Adelante La Albiceleste!

• Wash my 2006 World Cup Official Argentina Jersey - ✔
• Download World Cup Fixtures MS Excel File - ✔
• Put up World Cup Fixtures Poster - ✔
• Pay Cable Fee - ✔
• Purchase sports magazines with stories about previous World Cups - ✔
• Inform manager that I might suddenly fall sick during the weekdays - ✔ (If Argentina are playing a game on that day then it will be just a coincidence)
• Update Facebook/Orkut profile pictures and profile names to reflect the fact I'm a hardcore Argentina fan - ✔

Yep my World Cup checklist is complete. Now all I have to do is wait for the quadrennial football extravaganza to begin. At one point I was half heartedly thinking if it would've been possible to fly to S.Africa but I looked up the prices of tickets and found out that unless I rob an ATM I wouldn't have enough money to make the trip. The other options were either swimming all the way or via ship both of which I don't have time for.

Anyway unless if you ain't been paying attention I have made it quite clear that I'm a huge Argentina fan. Yes it was all because of Maradona and his exploits in 1986. I was too young to remember the '86 World Cup but I like to pretend that I watched Maradona's Hand of God goal on television (but I didn't). What I remember clearly is the school notebooks sold in Aizawl which had Maradona and other famous football stars on the covers. I had quite a few of those back in the late 80s.

Fast forward to the 1990 World Cup and this time I was able to watch my first live World Cup football game which happened to be Argentina vs Cameroon but 'twas rather unfortunate that Argentina lost the game. However they made up for it by reaching the final where they lost to Der Germans.

After the 78 and 86 WC wins and the 90 final the closest we have come to winning the trophy again was reaching the Quarter Finals in 98 and 2006. This time around Diego Armando Maradona is our Manager and with Messi,Aguero, Higuain, Tevez, di Maria et al in the team we could very well get our hands on that golden trophy again. Yes I'm aware that I've started using the word "we"; during the World Cup I'm an Argentinian.

As talented as we are we don't have too many good looking chaps in our team so I don't think too many of the female sex will be supporting us. That honour always has belonged to the oh so handsome I'd turn gay for them at the drop of a hat Italians. The most good looking chap in our team is Carlos Tevez and he looks like this -

I could go on and on about those dreamy Italians.. oops I mean incredibly talented Argentinians but I need to go pray at the Church of Maradona. Yes there really is a Church of Maradona. Go enjoy your World Cup but if your favorite team is NOT Argentina then I hope your World Cup really sucks.

No tome mi cielo azul y blanco lejos de mí. Adelante La Albiceleste!

Note: La Albicelesete is the nickname of the Argentina football team. Literally translated it means "the blue and white skies" . Blue and White are the colours of the Argentina national flag. Adelante means Forward.
"No tome mi cielo azul y blanco lejos de mí " - Do not take my blue and white sky/skies away from me.
I just wanted to add something in Spanish to this post so that it would give me this whole Spanish vibe thing and girls will fall in love with me and all that. Sigh! :(

XXX

When I first started writing this blog I mentioned that I already was starting to have writer's block .I was not kidding. I haven't updated my blog for seven months. Or maybe I'm too lazy to write. Probably laziness coupled with not being sufficiently inspired enough to blog. Tonight I found that I had no movies to watch and I'd just finished watching my football club being beaten(Aaaargh!) so I found time to spare before going to bed. What shall I blog about this time?

An obvious topic would be to blog about me turning thirty (Yay!) which happened last October. This must be one of the most common topics people would blog (brag?) about . Its an important milestone to have completed thirty years on this earth so this post will be a short review of how things have turned out now that three decades of my life have been completed.

Big thanks to the Man up in the sky for having given me good health, a loving family, a decent job etc. I have had a few close calls with death - so far I've almost drowned twice, met with a pretty nasty road accident while driving on my way back from work, inserted a stone in my nose and it fell down into my throat and I almost choked to death. Yes I really did that but this was when I was a kid. The last time I spent more than one night in a hospital was when I was born so basically I was a healthy enough baby/ toddler/ child/ teenager/ adult. Drinking Horlicks must've really helped although as promised on the carton it didn't make me grow 6 feet tall . I might sue them.

I don't think I really was a problem child for my parents. However there was that one time when my father discovered one of those erotic novels lent to me by a well meaning classmate . I'd hidden it behind a cupboard and my father stumbled on it while chasing a rat who led him to that treasure trove of erotica. I hate that rat. I had a tough time explaining that one. I think I said that the previous inhabitant must have left it there. The previous inhabitant of that room was a theology student so I don't think my dad believed me. Did okay in school and I was beaten by my teachers only once (as far as I can remember). High school was awesome but my college life was spent in Tamilnadu.....

On the romantic life front I have had my heart skewered , roasted and turned inside out (not literally) and I've also done my share of breaking hearts. (No I'm not proud of it.) Anyway enough about my love life already.

And then when one turns Thirty , we start getting asked the "When Are You Going To Get Married? Your Younger Brother Is Already Married And Has A Kid. Your Brother's Kid Is Going To Beat Up Your Kid.. HA HA HA " question pretty often. If I had saved a paisa for every time this question was asked to me in this exact format I'd have collected Rs. 342 already. (Yes I counted). The simple answer is "I Don't Know" (Ka Hre Lo!) . The oft repeated cliché that we men like to remain bachelors as long as possible doesn't really apply to me so when I feel that the conditions are right and that the planets are stars are aligned correctly I'll get married.

And as far as my career goes I'm glad to have a job that enables me to sit quietly behind the scenes and chat with friends do my work. There is a running joke on the popular FRIENDS tv show where no one knows what Chandler Bing's job is so similarly I bet that 99% of my friends do not know what I do . Anyone? Anyone? ... [Long Silence] Well, thanks for asking - I edit Microsoft's support and help websites for the UK and Ireland regions. It pays the bills and enables me to travel to exotic places around the world and buy the latest cars enables me to take economy class flights home and purchase a Honda Activa.

And as for extra-curricular activties - I can/could play any game (indoor or outdoor) but I never excelled in any sport which is why I'm working a desk job instead of playing as a striker for Arsenal Football Club. I also suck hard at playing carrom board. People have cried in despair watching me play. I can paint/draw a bit. I can sing a bit. Yes I can. I can write poems . Yes I can. I suck at card games. The only card game I'm good at is playing Solitaire on my laptop. 145 games won in a row. Yeaaaaah!! Books are the only extra curricular activity I excel at. It's easy to beat a book 'cause you can carry it into the loo and finish off reading a book. I also excel at watching movies. I must have watched at least 90% of the movies on IMdB's (the most popular movie website) top 250 movies list. Great achievement!

Usually these kind of posts end with some kind of sage philosophical/practical advice that the author will impart to his/her readers. I have none uh... okay maybe one : Do not insert stones into your nose. They hurt like hell and will probably kill you.

However (kinda out of the blue) I would like to take this opportunity to make a public service announcement. Please take care to preserve our fragile ecology and environment. Do your bit by not using plastic shopping bags in stores and take more showers together (only for married couples) to save water. I will end with one of my favourite quotes. This is a Carl Sagan quote which he made in reference to a photograph of Earth suspended in space.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

God Bless.

(PS: Why is the title of this blog "XXX"? - well, duh XXX denotes the number 30 using the Roman numeric system.)

Chinese Whispers

Chinese Whispers - A Short One-Act Play

Cast of Characters:

Mary - Woman

Jane - Another Woman

Time and Place:

Any Place , Any Time

Mary: OMG Jane Did you know that..but I really can't tell you..

Jane: No Jane tell me ..

Mary: I've got some HOT news. I promised to keep it a secret but I'll tell only you and you must promise not to tell anyone else. That totally hot guy from Mizoram Kima is dating Bipasha!

Jane: Kima hot? Hah..no way but that's really big news. How did you get to know?

Mary: Oh well my sister Susan heard it from her colleague Sanjana who overheard Annie and Preeti discussing it in the ladies room... it seems they saw it on some other girl's facebook status stating that she saw Kima patting Jennifer on her shoulder so its obvious that Kima is dating Bipasha!

---------------------------~the end~-------------------------------

Chinese Whispers is the name of a game we used to play when we were kids - We'd sit in a circle and one kid would whisper something to another kid to his right or left and the other kid would whisper what he/she was told to the next person and so on and by the time the whispers reached the last kid the original whisper would have been totally distorted. And that's exactly how rumours are spread in real life.

I have often been the victim of some really wild rumours but this one is my favourite - this happened a while ago and I won't mention any names. Sometime ago in 2005 I was at work and a friend of mine sends me a text message - (His girlfriend had recently dumped him and he was feeling rather blue) "I am at so and so lake.. I am going to jump in and I don't know how to swim. Goodbye". I got really worried and I immediately took an auto to that lake assuming that he was trying to kill himself. I searched for him (or his body) but there were no signs of him (or dead body).

To cut a long story short (TCALSS) it all ended well after I called up some friends and we went to his place and found him drunk and fast asleep . Two weeks later my mother and father call me up and my mother told me that someone told her that my girlfriend tried to commit suicide 'cause I dumped her ! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It was so funny and at the same time infuriating that people spread this particular rumour. Anyway that story too also ended well after I explained everything.

Women seem to love gossiping and spreading unfounded rumours much more than men (but that's an universal truth so I won't elaborate on that.) It probably is encoded in their DNA or something. Some of it is harmless but a lot of it is malicious and can lead to a lot of people getting hurt and getting beaten up or being drowned in a pond with their body encased in a block of cement . Even if we know for sure that someone is hiding a dirty little secret it is best to keep it to oneself and not let the whole world know about it. Various religions consider gossiping and spreading rumours as a grave sin. Islam considers gossiping as bad as eating the flesh of your own brother and the Bible equates gossiping with murder!

I'm aware of only one instance when rumours and gossip ended up in something good coming out of it - someone spread a rumour that a guy I know and some girl were sleeping around. None of it was true and both parties were very embarassed about it. The funny thing was they didn't even know each other . So one day they met up to clear up this rumour and TCALSS they ended up falling in love (and are still together after 3 years!). Now if only someone would start a similar rumour about Megan Fox and myself then maybe she'd want to meet up with me to clear up the situation and maybe things could happen...

Interlude/When You Are Old

A short break from "heavy duty blogging" -

Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods.. used to be my favourite poem. Now I've found a new favourite poem. Sorry Frosty. This one's called When You Are Old and was written by William Butler Yeats. I'm not big on poems especially abstract ones and this one is pretty straightforward as far as I can tell but if you were to google it you'll find that its about "rich mythical imagery" and "an abstract image issuing from a more concrete description of loneliness and regret". Big words flummox me :). Let me enjoy the poem for what I feel it portrays. Love -

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Such a sad and beautiful poem .

Note: The 'imagery' in this blog entry was provided by U J-i .My constant pestering of her to take a picture of an old Mizo lady inspired her to blog about it :). You can go read about it on her blog -

http://calliopes-canticles.blogspot.com/2009/08/whose-perspective-is-it-anyway.html

A poorly written diary chronicling the events of my visit home to Aizawl

July 1:- "Meru City Taxi" arrives at 4 am to pick me up. Try to make eye contact with some pretty airhostesses at airport . Fail terribly. Tried same thing inside aeroplane - same results.

Make it in time for my Calcutta-Aizawl flight. Heavy cloud cover over Lengpui Airport . After about 40 minutes of trying to land and avoiding hills our pilot decides that he isn't highly paid enough to risk landing in this miserable weather and we fly back to Calcutta. When we land in Calcutta the fat Marwadi looking guy in front of me asks the air hostess if we've landed in Aizawl. Giggles all around. First time I've had a Cal-Azl flight cancelled. To top it all off I fall sick. Fever.

July 2 :- We try again. Great Success. I send a text message to a friend "The Eagle Has Landed". Friend don't care too much for Eagles I guess. No acknowledgment. Shop at the veg/fruit market on the Lengpui-Azl road. It looks like this - (pic credit: Xaia @ misual.com)

Reach home. Happy reunion with mom/niece/sis-in-law/pet cat,dog etc. Dad had actually left for Cal the same day in the same plane I'd landed in.

July 3: I visit friends; Fever worsens. Great way to start a holiday.(It wasn't actually great. It was terrible. This statement is an example of "sarcasm")

July 4: It being a Saturday I lie in bed all day and half of the night when I decide that enough is enough and the whole family drives to Durtlang Hospital. My doctor friend Chhana sticks some needles into me and decides that it isn't malaria. Whew. Instructs me to pop some funny looking pills.

July 5: Have completely recovered now. Attend church. Fell asleep. Must've been the pills I was prescribed. At night I attend the college chapel service. Notice a misprint in the hymn book "Take my hands and let them sing" . I giggle alone.

July 6: Did absolutely nothing.

July 7: I visit the Mizoram Public Service Commission Office. A friend's mother is the Chair(wo)man of the MPSC. Didn't see her. Sucks.Pic below of the office. MPSC Office.

July 8: I visit the SBI branch at Bawngkawn. Bank teller actually complies with my request without any hassles. Surprise Surprise.

July 9: Due to restrictions placed on me by the Presbyterian Church of Mizoram I cannot reveal what I did on 9th July.

July 10: A friend's daughter thinks I look like a "white foreigner". Guess she hasn't seen too many white foreigners and is also colour blind. I also re-pot* some plants. Fascinating.(Yes correct, this too is an example of Sarcasm. You guys are paying attention. I'm pleased).*(How to re-pot a plant)

July 11: I attend birthday of Family friend. Am asked 387 times "When did you arrive/When are you going back?"; I smile politely and poke them in the eye.

July 12: Church. Didn't fall asleep. Preacher makes some good jokes. I like him. Pic Below of Preacher cracking jokes. You can't see him . But he was cracking. Jokes.

July 13: I take my dog to the vet. Dogs are unbelievably obedient at the vet. Little did I know it would turn out to be the "Take your dog to the vet week".

July 14: I take my dog to the vet. Someone actually apparently brought a pet tiger cub to the vet. I see its face and I think it looks more like a wildcat with its face painted to look like a tiger cub.

July 15: I take my dog to the vet. Someone has brought a cat that weighed 7 kgs. Poor cat sits in the corner all the while looking absolutely pissed with itself. A guy suggests that his dog fight with my dog. His dog has a patch over its eye and a tattoo on its butt. I decline the offer.

July 16:I take my dog to the vet. A dog decides that it doesn't want to get an injection. Runs away. Owner chases. Hilarity ensues.

July 17: I take my dog to the vet. I cry a little. He barks a little . After a week of doing stuff together we've become really close. We promise to write to each other. It rains in the afternoon. Pic below was taken while it was raining. You can't see the rain but it was raining. Buckets.

July 18: Due to unforseen reasons I am unable to fly to Calcutta. Seeing my niece again makes up for it.

July 19: A push - a gangsta style handshake - a tiny goodbye.

July 20: Back in Bangalore. I open up Cleartrip.com ; start planning next trip home.

Did Humpty Dumpty Really Fall Off a Wall?

Alright kids lets go way back to our school days.. no not the days of high school and middle school. Most people if you asked them would say that they had the most fun when they were in high school or middle school. Pfft.. so cliched. I want to take you way back to the days when you were just starting school. I'm talking about the period from Kindergarten to Class 2 or 3 - The most important time of our lives. This is where we first learnt the three R's - Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. (technically that should be "where we first learnt R,W and A.. confused the hell out of me when I was a kid but the key is in how you pronounce the words! I can see some of you now finally understand why they were called the Three R's)

For today's lesson we will be concentrating on Reading only. I'd want your rapt attention and pin drop silence. Reading first consisted of learning to read the Alphabets and numbers. Yeah the famous Alphabet song. Easiest lyrics ever! Lets skip a few chapters and proceed to the main part - Nursery Rhymes. I always loved reciting nursery rhymes. I probably have this hidden talent as a poet in me but I nowadays produce poems which are often laughed at.

For me the saddest nursery rhyme goes like this -

Rock-a-bye-baby On the treetop
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby
Cradle and all

I used to feel so sad for the poor little baby who fell from the tree. I used to think to myself "Oh Why did that bough break?" . I remember asking my mother if the baby died or not. Till date I have not been told the answer. Hope that baby lived or else I'll go into depression. Here is a picture which I've always had in my head about the little baby:

Enough of tragedy in nursery rhymes? No actually not - we're now going to have a look at Poor Little Humpty Dumpty who all the king's men couldn't put together again. You're thinking.."oh cute little rhyme" but like most nursery rhymes this one too has a bit of history attached to it. This website Indianchild.com tells us that Humpty Dumpty was actually the nickname of a cannon placed atop a church in England which subsequently fell down when the church was attacked during a battle. The English people liked the cannon so much they composed a rhyme in remembrance and it trickled down into our text books.

Another nursery rhyme associated with something more tragic than a stupid olde cannon is the also widely known -

Ring-a-Ring o'Rosies
A Pocket full of Posies
"A-tishoo! A-tishoo!"
We all fall Down!

This cute little rhyme is one associated with the Bubonic plague which.. er.. plagued Europe back in the olde days. The symptoms of this plague included a rosy red rash on the skin and violent sneezing and then people would fall sick and die. Try teaching that to the kids now!

Depressing stuff I know but brace yourselves for more depression - Baa Baa Black Sheep? Yep this too was not about some poor little black sheep and a boy. It was apparently about taxation where you were supposed to give a lot of your money in taxes to the king of England or something like that. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? Apparently back in the middle ages the sun came so close to the earth that the earth evaporated into nothingness and the only surviving man who happened to be on the moon at that time wrote this rhyme. I didn't make that up. It really happened.

Anyhow my clock has now struck one and my mouse has now run up the clock and I gotta run. If that statement vaguely reminds you of a nursery rhyme then you can all give yourselves a pat on the back.

(Quick Note - Someone asked in a previous post about the meaning of the title of my blog - Angel Dust and Bones : Angel Dust is the name of an album put out by one of my favourite rock bands - Faith No More; Dust n' Bones is the name of a Guns n' Roses song. Angel Dust is also the code name for a hallucinatory drug called PCP... and no PCP is not one of my favourite drugs . I hallucinate enough already without drugs.

Red Light Yellow Light Green Light - Go

I'm fuming, I'm royally pissed. You might ask Why? Well today I was on my way to work and was waiting at a red light. There was this dude behind me on his bike who kept honking his horn telling me to run the red light. WTF! I let him pass and as he passes me he actually has the nerve to berate me for not letting him go through the red light ! I guess that's all that's needed to tell you about the behaviour of drivers in Bangalore -rude and have no clue about traffic rules. I was hoping I'd catch up with him at the next red light . I would have sat on his head and forcefully injected him with a dose of Swine Flu culture. Luckily for him he had long disappeared into the maze of auto rickshaws on the road.


And don't get me started on autorickshaws and their obnoxious drivers. Well actually you have - If you get into an accident involving an autorickshaw you are automatically always in the wrong regardless of the fact that the auto driver was driving while simultaneously ogling the girls in his back seat and had run through 3 red lights in the wrong direction and was also smoking an aromatic beedi . Try arguing with an auto driver - by the end of the argument he would have you convinced he was holier than Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul combined.


And then you have the green light honkers - they are a breed of drivers who will honk as soon as the red light turns green!! Forget the fact they are like 20 cars behind the green light and will have to wait for a little while before they can start moving. They will start honking like it was the Annual Car Horn Honking Festival. All one can do is give them the finger
..and then hope its not a gang of rowdies inside the car who will come out and beat you to pulp.


I myself have not been a saint either when it comes to following road rules. The other day I was late for work and I was in a big hurry.. I stopped at a red light but there were no vehicles coming from the other direction. So I looked around and ran thro' the light. As you'd have guessed a scooter suddenly came zooming in from out of nowhere. The driver was a middle aged guy and he screamed at me and called me an "Idiot..fool...mumble mumble..grumble.. ." I could not catch the rest of his curse words but I'm sure they must have not been very complimentary.


By contrast back home in Aizawl people are generally more careful drivers. Probably this has to with the winding and steep roads and people drive with more caution although there are certain exceptions to this rule. Also drivers are more polite and respect the rules of the road - I have a picture here taken on my last trip home. I was in a taxi down the steep and winding Durtlang road and there was a huge traffic jam and vehicles were lined up end to end down the road. The right lane meant for vehicles leading up was free but not a single vehicle broke the lane to overtake the other vehicle.



There is also another breed of drivers - the slow ones. They drive so slowly that if you are driving behind them you have time to get down from your vehicle ,check the tires, smoke a cigarette, update your blog and they'd still be only 2 feet away from you. Most of these drivers I've noticed are women drivers. And no don't get me started on women drivers. Seriously. And on that sexist note I shall now drive away into the sunset thro' these innumerable red lights that life throws at ya!