Once upon a time ( not too long ago, though), I was asked to list out fifty things I want to do/have/experience before I die.
It was easy, in a way. Listing out fifty things was real easy. There are too many things in this world that I want to do. More than fifty, in fact. And no, none of them are as hogwashy as “going on a vacation to the Bahamas with Aishwarya Rai”. Aishwarya Rai does not figure in my grand scheme of things. We would probably bore the shit out of each other anyway, me and her.

Nope, all of these things on my TODO list are very probable. They can be done. And I am not saying this to psyche myself up.

So what stops me from going right ahead? Lots of things. My life, as of now, is very routine. A nice, safe, well-paying job. A nice, safe, cosy house in a nice, safe city. Commitments. My family. Friends. My own laziness. Need I jeopardize this blissful existence of mine?

The way my life is going right now, this is how it’s going to turn out in the next ten years – A nice, safe, well-paying job. A nice, safe, cosy house in a nice, safe city. Maybe I will be married. Have kids. And then sit down and wait for them to grow up, so that they can make my dreams come true. Isn’t that what they say? “Make your father proud of you, son.”

Oh man! I am turning into what I hate the most! I am becoming Normal! My To-do list will probably stay that way throughout my life – “things TO DO”. Never done. Will I even think about it once I am thoroughly Normalised? Or will I find it someday and look at it and laugh over the idealism of youth…..and say something like “Aaaah, those were the days…”

Does this happen to everybody? Does everyone feel the need to do “something”, something that’s different, and once that age of innocence and idealism is through, does everyone become a part of this grand cycle of monotony until it’s time to die? Or is it just me?

I wish I could change the predictable turn my life is taking. I wish I could get some time in my life, when I could seriously sit down and figure out WHAT it is that would make my life more meaningful. And I really, really wish I can do everything I want to do before I die.

This sucks.

After a long, long time, I logged my rediffmail account today…was chockful of junk mails and Daily Dilbert strips, but the nicest thing, of course, was going through the old mails, some of which were nearly three-four years old. There were all the mails I shared with psasi during his initial days in his company…the ones with The Psychelone when he was at home, the whole Wrecstasy experience…old feuds, 32kb mails full of back-biting ( ’twasn’t me! :-P ), old acquaintances from Saarang and Unmaad and Trivium, even a mail from Michael Kaluta, artist extraordinaire, who explained the concept behind the covers of the Black Sabbath tribute albums to me (he was the guy who did the artwork), one from Makshim Moshkow, arguably the Net’s nicest librarian…his collection of Russian e-texts ( maintained here ) is mind-boggling! Old classmatess from Bangladesh,Nepal, Bhutan, and nearly every state in the country; Nirvana fans I had met on trains, mails with links to HP Lovecraft, Lord of the Rings,Harry Potter, H2G2, movie screenplay sites, stuff that REALLY mattered once upon a time (they still do, of course), mails with login information to those kind of sites, old quizzes from The Cimmerian ( the only kind of mails he would send me after he passed out), fellow Batman-freaks from Bangalore….and all of them with WEIRD titles…..:-D

me@mycompany.com is a nice id, but well, rahmaniac@rediff.com sounds weirder….and even if i get kicked out of here, it’s gonna stay. I think I should use it more often.

The first thing I need to do is unsubscribe from Daily Dilbert. :-)

Just back from Pune. Nice trip, I think I wasn’t too condescending towards the kids…The lectures went off….ummm…safely enough. Loads of good-looking gals around in Pune. :-)

It’s odd, moving around in a new city with no one familiar around. You don’t know when the auto-driver is taking you around in circles just to increase the meter-rate. It’s kinda lonely, seeing a movie without any company, or trudging from college to college in the hot sun ( i asked for it, a guy offered to give me a lift, but I said I needed a walk )

As is usual, I blew up half my money in Planet M, and part of the remaining moolah on the second-hand bookstores near Pune bus-stand, so I had 40 Rupees in my pocket as I boarded the bus back to Hyd. C’est la vie. :-)

I was continually reminded of this urban legend about a mother and a daughter going to an unknown city in a different country, and booking a room in a hotel. the mother goes out to buy some supplies, the daughter agreeing to stay back in room 201 and catch some sleep. Mother returns an hour later, and to her surprise, discovers that room 201 is empty, no luggage around, no daughter…she approaches the hotel authorities, the receptionist, the liftman, the manager, each of whom claim that they have never seen her or her daughter before…their name isn’t on the register. And yes, the lady is still sure that is the same hotel.
Anybody explain what happened?

Am going to Pune tomorrow for 3 lectures on J2EE and emerging technologies….man! so many things that can go wrong. What if I trip on the stage, or the PPT doesn’t work, or somebody asks some weird question about which I have NO bloomin’ idea at all, or I say “f***” loudly when the projector stops working, or I need to go to the loo in the middle of the lecture…….

Murphy lurks at the back of my mind, smirking and rubbing his hands.

Too many things happening all at the same time.

The high points:

1) My keyboard is fixed. Nearly. Yippee. Now I can safely go back to ignoring it in peace.

2) Finished off a Conan novel – “Conan The Magnificent”. Still have to complete “Conan The Triumphant”, “Conan The Destroyer” and “Conan The Indestructible”. Yeah, yeah, that’s actual names of novels I am talking about….

3) Mr and Mrs Iyer. Thank you, Mrs Aparna Sen, for renewing my faith in Indian cinema. Thank you, Mr Zakir Hussain for making me buy one more cd.

4) Rhydhun, by Taufiq Qureshi is so, so, SO brilliant. Thank you, psasi, for lending it to me for such a long time. Wish you would never ask for it back, but of course you will, so I am gonna copy it anyway.

5) Best Book Stall. The place that never lets me down. Anybody wants a copy of Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” for 80 bucks? What about a first edition of RK Narayan’s “A Tiger For Malgudi” for Rs 75? A hardcover sixteenth printing of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for 200 Rs? These are the stuff I didn’t buy because I already have them…..imagine the stuff I actually bought. >:-)

6) Spy Kids 2. Red Dragon. Explosions. Yippeeee!!!

The low points:
1) Discovered on Sunday that I have this major caffeine addiction. There was this timpani beating in my head that refused to stop until I had two cups of coffee….

2) Brand Equity. The deadline ticks closer. And I still hate Business/Corporate quizzes….

3) The load-balancer code. Over the past couple of days, I have encountered everything from NumberFormatExceptions to NullPointerExceptions, and it’s only the first 90 lines of code, goddamnit!!!!!

4) Livejournal – This happened n times, where n is a positive integer tending to …well, not infinity, but a very high number anyhow.
ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved
——————————————————————————–
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.livejournal.com/~beatzo/friends
The following error was encountered:
Connection Failed
The system returned:
(110) Connection timed out
The remote host or network may be down. Please try the request again.

5) The Filmfare Awards. Morons, you give ARR the best Composer award and conveniently forget Sadhna Sargam’s ethereal “Chupke Se”. You make India’s biggest ham the compere and forget to switch off the mic when he opens his mouth. You take the cowards’ way out and give both Kavitha and Shreya the same award and on top of it, you don’t let them speak a word on stage. You actually think Vivek Oberoi in Company was better than Amitabh Bachhan in Aankhein or Jackie Shroff in Devdas!!!!! And to think I respected your magazine!!!!
Actually, I still do, but I don’t trust your powers of judgement. (yeah, as if that matters, right? )

6) Spy Kids 2. Red Dragon. Explosive Trash, but Trash all the same. Not that I mind.

5 more days left for the next weekend.