The end is the beginning

Today is my birthday. I turn the big three-oh! I guess this is the time for nostalgia, for reminiscing on the days gone by, the decade of my life that just ended. For this day on, I shall be referred to as being in the thirties (I see some rolling of the eyes here...). A whole new demographic. Now I will be considered to be in a different statistic when people do their inane surveys. All you surveyors out there, I will change your results from now on. This is my revenge on you for asking me those stupid questions.

Not so long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, I had decided that I will re-evaluate where I am when I turn 30 on 30. The day I pass the milestone, I will re-think my options, I will possibly change the course of my future. Will decide on doing something entirely different if what I am doing right now is not working out. But things happened on the way. I am a few years behind my schedule. The revaluation has to happen, today is just not the right time. I heard this somewhere: Every few years, you have to shake yourself, you have to break yourself and then you have to remake yourself, otherwise monotony will kill you.

One of these days, I will also pen down some thoughts on this change of decade. I remember writing some nice words when I last flipped over a decade. It was a nice piece on the loss of teen years. Somehow I never kept a copy and the original was lost in the numerous moves in the intervening years. Oh well, another thing on my to-do list.

Any Color as long as it is black

I realize that my last few posts have been fairly dark. But then there really is no color like black. Black is beautiful. Black is the new black.

Black is the only color you can express so colorfully. The other emotions can just not be put into words half as beautiful. After all, you can see the rainbow only on a cloudy day. Sun doesn't go very well with it.

I always think of myself as having a sunny personality. But when I write, somehow the words that come out aren't half as sunny or half as cheerful.

Oh well, I will try and lighten up some posts now. Or atleast not have too many of the dark ones in succession :-D

I am a stranger here myself

Sometimes I get this feeling that I am like a fish out of water. (Not that I know what a fish out of water will feel like. Maybe the way I will feel in water. I guess it's the proverbial fish we are talking about.) The one that is out of the familiar place. I need my familiar place, my happy corner. But no matter how much I try, I can't come up with this happy place. Where is it? What exactly am I looking for? Am I on the right path or did I take a wrong turn a few streets ago? is this a one way street with all the traffic coming from the opposite direction?

So many times it just happens that people are talking to me but all I can hear is noise. Words don't make any sense. They might as well be speaking some other language. Is it just ADD or does my mind just turn off at times. I feel like I want to run away. Maybe I am just too lazy to run away. Can we get a cab here please?

The words trip over each other while trying to get out. The tongue falters. The mind stubs it's toe. The thoughts appear too many and too fast but vaporize even faster. The mind is a blank slate one moment and a mesh of live wires the next. Which one diffuses the bomb? Red or blue? Or is it mauve? or azure?

What exactly is my problem? Do I think too much or too little? Am I too laid back or is it that I have stopped caring? Do I worry too much or not enough? Why do I always think in questions?

What if the problem is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?

Whatever!

Time has worn out some jagged edges and made a skeptic out of me. (Cynic, although, maybe a better term.) Incompetent people still infuriate me. Tantrums still surprise me. Idiots still annoy me. People still amuse me. Work still doesn't excite me. Travel, though, doesn't push the right buttons any more.

the mind wanders.....the thoughts seem to be in an endless pit. For every step they take up, they slip two down. every thought is incomplete but seems to start another chain reaction. why do my glasses sit funny on my nose. when I try to read, why do I see half the page from the lens and half without it. why is the sunlight reflecting off the whiteboard at the far end and onto my table. why does the red tap give out cold water? why does the girl two cubes away from me drag her feet while walking? do the thumb tacks in my cube spell something? Am I going cuckoo?

the words are meaningful but sentences are incoherent. After a long time felt like putting pen on paper. the handwriting is awful, I will stick to keyboard. the mind feels like a blank slate but the fingers are moving rapidly on the keyboard. words are emerging on the notepad. words that seem to have no connection to what I am thinking but still are a part of me.

meeting some nice people on the project. some are a pain. some insist on talking in jargons all the time. what is wrong with saying "making money on the project" vis-a-vis "generating revenue streams". And what the hell does synergy mean anyway.

I am happy being an imperfect human being. People who lay the claim to perfection scare me. I am uncomfortable around gods anyway.

Thoughts trail off......

Busybee

I wonder how people manage to pack so much in one day. Lately my days have been so busy that it is becoming increasingly difficult to pack everything in 24 hours. Come to think of it, even if a day had 48 hours, I would have been just as busy.

Read this somewhere:
"They say everbody is put on this earth to complete a specific set of tasks. Right now I am so far behind that I will never die!!"

How is it possible that as soon as I scratch one thing off my to-do list, 3 more are added. The to-do list keeps getting longer and longer as the body grows tired. The mind warns me to stop but the feet keep marching on.

Here's to taking the time off to walk bare feet on dew-smeared grass, to admire the sun-kissed dandelions, to look at the shooting stars running off in a huff, to take that extra microsecond to blink, to chart the course of the autumn leaf as it falls to the ground and to look up on a misty day and count the colors of the rainbow. To the to-do list that is the ignored bullet point on the life's to-do list.

Et Tu

I am sure there are a lot of crazy U2 fans out there but after what I did or their last concert, I surely must deserve an honourable mention if not a gold plated place in the rock-fans hall-of-fame.
The saga beagn about 3 months ago when I heard U2 will be performing in town as part of their Vertigo tour, I had that strange giddy feeling....vertigo i think it is called :-)

So I was on the net as soon as the tickets went on sale. After 20 unsuccessful minutes, I managed to get the prized seat in the third show. All three shows were sold out in less than 30 minutes!!

The D-Day
Just so happened that the day of the concert, I managed to be stuck in a town 300 miles away from concert. I made a decision to take half a day off, cover the distance in car, attend the concert and be back in the office for next day's work. The stupidity of the idea was written all over it but then people have done crazier things for a concert(or so I told myself).

So I started from Detroit (!) around 1pm and drove all the way to Chicago. Reached there around 6pm. Quickly changed into something non-office and then headed to the venue. The opening act was King of Leons. By the way they were singing, the days of their kingdom are numbered.

Then......(drumroll here)...Bono came on stage. Man, is he a showman. Every bit of it. He oozes cool. He reeks of attitude but damn he is good. and May 10 happens to be his birthday!!! Tha was the icing on the cake. He kept the house on their toes for a little over two hours.

As soon as we finished. I ran home. Switched into office clothes and started driving back. Reached Detroit at 6am, took a quick shower and was back in the office. Worked all day like a zombie and when i finally managed to retire, I had been up for 42 hours and had driven over 600 miles AND had worked almost two full days in office.

But I guess, in the end, the concert totally made it worth it...

The Talented Mr Tintin

Hmmm, talent and Mr Tintin. Not the pair of words you would usually use in the same sentence. I have often wondered what talent I have. Actually, make that, I have often wondered if I have a talent. Everbody is good at something or the other. Something that they make as a hobby or just like to brag about. Some can tell the model of the airplane by just looking at it from the ground (not that I will know if they are right or not). Some can do the same to birds or trees (tell the species that is). What is my talent? Reading books and then forgetting what it was about? Knowing the layout of most of the airport terminals of the world? A sneeze that makes people jump out of their skin?

Reminds me of a friend of mine who used to say: "It amazes me that everybody around me is good at something. Some are good in sports, some of them can play an instrument, some can sing, dance, talk, walk or do a hundred different things. Me, I am average at most of the things and good at nothing. I can't sing, I can't play an instrument, I can't dance, I can't climb rocks, I am not a geek. Hell, I can't even juggle two oranges properly!!"

When I heard this, it struck a chord. Or atleast I think it was a chord. I wouldn't know a difference between a chord and a clothes-line anyway. I realized that so much of this lack-of-talent thing is true for me too (Except for the two oranges part. I can probably juggle two, but three is pushing it. And I will never try it with eggs). I like to console myself with the thought that I do have a talent, I just haven't found it yet.

Manic Monday

Start of another week...

Same old thoughts crossing the mind. Life seems to be stuck in a rut. Like an old old gramophone record whose needle is stuck and keeps playing the same old 3 seconds over and over and over again. I need to either change the record or move to CDs with skip protection.

From the looks of it, this week promises to be hectic. Seems like I have more packed into this week than I normally pack in a month. Oh well, gives me a chance to break the happy alliance of mono and tony.

Blogger's block

I think I am suffering from a bad case of blogger's block, or whatever is the blogging equivalent to the writer's block.

Had so much to say before I created this blog but suddenly ran out of words. Nothing to rant or rave about now that I have a blog. I think I need my muse. Actually, what is this muse business anyway. My idea of muse is someone who can think for me and write what I should be writing. I can then just copy-paste what the muse has transcribed.

I need to get used to this blogging thingie.

Stay tuned...