioned on a hill, so you need to walk uphill quite often, which is very tiring, but you get used to that after a few hours, and the view from the top is worth the climb. I have never seen a city with more churches than I saw here. From any given place, you can probably count at least five to ten church roofs, and the churches are architecturally very different from anything you find in Italy or Spain. I must say that even though the churches seem quite bare after the extravagance you see in Italy, they have their own charm. I also fell in love with the blue and white tiles that are used everywhere, from residential buildings and random walls to church façades.

Everything in this place gives you feeling of being ancient. It is as if someone has built it a long time ago, and completely forgotten about the town they built, and it was not unusual to find abandoned or burnt down buildings while walking around. I just adored the buildings all around the city and went crazy talking pictures of random houses. They were so charming; I know it sounds very grandmotherly to use the word 'charming' to describe something, but I can't think of a more fitting adjective to describe these buildings.

If all this was not enough, the excellent wine and delicious food in Porto is should be able to convince anyone who still has any lingering doubts about how amazing this city is. The photo above doesn't do enough justice to the francesinha, which tastes just as good as it looks. Porto is also one of the cheapest European city I have been to. Everything there is about 10% cheaper than the rest of Europe. After Madrid and Milan, it really felt as if we had struck gold.

Another reason why I am never going to forget Porto is because it has the most adorable bookshop in the world. After Paris, I never though I would fall in love with another bookshop again, until I stumbled onto this one . We just landed there by chance while randomly strolling around. They should really make it illegal to have such overwhelmingly pretty bookshops because people are unable to concentrate on the books the shop actually sells.

Porto is definitely one of the most underrated European cities, and worth visiting by anyone who is thinking of travelling around Europe.

Parlez-vous français?

2008-10-04T17:17:00.003+02:00

As a part of my university requirements, I have to study an additional language this year. When I say additional, I mean that this will be the second foreign language that I would have studied in the course of my three years at uni. My university well lives up to its Eurocentric reputation and only offers courses only in European languages. Hence, I had a choice between Italian, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese. Unfortunately, I couldn't choose Italian as my second foreign language because I had already studied it as my first foreign language, which is why I was forced to choose something else from the above list.

Six years ago when I was still a young fledgling, I had to study French in my old school in Bombay, which basically involved the school giving us lists of vocabulary and grammar rules, and us memorizing them without understanding what we were studying. Can you imagine what Indianized French sounds like? Well, you shouldn't bother much with it because it is quite painful to hear. The only thing my French lessons from school helped me to do was to have a good topography of Paris in my head. I pretty much knew my way around Champs Elysée, Place de la Concorde, L'Arc de Triomphe, Le Tour Eiffel, Musée du Louvre, Rue Saint-Honoré, Avenue d'Opéra, Montmatre well before I went to Paris.

So when the time came for me to choose a language this year, I didn't even give it a second thought and chose French. I mean, however beautiful Portuguese and German may sound, you don't see me learning them in a year, do you? And keeping my love for Spanish men and Spain apart, I couldn't possibly learn a language that sounds as crude as Spanish. No, not even Gujarati sounds as vulgar as Spanish, and so I didn't even think about the other options.

It all seemed simple enough until I realized that someone had forgotten to mention that I had to learn my second foreign language in my first foreign language. Yes folks, I am actually studying French in Italian. All of you can probably stare at your computer screens and look mildly amused, but this is no a laughing matter. I can barely manage speaking and understanding Italian, throw French into the equation and my nerves just crumble like a pack of cards.

Its very scary to be put in a foreign language class with a bunch of Italian native speakers, most of whom have previously studied French the right way in high school. My teacher keeps reciting these long sentences that she wants translated into French. I have to translate the Italian into English in my head and then translate the English back in to French in my head and then actually say it out loud. All of this has to be done in less than a second while the teacher and the rest of the class is waiting for me to reply. Its so stressful, especially since my teacher has to policy of making everyone in class talk at least once out loud during the lesson. This means that I can't even hide behind people in the background and try to merge in with the crowd.

If this was once a week for an hour each time, I might still be able to happily handle it without getting terrified each time, but I have French thrice a week, two one and a half hour lessons and one two and a half hour lesson. This year is truly going to pass very slowly. However, being your spunky narrator that I am, I will not give up without a fight, may it be in Italian or French. I am determined to do well because I've wanted to learn French for so long, and now I finally have an opportunity, albeit in Italian. It is truly a beautiful language and I do have a soft spot for French men, so that is always an incentive, right?

Travelling Fun

2008-09-28T19:21:00.005+02:00

I don't mind airline travel. In fact, I quite look forward to it, especially when I'm travelling alone. I don't know why it bores most other people I know. I suppose, it is a bit lonely seeing families travelling for holidays together when you're sitting in a corner all by yourself reading a book, but all in all, its quite a bit of fun. Since I am the laziest person I know, sitting stationary in a moving vehicle has always been a fascinating principle to me, which is why I have always loved plane rides, road trips and train journeys.

I also have mental capacity of a five year old, which means that I am very easy to please. So you just need to give me a book, an ipod and maybe an good inflight movie, and I am the happiest girl in the world. I am also lucky enough to have the skill of sleeping through practically anything, so that also helps me kill the hours. The only thing I need to fall asleep is music playing in the background, and I sleep as well as Fluffy. Ok, bad Harry Potter references apart, this habit of mine does cause me to waste precious ipod battery. However, it is a really great feeling to fall asleep with your ipod on and then wake up hours/minutes later to find it still running. Also, if you're really weird you could just press the back button and see the entire list of songs that played while were asleep and have no memory of hearing any of them (not that I would do anything as silly as this)

The most fulfilling plane journey that I've ever been through is the forty minute journey between Zurich and Milan. It was so beautiful, and if I was any good at taking pictures and if I had a camera on me, I would have taken fancy pictures, and posted them up here, but even those would not have done any justice to that scenery. It just cheered me up so much, and even the prospect of going to lectures the next morning could not have brought me down. What could possibly be better than sitting by the window seat in one of the tiniest commercial planes in the world, on a clear sunny morning, admiring the beauty of the Swiss Alps while sipping watery airline tea, and having the soundtrack of Singh is King blasting into your ears?

That, my dear friends, was true happiness; a kind of happiness that does not come with spending an evening with your friends or buying new shoes or watching a good film; no, it was a kind of happiness that does not have any reason at all, a sort of happiness that makes you feel completely satisfied with the big scheme of things. Just for that tiny, fleeting moment, you are at peace with the world, completely satisfied with what you have, and have no desires of any sort.

I just got back last Tuesday and have been so busy with the start of a new term at uni. Its hard to imagine that I was in Bombay, getting into moving trains and buses, fighting the rain and the crowd, and eating unhealthy, roadside junk food just less than a week ago. But its been good to get back home. I am always complaining about Milan, but whenever I'm away from here for long periods of time, and come back, I always get the feeling of coming back home. OK, I finally admit it after six long years of living here, Milan is home, and I truly love living here regardless of all my complaining.

Life as a n00by b00by

2008-09-18T12:30:00.008+02:00

I was so ridiculously nervous on my first day at work. If I hadn't been so terrified, I might have seen the humour in the situation. I am very ashamed to admit that before this internship, I had never worked before in my entire life. Twenty years without doing a decent day's job is something that doesn't go well on a person's CV, and so I decided that to use this summer to do something more useful than lying around on a sunny Mediterranean beach.

I landed in Bombay on a Saturday night and my internship was to start on a Monday morning. I knew that I was going to be in Bombay right in the middle of the monsoons and kind of expected all the rain. However, I wasn't expecting the heavens to start celebrating with my arrival with a deluge of tropical rainfall. I figured that the rain would subside by the time it was Monday because it couldn't possibly rain continuously for more than twenty four hours, could it? Clearly, six years away from the city had taken away my memories of its wild rainfall.

It rained on Sunday morning, on Sunday afternoon, on Sunday evening and on Sunday night. I went to bed hoping that it would subside by the next morning because I didn't particularly relish going to work on my first day under the pouring rain. But luck, as usual, deluded me and it was pouring so much on Monday morning that I couldn't even look at the building in front of my house through the window.

I decided to take a taxi to work instead of trying to brave it out and wait for the bus like I had initially planned on doing. I was also very paranoid about reaching late, so I left extremely early and was wearing formal clothes and flip flops (and carrying my nice sandals in my bag). As a result, I arrived at work at 8.30 instead of 9, which was actually the time I had to report.

The first thing I noticed was that the office was flooded with ankle length deep water and one of the doors to the office was blocked due to the creation of a large muddy pond. Additionally, everything, including the computer CPUs and the wires were swimming around in the water. The office was also practically empty. I mustered up some courage and bashfully introduced myself to the receptionist who had thankfully just arrived. She told me in the nicest possible manner that one could to tell me that she didn't think that anyone would actually come to work today because of the rain, and I could sit wherever I found some space in the office.

Slowly people started trickling into office by around 10.30/11.00 in the morning and I had to undergo a very painful experience of explaining my life story, the circumstances under which I had come to live in Italy, study in Milan, and come back to Bombay. After knowing all they had to know about my life in under ten minutes, people eventually lost interest and went about doing their work as I sat uncomfortably counting the cracks in the ceiling. I was so worried the office was going to blow up any second because of all the wires that were floating in the water and that we were all going to die that I kept thinking of creative ways of quickly exiting the building. However, everyone else seemed relaxed enough as if this was a regular occurrence and continued working on their computers.

I sat on a chair all day, did the sudoku in the newspaper and read a fashion magazine until someone finally noticed that I existed. They were very nice and told me that my boss wasn't going to be in office for the day and that they didn't know what to do with me because there was neither a seat or a computer free for me in the office. There is clearly not much one can say to that. I got back home feeling very lonely and left out.

The next day, the sun was shining brightly; I got the bus on time; the office was no longer immersed in a puddle of muddy water; I took my laptop to work; someone created space for me to sit; people seemed friendlier; I was given my own stationary pile (and we all know that nothing makes your narrator happier than the sight of new stationary); someone invited me to sit with them for lunch; and my boss came and gave me work to do. It was what an ideal first day should have been!

Friday is my last day and work, and I am truly going to miss coming here daily. All these people that initially seemed scary and unapproachable turned out to be really nice and friendly, and I sort of feel silly for being so nervous around them.

Ring of Fire

2008-09-14T17:39:00.009+02:00

When things like this happen in this country, I really don't know what to think or do apart from sit glued to the television screen watching news channels. Even after I have kind of figured out what exactly has happened, a part of me feels guilty for wanting to switch the television off. So, I keep it on, and keep seeing the same reports and videos again and again.

A few days ago, I was talking with a colleague about how dangerous it has become for people living in Indian cities due to all the bomb blasts that have been happening in the recent years, and yesterday there were blasts in Delhi. When something like this happens, which is pretty often in the world these days, I go through four main stages:

Fear - When the news first hits me, I get very scared; I worry about the people I know who live in that place. I don't know if all my friends/relatives are alright and try to reassure myself before contacting them as soon as possible. I also get frightened thinking about what would happen if something like that happened in an area where I was around. How would my family possibly be able to deal with anything happening to me?
Anger - I then get irritated at the unfairness of it all; I get really mad that things like this keep happening in this country and no one seems to be doing anything about it. All I keep reading in the papers is how investigations are always coming to a dead end. Every months there new blasts happening where hundreds for innocent people are mindlessly killed for no reason at all. Additionally if you notice, its always the poor people end up dying or getting injured; people who were going about doing their work, and minding their own business. You never hear of fat industrialists dying, do you?
Helplessness - Then I am always overcome with a sense of sadness for being unable to do absolutely anything about these things. Sometimes, I get really scared because even if I had the power to do something and save the world, I don't even know if I would bother to save the world. I know myself well, and yet I don't know what I would do if I faced a choice between risking my life and saving the world, or sitting at home, on my bed browsing the internet.
Indifference - And then slowly, all these emotions fade away. I get distracted thinking about other things that are going on in my life. I still feel sorry about what has happened, but I know that it hasn't affected me in any way, so I go on with my life; I change the channel on the telly. If I'm feeling particularly vehement, I might make an angy blog post or two, but apart from this, I don't do anything else and go about minding my own business until something like this happens, and the whole cycle of emotions begins once again.

I feel horrible when I behave in this manner because I know I should be feeling more, or doing more. However, I can't help being hardened by the fact that events such as these have happened so many times before, not only in India, but everywhere in the world. Maybe I'm just too cynical for my own good, but I know that nothing is ever going to be done to stop these things and people are going to keep dying for no reason whatsoever.

How many people have the courage to admit that they have stopped caring/counting the blasts that have happened in Iraq anymore or the number of innocent people that have died there? I'm not even going to ask people about Israel or Palestine because I am pretty sure that people have just stopped following the news on this matter, and there is nothing more left to be said.

Blogshead Revisited

2008-09-11T06:33:00.008+02:00

Its been more than a year since my last blog post and I know that I have been missing for a ridiculous amount of time. To tell you the truth, I've been wanting to resume blogging for a very long time now, but have been putting it off at the back of my head. The thought of starting over from the very beginning seems very daunting, doesn't it? I'm pretty sure that the handful of people who might be reading my blog earlier have probably removed it from their sidebars.

I don't have any nice blogger friends any more, apart from one, who I'd like to think is also my friend in real life. But I have bravely decided to start blogging again, at least for a while and see how it goes. I'm sure its going to be as much fun as it was the first time, and I promise to try my best to update as regularly as possible.

A lot of things can change in one year, but nothing much seems to have changed in my life. I'm a year older, and that isn't as fun as it used to be. I still remember how desperate I was to become thirteen and I had made this whole countdown upto my birthday. But once you become twenty, birthdays just remind me of how time is running out. I feel old; everyone else seems to be younger and more accomplished than me. Ok, I admit that this doesn't take much effort, but earlier at least I had my young age as an excuse for my laziness, but now even that seems to have gone away.

However, on a less depressive note, there have been a lot of changes. I've travelled quite a bit in the last whole year, and I'll be surely be talking about that in my future posts. I'm just a year away from getting out of university (but I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to dread it or look forward to it, although presently I'm tilting towards the latter option).

I've been in Bombay for the last three months working an as intern here, which is as lowly as it sounds. I have always heard horror stories about interns being used as slaves in the offices that they are working in, but my experience here has been surprisingly pleasant. Also, living in Bombay after being away for almost six years has been wonderful. I know I always look at Bombay with rose tinted glasses, but I can't help it, I've always been like this. I've been braving the monsoon and taking public transport every day for the last three months and I still don't seem to mind much (even though I shriek like a twelve year old every time my hair gets wet!)

I still have a couple of weeks to go before uni starts and I'll try my best to be prolific before that.

AWOL...

2007-03-09T23:49:00.002+01:00

I know, I haven't been the most faithful of bloggers recently, but as I've been complaining to everyone I seem to know in the virtual world, I've been busy. I have exams in April. I also have extremely difficult subjects this semester. Therefore, I have not been updating or reading other blogs for quite a while now. I apologise to everyone who thinks me to be an ungrateful blogger because I haven't been commenting on anything for a long time now.

Its really strange, I have so many things I could post about these days, but I just don't seem to have the time to do absolutely anything that I seem to want. I could blog about my visits to this extremely illegal photocopy shop or review Elizabeth I, that I watched yesterday from 4 in the evening to 8 at night on TV. If I wanted, I could also post a lengthy review about Notes on a Scandal and wonder in amazement on how the movie is an amazing cross between the scandal in my school last year involving a 15 year old girl and a Geography teacher and The Collector by John Fowles.

I could also write a wonderful post about spring time and how spring in Milan is my favourite season here. Nothing can make a me happier than the early days of spring. It is such a lovely season. I could, if I wanted, whinge about my semester (not that I've not already done that above) or write a long post about my amazing grandma, who is presently visiting us or narrate my first baby sitting experience (which was extremely surreal, by the way)

Another thing I could probably post about is how excited I am to my upcoming weekend in England. I'm vising TPF next weekend because we have a long weekend and I really need a little break. I'm leaving next Thursday evening and will be back on Monday.

As I said, there is a whole list of topics that are just demanding blog posts from me. But right now all I seem to want to do is go to bed because its 1 at night and I woke up really morning and have been at uni all day today.

Louis Vuitton and Ray Bans

2007-02-19T19:32:00.001+01:00

The problem with living and studying in Milan is that you can't afford to have a bad hair day here. It is just not possible for a person who wakes up late one morning to get into a hoodie, wear a baseball cap and go for lectures. It is something unheard of. People prefer to wake up early to get ready for uni or skip classes if they wake up late rather than attend the day with dark circles and no make up.

I would be lying here if I said that I don't bother with how I look and I don't really care what other people think. However, I can't be bothered to wear make up every day. That would be pushing it too far, even for me. I wake up much too late for that each morning. I barely make it to lessons on time. But I do make sure that I am decently dressed and have clean hair each day. I wouldn't dare to go to uni with unkempt hair. I just think, its something that comes naturally to you, once you spend enough time in this city.

Its just that Italian people like to be well dressed, I guess. Of course, most of these people that I see at uni are pushing the limits of being well dressed. It can get rather ridiculous at times. For example, it is perfectly normal in uni to wear sun glasses in any month of the year, regardless of the sun or rain. As I came out of lectures today, I saw a whole group of boys and girls with Ray Bans going around, pretending to extremely cool as if they did not look like absolute idiots. Winters in Milan are not exactly bright and sunny, but no one really seems to care.

I, myself have a strict policy about sun glasses, as in I refuse to wear them later than October. This year I even had my parents teasing me about wearing my sun glasses so late on in autumn. But it really is almost a part of university custom to wear your sun glasses and who am I to question tradition? Also, the fact that I happen to love my sun glasses, was an additional advantage, I suppose. But even I, with all my vanity could not bear to wear them later then early November. It just gets too dark to see anything. I don't understand how people can do it.

Italy is also the only country where guys carry Louis Vuitton bags to uni, wear Gucci belts and Armani jeans and proudly proclaim to be heterosexual. I know perfectly straight men in my class who actually go get fake tans all through the year, so that their skin can look good in every season. Funnily enough, Italian men are obsessively homophobic and cringe every time anyone says the word 'metrosexual'. So I just can't seem to understand Italian teenagers, however hard I try.

I live in a country where most of the men like wearing tight jeans, spending hours in the gym, and carrying designer bags and most women like wearing tight jeans, spending hours in the gym and carrying designer bags too. So where is this big gender inequality that people seem to be raving on about, I ask you ?

Foreign Bookstores

2007-02-05T23:10:00.004+01:00

I should technically be desperately studying right now, but all I feel like doing is going to bed and procrastinating. I've been having exams for more than a month now. It is just four exams stretched out over month and a half and what a terrible month it has been. My last one is on Valentine's Day, so at least I have an excuse to stay at home this year and be miserable on my own. Ignore me folks, I'm just whinging out of self pity.

I've been thinking quite a lot these last few days about how lovely my Paris trip was. I have also now come to the conclusion, that Paris is definitely the most beautiful city in I've have ever been to, in every sense. But strangely enough, now that I think about it my favourite place in Paris was a plain old bookshop rather than any of the city's impressive structures. This is the particular bookshop that I am talking about. It has been almost a month since I got back and I cant seem to stop obsessing over this bookshop.

I am really bad at directions, but roughly speaking the shop on the banks of the Seine, in front of the Notre Dame, just next to the entrance of the Latin Quarter, near the St Michael bridge. It is also extremely small, as in the width of the whole store is just what is shown in the above picture. This makes it very stuffy and crowded inside, but people don't seem to mind because it has such wonderful books. It also has a second floor, which consists of antique books that you are not allowed to buy, but you can sit there and read all to your heart's content. To my delight, the shop sells only English books. Most people outside Continental Europe do not realize how difficult/expensive it is to buy books written in English here.

I don't even know how to start describing the insides of this wonderful store. It is very strange architecturally from the inside, as in it has little rooms everywhere. Now these little rooms are also full of bookshelves from the top the bottom. This makes it extremely uncomfortable to navigate around the store. At one point I found myself surrounded by books on all three sides from the top of the roof to the bottom and no moving space.

The books seem to be arranged in no order whatsoever. I'm sure they have their own system in there, but in the very short time I spent in there, I couldn't figure it out. But all this made the shop prettier and more approachable, if you know what I mean. Another great thing about this store was that, on the top floor there were these tiny rooms with beds everywhere for people to lie down and read. We unfortunately did not have enough time to sit and read in there, but the though of lying by a bed, next to a window looking towards the Notre Dame and peacefully reading antique books sounds really beautiful, doesn't it?

I don't think any shop in the world that I ever visit is ever going to live up to this one. It was just beautiful and I know my post does not do much justice to it. It almost makes me want to live in Paris just go visit this shop every weekend and browse through some of my favourite books.

Oooh, the start of the movie Before Sunset, is filmed in the bookstore. I didn't realize this until a few days ago when they were showing it on television for the umpteenth time and I was actually watching it again for the umpteenth time. I suddenly saw this familiar store that has been in my mind for a such a long time now and got overly excited, and had no one to gush about this. So this is me gushing about a trivial bookstore. I promise to write about something more interesting next time.

I love

2007-01-30T09:52:00.000+01:00

I'm not a very hard person to please. I'm a bit fussy about some things like margins and justified text and highlighters, but apart from all that I think its really easy to make me happy. But I'm not one of those overly bubbly people. I cant stand people who are cheerful all the time. I'm sure they are really nice people, but it really irritates me for some reason. Anyhow since, I've been extremely grumpy all day today, what could be better than making a list of things that might help me feel better?

I love:

Getting under my duvet on winter afternoons to read my book and then napping for a few hours. I love afternoon naps. I normally don't ever have time for them and they make me feel very grandmother-ly, but I do enjoy them very much.
Kissing my dad (on his cheek, of course) after he's just shaved and smelling his aftershave.
Having chilled coke on a hot summer day. Mind you, if you put ice into it I shall be very annoyed.
Watching a good movie on my own on television. The worse thing you can do in my house is watch a movie with my parents because they keep talking randomly all through movies. I don't think they get the seriousness of listening to each and every dialogue in a film.
Wearing tiny skirts with flip flops all through summer and not caring about how chubby/fat I think I look because there is always someone on the street that looks worse than me.
Eating ice cream with TPF. I'm one of those people who do not like to experiment with new ice cream flavours. I suppose this would make me an old school ice cream eater. Also, I dislike chocolate ice cream. I'm a terrible person. I love chocolate, but cannot bear to eat pure chocolate ice cream. EW!
Walking from the tram stop to my house after uni every day with my ipod. Mind you, I only like walking back home, not walking towards the tram stop because that means that I have a whole day of lectures ahead of me. I also like taking the tram instead of the bus or the metro to uni, it makes me feel very quaint.
Scarfs. I love scarfs and everything about them. I love how they feel nice and warm around your neck and how warm they feel because of your body heat when you take them off.
New episodes of my favourite TV shows. I religiously watch Lost, Scrubs, Desperate Housewives, Heroes and Veronica Mars every week and I need to have updates otherwise I get very, very irritated at the world.
Being nice and dry under an umbrella when its raining. I love umbrellas enough to write blog posts about them too. I know, I should really stop being sentimental about inanimate objects.

and one more because I like prime numbers

11. Getting into bed each night. The Scarlet O'Hara in me still has a small hope that everything is going to be alright when I wake up the next day.

Dear Diary,

2007-01-22T10:11:00.000+01:00

Exactly one year ago, on this day, I finally decided to enter the technological world of geek-dom and get myself a blog, an online journal of sorts.

I know I haven't been the most faithful blog writer in the world and have let you down so many times. You have to understand that I am but an inexperienced, fickle, hormonal teenager quite prone to angst filled outbursts (for one more year, at least) and this sort of behaviour is what is expected of me. Sometimes, pressures from the society can be quite burdening, and I am forced to behave in the manner people expect a person in my age group to behave in.

A lot of things can happen in the period of a year, but a lot of things can remain the same too. I have not yet managed to find solutions to issues that I promised to last year. The world still has a lot of problems such as global warming, Dan Brown, nuclear weapons, K-Fed, Iraq, Paris Hilton's wardrobe and Darfur; but rest assured, I am still working on them, and maybe one day, who knows, I might actually miraculously do something to solve them.

Even though I haven't done much in this whole year, there are some things that I have successfully managed to accomplish. I have gotten myself successfully out of high school, for one. Sometimes, on the most angst filled days of my teenage career, it used to seem that my school building was going to keep me hostage in its murky corridors for the rest of my life. But I have managed to surpass my fears, graduate from high school and have gotten myself enrolled into a university.

My entire blogging experience has been disappointingly wonderful. I do not have scary stories of Internet stalkers to narrate to my grandchildren. But I have met some really great people though you, my dearest journal. Both Ash and Szerelem did not turn out to be porn stars in disguise, paedophiles or middle aged men with no life, but relatively normal people. I have also not succeeded in maintaining my anonymity thanks to certain people on here who couldn't resist looking me up on facebook.

I am not going to make you fickle promises for next year, dearest diary because I don't intend to keep them. But what I can assure you is that I shall do my best and become the better person you want me to be.

With much love from your one and only,
Pan

Exams!

2007-01-13T16:27:00.000+01:00

GAH!

Am taking a mini-break. Will be back at the end of January.

Paris!

2007-01-05T08:25:00.000+01:00

I'm not much of a photographer, so I'm just going to upload just a few pictures on here. I always thought that Paris was over rated, but I am very glad to say that I was wrong. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to in my entire life. To say that I absolutely loved it would really be an understatement.

We were there for just five days, which I have to admit is really not enough for a person to completely explore Paris. All we managed to see were the main tourist attractions. I suppose, they are the main tourist attractions for a reason and from whatever little sightseeing we did, it was wonderful.
I know a lot of people don't actually like the Eiffel Tower and think it to be a metal monstrosity. I actually liked it. It was exactly how I imagined it to be; metal and brown. Yeah, the Eiffel tower is brown. I'm really glad that I knew that it was brown before I actually went there, otherwise I would have been severely annoyed.

The line to go the tower was a nightmare, but we eventually managed to get up to the top because we ahem, kind of managed to skip the queue by perfectly legal means. The view is brilliant and its worth going up there. I read somewhere that Tom Cruise proposed to Katie Holmes on top of the Eiffel Tower. How much do you want to bet that Tom and Katie didn't have to stand for 3 hours in a queue to get up to the top? I'm sure Tom had the whole tower reserved for the evening or something. Hell, if a man reserved the Eiffel tower for me for an evening, I'd totally marry him and become a Scientology expert. Morals be damned!

French food is absolutely delicious (i.e full of millions of calories). I've managed to gain almost 2 kilos in 5 days, even with all the walking we did (which was really a lot!). I feel fat now, but it was worth every calorie and cent, I have to say.

My poor friends got tired of me pointing out cute apartments all over the city that I would eventually be owning when I am older and much more richer. I have decided that one day, I'm going to become the Donald Trump of Paris and my great real estate choices are going to make poor old Donald turn in his grave (because by the time I get rich, he is surely going to be dead).

I just got back a two days ago. I've been thinking about it and I still cant figure out which was my favourite area in Paris, the one that I would absolutely love to go back to again. I think it might be the Quartier Latin or the Opéra, but I don't think I'll ever make my mind up. The trip was also a lot more fun because we went by train. I've always loved travelling by train. It just makes the whole experience so much more fun, according to me, especially if the train is a sleeper.

Christmas!

2006-12-16T00:21:00.000+01:00

I know, it has been ages since I last posted. No, I'm not dead, in case anyone was wondering or pretending to care. I've just not been in the mood for blogging lately. Its not like I've been overly busy with work or something of that sort. To tell you the truth, I've been doing everything but work these days. My days generally consist of endless procrastination, heavy lecture skipping, talking to TPF on the phone, going out with TPF when I'm not on the phone and attending various social events.

Yes, I did say those magical words, social events. It is after all the time of the year where Pan actually goes out for social events and does not shut herself up in her bedroom, listening to alternative music.

I have always viewed Christmas season with a mixed feeling. It is one of the few religious holidays that I'm not totally indifferent to. I, for some strange reason actually care about Christmas (I blame this completely on my convent school upbringing). However much of a clichè this might sound, Christmas season makes me cheerful; the lights, the decorations, the irritating repetitive songs, the silly red hats (especially the ones with stars that light up) make me happy.

The best part of Christmas is Christmas carols. Anyone who knows me can confirm this. I love Christmas carols. I make it a point to sing them randomly all through the year. I also happen to be one of those creepy people who know the lyrics of the second and the third verses of 'Joy to the World' and 'Silent Night'. I can never make up my mind on my favourite one though. It changes from year to year. Presently, I'm stuck somewhere between 'The First Noel' and 'White Christmas'. The only problem about Christmas carols is that ahem, I don't sing very well. Sometimes I feel sorry for the people I hang out with. They must really love me if they can bear my rendition of 'Silver Bells' or 'Winter Wonderland' and still speak to me after that.

Another great thing about Christmas is Boxing Day. The thought of Boxing Day shopping is already making me smile.

I suppose, the whole deal with singing about reindeer and Christmas trees is all very silly considering the point of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ (who might or might not have been born on the 25th of December). But nobody cares about these unimportant details, do they? This point always seems to get overlooked for some strange reason.

But Christmas season isn't always full of joy and happiness. No, Christmas has a dark side that also needs to be explored. It involves Christmas presents. There, I've gone and said those evil words. Every single year, I have to spend time, energy and money on buying Christmas presents to a whole load of people that I don't care much about. I'm not even Christian, so I'm not quite sure why I'm buying these presents, but that is how it is! Christmas presents are really stressful. They involve a whole load of strategic planning. Its not just the money that is the problem, every year I keep running out of creative ideas on what to buy for people. I cant get someone a scarf because I gave them a scarf last year. I cant give someone a pair of gloves because that is what they gave me last year and thus, the problem continues.

Christmas in Milan is no different from Christmas anywhere else, although it involves a whole load of pandoro and panettone. The problem with both, panettone and pandoro is making up your mind, which one you prefer, and this decision is not half as easy as it sounds. Its almost like Sophie's Choice actually (by the way, has anyone apart from me actually read that book? No, having watched the movie does not count!).

Audrey!

2006-11-24T09:12:00.000+01:00

To say that I love Audrey Hepburn would be an understatement. It is actually surprising that I've never mentioned her on my blog before. I know that a lot of people think that she is over rated, and I suppose they might be right, but I fall into that mainstream category of people who believe that she was the most beautiful person they have ever laid their eyes upon. My current Audrey Hepburn merchandise includes:

A large Breakfast at Tiffany's Poster.
A small poster from Charade.
A small poster from War and Peace.
A small screen shot photograph.
A hand bag with a screen shot photos on both sides.
An Audrey card that TPF gave me last Christmas
A bookmark with a Breakfast at Tiffany's picture.
A big, door poster that I'm not supposed to know about because it's my Christmas present this year from TPF

This list will probably go on as time passes because I don't see myself getting over her any time soon. I know it is very superficial to like somebody because they are pretty, but however cruel this sounds, looks are quite important. Why do you think people worship Becks? No, it's going nothing to do with football. Its just that people can recognize a fine piece of ahem, booty when they see it. I'm not trying to say that Audrey has a fine piece of ahem, booty here. In fact, people hardly think about any of her other assets because they are so enamoured by her pretty face.

She almost makes acting a dignified profession. You can't imagine Audrey Hepburn baring it all on screen because the role demanded it or even participating in a sex scene in any of her movies, can you? She is a dignified person who wouldn't stoop to that level, even if the role demands it. People can see that she is beautiful woman, even without her showing any skin at all, and that is a rare quality in a person.

The first Audrey Hepburn movie I watched was My Fair Lady. I was quite young when I first saw it. It was a great movie and I loved it. I could never quite figure out the end actually, but I thought that it was a wonderful movie in any case (and Audrey totally deserved that Oscar that went to Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins that year!). I've actually not even watched too many Audrey movies. I've just watched My Fair Lady, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Charade, Wait Until Dark, Roman Holiday, Sabrina, War and Peace and Funny Face. Actually I was re-watching Sabrina on television the other day and it struck me that she wasn't just beautiful, anyone can do beautiful. She is charming and elegant and stands out, and this is what makes her different from all other Hollywood actresses.

I didn't particularly like Breakfast at Tiffany's actually (because I read the book a week before I watched the film and the end of the film is completely different from how the book ends), but I thought Audrey made a delightful Holly Golightly. I thought that Wait Until Dark was a brilliant, but it scared me. I can't take thrillers, its just too much suspense and I get frightened quite easily. My personal favourite is Funny Face, because you get to see Audry Hepburn dancing with Fred Astaire in Paris. What more can one want in life from a movie?

As a short footnote, I would like to apologise for the infrequent blog updates. I've been really busy with real life lately. Its driving me mad. Sigh!

God save the Queen!

2006-11-14T23:03:00.000+01:00

I'm back! Ok, I've been back since Monday actually, but I haven’t had time to do absolutely anything. Once would think that they would give you some leave once you finish your mid-term exams, but nothing of that sort seems to be happening. It's just work, work and more work for me. I don’t think I like Uni anymore.

Well, the trip was great. England, according to me would be the most beautiful country in the world if it was less colder or if it rained less there or if it didn't get dark there at 4 in the evening or if it was not full of drunk British people. But what would the world be without British people, really? British people are so absolutely strange that you can't help but be fond of them.

I love being in England. People there actually speak in English! This means that I don’t have to actually try to eavesdrop on people. It just comes naturally. Even rude airport staff in England speak English! You have no idea how great it feels to have people talking in English around you. It’s not that I don’t speak Italian, it’s just that I’d much rather speak in English than in Italian because lets face it, my Italian is not very good.

I remember when I very young my mum had gone to London for work once. When she got back I asked her all about it. Since I was too young to understand anything much about tourist-London, my mum described England in the best possible way that one could to a child. She told me that in England, you could press buttons and get Dairy Milk from machines. Ever since that moment I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of vending machines (you see, we don’t have vending machines in India). I love England because it’s full of vending machines. I pretend not to, but I still get a minor thrill every time I put in some coins, press buttons and get things.

From this trip I have learnt some new things about the U.K and English people that I didn’t know before:

1) People from Aberdeen are supposed to shag sheep. I still haven’t quite figured out why sheep and not cows, but I’m working on it.

2) Pastries are not sweet in England. The can also be salty, like stuffed croissants.

3) Crisps and chips do not mean the same thing. Crisps actually mean chips in the normal world and chips in England are French fries in the normal world.

4) Sainsbury makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. Nothing can beat those cookies.

5) ‘Chavs’ are bad, bad people, and you don’t want to be considered one of them.

6) People have to actually show their IDs there to buy alcohol. (This is so not the case in Italy)

7) People actually use the words ‘blimey’ and ‘cheers’ as a part of their normal vocabulary.

8) Scottish people have their own currency, which could possibly be labelled as one of the most useless currencies in the whole world.

9) British people are very fond of potatoes. I’m not sure where this obsession comes from, but it’s definitely there.

10) However funny this sounds, people in England still drink to the Queen.

And one more because I love prime numbers so much.

11) What is the deal with dinner at 6 in the evening? And why for the sake of God do people refer to it as supper or tea?

I'm getting very fond of lists these days. I should stop doing these.

Having said all this, I have to admit that I’m very fond of British people. After all, they all have sexy, unintelligible British accents and have the best tabloids in the world.

Cheers!

And she's back...

2006-11-08T18:11:00.001+01:00

After long night of sleeplessness and dreadful days that didn't seem to get any shorter, I'm back! Have I mentioned somewhere on this blog that I hate exams? Well, I've never met anyone who actually likes exams in my entire life (unless it's TPF who says that she had a lot of fun doing the SATs), but I happen to dislike them more than most people.

Ha, at least I've finished my midterms now. I have more exams in the first week of January that I'm not even going to bother thinking about at this moment because I suspect that I'll start worrying if I do think about them. I know, I can never be happy, can I? I keep worrying about everything!

Hmm, this blog post doesn't have a point if you're wondering why I'm not getting to it. I don't have any news, and I haven't even been following world news for me to discuss what is happening in the world. Actually, I do have some little things here and there that have been happening. So let me write a small list of the things that have been going on lately:

I fainted. It sounds rather funny when I write it down, but it did happen last week. I'm not sure why it happened or how. It was at about 5.30 in the morning. The alarm rang wasn't supposed to ring until 6. I should have known something was wrong, since I had actually woken up before it rang. So, as soon as I woke up and got out of bed, I started shivering. I went to brush my teeth and started feeling rather ill. Then, I started sweating and feeling very hot. I finished brushing my teeth and started walking towards my room to go back into bed because I was feeling rather ill. On my way back, I lost consciousness for a few seconds and found myself on the floor. After an another hour, I started feeling completely normal and nothing has happened ever since.
I had a terrible sore throat and cold all through my exams courtesy TPF, who passed it onto me the weekend that she were here. It just couldn't have been worse, could it? I've never felt this ill all through exams ever before.
If I cough once more, I might consider strangling myself because it is seriously getting on my nerves.
I have a Facebook account. I feel strangely exposed. It even has photographs of myself. I'm paranoid about putting my pictures up on the internet. Facebook is repulsive to me and therefore that makes it extremely addictive at the same time. I considered linking up blog up there for 10 whole seconds and gave that idea up. I don't think I am comfortable with a whole load of people who I know in real life reading my blog. (Also, if they started regularly frequenting my blog, this would mean that I couldn't bitch about them any more.)
My Facebook account lists me married to TPF. It feels great to be married!
My beloved ipod has officially stopped working. You can't even switch it on any more. I miss it. I'm going to buy one of those cool, new 8GB Nanos some time next month, but I would much rather prefer my old second generation, bulky, scratched ipod. My mother thinks that I'm the most sentimental person she knows, but I can't help being sentimental about inanimate objects.
The love of my life, Julia has also ceased to function. She refuses to start up anymore. It's making me miserable. I hate living without her. I'll have to contact the support people after I get back from England. *sigh*
I'm leaving for England tomorrow. YAY! I still have to pack though, and am not sure when exactly am I going to find the time to do so because I have to go out tonight and I have lessons at uni early tomorrow morning. On a second thought, maybe I should be doing that now instead of updating my blog.
Have I mentioned somewhere in here how ill I am? I'm really ill. I've been following the sit-com routine lately.
I have dark circles. There was a time once when I was actually proud of them because they made me look mature and old. Now I just look old and ghastly.

And one more because I lurrrrve prime numbers

11. I've become stalkerish in the last few weeks. I'm such horrible person because I don't even feel guilty of my clandestine activities. I keep looking up random people on Google and Facebook searches. You'll be amazed about the kind you stuff you find out about people on the Internet.

That is all from me for now. I promise to be more interesting for my next post. I'll be back from England by then, and I'll have loads to write.

Mid-Terms sigh

2006-10-27T09:42:00.001+02:00

This is an unfortunate post to let my imaginary following know that I shall be away from the blogosphere for the next few weeks on a mini-break. I have my very first university mid-term exams starting from next week. Whoever said that uni was about debauched, decadent alcohol ridden parties was so very wrong. I haven't partied properly since high school ended now. It's not that I actually enjoy partying, but it's the lack of opportunity that I find frustrating.

But on the other hand, I have some good news too. TPF is going to be back home for the weekend. It's the first time I'm going to see her in a month. Okay, I know she's not been away for that long, but you know how we both are. Although, she couldn't have chosen a worse time to come to visit. Something tells me that I'm not going to get any studying done this weekend.

I cant wait for my exams to get over because once those are done, I'm going to be in England in the second week of Novmber. I'll just be there for 3 days though. I'm visiting TPF for a long weekend of fun, fun and more fun. WHEE! Okay, I'll stop. I'm just excited.

Right, back to studies now :)

Diwali!

2006-10-21T18:15:00.000+02:00

Happy Diwali everyone!

Diwali is the most depressing day of the year in Italy. Also, if having a depressing Diwali in a European country wasn't enough, it had to rain all day and be dark and cloudy. However, it could be worse, right? I mean, at least this year Diwali has fallen on a weekend, and so we have some semblance of a holiday. For the last three years, I've been going to school and pretending that it's just another day.

*sigh*

Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain

2006-10-14T19:18:00.008+02:00

After much deliberation I have finally decided to write my first review. I’m always cautious about reviewing because I’m a very biased reviewer, as in I only like reviewing the things I like. Also, I don’t like reviewing the things I don’t like because someone has worked very hard to make a film or write a book and I feel guilty making flippant remarks about someone else’s hard work (unless it’s Dan Brown, of course. I mean, his name is DAN, why would people even consider reading something written by a man whose parents weren’t imaginative enough to give him a name that is no longer than three letters?)

But as usual I digress, the subject of this review is going to be the movie Amélie or Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain, as it is called in French. Don’t worry, there are not going to be any spoilers in this post, just some silly gushing that might give some of you an insight into female sentimentality. The movie is made in such a way that you either dislike it because you think that it is plot-less and well, a waste of time or you love it. I, unlike my unsentimental father, fall into this latter category.

I’m not sure what is it about this movie that makes it so different from all the other movies that I’ve ever seen; maybe it is the way in which the movie is filmed, maybe it is the soundtrack of the movie or maybe it is Amélie herself that I can identify with because she reminds me so much of myself. The first thing I wanted to do when I finished watching the movie the first time was re-start and watch it all over again

I’m not very sure how one could possibly label Amélie into a particular genre. I’m not sure whether it would be appropriate to call it a comedy. It doesn’t make you laugh out loud, just subtly smile and maybe even have a good cry. This tale of an innocent, lonely, naïve girl living in Paris charms everyone’s hearts. At the end of the movie, you can’t help but fall completely in love with this delightful character.

The movie has a brilliant cast. Audrey Tautou as Amélie is wonderful and I cant think of any other actress who could have played a convincing Amélie. The only danger for roles like these is that it might make an actor typecast for a certain set of roles. Also, just after seeing Amélie, I also watched Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement) which is also directed by Jean Pierre Jeunet and stars Audrey Tautou in a very Amélie-like character. Even though that movie was great, I was kind of let down because of Tautou’s stereotypical character. Of course, I then watched The Da Vinci Code, which TPF has written about in a fabulous review that describes all my sentiments for that movie. Mathieu Kassovitz, on the other hand, is absolutely adorable. I am completely in love with him. I remember squealing and gripping TPF’s hand hard in the cinema hall when I realized that he was in Munich.

The movie has a wonderful soundtrack by Yann Tiersen. I’ve never loved the whole soundtrack of a particular movie before. But every track in Amélie is heart warming and it is impossible for a person to be indifferent the music in this movie because music plays such a pivotal role in this film. You just have to feel something when you listen to it, and I’m not saying this because I’m an angsting alternative-music listening teenager, but because I really do mean it.

Another strange thing is that though I’ve seen Amélie several times now, I’ve always seen it in Italian. Since Italian is not my first language, I don’t focus much on a movie when I’m watching it in Italian, but end up just keep trying to figure out the plot. It is rather rare for me to actually feel any emotion to what is happening on screen because I’m so caught up in the plot. Also, since it was a French movie translated into Italian rather than an English movie translated into Italian, it was much harder for me to understand it, at least the first time I watched it. I wonder how the English translation is. I am rather curious. I shall watch it in English eventually if I manage to find someone who owns the DVD in English.

Having said all this I have to admit that this is not a movie for plot oriented people, but for people who like focusing on the cinematography and the actual filming of movies. It is also meant for sentimental teenage girls who are looking for the smallest possible excuse to shed copious tears.

As a side note, I have a humongous Amélie poster in my room bought by TPF from Istanbul.

Another one of these meme thingies

2006-10-05T22:52:00.003+02:00

TPF tagged me for a meme ages ago. I love memes because this means that I don't need to think of something relatively intelligent to blog about. This does not necessarily mean that most of my posts are intelligent, but still I don't need to worry about finding a topic to blog about.

This meme is part of her 'meme experiment'. I have to post the 10 most played songs on my itunes counter. This means that, however weird my results maybe, I have to do this meme because I don't want to get on TPF's bad side. Actually, the results of this meme are going to be completely incorrect because even though I've had itunes for about two years now, I recently changed computers from Quincy to Julia, all my old play counts were deleted and I basically restarted the whole list. Therefore, right now, the most played music on my counter happens to be my recently added music.

1. Dhadak Dhadak from the movie, Bunty aur Babli. I went through a whole period a few months ago that I was obsessively addicted to this song and used to listen to it more than once a day. Right now, that phase of mine has passed and I no longer listen to it with the same frequency that I used to. But, it's a great song and rather catchy.

2. Tainted Love, by Soft Cell. I heard this song for the first time when I was in the Supermarket with TPF (don't ask me what were we doing together in a supermarket, it's a long story). Marilyn Manson has re-sung this song and it's electric guitar version is quite popular. But I downloaded the original version of the song by Soft Cell just a few weeks ago. It's a great song and I listen to it at least once a day on my way to and fro from uni.

3. Sexy Back, by Justin Timberlake. Oh Justin, Marry me! *sigh* Sorry, that was the teenage fangirl in me talking. I wasn't a very big Justin Timberlake fan for a long time. (Please feel free make fun of TPF, a few years ago she went to a Justin Timberlake concert). But this song is the epitome of good pop. It's so catchy and had a great video with Justin looking overly sexy. Britney must now feel like an idiot for leaving him to marry that sleeze bag of hers You show her who's the cooler one, Justin!

4. Supermassive Black Hole, by Muse. It's from their latest album. I'm not much of a Muse fan, but I love this song. It's great, but I'm not a big fan of it's video. It's creepy because it has the band playing in masks, and I've been terrified of masks ever since I was a child. It's just one of those little things that I really don't like.

5. Every You and Every Me, by Placebo. TPF called me mainstream when I told her that this was my favourite Placebo song. Well, I cant help it if I'm mainstream. I mean, it's mainstream because it's their best song, isn't it? Things are always mainstream for a reason. So there, that is my excuse for liking the most popular Placebo song.

6. Bohemian Like You, by The Dandy Warhols. Well, this is the only Dandy Warhols song that I know apart from, 'We Used to Be Friends', which is also the Veronica Mars soundtrack. As a side note, how great is Veronica Mars? I am mildly obsessive about it. Anyways, both these songs are great. But the only reason this appears so high on my playlist is because I recently downloaded it, which means that I listen to it more frequently because it is on my Recently Played playlist.

7. When You Were Young, by The Killers. Okay, I like The Killers. Anyone has any problems with that, huh? Do you, huh? No, tell me, do you? Because I don't care! Hmph! I like this song. It's from their new album. I even like their old songs. The Killers are a great band and I am not looking for anyone to tell me that they're not. I almost bought myself a band tshirt a few years ago. The only reason I decided not to buy it was because the infamous Vintage Girl had the same tshit and it would have been silly for me to own the same thing.

8. Main Hoon Don from Don. It's from the new movie Don starring Shahrukh Khan. It's the remake of the old Don movie by Farhan Akhtar. I can't wait to watch it. It's going to be great. I also have another song, Yeh Mera Dil, which I listen to much more often than this track, but I managed to get Yeh Mera Dil just a few days ago. Anyways, call me mainstream again, but I love Shahrukh, even though he's the crappiest Bollywood actor in the film industry. But god, he's Shahrukh Khan, how is one supposed to dislike him?

9. Tell Me Baby, by Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's from their new album, Stadium Arcadium. It's a great album, even though I've heard just two songs from it. I loved Dani California. It kept playing everywhere when TPF and I were in Bombay a few months ago and Tell Me Baby is just as good. I'm not a hardcore Red Hot Chili Peppers fan, but they are a good band.

10. The Blues are Still Blue, by Belle and Sebastian. I discovered this band via TPF who went to a concert of theirs a few months ago in Milan with her brother. Anyways, both TPF and I have become big Belle and Sebastian fans after that. It's not a very popular mainstream band, but I love it. All their songs are great. This also happens to be my only alternative entery in this top then list. (I am pretending to ignore the fact that Radiohead missed this list by like 2 places or something) You know, I just pretend not to like alternative music. When it comes down to it, I'm as big an alternative music fan as anybody else.

And one more since I am so fond of prime numbers:

11. Cakkidi, by Kenan Dogulu. Ah, my first and only Turkish entery in this list. This is such a great song and I even have the video, which is as great as the song itself. Turkish pop is the best kind of pop in the whole world. Once Tarkan figures out his sexuality, I'll be his slave for life regardless of what he decides.

Technically, since I am known to be the meme killer and everything, I'm not actually supposed to tag people. But I shall have to make an exception in this case since this is TPF's meme experiment, and I cant kill it at the second person. Therefore, I tag Nitin, Szerelem and Eris.

Libraries

2006-09-30T16:59:00.001+02:00

The best things about libraries has always been the way they smell. I don'’t think there is anything in the world that smells better than read, dusty, old books.

Libraries have always intimidated me ever since childhood. I think this is mainly due to the fact that my old school library was an old chapel converted into a library. Therefore it always seemed a little daunting to me, until I eventually got used to it. It was a humongous, dark room with little sunlight, stain glass windows and no electric lights (at least during the day). If you entered the library in the afternoon, you would get temporarily blinded because it used to be so dark inside.

It was a beautiful room with stone floors that kept the temperature inside cool even in hot and humid Bombay summers. The room was equipped with a large circular table, which always fondly reminded me of King Arthur's round table and had a large circle of locked cupboards around its edges. Sometimes when I entered the library I liked imagining that time had suspended around me and I had entered another dimension. It was the only place in school where I could be alone and all by myself (because none of my friends cared much about libraries or books) and it comforted me. I used to sit for hours there and go through books until the dreaded bell told me that it was time to come back into reality and return to class.

Most of the other people in school ever read anything apart from old Enid Blyton books from the library that I had already grown beyond when I started borrowing books from there. So after much begging on my part, and deliberation my teacher's part, she gave me (and Eris, of course) a free reign to go through all the locked cupboards that were full of books no one had ever bothered to look at for decades and I'm sure no one after me will probably bother with them for a few more decades. I discovered some of my favourite books hidden among those shelves. I would not have read the whole Narnia series if Eris had not discovered it by mistake while looking for Trixie Belden books in those shelves.

My high school library, on the other hand, was much more modern and full of well known books. It didn't have any rare or hidden or dusty books as a matter of fact. It also had an electronic check out system (with the kind of machines you have in supermarkets) and a whole load of computers that we were supposed to use for research purposes. Most people actually used these computers for playing flash games because the library computers were not supervised unlike the school computers by our computer teacher. Most of the times the library was used either as a 'hang out'’ place by people on rainy days or as a last minute 'homework copying' place. I had a young, sweet, library teacher who was also my English teacher for my first two years in high school. I always knew that something was missing from that library, until I realized that it was the dark, ominous atmosphere and written check out library cards that I missed. Until that moment I had never realized how much I loved my archaic, middle school library that I grew up in.

Right now all I have an access to is a humongous University library where I have to look up all the books I want via an online catalogue. No more going through library shelves or reading book jackets. Sometimes, just sometimes I detest technology.

PS: On a completely unrelated note, today is also Pan's birthday. She feels too old to be true!

University Reds

2006-09-26T00:11:00.001+02:00

First of all I must apologise for my recent disappearance from the blogosphere. University began a few weeks ago, and therefore I have been pretty busy lately. Also TPF is leaving for Uni on Wednesday and I have been spending every bit of my spare time with her later.

What can I say about Uni? It's different, very different from high school. Everything seems so completely and frighteningly big here. When I say different I don't mean bad different though. But I miss my friends and Dave. TPF darling, it's not the same without you! *sniff* I can't make silly jokes anymore or make obscure references and have someone actually understanding them. On a lighter note, I emailed Dave a few days ago and he replied today *fangirlish squeal*. It made my day. I don't sound like an almost 19 year old University student, do I?

For those who are actually interested, I am getting my degree in a course called, International Economics and Management. I'm sure it sounds more impressive than it actually is. It is not as cool as it sounds (well, this is assuming you think it sounds cool) It just involves a lot of Maths, Economics and Law, at least for now that is. I've been meeting loads of new people, practicing my Italian (which sucks, by the way) and pretending to actually care about my studies. I can't believe I actually have three hour lectures. My longest lesson in school used to last for 70 minutes. Yes, I am whinging here, so please bear with me.

Social life seems to be on a weird high (kind of). I just got invited today to go to Germany this weekend for three days for the October Beer Fest (which is a beer festival, as you must have already deciphered from it's name). The festival involves going to Germany on Friday, drinking beer all of Saturday, getting hung over all of Sunday and coming back to Uni on Monday. If people have already started tutting and mentally chiding Pan off, I am not actually planning to attend this thing. I am a responsible young, adult who would not even dream of going to weird alcohol festivals.

I've been meeting a whole lot of new people lately and I'm terrible with their names. I don't remember the names of half the people I've had conversations with. Therefore, I've been a very horrible person and come up with mental nicknames for people. These include AcneBoy, FizzHead, HotBoy, CuteRear, NerdyGirl, FashionVictiom etc. I have also started catagorising people by their nationality, which admittedly is not a very nice thing to do. But I'm always going to be known as IndianGirl to people, so it is not technically horrible of me to call people NorwegianBoy or HungarianGirl, right?

Anyways, after more than a week of attending Uni I have come to the conclusion that the world is full of a hell of a lot of weird people and I happen to be one of them.

If she thinks can she tell me to prove it...

2006-09-18T08:57:00.000+02:00

I've been tagged by TPF for a silly picture. TPF has asked me to prove her wrong by actually attempting to do this meme, so here is it. TPF is generally hardly ever wrong and so whenever I do get this great opportunity, I love doing it. Therefore, I have finally found a picture of myself which can embarrass me for life if uploaded on the internet and here I am doing it myself.

What can be sillier than a humiliating naked picture of yourself bathing in a bright, orange bucket? My mother put me in a bucket for god's sake when I was a child and then people wonder why I have issues about my childhood? Although I love my partially serious expression for the pictue. Ah, I was always the intellectual thinker even when I was a baby bathing in a bucket.

I think the legs behind the bucket belong to my mother, but I'm not very sure why exactly is she wearing a dress/gown that makes her look like a badly dressed hospital nurse. The thing in my hand is a chewing thingie that babies use when they are teething. Mine was blue and elephant shaped and I loved it from the bottom of my heart. *sniff*

Hmm, tags?

I refuse to tag people because I am officially the meme killer :) But if anyone does want to do it, they can feel free.

Pictures, pictures and more pictures

2006-09-13T23:40:00.000+02:00

I have finally managed to find the time to post some of the Bombay photographs that I had promised. It took to me ages to upload everything here, so please appreciate my hard work and effort. These pictures were taken solely by TPF and me, therefore no one else gets any credit, apart from our wonderful cameras, of course. I'm putting the pictures under sub-headings because everyone knows how anal I am about organisation.

These pictures are dedicated to Nikki, since I promised I would get something back for her.

The funny pictures that people with a sense of humour might enjoy:

I'm not sure if the above sign is readable. It was taken in a bus. The sign in English says, 'spitting and smoking prohibited'. I like the idea of random people trying to spit at each other in public transport.

I love how they are so honest about the warning above, and I'm sure the threat works. I mean, who would want to even risk parking there in order to see whether their tyres actually get deflated? Alright, maybe I would, if I had a car of course, but still, it is rather funny.

This sign was hilarious, I love the last line that says 'Fancy Item Available Here'. While I was talking this picture, there were a lot of guys around the shopkeeper of this store and I hear one of them telling this shopkeeper, "She's going to publish this picture in a big foreign newspaper and you're going to be famous." So yes, I now have the reponsibily to make someone famous.

Oh come on, we are not perverts, just hormone infested teenagers who tend to notice these kind of signs, point at them in the middle of a crowded street, giggle like lunatics and attract even more attention by taking pictures of the sign.

I think it would have been a bit more easier for this 'Order' to make a sign about the things one could actually do in the park, rather than the things that one couldn't do in there.

See, what I like so much about this pharmacy was their directness towards their customers. The customers don't even have to bother asking for bags and then have the shopkeepers rudely refusing. Instead, they just have a polite sign out up everywhere in the shop.

What more could a man want in life than a hairdresser who is also an expert on ingrown nails and corns. Ah bliss! How does one become an expert in ingrown toe nails? Is there some sort of university degree one can do?

This was funny. How can they randomly prohibit people from procrastination is beyond me :)

The not-so-funny pictures that amused only TPF and Pan because let us face it, they're idiots:

It says 'Fire Box'. I'm not sure why that's even minutely funny. It just is! 'Fire Box', ha! Alright, I'll just stop!

'Tourism Police'. That is almost as funny as 'Fire Box'. Oh come on, we were just being silly, don't look at me so strangely please.

There is nothing wrong with the one above, apart from the whole 'belt' bit I think. It must be funny if they check your clothes, shoes and not to mention, belt before you actually go in there.

In India, we have taxis and we have rickshaws (known as 'ricks' for short). I love rickshaws, they are three wheeler vehicles with open sides, flimsy canvas roof and a seat that can just barely manage to squeeze three people at the back. Although, I have sat in one with five people (alright, this was when I was about thirteen or fourteen so we were small people) . All the fare meters in rickshaws in Bombay have 'Don't Touch Me' written on them. As a child, I've spent many happy house pondering on how the fare meter could paint signs on itself when it didn't have hands. What can I say, my mother, as usual ruined all my fantasies.

This sign is printed at the back of some seats in public transport buses in Bombay reserving the seats for women. It's not very funny to anyone apart from TPF, Harry and me because it reminds us of an embarrassing incident which involved my friends actually making people (men) get up from those seats so that we could sit down in a rather crowded bus. I've never felt so privileged to be a woman in my entire life.

The Garbage Bins (because they are Pan's specialty and she can't not post them however silly they maybe):

The Touristy Images (which for some suspicious reason happen to be very few):

Most of the touristy pictures are taken by TPF because she is a great photographer. I, on the other hand, am rather bad and end up messing everything up, so I must thank her for letting me use her pictures.

We had such a lovely trip, and I must thank Eris and my other friends (who probably don't read this blog) that made it even more fun for us. Eris darling, you know how much I love you and your fuzzy hair, right?

Meme Time :)

2006-09-10T21:51:00.001+02:00

I would like to apologies for my late post. I've been back for a while now, but have been busy with real life. I've been tagged by Sophia, which is great because now I don't need to write a comeback post.

1. One book that changed your life: This is a hard question, TPF and I had even had a conversation about this one. We interpret the question in very different ways. According to me every book I read, good or bad manages to have a tiny effect on my life. But if I was forced to choose, I would probably say that the first book that changed the way I viewed life was the play Equus, by Peter Shaffer (I hope plays count in this meme!).

2. One book that you've read more than once: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. I normally don't bother reading text heavy classics multiple times, but what can I say, Wuthering Heights just has that kind of effect on me. It's a wonderful book for angst loving, romance wanting teenagers and I would recommend it to anyone.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: I would love to take with me any elaboratete Dickens' novel with multiple plots and a lot of characters or maybe I might just decide to take along War and Peace and finally manage to finish it.

4. One book that made you laugh: The Simoqin Prophacies by Samit Basu. This book is hilarious and Samit Basu is one of my favourite Indian writers. It is full of really funny sections and one liners that actually have a point and are related to the plot. It's sequal The Manticore's Secret is also just as good.

5. One book that made you cry: To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I have read this book several times now and the last two pages of the book always make me cry. I guess, it is a sort of a personal catharsis that I undergo every time I read it. But tears just can't stop falling every time I read this book.

6. One book that you wish had been written: I would have loved to have an Emily Bronte's autobiography or another novel by her.

7. One book that you wish had never been written: Sweet Valley. I have wasted too many important years of my young and innocent reading life over this series and I genuinely wish that the whole series didn't exist

8. One book you'’re currently reading: The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky and Two Lives, by Vikram Seth (yes, both at the same time. It's a childhood habit of mine, I'm always in the middle of at least two books at a time)

9. One book you'’ve been meaning to read: Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. Well, I first need to buy the black Penguin edition of this book (you know the ones I absolutely adore) and then I will eventually read it.

umm... I refuse to tag anyone else because I am the 'meme killer'! :)

Break Time

2006-08-24T20:54:00.001+02:00

I'm leaving for our annual family vacations early tomorrow morning. I'm not exactly sure if I'm looking forward to these vacations or dreading them. You see, when we're on holiday, all the members of my family end up getting on each others nerves so much so that by the end of it, everyone is extremely relieved to get back and return to work/school.

We're going on a road trip to the north of France and Spain and are going to be staying in a little seaside town next to the Spanish border in France. This does mean that I am not going to have internet access for a week or so. University starts almost as soon as I get back and I'm not particularly looking forward to that. But that qualifies for another post on it's own which shall be written as soon as I get back.

Right now I have a long list of things I have to do before tonight, written down for me very thoughtfully by my dear mother, who didn't think I would remember them. This list includes a whole load of ironing, vacuuming, clearing up my room and not to mention the packing which she has been nagging me to get on with for a week. But yours truly, as usual, has left everything for the last day and doesn't feel like doing it anymore now that the last day has actually come up. I'm in it for a 'Talk' tonight, I can feel it.

Happy Birthday, Mummy!

2006-08-21T12:17:00.001+02:00

Today is my mum's birthday. My father was thankfully nudged into remembering it by me last night because I didn't want him forgetting her birthday three times in a row this year. Luckily for him, my mum is one of those people who does not care much about birthdays; so my dad's forgetfulness was not too much of a big deal.

My mum and I normally don't exactly get along. We fight a lot. This is actually an understatement. We fight all the time is probably a more accurate description of my relationship with my mother. She always tells me off for not being more useful around the house. I always tell her that she should appreciate having me as a daughter and be thankful that I'm not a drug addict, teen angsting, alternative music listening, purple haired creep, which I could have pretty much turned out to be if I had wanted. But mostly we fight for the same old reasons, and normally require external assistance in the form of my father to send us into our respective rooms in order to have some peace and quiet in our household.

What I personally love about our fights is that she is always the first one to make up. She can never be upset with me for more than an hour. So I guess, there's no bitterness in our relationship. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, my ability to judge how much I love a person comes from how much that person can affect me enough to get on my nerves. Sometimes, I have to guiltily admit that I feel like throwing things at my mother.

My mum can actually read my mind. It's scary, but it's true. Sometimes when I was younger I used to think that she was literally inside my mind. She always tells me that she just knows. Now, I don't even bother asking her how does she always know. I never need to tell her how I'm feeling or how my day was. She claims she can read it on my face, however well I'm trying to cover it up. This makes it very difficult to lie or conceal things from her.

According to my father, the only thing I've inherited from my mother are my procrastination abilities and my immense dislike for any sort of work. Both of us don't even bother denying, this. What can I say, there has to be something other than my height that I should have got from my mother's genes. My mum is tiny, she's really small and thin, well, smaller and thinner than me at least. This makes it possible for her to have a complete access to my wardrobe. We fight over my clothes all the times. I hate it when she wears my clothes. She never minds when I wear hers.

My mum was relatively young when she had me, and she's managed to age quite well. Most people normally mistake us for sisters. I love people complimenting my mum on the fact that she looks so young. It makes me happy because she's so pretty. She always tells me that she was too young when I was born, and had no idea how to deal with children. Well, I personally think she did a fine job. Mum's also great with people. Everyone who knows her loves her including the people she works for and all the cleaning women. What wouldn't I do to have her social skills?

My mum is rather absurd. She comes up with the silliest suggestions, which involve no logical thinking whatsoever. She is terrified of heights. See, the fact that she has problems with heights wouldn't matter much to me, but the fact that she insists that I keep away from them is what leads to our inexorable arguments. My mum also has every phobia in the world - heights, darkness, closed spaces, crowds, insects and every other thing one can think of. But she is always a good sport and doesn't mind our incessant teasing.

She likes things done her way all the time, which inevitably leads to our numerous arguments because I like the same. She never ever gives in when we fight. She is the most stubborn creature I've ever come across. She is more stubborn than I am and that takes some effort.

She always falls asleep mid way of movies, a habit that I've recently started finding adorable.

She is also obsessed with cleaning. If I could divide every person in this world into six different groups based on the characters in Friends, my mum would definitely be a Monica. She's scary when she cleans and the problem is that she's always cleaning.

She is great at finding missing property. It's a skill, I tell you. She once managed to find a pair of our house keys on the street two days after our maid had accidentally dropped them. I've lost count of the number of times she's retrieved lost items for me - missing earrings, bags, food, books, important documents, keys and the list continues.

However she may be, she's still my mum and I love her from the bottom my heart. She is the bestest mother in the whole world according to me, and I wouldn't replace her for all the riches in the world. So, here's wishing her a very happy birthday.

Independence Day

2006-08-14T21:33:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow, 15th August is the Indian Independence day. Yes folks, at the stroke of midnight exactly 59 years ago, in the year 1947, we became free. Freedom is a very subjective word in this context, I suppose. It is also the first date I actually remember memorizing after my own birthday.

When I was younger, my dad and I used to spend the Independence day morning watching the national parade on television. He always made me stand up when they played the national anthem because according to him it is blasphemous to sit down when the national anthem of any country is playing. So we stood up as soon as the President's orchestra started playing. I loved standing up. It was always a special occasion for me. This was because, on most other days I never had the opportunity to consciously stand up straight, while looking at television for a few minutes. Then, we used to watch the President's speech, whilst I normally lost interest in it mid way because I could never understand the big Hindi words he used in this speech. Mind you, this wasn't because I was a stupid child; colloquial Hindi is so much different from formal Hindi, that I still normally don't understand all of the President's speech.

As I grew up, it became mandatory to participate in the school independence day celebrations where we had to stand in the hot sun all morning, sing patriotic songs in three languages (Hindi, English and Marathi). Then of course, there was the flag unfurling ceremony where we sang the national anthem. I loved singing our national anthem and still do enjoy singing it, even though I haven't had the opportunity to sing it in the last four years. I don't think I liked it because it made me feel patriotic, but because I always felt that it was a beautiful song.

I'm not exactly what you call a nationalist, well not consciously at least. I'm the first person to criticize my country where it deserves, which is what I normally do. But today I have decided to do something else. I have decided to talk about why I like my country and not why I dislike it. I'm not going to talk about the hypocrisy with which Indian culture treats women or how religion is going to be the end of our people or about the absolute poverty, illiteracy and corruption, but about why I love it so much. Whatever faults India may have, it is still my country and I love it very much because it defines who I am and where I allegedly belong, well according to my passport, at least.

I love my country because I grew up there and whatever little morals I may have, they are because of my upbringing there. I love it because of it's wonderful film industry (yes, I am one of those one billion suckers that actually likes Bollywood movies). I love it because we have great food. Seriously, which other country can boast to be more creative than us where vegetarian food is concerned? When I talk about food, it encompasses all kinds of foods including snacks, three course meals, street food and junk food. I love how we like to Indianize every western item we come across, even McDonalds rather than fall pray to plain old westernization. I also love it because we have seasonal fruits that you don't get anywhere else in the world.

I love it because our national sport it cricket and we're great at it. The World Cup is next year, and wait and see, we're going to be absolutely brilliant. I love it because of it's chaotic traffic. You never feel alone or lonely, at least in Bombay. I love the fact that you can never be alone on the streets whatever time of night it may be because there are people everywhere, all the time.

I love it because we have the monsoon season, which according to me is the best season in the world. I love it because we have a great sense of style and clothing. In India, I can wear a pair of jeans with a kurta and not have to face hoards of people looking at me strangely. We have even managed to make ourselves look hot in saris, a garment which was created supposedly to cover up our bodies. I love it because everyone there is so friendly and I wouldn't even think twice before asking my neighbours for any sort of help. Here, I don't even know who lives next door to me.

I love it because we have so many languages (and yes, they are languages with different scripts and not just dialects. The next person to ask me about this is going to have to listen to a long rant). You just grow up speaking and studying two, three different languages and understanding at least one or two more. I love the fact that whenever I am there, I always end up speaking in a bizarre, incomprehensible mixture of Hindi/English/Marathi all at the same time, and everybody still understands me.

I love it because every single person you meet from there comes from such a diverse cultural background that everyone might as well come from a different country, and yet we manage to love each other just fine. I also love it because in India you grow up having a lot of friends everywhere. I knew practically every kid my age on the whole street where I lived because everyone always knows everyone else. India is a country where it is very difficult for someone to keep a secret. But what I love the most about it is how people like me can grow up there retaining our own culture and languages, while watching American sitcoms, movies and speaking fluent English. It's like you grow up belonging to two different worlds. I can listen to Led Zeppelin and love Bollywood music all at the same time.

So there, that is how I've spent my Independence day this year. I can't watch the parade on television here or sing the national anthem, but what I can do is give us a fine tribute that even the President in his fancy Hindi might have problems trying to compete with.

Mera Bharat is truly mahan! :)

Introducing Julia!

2006-08-10T22:51:00.000+02:00

I would like everyone on the blogosphere to get acquainted with Julia. Yes, I am officially replacing TPF from her 'best friend' status. TPF lost this position the moment she abandoned me in this strange, foreign country and returned to her native land. I am fickle enough to replace and abandon old friends as soon as I find new ones that I like more. Julia is beautiful, interesting, intelligent and all other adverbs of admiration one can think of and I am totally enamoured by her. She is also the best thing that has happened to me since cable television in this country, which clearly shows how much she means to me.

For those who has not figured this out yet, Julia happens to be my new laptop. I have always wanted a laptop ever since I heard about them. I mean, what could be better than a computer, a computer that you can use in your bed, of course or on your couch or in the bathroom, for that matter. For the record, no I am not using my computer in the bathroom, but I would like to have the option to do so in any case, thank you very much. Julia also happens to be password protected, which means that I can write/view pornography on it without my parents knowing or checking my browser history. No, I am not into writing/viewing pornography, but I still like keeping my options open. Privacy matters, especially when you have a teenager with nothing to hide. That is why I like to pretend that I have a big secret up my sleeve or in this case, in my computer.

Julia is a graduation present from my parents. Initially I was going to buy a Mac because Macs are so cool in teenage land, but then I started looking beyond the pretty looks and being the non conformist teenage that I am, I decided that I was not yet ready to try to learn to use a whole new operating system all on my own. I also figured that my Mac dreams could wait until I started earning my own money and let my parents save bit more for my future educational dreams. Turns out, Julia was a bit more expensive than the Mac that I wanted, but it was love at first sight and even my parents couldn't deny that to me.

No, I'm not getting rid of Quincy (my old computer) or forgetting him as soon as I have a prettier replacement with no sexuality crisis. What kind of a person would that make me? A teenager, I know, but as I previously mentioned, I'm one of those unconventional types, therefore I am still emotionally attached to Quincy. He has been with my through my good times and crashed through my bad times. I love him very much and will always care about him even with Julia in my life, however pretty her in-built web cam may be or however cool her in-built DVD burner is. Yes, even though Julia may have the beautiful blue lights and the in-built wireless connection, but Quincy is still my hero.

These days, I feel like a computer whiz. A few days ago, I made my home wireless entirely by myself. Alright, I'm sure this is no big feat to most people, but trust me if you had to call up Internet technicians and ask for computer help in Italian when you don't really speak Italian, it is a big deal. Therefore, yes I am proud of myself.

Mid-life Crisis

2006-08-05T09:23:00.000+02:00

Most of the times, technology scares me because I feel too old for it. Most children these days start using computers at age three on cool Macs. I, on the other hand, had my first home computer when I was in the third grade. I’m not sure what operating system we had at that time, but my first memories of actually using a computer is with Windows 93. The computer belonged to my mum’s office. I still remember logging off Windows and going on to 'DOS' and typing ‘c-drive’ and playing games such as ‘Prince of Persia’ (yes, the original ‘Prince’. I sucked at it, by the way. It used to terrify me and yet, I insisted playing it.). I could never understand how key boards worked and why all the alphabets were not in alphabetical order or how in the wide world could my mother type so fast. Today, my mother is the slowest typist in the family. It is funny how things turn out to be, isn’t it?

We got Internet at home when I was either in the sixth grade or the seventh grade. At that time, I don’t even think my parents knew what exactly the Internet was. I’m not sure I still know what exactly the Internet is. I remember my mother teaching my the basics of email in seventh grade and opening a hotmail account for me. I never thought that I would even use it. After all, I did not have anyone to write messages to. Then, I was introduced to chain forwards, which I have to shamefully admit that my 13 year old self was addicted to. But my exposure to the Internet did not go beyond email. That was until I was introduced to something called ‘Google’ of course. Suddenly my vision of life had changed. I still hold Google responsible for changing my way of thinking.

Right now, I find that children are introduced to computers much before kindergarten. My three year old cousin, who has not even started school yet, proficiently plays all sorts of ‘educational’ games on her computer, which teach her how to count, learn the alphabet or does puzzles. She has a lot of fun doing them and learns at the same time. I just learnt the alphabet from boring, little school books. When I was little, my idea of fun on a computer was ‘Microsoft Paint’ on which I have spent endless joyful moments. CDs were practically inexistent all through my childhood. All I knew were the big floppies for the A-drive by my parents for work purposes. The little floppies, which are outdated right now seemed like a digital revolution to me.

It’s not just computers, it’s every piece of technology that we presently use seems foreign to my childhood like laptops, ipods, DVD players, DVDs themselves, mobile phones etc. The strangest thing in the world is to see my two year old cousin using the DVD player. He knows how to switch it on, select his DVD and play it. At two, I hardly knew what a remote control for our television was and grew up watching VHSs on our outdated video player.

Since I am the only fruit of my parent’s loins, they but naturally freakishly obsessive about knowing my movements. I got my first mobile phone when I was about fourteen and hated it. All my friends could never understand why I disliked it so much, but I did. It made me attract attention. I didn’t like the attention. I did not have any numbers stored on my phone, and I did not even know about the existence of text messages. There was nobody else of my age group who owned an actual cell phone. I used to get into so many arguments with my parents about carrying it all around. Presently, I’ve been carrying a mobile around for about the last 5 years, I still don’t use it much, (because it is permanently out of money) but I don’t think I could live without it. It just makes me feel safer having a phone around me in case of late night emergencies. Normally, my mobile phone is more useful to me as an alarm clock, rather than an object of communication, but it’s something I still need to have for personal comfort. It feels great to know that all the people I love are just a button away from me.

I feel too old for a lot of things actually. Just the other day TPF had come over to my house for a sleepover and we were supposed to have a movie marathon all night long. The next day my dad asked me which movies we saw all night and I told him that we just went to bed at 11 because we were too tired to do anything else. He then teased me about all the fabulous plans we had made that evening. My reply to that was: “I think I’ve become too old to stay up all night long, dad. When I was 14, it was alright, I used to have all that energy, but right now, I just don’t think I have the capacity to stay up late.”

That’s right, my dear readers I’m almost 19 and am going through a mid-life crisis. I’m too old for this young world that seems to get younger each day and all I can do is sit and collect stories to tell my grandchildren.

Birthday Girl!

2006-07-27T19:00:00.000+02:00

I wish I could say that I was the subject of this post, but unfortunately my birthday isn't till September. This post is going to be solely dedicated to our favourite Poodle. It is her birthday tomorrow and she has decided to become into a full fledged adult. She has finally turned 18, which means that now she can legally watch R-rated movies, have sex and drink in this country without feeling guilty for breaking the law (we all know that the law and not the lack of opportunity was the only thing that was keeping her from indulging in these activities)

Even though we have been going to the same school for about four years now, we have only been friends for about a year and a half because well, we had different social circles in school. Alright, who am I kidding, TPF was a bitch for two years, until she finally decided to start being nice to me. It is rather strange that in a grade of 47 people and a school of less than 250 people that we did not become friends straight away. Predictably enough, the first normal conversation we had was on books and ahem... fanfiction. We have been close friends ever since. There is nothing better than Harry Potter bonding to bring people together.

To say that both of us fight a lot would be an understatement, but to say that we both get along would also be one too. I judge how much I care for a person by their ability to get on my nerves. This is a strange parameter to measure love by, but I've found it particularly useful. I think the only person how can get on my nerves as much as my mum happens to be TPF.

In less than a month, we're leaving for university and it's going to be very frightening not to have her here with me living fifteen minutes away from my house or going to the same school as me. I'll miss spending all day together only to get home and talk to her on phone while finding myself emailing her the same evening for absolutely no reason. I think, I'm even going to miss our adorable arguments.

Sample Argument
TPF: 'Is my hair looking okay from the back?'
Pan: 'Do I look like I care?'
TPF: *sulks*
Pan: 'Alright, I'm sorry, it's looking fine, really!'
TPF: *sulks*
Pan: 'Oh my god, do you have to over react for the silliest things?'
TPF: 'Oh look whose talking!'
Pan: 'What is that supposed to mean?'
TPF: 'You think I'm touchy, have you seen yourself?'
Pan: *sulks*
And so the vicious cycle continues for 2 whole minutes till Pan and TPF are either tired of sulking or have forgotten why they were mad at each other in the first place

As Harry once put it , on an average we fight for about 30 minutes a day. (Oh god, we do sound like a married couple, don't we? We remind me of my mum and dad and that is definitely not a good sign).

I'm not even going to try wishing her the very best in life, because I know that she doesn't need luck. She happens to be the most intelligent person I've ever had the opportunity to meet in my short and insignificant lifetime. I love her very much and all I can say is that she's the bestest! As I've told her so many times, I only love her because she's so intelligent, funny and pretty. Now on the other hand, if she was stupid, boring and not to mention horribly ugly, I wouldn't have bothered with her at all. Its the blond hair, green eyes and the pretty dimples that keep me in her company.

Aww, our very own Poodle is finally legal now and all I can do is get teary eyed and go: "They grow up fast, don't they?" and reminiscence on how I've just spent the best two years of my life with her.

Football Fever

2006-07-17T23:23:00.001+02:00

I've never been much of a sports fan. But I can well understand why it means so much to a lot of people. I am moderately fond of cricket because I'm Indian and any self respecting Indian is supposed to love cricket.

I also quite enjoy watching football, but only with my dad or TPF because all through the match they're always giving me random and not to mention useless factual information about the players. They only do this because they know how much of a sucker I am for useless and random facts. Therefore as you can see, I'm not overly testostrony about football like most of the people I know, but I have to say the World Cup is a completely different issue.

I like football mainly because I get to watch overly cute men running around in shorts for 90 whole minutes. Additionally, I like it because the teams sing their national anthems before every match and that for some reason makes me cry. Superficiality apart, I'm also in it for the sportsmanship, team spirit, also obviously for an opportunity to watch a good game and blah blah blah.

TPF and I had been following the first round of the World Cup rather badly because we were in India when it began. This does not mean that we don't have television in India or that one can't watch football in India, but means that we were invariable not at home when the matches were aired. So we almost missed most of the first few matches, including Italy's first match against Ghana. But we've been religiously following the rest of the World Cup ever since we've gotten back, ahem...well except from the Portugal-Netherlands match because that evening Harry and I thought it would be a good idea to go swimming in the sea at 11 at night without towels when were were staying at her grandparents house near Genova (But that's a different adventure which shall be put up here in due course)

As I said, even though the World Cup fever was not lost on me, I was still unprepared for what I saw last Sunday at the finals. The Italy-Germany semi finals match was great. Michael Ballack (he's the German captain) looked so ahem... hot when he was crying after the match that Germany lost, that I almost want to re-watch that match only to see him crying at the end of it all over again. Alright, I agree, I'm a horrible person, but he is rather pretty.

Sometimes I forget I live in Italy because I'm rather absentminded and not to mention unaware of the world around me. But ever since Italy became the World Cup finalists, the fact that I'm actually living here has been brought to my notice with celebratory screams and these horns that are so loud that you jump every time somebody blows them, around the city for a few days before the actual match.

The frenzy in Milan right before the match was absolutely crazy. There were more than 10 thousand people in the city centre who had come to watch the match on a tiny screen that had been put up there. Most of these 10 thousand people had flags with them, which they found necessary to wave around wildly all the time. This also meant that whatever little one's view was of that tiny screen was completely obstructed.

As you may have already noticed from the picture at the side which was taken by Pan before the match started that she was one of these 10 thousand idiots at the main square along with her dad and TPF. Thankfully we thought it prudent to return home for the second half of the match and watch it like civilized people in front of our flat screen television. This has to be one of the smartest decisions that Pan and her father might have actually made together in their entire lifetime.

Anyways, I did spend most of the second half and the extra time with my head into a cushion on my couch because I just couldn't bear to see what was happening. I was too nervous to watch most of the match. But surprisingly enough I gathered my courage and watched all the penalty kicks. Normally, as a principle I don't watch penalties, but this was with World Cup finals with Italy playing, so I just couldn't have missed that.

My dearest wish for the outcome of the match was wanting Italy to win, but also wanting Zidane (the captain of the French side, who also happens to be my favourite football player in the whole world and mind you, extremely attractive too) to score. And score he did on a penalty kick. Anyways I'm never going to forgive Materazzi for for being an asshole and making Zidane headbutt him. No, nothing anyone says is going to convince me otherwise. Zidane is like Eric Clapton, he's God!

After the match we went out to the main city centre. After all, that was where about 10 thousand people saw the match. By 'we' I mean, Pan's mum, Pan's dad, TPF, TPF's 10 euro Italian flag (which was completely worth it) and your fabulous and extremely modest narrator, Pan. The pictures posted up here are all taken from my Dad's exceedingly old cell phone and so they don't portray even half the atmosphere or emotions in the air before and after the match. Although, you can see from the picture below, there were naked people dancing around in the city's main fountain, which was just plain ewww because I suspect that the water in those fountains is slimy and unclean. For once, even your prissy narrator, Pan looked upon these barbaric people with a fond eye because Italy had won the World Cup after all and certain allowances had to be made for the night. Of course, Pan did get wild when the dirty fountain water was splashed by fat, naked guy on her beautiful shiny tresses reminding her of the wild night where there was a lot of cocktail throwing in the air and her hair had gotten stuck in the cross fire.

It was a great match and Italy deserved to win, not because they were a better team, but because Pan supported them and because they were prettier than the French side.

Back from the Dead with a Big Bang!

2006-07-13T10:00:00.001+02:00

Look who's back. It's me, everyone's favourite drama queen back from the dead, although I wasn't exactly dead; so the title of my post sounds rather silly, but I've always wanted to use that phrase at least once in my life and right now seemed to be an opportune moment.

So at this moment the reader might be wondering where the heck has Pan been for so long. My answer to that question would be a shameful 'here and there'. Alright, I admit it, I've been guilty of procrastination and haven't been on any website apart from my email and mugglenet for more than a month now. Although, I have been busy doing other things like attending various 'social events' (in normal teenage terminology 'social events' means decadent, debauched, alcohol ridden parties). Additionally, there was the Graduation Day ceremony last week where Pan almost tripped on the flag of her own country because she couldn't control the sari that TPF had forced her to wear. Pan was also forced by mean teacher to give a speech and be a model nerdy student, which she certainly is, to a bunch of parents, most of whom don't understand a word of English on Graduation Day. And how can I not mention the fateful and depressing thing called examination results that we got a few days ago.

I can never make up my mind about examination results. They always depress me for some strange reason however well or badly I may have done in them. Maybe it could be because there is so much hype building up before the marks are given out, one can't help but feel a bit let down when one finally gets them after a long wait.

Results aside what else has Pan been doing because it has been almost a month since she came back from India. Well, I can't resist it anymore, I have to bring the second part of the post title into motion. Last night, Pan and TPF went to the Rolling Stones concert. It was their first concert in Europe of their 'A Bigger Bang' tour. The concert began at nine in the evening but Pan and TPF were there since seven listening to crappy introducing band (called Feeder) and socialising with creepy, old man next to us. Alright, I'm lying here. TPF was the one talking to old man next to us, while Pan just looked the other way and pretended that she doesn't understand Italian and know either of them.

No, we didn't see Mick from that close. That's ahem... the picture of the screen. We did have the cheapest tickets (which were not cheap under any circumstances, we bought them for 50 euro), so we were the furthermost away from the stage. There were about 60 thousand people there, so one can only imagine how full the stadium was. Needless to say, the concert was fabulous. It involved the most varied age group of people I've ever seen. There were people from age 16 to age 70. I am now the proud owner of a Rolling Stones t-shirt and a band poster. Of all the strangest people to bump into at a concert with 60 thousand people, we bumped into Mags and her sister (Hopefully some of you might remember TPF's friend and drug addict extraordinaire, Mags who has made several drunk appearances on TPF's blog)

Pan almost cried when Mick sang, 'I can get no satisfaction'. It was also the exact moment of her life that Pan realized that she was born in the wrong times. Pan's not meant for the 21st century, but for the good ol' sixties and seventies. I mean, if I was 18 in the sixties I wouldn't be sitting in front of a computer updating my blog. Pan from the sixties would have been half way around the globe on a trek to Katmandu listening to Cream cassettes on her cool, new walkman. But no, she's dumped against her wishes into the 21st century, where she is forced to listen to Cream and The Rolling Stones on her ipod instead.

But as usual I digress. Coming back to the concert, Mick Jagger looks as hot as ever. My god, he's in his sixties and I'm crushing on him, I should really stop. Keith Richards looks like he's going to drop dead any second. TPF and I were really afraid that we were going to be a witness to Keith Richards' death. I also have a minor crush on Keith, which is just plain scary, and so I don't like thinking about it. On top of it all, we also saw Materazzi and Del Piero at the concert (to all those ignorant people who don't know who I'm talking about, they are famous Italian football players). This just reminds me of the subject of my next post which is going to be football. As everyone may know, Italy just won the World Cup last week. (If you didn't know this, please stop reading my blog right now and go and get an update on current world news).

So there you go, you've just got an update on Pan's social life. It is rather strange that after a four year slump my social life has been on an all time high these days. But after all this is the longest holiday I'm ever going to have in my life unless I'm unemployed in the future, so I might as well enjoy myself. Although I must admit, it feels odd to be happy all the time. I mean, I'm one of those teen angsting people who gets depressed and morose rather easily. Poor TPF, you should ask her about it because she's the one who has to put up with my mood swings. Although, we are married and everything, so I'm not sure if I'm supposed to feel guilty about it. But as I said, it's been really great these days. I shall post the photos of our Bombay pictures next week, so that everyone has something to look forward to.

Blogging in the Rain - Another Joint Post

2006-05-31T22:30:00.000+02:00

After the overwhelming response they got from their beloved fans, Pan and TPF have decided to grace you all with another gem from your favourite teenage bloggers.

In the past few days they have been busy shopping.

Yes, that's right, folks. TPF has never been to India before and instead of sightseeing, she has been keeping herself busy by trying to buy away half the city. Pan, who on the other hand was born in Bombay, is buying the other half.

Today, Pan and TPF bought 12 pairs of earrings, not to mention a ring, for less than 6 Euros. The street vendor thought that he was ripping Pan and TPF off but in reality, what the poor street vendor doesn't know is that Pan and TPF were the ones who had the upper hand in the transaction. They're evil and they love it! [Also, they love exploiting cheap labour]

TPF ruined Pan's morning the other day because she randomly pretended to be sick. The reason for this is that she is an attention-seeking brat. To this day, the reasons for her random 'condition' remain one of the biggest mysteries of mankind. Suffice it to say that once Pan forcibly dragged her to a shopping mall, TPF immediately got better.

[This is all Pan's fabrication. TPF was truly feeling unwell.]

Well, we all know who just typed that out!

The monsoon has officially arrived in Bombay. This was testified to by the copious wading through ankle-deep water under a flimsy, Milanese and shared chatri* that Pan and TPF engaged in this evening.

This of course was nothing compared to the walking around barefoot in a damp-floored temple that TPF had to endure for the sake of cultural awareness. Yes, friends, our darling TPF was seen BAREFOOT in a damp, fungus-ridden public space. Behold the flying pigs.

Pan and TPF cooked. Together. It was ugly. It was bitter. It was war!

Enough said on that.

Throughout all this, Pan and TPF have fallen victim to the infamous leer. The characteristics of this leer include:

1) bared teeth

2) perverted sneer

3) traces of drool

4) dirty mumblings in Marathi

5) touching of private areas, including but not limited to 'the tool' or the 'the wand', as it is known in the wizarding world

Of course, Pan and TPF are hardly blameless in this situation, being the uber-hot chicks that they are. Also, TPF happens to be rather pale compared to the average Mumbaite, and Pan favours clothing that enhances her naturally prominent assets.

Wait till Eris joins them. She's bald, for God's sake.

So for now, TPF and Pan once again leave the blogosphere and hope that you will all survive for a couple of days without their riveting posts, although from the astounding amount of comments they have received on their last entry, it seems as if you shall all live.

*umbrella

Bombay Blogging - A Joint Post

2006-05-29T07:45:00.000+02:00

Hello, imaginary following. Today, Pan and TPF shall be joining their already immense wits to create one fun-fest of a post! Buckle up!

We are in Bombay, as you can tell by the title, and we're posting together, as you can also tell by the title (and by the fact that the same post is in both our blogs). We are also fighting over the keyboard, an activity which is definitely in line with our usual bickering and childish banter.

No, we are not married. But thanks for asking.

Moving on.

We have already taken some funny photos which shall be posted as soon as we get back to Italy. Meanwhile, we shall tell you what's been going on for the last two days.

The flight was mostly uneventful, except for Pan's mispronounciation of German (we were flying Austrian Air). You see, she kept pronouncing 'flug' as if it rhymed with 'plug', when the 'u' is actually supposed to be pronounced as something like the the double 'o'in 'book'. Also, TPF mocked Pan for her sentimentalism, which was very very mean of her. Pan sulked and TPF apologized and everything was fine again. We watched a Hindi movie with subtitles - Bluff Master on the plane and marvelled at the uber-cool headphones, which the plane people were kind enough to supply. We also had a Britney Spears marathon on our iPod which was rather cool.

At the airport, Pan got paranoid about our luggage not coming thorugh. Luckily, TPF was there to save the day and make sure Pan didn't hyperventilate. Pan's friends came all the way to the airport to say hi to her, which made her feel like a horrible friend (which she is).

We eventually got home and survived thanks to the aid of ceiling fans. It's pretty hot and humid here, kind of like Turkish summers, which makes TPF feel at home and Pan feel sticky with perspiration. Because women don't sweat, they perspire.

Yesterday, we went out for a walk with a friend of Pan's. Apparently, Pan sucks at road crossing. TPF saved her life numerous times (you can probably tell by now that TPF's writing most of this post whilst Pan is busy twirling her thumbs and talking to her aunt). By the way, did you know that Pan is an auntie? Her cousin has a two and a half year old son called Gops (well, not really. It's a nickname). Gops loves his auntie Pan, but not his auntie Pan's friend, TPF (he can join the bloody club). In fact, Gops thinks TPF is auntie Pan's mummy. Which is very flattering to TPF. Really.

We shall do another one of these joint posts very soon to keep you all in touch with your uber-cool teenaged bloggers. You are advised to leave comments on both blogs, otherwise you may cause discontent and more bickering and we already do enough of that without your help.

Thank you and goodbye!

A trip away from er...home(?)

2006-05-26T06:15:00.000+02:00

I'm leaving for India tomorrow morning, well that on this Saturday for people living in different time zones, for just about three weeks. TPF is going to be accompanying me along with Harry who is going to join us on the 5th of June and we're coming back on the 17th of June, just in time for our Graduation Ceremony and Prom.

I was rather excited about the trip until about today because I haven't visited India for about two and a half years now. The last time I was there, it was for my grandfather's funeral, so I guess, it wasn't the best of vaccations. But now that I'm actually leaving tomorrow, I've just realized that I'm terrified and maybe a little apprehensive about the whole trip. I'm terrified to see how different the place is going to from what I was used to, I'm also terrified about how different I am going to be than what I was used to when I was there. I always assumed that once you've spent fourteen years in a place, it ends up becoming a part of your life, but my memories of home there are very blurry, for some reason. All my childhood just seems like a blur of memories and I can hardly remember the details.

The whole trip also made me think of Frankengirl's wonderful post on home that struck a deep chord on my mind. Ever since I was a child, my home had always been Bombay. I don't think my vision of life went beyond the city. I was born there and I always thought my life would end there. I had lived in the same house all my life, until I moved to Italy. So whenever anyone mentioned the word home to me, it always meant our house in Bombay because that's where my heart was. But now I have realized that Bombay is no longer home and it will never be home. Home is here, here in Milan where I presently live, where all my friends are, where my family is and that is what makes it home. It is not the physical house of brick and stone that I had lived in for fourteen years. I've been living here for only four years now and this is my home and I'm sure as time passes that will change, I'll find other places that I'd like to call home depending where I feel the most comfortable.

So my fear arises from the fact that I'm just going to be like any other tourist visiting Bombay for the first time. I don't want to be just a tourist. But oddly enough that is exactly what I'm going to be. I have to admit that in the end, I know we're going to have a great time. It is also the last summer I will probably spend with my friends because we're all off to university in a month's time in different countries, in different continents and so of course we're going to lead completely different lives and who knows where that's going to lead us. Therefore, I'm going to make sure that we have a wonderful time :)

PS: I might be away for a while becuase my aunt's house where we're going to be staying has a dial up connection and you can imagine how slow that is. Also, I don't know whether I'll have a lot of time to actually be on the computer, but I'll try post as soon as I get a bit of free time.

The Holiday Commandments

2006-05-21T09:27:00.000+02:00

Squeeeeeeal! I'm sorry I completely apologize for the random squealing I am going to do all through this post, but unfortunately I cannot stop my self. They are finally over. I can't even make myself repeat the 'E' word again, so from now on the 'E' word is going to be known as, well the 'E' word. Although, I must admit, the last day of school was rather anticlimactic. I was expecting the heavens to do something sensational to celebrate my end of the year, but nothing of that sort happened. I didn't do anything special apart from eating lunch at Burger King, watching The Da Vinci Code that TPF has so wonderfully reviewed, getting foot blisters and limping home because of my sandals and washing the dishes of course.

My mother ended my short lived 'end of school' happiness.

Pan: 'Squeeeeeeal, My exams are over'

Mum: 'Oh great, now you can do the dishes tonight'

Pan: 'But, but... mother - '

(silence, mother has already left the room)

I have decided to make use of my time and come up with 'The Holiday Commandments' which I dogmatically plan to follow:

Thou shalt read at least one decent book a week.
Thou shalt watch at least one movie a day regardless of its language, rating or content.
Thou shalt move thy lazy arse and do something useful in the house by helping mum with housework and not sit whinging about the unfairness of the situation.
Thou shalt learn the basics of cooking.
Thou shalt spend unhealthy amount of time reading fanfiction on the internet without feeling guilty about it.
Thou shalt not succumb to peer pressure and go out in the sun and get an unhealthy tan.
Thou shalt eat at least one ice-cream every three days without worrying about thy weight.
Thou shalt not under any circumstances obsessively wonder about how thou hast done in thy examinations.
Thou shalt clear up thy books/files/notes/university prospectus/stationary that are lying around the house for the last two years and organize old files neatly.
Thou shalt watch crappy sit-coms re-runs on television and waste time watching the E Entertainment channel without wondering how pathetic thy life is.

And one more, since I like prime numbers...

11. Thou shalt not, I repeat not, get intoxicated before prom in any of the outings thou maketh with thy trashy friends..

There you go. My holiday commandments are done. I'm going to be a good person this summer.

A Tribute to my Fantasy Friends

2006-05-16T10:38:00.000+02:00

Since I've been using the same route and public transport to go to school and back for the last four years at the same timings each morning, it is only natural that I've been seeing some other people who have been doing the same for a few years.

I've always been a hopeless ball of fluff. As I've mentioned somewhere previously, I'm the most pathetically romantic person I know. I guess, it must be something to do with the fact I'm an only child and therefore I'm quite used to retreating into my own world and making up fantasy worlds to live in.

It was my favorite hobby as a child. Both my parents worked, so I was quite used to being on my own for long hours. I don't think it was loneliness that brought out my romantic nature, but just a lot of free time. I didn't have the same problems as most of my other friends with siblings which involved fighting for books, toys, television channels and any other thing that one can imagine. Hence, what I absolutely adored doing was sitting on the window ledge of my house, observing people walking on the street in the evenings and thinking about them and their probable lives to a great extent.

My secret pleasure in this little game was that these people who meant so much to me in my imaginary world didn't have any idea that I existed. Most of them had not even noticed a child sitting on a window ledge looking at them going home after a busy day at work or a trip to the market. It was a source of comfort to love these people who didn't know me at all. It also made me wonder whether there actually were other people in the world whose imaginary worlds revolved around me. I know it sounds far fetched now and rather silly, but at that time it made a lot sense in convoluted mind.

I've gotten into this same bad habit for these last few years. This is because of the fact that I keep seeing the same people each morning in the bus. I happen to be rather fond of them, however much some of them might appeal to me or even repulse me to a certain extent.

One of them is a young man. He is a professional from what I know because he wears a suit and a tie to work every day, but this probably has to be his first job because he is rather young. What I adore about him is his green coat, his meticulously combed hair and the way in which he clutches on to his laptop as if its the only thing that matters in his life and he would probably be willing to give his life up in order to save it. He has not only been taking the bus with me for the last three years, but also the metro in the same direction. He probably does not even know that I exist and even if he did know that I existed, he surely is not aware about the fact that I take such a great interest in his life.

Then there is this woman in her late forties who has two adopted children who I see almost every day. One of the kid is about five and the other one is about eight and she takes them to school each morning. I'm not going to talk about how annoying or spoilt those children are, but about the fact that I've never seen any mother in my entire life who loves her children as much as that woman loves her two boys. She doesn't consciously do anything special to show her love for them, but the way in which she looks at them or holds their hands while helping them climb onto the bus or even the manner in which she speaks to them shows how much they mean to her. It just makes me randomly feel like sniffling every time I see her. Sometimes, their father drops them to school and he's really sweet with them too. Those are my favorite 'bus people' and they always make my day every time I happen to see them in the mornings.

Then there is this old woman who goes somewhere every morning. I can't make out where exactly she goes. She's too old to work and looks like a retired, old grandmother, but she's been taking the same bus each morning for the last four years, which means that she is doing something and I can't understand what. This old woman is also the fastest and the most enthusiastic book reader I've ever seen in my entire life. I read quite fast myself and I've not met too many people who read fast in my life, but this woman has a new book every week or sometimes in even less than a week. There has not been a single day when she hasn't travelled without reading and I must admit, I'm rather jealous about her ardent book reading enthusiasm. (hmph, I don't like her taste in books, which automatically according to my deeply prejudiced nature is supposed to mean that I don't like her. I refuse to respect anyone who has read the book, Deception Point because that probably means that they actually liked The Da Vinci Code and Angles and Demons enough to read other Dan Brown books. He has a three-letter name, you're not supposed to read books written by people whose parents were not imaginative enough to give their children names that consist of more than three alphabets and ...er... no offence to anyone reading this who does have a three-letter real name unless you name is Bob, in that case umm... yeah... you can get offended)

There are so many other people that I see every day; an old couple with a crabby wife who is so authoritative and irritating that I feel rather sorry for her husband who seems like a nice person, an irritatingly, friendly woman who likes making random friends with other bus passengers and does not brush her hair, this other woman this put a cigarette in her mouth a stop before she has to get off the bus and lights it as soon as she steps off, a lady with the thick, fur coat that must have killed polar bear, the boy who is always late to school and goes to school with a motorcycle helmet for some unfathomable reason, the silly girl who goes to school with a different bag each day and not to mention the creepy guy who took pictures of me on his mobile phone last year.

There are so many people who have made an impact to my life by just existing and not doing anything special. Most of them don't even know that I actually exist. For some reason this thought would be rather depressing for most people, but I feel strangely comforted by it because I like being the anonymous observer. I'm not going to be here next year to observe them and I doubt that they will notice my absence but I, on my part am definitely going to miss them.

Guess Who's Back?

2006-05-09T22:45:00.001+02:00

Clichéd post titles apart, I'm officially out from blog retirement. But my exams are not over yet, I still have exactly 10 whole days, 5 exam papers and 2 full subjects to complete before they do actually get over, but I have finished most of them. Before I actually begin this post, I have to warn people reading this that this post is absolutely subjectless and consists solely of my random ramblings.

The last two weeks have been filled with odd sleeping and food habits, exam pressure and not to mention bad hair. (I always have bad hair during exams, it's some kind of condition that I'm forced to suffer with) I have actual dark circles below my eyes, my first dark circles. I'm not to sure whether to be proud that I'm an adult now because I have dark circles or get wound up like most people about them. I think, I'll wait a few more years before they start worrying me.

I'm not a very 'sitting up late night to study' person. My eye-lids start drooping as soon as the clock touches 11.00 p.m and I just can't keep myself awake, however desperate my exam preparation is. Now because of this terrible 'early to bed' habit I'm forced to set the alarm early in the morning. The problem with alarms is that I have to set the alarm at least an hour in advance in order to get up at a particular time. (The person who invented the 'snooze' button on alarm clocks should win a Noble prize). As a result, I've been setting my alarm at 3.15 - 3.30 a.m in the morning to be up by 4.00 to study the things I haven't finished the morning before the exam for the last two days. This 'early morning getting up' thing has got me into a 'napping in the afternoons' habit. I love afternoon naps. Aren't they the bestest thing ever? (For people who are mentally correcting my bad grammar, I'm quite aware that 'bestest' isn't a word, and that doesn't stop me from using it.) I know, I'm getting into my grandma's habits of going to bed early, rising early in the morning and having afternoon naps.

My desperate examination situation makes me wonder what the hell was I exactly doing for a month of study leave before the exams began. I can't say I didn't know that it was going to be like this. I knew exactly what I would be in for, if I didn't revise properly before the exams, but now I just feel like an idiot. Knowing me, I am well aware that even if I did have a time-turner, like the ones they use in badly written Harry Potter fanfiction, I would have still not revised properly because apart from several other things I also happen to be the queen of procrastination.

I can't believe I'm almost two thirds done with the IB. It used to feel like it was going to last forever and now I'm almost done with it. Suddenly my whole world seems quite empty right now. I remember the psycological torture we had to undergo before we actually started the course with lectures from teachers which went like quote, "You think you're going to do well, but you're all going to fail." unquote.

Under these warnings our disillusioned selves began this course two years ago and I have to agree with most people in my grade. Yep, they've been hell alright, but I guess the satisfaction one derives from doing courses like the IB is that you actually feel well versed in your fields of knowledge and that makes it worth it. It's nice to feel intelligent, isn't it? One doesn't get that feeling too often these days.

My bladder has been running out of bounds these days. I'm sure not too many people over here do care or are interested in my urinary habits, but I shall mention them in any case. I'm telling you, it's gotten out of control. Like today, I had a two hour, writing intensive Economics exam and after an hour, I had to pee and not just pee, pee badly. But I was forced to sit there for another hour and continue writing wildly, while pretending that my bladder was not going to burst out any second. This was when I went to the bathroom right before the paper. I'm not even going to start discussing both my English papers, when I actually forgot to go to the bathroom before the exam began.

You Give Me Fever...

2006-04-27T21:50:00.001+02:00

I hope people aren't going to be misled by the title of this post. I'm not going to be talking about a hot, sexy, possible future life partner that Elvis had in mind when he sang this song in this post; but about my upcoming examinations that begin in umm.. less than a few days. They are one of those final-end-of-school-exams-that-your-whole-life-and-career-depend-on kind of exams. I should definitely be more paranoid about them, but I can't be arsed to care. Alright, I'm lying here, I do care.

Last night just less than a week before my Maths exam I realized I can't integrate. Seriously, I have no imagination for calculus, even though I've been doing it for the last three years. I remember a conversation I had in class with my teacher three years ago while he was attempting to teach us the basics of calculus.

Teacher: "Imagine a line on a graph, parallel to the X-axis."

(Now it was fine till here. I mean, I have imagination problems but, its not too hard to imagine random lines floating about on an axis)

Teacher (continues): "Now imagine this line moving around the X-axis, making a cylinder around the axis because it's moving so fast."

(Hmm, this required a lot of effort. Usually it takes me ages to imagine normal three dimensional cylinders. To imagine a moving line making one was and it still is rather difficult.)

Teacher: "Now imagine if I wanted to find the volume of this cylinder."

(At this point, your beloved narrator, Pan couldn't bear to remain silent anymore, her imagination did have some kind of mathematical boundaries after all and she had to speak up.)

Pan: "Why would a line want to revolve around an axis?"

Awkward Silence

Teacher: "So, we were discussing how to calculate the volume then... thanks to integration we have a formula..."

(Therefore, my rather interesting question has remained unanswered ever since and had dreadfully affected my calculus abilities)

Anyways, this is probably going to be my last post for a while because I have exams till the 19th of May. I will still probably be reading all my favourite blogs on my sidebar and commenting, but I don't think I'll have time to post anything new. After all, pretending to study does require colossal effort.

Some days ago TPF and I watched the movie version of The Importance of Being Earnest. I agree, the movie did give the words 'Creative License' a new meaning, but I have to admit, I enjoyed it. Although, I may be highly biased in my opinion because it is my deep and profound belief that anything with Colin Firth has to be beyond brilliant. (Sidenote for Fangirl Rant - Oh my god, have you seen him? I mean, he's not as physically attractive as other Hollywood actors, but that's what makes it so endearing, doesn't it? Plus, he has this mysterious Mr Darcyish aura around him that makes him so very attractive. Anyone would think that this Mr. Darcyish aura would type cast him as an actor in movies (like Hugh Grant for example), but no, he's done quite a varied range of movie roles, ok, I'll just stop now :D) Surprisingly Rupert Everett made quite a good Algy.

Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell was hilarious. She is a very good actress after all. Although, she's very theatrical and therefore, it doesn't always come out well in cinema. The movie changed the order and locations of practically all the scenes of the play, but kept the almost all the language from the original play. Therefore, the humour is not lost. I would recommend people to read the play before actually watching the movie because Oscar Wilde definitely should be read at least once in your lifetime. Its like some sort of a law. Here is a link here to some memorable Earnest quotes.

I have absolutely no idea how I've managed to include Calculus, Colin Firth, upcoming examinations, Oscar Wilde, Maths, Judi Dench and The Importance of Being Earnest in one post, hey, its all in there, isn't it?