lazy

there are two ways to enjoy a vacation:

by making sure you always have something you're supposed to do, or by just doing whatever you please.

the former is good for your photo album, but nothing can beat the latter when it comes to getting back your energy to face life on monday morning :)

welcome!!!

2008 was a great year, a year of many firsts and a few seconds too...a year of embracing the present, letting go of the past (but not letting it out of my sight), but regrettably, of not looking to the future.

2009 merits a hearty celebration because it comes with a resolution that is worth it.

cheers to 2009!!!

irony

after searching 5 kms of nh-4 for a place to lunch at, we finally found a place that served barely-edible bhurji and omlette, with a 1 hour wait time.

and we then find the most humongously sized mcDonalds a few thousand metres from it.

in the end, we had 2 lunches :P

did you just say twitter?

twitter is somehow creeping up in the scale of things that make up my life these days. it's probably partly because i've met a few (nice) people from twitter, and they really turned out to be as good, if not better, than they seemed to be online.

but i think it's also got something to do with what people are using twitter for these days.

some time ago, i was telling a close friend about twitter. he didn't quite know what it was (yes, there are actually a lot of people like that), so i tried explaining it to him.

now if you'd ask me "what is twitter?" a couple of years (or even a few months) ago, i'd typically have come up with something on the lines of "micro blogging" - which it is, in a way...but somehow isn't a very nice answer to give someone. especially if that someone doesn't blog. or worse still, doesn't read blogs (yes, i actually explained what is a blog to someone a couple of months ago...i had to actually show her my blog before she understood!!!).

so i tried a new explanation this time:

twitter is a social network.

my friend immediately cut me off with "NOT AGAIN!!!"

i persisted:

twitter is a social network with exactly 3 features:

1. you can follow other users, users can follow you, it doesn't have to be mutual.
2. users post messages either privately or publicly. public messages go to everyone who follows them. private messages go only to a specific user.
3. twitter is flexibile in all points other than the above two: users don't need to be people, posting/reading posts can be using any system, most interestingly sms/mobile web/messenger/browser plugins, etc etc.

he hasn't joined yet, but i'm not taking any bets on how long he takes to sign up :)

meta days

the past week or so has had a disproportionately large number of "meta days" - days which somehow, by their content make me reflect and understand the rest of my life, and give me that nirvanic feeling. not just peace, but singularity. the feeling of knowing where you fit in the universe, and finding yourself in that exact place.

like a few days ago, ralston's blog prompted me to say:

i can't define happiness. the only thing that i know about it is that it finds me only when i'm not looking for it.

--kris

and then a few days later, a friend and i were just chatting over a couple of drinks, and he was telling me how thoroughly he was enjoying himself thanks to him getting back to playing the guitar. it seems all his life he used to play because he wanted to be better than the rest, but he's suddenly discovered the joy of just playing for himself - experimenting in his own ways, trying to pick up new songs, and even saving up for a better (but secondhand) guitar.

and somehow, in that moment, something fell into place. i realised where i am. i'm in the exact same place as he is. i've stopped living for the future, or for the people around me. i'm back to embracing the moment, but this time more than ever before. doing things because they please me, and nothing else. loving people because i want to, not because i hope they'll love me back (something which i never thought possible by the way).

i realise that this is not a sustainable state of affairs (for example, i'm now overspending and undersleeping, overeating and underworking - tons of things like that), but still, it's the ultimate high: living for yourself.

oh and did i forget, i've been listening to awesome music too? mostly trance, but a lot of odds and ends too :)

location is everything

few new terms and some old (but rather uncommon) ones:

wfw = working from work (what you should be doing when you're at work)
hfh = homing from home (what you should be doing when you're not at work)
wfh = working from home (self explanatory)
hfw = homing from work (when you sit in the office and do things you're supposed to do at home)

sonu!

you know you're a real gem of a person if 3 of your friends happen to start chatting (separately) about unrelated topics and yet within 10 minutes of each other the topic changes to how much they miss you.

you're a gem sonu, a priceless one.

ps: the friends involved are vimal and joylyn :)