chinese!

for three weeks, in my office, google reader switched to chinese (no clue why!!!), and i couldn't figure out how to turn it back to good ol' queen's english.

the best part about google reader is that it's actually quite usable in a language you don't understand, once you've used it a bit. i survived for 3 weeks before i got over my laziness and figured how to change it back (hint: "settings" is the 4th link from right, in the upper right corner)

oh and a few days before i changed it back, i snagged a screenshot as proof (note the near-empty reading list - proves that i've been using it)

the matrix. it's all around us.

last night, my socks were knocked off by my friend who claimed to be at kashid at the same time as i was. tonight, the same thing happened. again.

okay, so these friends headed to kashid on sunday, so they just about missed me, but i passed them on the road!!! we didn't recognise each other, tripping as i was on the road and my music, and with my well tinted helmet and all!!!

better still, in the course of the same conversation, we both suggested that we should bike to goa - and agreed. i said i'll do it twice, because i've already planned on going once. but that was before i asked him when he was planning to go - because he was planning to go on the same date as i was!!! december 27th!!!

the conversation then steered to other destinations to bike to before goa - and apparently we're both planning to bike to pune. on the same weekend!!! that's november 8th, btw.

i can't call this a coincidence any more. it just can't be.

near misses

recently a couple of coincidences startled me. like on monday, when i went to the russel peters' show in mumbai, a friend of mine who was also there, was looking for me but apparently didn't find me.

freakiest of all, was the fact that we were sitting in adjacent rows...his seat was h40 and mine was i40!!!

the puzzle was sorted out when we figured that he was at h40 on the ground floor and i was at i40 on the first floor :)

a couple of hours later came a real biggie.

i was showering at 1:45am last night, with my phone playing music from its ziploc bag (i do that all the time :D) when it rang.

friend: "wassup".
me: "what the fuck???!!!"

apparently he didn't realise it was the middle of the night :D, and yeah, while i'm usually up at this time i don't like the thought of people taking that for granted (just in case i decided to sleep early for a change, no?)

and then came the *mindfucking* revelation. he was in kashid last weekend when i was camping alone. he finally figured that out from the green tent in my facebook album.

guess what. i saw him there. he and two other guys were the only other people on the beach that afternoon. they played with a beach ball, and then a frisbee. i remember looking at them and wondering if i should join them.

guess what. they saw me too. my friend apparently envied me my tent and suggested to his friends that since i'm all alone, they should beat me up and take my tent.

the only reason i didn't ask him if he wanted to come to kashid, was because i was intent on going alone. in fact, the thought had crossed my mind just the night before, while i was packing.

to add to the coincidences, it was his first trip to kashid (i, on the other hand, am quite a regular :D)

i still can't believe it happened.

camp out alone

i went camping alone last weekend. it was something i always wanted to do, but never ended up doing because there was always something to do with my friends, and i would give that more importance. unfortunately for me, i'm a compulsive program-maker. if i have a holiday, i will call every last friend in the hope of finding something interesting or nice to do with him/her/them. which means that it's very hard to get a completely free weekend to go off by myself.

thankfully, last weekend was the weekend before diwali (oh yeah, happy diwali, everyone!!!) so a lot of people were back home with their families, and a few others had cleaning and house chores to do. plus there were no new movies. and of course, i was getting a lil restive. so at 10pm on friday night, i decided this is it, and i'm going.

here's a few things i kept in mind while packing:

• travel light (i had to bike for 4+ hours with my bag - and that included my tent - so that was even more important than usual).


• carry enough of identification, both with me and in my bag.


• carry stuff to read that i won't get bored of (i took 3 books, so i could choose depending on my mood).


• carry a lot of good music and charge my player completely.


• charge my phone completely. don't put music on my phone, as phone charge is more important if i need to contact people.


• carry plenty of cash.


• carry a good torch and plenty of batteries - super important!!!

one bad thing that i did was that i didn't inform my folks i was going alone till after i reached (they wouldn't have allowed me to go :D). i shudder to think of what would have happened if i got caught in a bad accident. i guess i'll tell my parents next time, because they'll let me go now :P. also, i usually didn't carry my watch and jacket, so i had to switch my phone on whenever i needed to know the time (not that the time was important, except when i was going to sleep, waking up, and leaving)

that's it, really. i enjoyed my ride alone (stayed off the music before sunrise, because i really needed to focus on the road in the dark). pitching the tent was amazing, swimming in the sea alone was amazing, making sandcastles alone was amazing, reading is better in a hammock than anywhere else, watching the sun set over a couple of beers with my camera in hand was splendid too.

i made a couple of friends over my last beer - that was something absolutely new to me. i never talk to strangers if i had someone accompanying me, whether on vacation or not. i guess it's much easier when i'm alone :)

swimming in the sea in the dark was simply mindblowing. it was way better than i imagined in my wildest dreams. this is only the second time i tried it, and swimming alone was....hmmm....i've run out of adjectives. just out of this world.

i had a crisis to deal with too - my tent was locked with a numeric combination lock, and i couldn't unlock it in the dark. my torch, bike keys, matches, candle, everything other than myself, were inside the tent. that's one thing i learned. next time, i'll hide a torch somewhere *before* the sun sets :D

watching the stars come out in the sky, dinner under the stars (i carried a enough of canned food and fruit - didn't have to buy anything other than a few loaves of pav and a cup of tea, and of course the beer). in fact, it was so amazing, it was almost mystical. i spent most of the evening singing to myself. strangely, i sang a lot of spiritual songs, and that's something i rarely ever do. i guess the beauty of nature around me did that :)

oh and i can't forget to mention crabs. i learned how to outwit those quick legged and wily creatures after an hour of aimlessly wandering around the beach in the dark. it was absolutely fascinating, watching them react and adapt to my presence and interference :)

i bumped into my new found friends again on my way back to my tent. it seems they wanted to check on me to see if i was fine. they found the tent closed and assumed i was asleep, when i was actually busy catching crabs at the end of the beach. ah well. i guess they were as happy to see me as i was to see them. they shared their bottle of port wine, i watched on as they played with their sparklers and rockets, and then they went back to their resort. that was the last of my dose of humanity for this trip.

morning was mostly just breakfast, a beachside crap (don't ask me to elaborate :)), a quick dip, packing up, calling home, and leaving.

the ride back was amazing, and i did it in record time and just 1 proper break (this time i wasn't scared because i had got the hang of handling the huge bag perfectly). all the screwed up parts of the road were near mumbai - basically nh4 is completely unmotorable from panvel to mumbra. it was so bad my bag partly ripped with the jerks despite me riding below 10kmph. thankfully my bag held, and it reached home in one piece...probably can't use it again tho. which is a pity, it was just perfect for a 1 man trip :(

anyway...that was my weekend. 24 hours (precisely 24 from pitching to unpitching the tent!) on an amazing beach, almost entirely alone. i'm planning on doing it again and again. maybe atleast twice a year, when the weather is right and if i can find other good campsites :)

screw you all, i'm going home!!!

apparently my blog paints a very sanitized view of my life.



i really don't know how my blog is this clean. maybe it's because i used to blog a lot from work, and old habits (even "good" ones) die hard :D

ps: link picked up from jadis' blog :)

pitching a tent alone

i went camping this weekend at kashid. on bike. alone.

my first challenge was packing everything in a way that i could manage riding for around 180 kms each way, including bumpy village roads, national highways and everything in between (and to make things worse, i still have very clear memories and scars from the accident that happened the last time i tried that).



my second challenge was pitching the tent alone.








everything else was easy in comparison (except for packing the tent by myself - no photos of that :D)

caught on a fence

i have an interesting dilemma.

i want to go camping *alone* at kashid, this weekend. no one else that i know wants me to go. and i'm of two minds myself.

if i'm going, i have an hour to pack and then 5 hours to sleep.