Sunday Evenings

Sunday evenings always make me dreary and un-witty. I start contemplating. First of banal practicalities . Do I have gas in the car? What do I eat for lunch tomorrow? Then absurd thoughts run through my epileptic mind causing bizarre streams of conversations.

Like how I realized that as I grow older (and not so wiser), I also seem to have a lesser range of emotions to play with. In fact I am down to 4 main ones. Anger, Love, Boredom, Depression.

Really boredom is a consistent one and mixes rather nicely with the others. I can be loving & bored at the same time.

I am nervous about having so few combinations left.
I fear there are some out there who have not crossed my brain’s emotion making factory maybe because of the lack of the right formula. Or the right management.

I believe I am at an interstice here.

Man of Mystery

There is this man at work. Small, wiry, intense and french. Born in Morocco, educated in Europe and Asia, lived in NY & Egypt . An exciting and flamboyant childhood .

But these days he works in an insurance company, in the middle of suburbia , in a 10 by 10 cube past the coffee area, past the forgotten people.

I am constantly intrigued.

Book Club

I joined this book club the other day. We were defined as the "wild card". There were 3 groups as I walked in. Bestsellers, Chick Lit and Non Fiction.And then there was us. 7 nervous looking women feeling uncharacterized. One of them did not even speak english. I gently asked if she was in the right room. She nodded vigorously and suggested nervously , this was her strategy to learn the language. Being the corporate 'action oriented', 'goal achieving' , 'efficient' person that I am for most of the day, I quickly started off the conversation with introductions. We had a nerdy lost CS engineer from MIT, an over zealous architect, the non english speaking lady with a goal, the beautiful asian girl whose last good read was unknown, somebody called summer who was blond, bright and happy and the Indian IT Engineer. And then there was me.Not really sure why I was in a book club( I have never been in one and Oprah just killed it for me)

We decided we would meet each month and one by one we would recommend books for the group . We started off with 'Istanbul' by Orhan Pamuk. I have a month to finish this.

I also have 'The Time Traveler's Wife', and Kiran Desai's 'Inheritance of Loss' to read as well.

We meet again next month over wine to see how we are doing.

FOMO

The world that I live in right now and will be doing so for the next two years suffers from FOMO aka Fear Of Missing Out.

Parties, Pre parties, Post parties, Social events, Career events, Organized events, Section Retreats, Treks, Hikes, Pub Crawls, Volunteer opportunities, Leadership Roles, Poker Nights, Wine Tasting Nights, Dance Nights, Night out in the town nights .

The myth is that participation will prevent FOMO. I know for a fact that it actually exacerbates it. You come out meeting people who are suffering too and want to be "clued in", "in the loop" and part of the group. Everybody wants to know everybody else and everybody wants to be known.

Take our innate 'desire to belong' and add that to our desire to experience everything at least once since 'it's only one life we live' and you have got FOMO.

Cool Things

So ,I stood for 45 mins to get inside a swanky club for a guy I had never met , for a birthday I didn't care about.

My new life involves socialising, to an extent, that my smile is always plastered and I always have the same 3 sentences that spout out in smooth, rhythmic motion.

Hey, How ya doin?
So, did you have trouble getting here?
Cool place , eh?


Oh, the tyranny of being "it".

Blogging

Why are people blogging so much these days? Are our lives so lonely that random ramblings on the virtual space will calm us down? Is it an easy fuck and no blow job involved?

Is this our one shot at mortality with the absolutely ambitious hope that we will get noticed?

figure this: 6 b people and if you are not Tom cruise showing off your seed on vanity fair, you dont count....

yes, figure this:

that attempt just sucks....

Am I too mean?

What's eating Popinjay?

- Bad Weather
-Incompetent comprehension
-Meaningless conversation
-Ambitious projects
-Israel&Palestine& ....... the lebanon......& the Hezbollah
-Radicalism
-Loveless Relationships

Elsewhere.

I moved to a new city this week. A new culture, a new workplace, a new identity. Everything before this sunday will now only be a memory and no longer my reality.

Although everything is still the same, there is a sharp sensitivity to the nuances of my surroundings. I look at people eating, talking, even working with a child's sense of wonder.

I miss odd things that were familiar, like my big old bathroom( yes, I really do) and my non speaking neighbour.

There is the possibility of future adventures and a wistful longing for the time gone by.

NY Times top American Fiction.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/books/fiction-25-years.html?ex=1149048000&en=ceb7fa2e42ad3445&ei=5070

Truly Happy People

I was in Memphis this weekend with family. While there, I was invited to a cousin's friend's place for fish tikka and a shot of scotch. I dont drink whiskey but while gently sipping on my shiraz, I marvelled at how happy they looked.

So one of these truly happy people that was sharing a drink with me in an obscure suburb in memphis remarked 'I am truely happy'. I waited. Maybe hoping they would also let me know how they got there. But there were no ensuing words of wisdom. Just a plain, disconcerting statement. They were older and one does get that way at that age, I figured. They dint look too sharp or ambitious and one does get happy when either is lacking. They must be religious,I concluded. Religious people sometimes have that mysterious and suspicious glow about them. As I pondered on what else needed to be certainly lacking in their characters that would justify them stating that arrogant line, I realised with a tired smile, that that they were just two truely happy people and my cynical mind would never fathom the simpleness of that fact.

Night Time.

The cool thing about cyber-surfing is that it is endless. Time dissolves, energy dissipates and love happens. Like for instance , my favorite http://kitabkhana.blogspot.com/2005/08/vice-visa.html

Quote for the night:

'I have a dog, a cat and a blog'.

Roots

I recently took International Programming at home. Sounds and smells from my home country sneaked into my american lifestyle. The first time I watched, I knew there was no looking back. 5 years as an outsider, and all the blending in and the mixing up seemed to disintegrate as I watched drugged in the flavor.

Songs from my past floated in.When days were spent in languorous strolls and roadside sips of tea. People all around . Hustling,bustling,walking,chatting,eating,living. Slivers of my life that I had neatly tucked away . A sigh escaped quietly.

"Improbability of Actualities"

I am waiting for macros to run.
I am waiting for the next big thing.

In a cube in a corner in a circle.

Entry?

April 06, 5:26PM