You say yes, I say no

This blog faces so much neglect. Most days, there's not even a Hello Goodbye. So much life if happening that the brainspace this blog gets is reduced to microscopic proportions.

Exploring California's coasts, I'm happy that the beaches around here are ones where you need to wear a sweatshirt to. Picnics and books with a fine layer of sand on barely sunny days. Living here, I don't need an excuse to go outdoors, just need more company holidays.

Next holiday is all the way in September, but I already have flights booked and plans made. I live from one long weekend to the next.

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle License Testing

Another week, another couple of hours wasted pondering the many existential crises that comes saddled with a Monday morning. I am yet to attain anything remotely close to Zen. Bikram yoga, when will I see the miracles that you famously promise on your website? Will it take more than the ten sessions that my groupon is valid for?

I got my Motorcycle skill test waived by attending two 5 hour sessions of coaching followed by tests. Stood in the sun for 5 hours, woke up early and skipped breakfasts. Should I buy a motorcycle or should I not? That is the question. Help me out here, imaginary readers of this blog. Is it a good buy or am I just throwing money out the window, to be caught by some sleazy dealer or greasy guy from craigslist?

The weekend was filled with the riches of Indian food that only the bay area can provide without ripping giant holes in one's pocket. And at an archaic parking ticket machine, a stranger was kind to me. As they say on the internet nowadays, Faith in Humanity restored.

Vagaries

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine. - Milan Kundera

Even if you don't plan to read the entire book, at least read the first page of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Then, ping me. To put such a universal concept into such powerful prose makes for arresting reading.

I'm off to Milan soon. Off to traipse through the canals of Venice and sit at cafes and imbibe copious quantities of limoncello. To spend hours on the train gossiping with Khushboo, to shop and to get more stamps in my passport. To forget about life for a while.

All this anticipation, for all of three days! A huge chunk of my day goes in living out my vacation before it even begins. I can already smell the post vacation blues.

As the fiscal year closes, here is some obligatory complaining about tax forms and all it's associated fanfare. Moan, whine, moan. Why do we have to grow up so fast. Time runs merrily along assuming that we can keep up, while people like me, hardly athletic, stumble and clutch at our asthmatic inhalers of youth, hoping to catch up.

Happy new year 2013

The new year began with a semi thrilling flight scare. Midway to Chicago, at about thirty thousand feet in the air, the pilot announces that some mechanical warnings were popping up on the dashboard that he couldn't fathom and that we will have to land at the closest airport. For the next fifteen minutes, I tried not to think about why I didn't pay attention to the safety briefing, why I was reading my book when the flight attendant was announcing the different ways to inflate the life vest. After some mild heart palpitations, I decided to continue reading as it was the one way I could keep from constructing horrifying scenarios involving balls of fire in the sky.

When I finally reached home after an overnight delay and mediocre sandwiches for breakfast, I went around my building so that I can check on my precious car, whose fate I was afraid for since roommate put the thoughts of car thefts in my head before I left for my trip.

No car thieves or vandals had happened by. Just a bunch of migratory birds who had decided to land on my car for what seemed to be a communal poop ritual.

Though the trip didn't end very well, it was in fact quite pleasant. Met some old friends, watched Les Miserables and bemoaned my inability to sing that well, and tried out archery. Went with sore arms to roam about freezing New York, and delighted in the maddening crowds at Times Square again.