Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

I know, it's sad. I have literally nothing to talk about. Nothing. But then again, I have been completely - and rather gloriously, I have to admit - clueless about the world around me in general. It feels rather nice, actually, just sitting in my room right now, letting my mind wander (I desperately want to write, atleast my blog if nothing else). All for Love, by Bryan Adams, Rod Steward and Sting (a rather confusing medley of voices, there) is playing right now, and just as it stops, another awesome song will play. Life is, I suppose, not too bad. Not too bad at all :).

So, what to do? Create a blog for writing stories! Nah, never mind. If I want to write that badly, I should just - well - write. And focus and make it pretty and nice and warm and lovely and everything else.

Just to break the monotony of the tepidity of my existance, today was a rather harrowing day. Harrowing? No, I mean: well, I'm not sure what I mean, beside apart from luck and awareness, my entire vocabulary above and beyond the word "effervescence" seems to have fallen out of my head. I would really like, at this point, to rattle off into a very abstract, everythin's-a-shakin' kind of post, atleast partially cos I'm a bit bugged on the inside at some things, but I won't. Sometimes, I figure, it's just nicer if the things which really bug you are on the inside, don't you? Plus, atleast today, I don't want to get all mad, because you know how it works, right? A little bad luck, a little irritation, whatever, very very quickly gets absorbed into the essence of everything else, and slowly everything gets this strange, unhealthy smell - or is that just my room?

Apparently, the only really interesting question is: if I had a room phone, who would I call?

This post was posted by Unknown at 12:04 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment

It's All Wrong?

This post was posted by Unknown at 11:14 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment

A news@nature.com article has, amongst its external links, a link to the Battle of Marathon article on Wikipedia! In case you don't know what that is (and you read my blog?), check out Wikipedia's article on itself.

This post was posted by Unknown at 10:34 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Dear World:

Here is something I've been meaning to say to you for a long, long time, but now that I have tons of things to do, and no time in which to do it, the time (I'm afraid to say) has come.

First of all, what's which this whole rich-poor big-small powerful-powerless duality, huh? I get the rationale behind the conservation of matter and all that crap, but why does anything which happens for anyone have to make things atleast slightly worse for someone else? Can't we all just live in our own tiny spheres, taking charge of our corner of the globe and letting everything else evaporate to nothingness? Does anything really matter? Does anyone?

Second, and this is the one that I particularly object to, what's with all this dreaming crap. If you don't dream, you can't do it, they say, but: to dream is to realise something; and then to not achieve it (or, even better, to choose not to achieve it) is to make it go away. But dreams aren't like that, yeah? They don't just vanish. They can't. They won't. They'll stick around like an irritating leech, sucking out of you the tomorrows which might have been, and those which might yet be. They are your past, coming up to meet with your present, and that - in my humble opinion - is Just Not Done.

Next point: what's with this whole money thing anyway? Does money make you successful? Is a doctor working for peanuts and chickens in Somalia happier than someone with a practice in downtown New York? What if they're both killed (drought, mugging) on their forty-second birthday? Does it make a difference? What is a successful life? What is happiness?

Lastly, let me see if I've got this straight: to get close to someone, you need to let down your barriers, and let them in? And then they're in, and you're out, and inside and outside is melting, right? But: what comes next, then? Can inside merge successfully with outside? Or will there always be hesitancy, a sense of too-much-closeness? And what - I'm going completely hypothetical and out-on-a-limb here - if past collides with today, and screws tomorrow in the process? And if it all goes to hell?

The thing with me - for me, to me, whatever - right now is ... well, to be perfectly honest, I don't know what the thing is entirely. I'm disjointed, disconnected, out of whack, somewhere along the line, but I just don't know where, and it's bugging the hell out of me. Everything feels suddenly and awesome wrong: my room, my hall, my comps, my life. I can't seem to get along with my friends very well these days, and as usual that scares me like crazy :). Generally, I just hang out "by myself" until I get back into a more social mood, and then I get back? But this time, I have to work on the comps, and - even more frightning - I just can't seem to be able to tell people dynamics any more. It's all just gone to hell, basically, and - as always - I'm wondering if it'll come back.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I am - or can be - quite a neophobic; and change of any sort worries me. It's nothing specific, you know? just a feeling? just a ugly thought? But yeah, it's there, and it scares me. I don't know what's going on, I think I'm changing, and I don't like it. But I'm not very sure what I can do about it.

Maybe I'm changing, but - just slowly? So I'm slightly better or smarter or more mature or whatever than last semester, but not quite there yet? Maybe, I'm just screwed up. It's a possibility, but a dismal, pointless one, so let's not go there.

What else, what else? Well, previous comments about the cruddiness of "Glass Palace" is to be restressed (not that I've read it again or anything, but I just remember). Yeah, it's basically the above, really. See, this is the point: give me a program, make me work on it for ages and ages, then tell me no no no, we need to do something else, sorry mate, program's useless, and you know what I'll do ... ? NOTHING. I'd just zip up my code, put it aside, maybe go for a walk or something to clear my head, and - assuming I'm interested - get working on it straight off. But that just doesn't happen for me with people and relationships. Once I get close to someone, I stay close - for better or for worse, and that's not always a good thing. Oh, what do I know? Everything's confused right now, confused and in the air, it's all just room-SPS-firewall-moving-papers-files-crap-crap-crap. It is. Life's just this hazy, pointless construct for me right now, and I want - I need - OUT. Something new, something breezy, something interesting, whatever man, I don't care, I ain't particular. Just OUT. Just AWAY. Jesus, I don't even know what I mean, or what sort of thing I mean, and my attempt at freaking out last week - going movie, etc. - was just completely wasted. I mean, it was fun, but I would have liked something better? Something - I don't know - more wholesome. Less existential, more alive :P. Whatever, man, me just crapping now. That's about it from me, I suppose. Will go write a story or something now. Ciao.

This post was posted by Unknown at 4:15 pm | 2 comments | Post a Comment

Don't ask why, cos I'm not saying, but today I'm mad. Partially, it's just sheer frustration at the whole SysAd thing; at Kepler's unrelenting refusing to be contacted from the outside network. Partially, it's something else entirely, which I don't want to get into (and yes, this post will almost certainly vanish as soon as I've typed it out and had my shout, etc.)

I don't like this; this, being my life here right now. It has been - and, God willing, it will be - so incredibly, unbelievably awesome; but right here, right now, it just feels like a complete waste. What am I doing? I'm sitting in my room - an icky, mouldy room way out in the middle of nowhere, really, and so far away from KE and PGP, my haunts and "home" on campus. I am - or rather, was, before the existential angst of it all got to me - reading this unbelievably cruddy book by Amitav Ghosh. Cruddy. Gross. Very, very ugh. Right now, this kid-turned-man is telling this story at a part of how he once met and fell irrevocably in love with a woman, and of course the woman is there at the party, but he doesn't want to tell her directly. I mean, God, can you get more just plain weird>? Now, this would be okay and may be even slightly cute, if you glanced at it, but he goes on and on for two friggin' pages. I mean, Jesus, if you have to remind the audience of the first chapter of your book, you're not doing a very good job, are you?

That's why I'm here, incidently, just to see if I could do a better job. Ended up blogging and listening to SFF instead. God. Is it any wonder that I'm such an incredible loser?

Well, it's begun, any how. What? Who knows. Today. Tomorrow, maybe, even. The End? Certainly.

This post was posted by Unknown at 9:49 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

I write this from what is, beyond doubt, one of the most interesting views I've come across in NUS. In my two years here, I've looked out of my window at trees, buildings, houses, and - for one rather fun week! - even a wide angle view of the entire KE east wing. But this ...

Let me describe it for you (yes, this post is already about a thousand times saner than any of my others, but I'm in an abnormally sane mood, and so would be grateful if you'd just let that pass :). I look out at a pair of trees. Pine-tree-like-trees, with thin, green windows. That's it. Everything beyond is obscured by several other trees. But - and this is the point that I'm getting at - there's this very nice feeling of green, which I'm finding quite calming right now.

A bit excessively calming (I must hasten to report), as right now I'm feeling very tired and worn out all of a sudden. Might be the moving.

Just one last, minor comment: this is my last move for this academic year. In the last two weeks, I have moved from PGP to Extension A to Old KR. I can sum it up in one sentence, though: it's been like moving from a five-star hotel to a motel to a jungle lodge :P. Can't say I complain too much about the lodge, though.

This post was posted by Unknown at 6:52 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment

The Great SPS upgrade (what, again? :P) begins tomorrow. Things in the works:

1. Firewall
2. Replace NFS (which incl: better backup, redundancy, and get rid of the !@#! flock() error)
3. Improvement in UI and other general workstation stuff

Everything has gotten off to a bad start. The light in the SPS room above the comps just blew itself out about an hour back, our "allowed offtime" starts tomorrow and goes on for only seven days, and the best suggestions only came in yesterday ... gasp! And right now, I'm sitting in SPS supposed to be either working on the firewall or doing my lab stuff but I don't want to do either because I'm so tired ...

I know I should just force myself to finish atleast the lab stuff ... but I have to go to my lab for that, and really, I'm just feeling so completely drained and cold (the latter, courtesy SPS's awesome airconditioning) that I just wanna go off and sleep and sleep and sleep ...

Had completely forgotten just how lonely SPS could get on Saturday nights. Ah well. Can barely keep my eyes open. Hopefully tomorrow will right all wrongs, and clear all paths :P. Or something like that. Good night.

This post was posted by Unknown at 8:24 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Justfinished configuring the network on the firewall; including a beautiful little script which can be used to quickly set up which interface goes where! So very tempted to go on working (I slept through most of yesterday), but then I'll never wake up in time for tomorrow (when I'm volunteering at the Animal Protector's Roadshow, are you coming?), so I'd better move. Should be good fun :).

This post was posted by Unknown at 1:01 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Don't watch. I'm going to try and write my own version of the movie, though - same character, same story, but told properly, so I've decided to be nice and not dis them too much. But seriously, yeah, don't watch. Special effects, yeah, Keira Knightly (but just barely!), yeah, but really, nothing much else (oh, and to my Camelot-loving friends - the closest they get is Stonehenge. Seriously. This is King Arthur, Roman ishtyle).

This post was posted by Unknown at 4:28 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Yahoo! Messenger now allows you to play LaunchCast, Yahoo's online radio, out of the player itself. I suppose it's probably done with IE (which might not be such a good idea. But the Launch player is a brilliant idea, since it was always so irritating to keep an IE window open just to play it. Also, the interface for messenger has changed a LOT since the last version, which maybe, just maybe, a sign that Yahoo's gonna standardize its interface? Which might mean cooler Linux versions in the future?

Then again, this is Yahoo - what was I thinking??

This post was posted by Unknown at 4:09 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

HSC Test Your Bird Knowledge!, small quiz on birds. Very interesting for all you bio/eco people (or any one curious, really).

This post was posted by Unknown at 11:02 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

... ain't all it's cracked up to be.

This post was posted by Unknown at 5:09 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Just had a long, long, long chat with Kaberi. Awesomely cool. I love my friends!! :D

This post was posted by Unknown at 5:16 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

But mostly forgot it all on the way back from the airport :D (went to see Naef off, was at Changi all night, and only got back now!) Way too tired to anyways. My feet are killing me. Had some brilliant (?) ideas at the airport, btw, but won't set them out here since (a) as a writer once put it, if the idea is brilliant enough, you won't be able to forget them, and (b) no-one but me would be jobless enough to actually implement this particular idea :P.

Interesting point: lots of things happened yesterday night - lots of ghosts, I mean, memories of the past walking slowly by. Things which kept reminding me of things, if you know what I mean. One of the most amazing experiences I had this last holiday - if I might be allowed the digression - was visiting Priyadarshini Park. Mostly, the places I visit can be distributed into three types: places with so many memories that they just saturate me up, and it's hard to focus on any one (most of the rooms I've lived in, for instance), those with such few memories that I don't really remember properly (like Plaza Singapura, Orchard - only been there once) and the really magical ones, the ones with enough emotional memories that they follow you (like ghosts!) and peek out from behind familiar pillars, smiling. Changi is such a magical place (the other, ironically, is a bus, but I won't go into that now), atleast for me. I've seen off so many people who meant so much for me, had so many interesting - pivotal? definately important - events happen there, steps taken, people met, the whole hoo-ha. And tonight - well, yesterday night - I went back to so many of the places with memories, and grinned at the ghosts of long (and not so long) ago. (So why did I mention Priyadarshani Park? Because there is another category of place. Last June was the first time I returned to PDP, as we used to call it, after almost nine years. The memories didn't peek out from nowhere - they jumped out of the ground, from behind trees, and over hills; they caught me by sheer surprise. Things which I hadn't remembered in years and all. Very cool, but it was slightly spooky for me, which is why I still haven't visited my two homes in Mumbai - Ridgeway and Manek).

That's all I've gotta say for now, I guess (and I desperately need to bathe and sleep!) But feeling much better from y'day night, which is good :). If any of my friends who I got mad at y'day read this before I see them next, a huge huge huge SORRY from me :). Love you guys! Now g'nite, and seeya tomorrow.

p.s. Now on page 124 of The Fountainhead - would all those who find the plot "contrived" please raise their hands? Still, fun book to read - let's see where it goes from here in on. At the risk - no, certainty - of sounding priggish, it's nothing compared with The Great One.

This post was posted by Unknown at 7:40 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

This, you should probably read before you go see the movie: Unfairenheit 9/11 - The lies of Michael Moore.

This post was posted by Unknown at 1:21 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Yup, that's right, folks. But my other blog ain't this messy.

How are things? Resoundingly, not good. My general hubris threatens to engulf everything, as it always does, and my twin foes of Hastiness and Boredom look set to make a comeback. And I'm so tired! I forgot how much fun - and how tiring - it is, walking around campus. And I'm in a lousy room, with my pillow with my local guardian! *sobz*

I want a life. I need a life. And by golly, by the end of this semester, I will have a life of my own! So there ...

This post was posted by Unknown at 12:46 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Singapore - at last.

I'm writing this from Naef's room (you know, Naef?). Am bunking over for the night, since I forgot to tell OSA, and consequently I won't be able to get my room until tomorrow. Argh, stupid, stupid! But an interesting experience, I suppose, and one that will Do Me Good.

Saw a lovely movie on the plane called "Annie and Me", really nice film. Enjoyable. Will put more stuff up on it later - when I'm just a trifle more sane, that is :).

For the record books: I travelled on a Boeing 777-200, seat 44C (which isn't really a 'C' seat, since it's the first row in the second part of the economic class, there's only an 'A' and a 'C' - so it's 2-3-2, not 3-3-3). Obviously, the record books are extraordinarily boring. Now you know why.

This post was posted by Unknown at 9:45 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

When you come down to it, I've realised, the one thing which scares me the most is tomorrow. It really can scare the shit out of me, man. I'm not kidding.

I just went and scratched out a huge arrow in the sandpit - pointing east of south east, about four paces long - with a single word written below it: tomorrow.

That's my frame of mind right now, I suppose. Until tomorrow, then! :)

This post was posted by Unknown at 10:36 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Calendar of Events

This post was posted by Unknown at 5:54 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Two links for tonight (I'm sleepy!)

1. Lyrics to "We both reached for the gun" from Chicago, the musical. Amazing song, and amazing movie - watch it if you can!
2. Things People Said: a blog for to stockpile up quotes for me! It's gonna grow at one-a-day, hopefully, so wish me luck!

This post was posted by Unknown at 4:23 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

Have I plugged this webpage before already? If so, apologies. In any case, check it out!

This post was posted by Unknown at 3:41 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment