Contentment makes for boring blogposts.

I am very happy and contented right now. Hence I have nothing to blog about. I wonder if there’s some universal law that states that you can only write a lot if you are depressed, dissatisfied, melancholy or just generally pissed off with the state of things. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that contentment is very pedestrian. It’s not news

Happiness is a grey area as far as blogging is concerned. An event that makes you happy might make for a great blogpost. Things that make you happy might make for a great blogpost. It all depends on how you write. I could write a small post about the things that make me happy. I suspect that it wouldn’t be very interesting unless I contrasted them with something melancholy or just general unhappiness.

Then again, it might be a very boring post. I believe we all like to know that other people are going through shit. Bloody sadists! Or it might be that “My life’s good right now!” just sounds mundane.

See, Contentment is quite boring. Did you ever read such a load of tripe as the one above? Admit it, you haven’t. Tough cookie! You’ve already wasted two minutes of your sad life reading that.

In other news, Jyoti Basu finally quits the CPI(M). Along the way he quit life also. Okay, that was a bad one. One shouldn’t joke about Death. He might take offense.

There’s just one thing about this that annoys me. How come the man gets such great medical treatment? AMRI,AIIMS, expensive drugs, life-support… who paid for all that?

There is a bloody cold wind blowing in Durgapur. It is fairly cold. In Hindi, a fart is also called “garam hawa“. In case you are wondering, yes I did learn that from 3 Idiots. In case you weren’t wondering… I told you anyway.

I can see you judging me fro watching 3 Idiots. I claim absolution. I have a cast-iron excuse. My room-mate has it on his computer and he watches it everyday. I almost know the dialogues now. He watches bits of it over and over and over. He watched the beginning at least ten times and he’s watched that scene where Boman Irani’s moustache is shaved off so many times I can describe the scene is perfect detail.

Another mess-mate liked the movie so much he watched it thrice in three different halls. Oh and did I mention that another mess-mate watches Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani every alternate day?

You know when I said I was contented?

I Lied.

My room! How I’ve missed you!

I’m home again. Phew! No more traveling for some time. Oh wait! I have to catch a bus for Calcutta tomorrow. Damn! Ah well, C’est la vie.

In December 2009, I stayed for just 46 hours in Durgapur. Would you believe it?

I’ve been gallivanting across the country these past few days. All right, I’ve been visiting my extended family in South India. “Gallivanting across the country” just sounds cooler.

There’s something incredibly unique about traveling by Sleeper Class in an Indian train. That something unique consist of, among other things, equal parts of overcrowded compartments, waitlisted passengers in reserved coaches, hawkers, IRCTC and noxious bodily gases(The last two are sometimes related).

But getting down at Vizag station to buy coffee at 4:30 in the morning makes up for it a lot. Buying IRCTC tomato soup also helps. Having an upper berth helps. Having good books to read while on the upper berth helps the most.

Madras was quite fun. I visited three bookshops, a bird sanctuary and a crocodile park this time. I am very happy.

The Bird Sanctuary was damn nice. There were Painted Storks, Pelicans and Ibises. They were nesting in trees in the middle of this big lake. It looked like a little city. The Crocodile Park was also a lot of fun. They had Marsh Crocodiles(320 in one pen, 450 in another), Nile Crocodiles, Australian Freshwater Crocodiles, Saltwater Crocodiles, Alligators, Caimans and Gharials. They also had turtles, tortoises, snakes, fish and one monitor lizard.

We also went to Thiruvananthapuram to visit my dad’s side of the family. Kerala is quite pleasant at this time of the year. We went to this Aquarium and Flower show there which, once you enter, you cannot exit without seeing everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. They’ve put up fences and barricaded in such a way that you can only keep going forward. The route has been designed such that you’ll have to see every shop.

We’ve brought back quite a few books from this trip. A few of my dad’s books were lying around in Thiruvananthapuram so we brought those back. We also bought quite a few books in Madras. I’ll list them soon.

There weren’t many funny incidents this time around. Probably because I was traveling with my parents. People who belong to the Prepare for Apocalypse cult seldom have funny incidents happening to them. It’s something to do with the way they plan every aspect of the trip.

On the journey to Madras, on the Howrah-Chennai Coromandel Super Fast Express(to give it it’s full name) we had a group of nuns and a group of NCC cadets in our coach. I guess we had the protection of God and Good Guys.

We returned to Madras from Trivandrum by bus. That’s an eighteen hour journey. The bus was fairly comfortable. It had a considerable amount of leg-room. Alas! It still wasn’t enough to let me stretch my legs completely. I believe I can now survive anything.

The journey from Madras to Durgapur by the Chennai Egmore-Dibrugarh Town Express was very comfortable. The train was relatively empty and we traveled in great comfort. Orissa and West Bengal were very cold at night though. Indeed, it was very chilly.

That’s about all.

PS: The total number of books gained from this trip is 35. And my sister has whacked five more. So that’s forty. Brilliant! Now excuse me. I have a lot of reading to do. Mwahaha!!!! I think I’ll list out all the books. Just to gloat. Mwahaha!!!

PPS:One of those books is a copy of The poetical works of John Milton OUP, 1930. I picked it up because it was apparently given to my great-grand-uncle as a prize for General Proficiency when he was in College. I think it would be interesting if such prizes were given again. Not least because “Riot breaks out at College function” would make a nice headline.

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Update
Well, here’s the list of books I’ve whacked.

1. The Jeeves Omnibus :: P.G.Wodehouse.
2. The Inimitable Jeeves :: P.G.Wodehouse
3. Ukridge :: P.G.Wodehouse
4. Vintage :: P.G.Wodehouse
5. The Stationary Ark :: Gerald Durrell
6. The Drunken Forest :: Gerald Durrell
7. Catch Me a Colobus :: Gerald Durrell
8. Three Singles to Adventure :: Gerald Durrell
9. The New Noah :: Gerald Durrell
10. Intimate Relations :: Jacquie Durrell
11. Doctor on Toast :: Richard Gordon
12. Doctor and Son :: Richard Gordon
13. Doctor in Clover :: Richard Gordon
14. Doctor on the Job :: Richard Gordon
15. Guards!Guards :: Terry Pratchett
16. Soul Music :: Terry Pratchett
17. Magic :: Isaac Asimov
18. Robots and Empire :: Isaac Asimov
19. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle :: Haruki Murakami
20. On the Road :: Jack Kerouac
21. Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories :: Herman Melville
22. The Invisible Man :: H.G.Wells
23. The History of Mr.Polly :: H.G. Wells
24. The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes :: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
25. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater :: Thomas De Quincey
26. Medea and Other Plays :: Euripides trans. John Davie
27. The Three Theban Plays :: Sophocles trans. Robert Fagles
28. The Poetical Works of John Milton :: Ed. Rev.H.C. Beeching
29. Major American Short Stories :: Ed. A.Walton Litz
30. More William :: Richmal Crompton
31. Sweet William :: Richmal Crompton
32. The Perfect Murders :: Agatha Christie
    • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd :: Agatha Christie
    • Murder on the Orient Express :: Agatha Christie
    • Murder in the Mews :: Agatha Christie
    • Hercule Poirot’s Christmas :: Agatha Christie
33. The Painter of Signs :: R.K. Narayan
34. Farewell, My Lovely :: Raymond Chandler

We had to carry them in a small Carton. To be precise, I had to carry them in a small Carton.
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Arising from the above, I have done some rearranging in my room. I’ve had to convert a whole set of shelves into bookshelves(not that I mind ) I had to throw away a bunch of old DVDs and CDs I got free with tech magazines when I used to buy them every month.

Those CDs and DVDs had some good software and freeware on them. They were very useful, especially when Broadband wasn’t all that common and Dial-up was the norm. Nowadays everything can be downloaded but back then it was quite a task trying to download even a small(by today’s standards) file. And since Dial-up would drop the line at the slightest excuse, you might have spent forty minutes trying to download a 4MB file and BAM! it’s gone. Even when Broadband came, they were useful for getting hold of very large files and updates and codecs. Especially for getting Codecs and Updates. You’d get DirectX updates, K-Lite and VLC codec upgrades and Windows patches every month. Very useful for the very lazy and for the technologically challenged.

And now they’re all useless. Most of the discs won’t run. And most of the software is hopelessly outdated. I doubt many of them will even run. C’est la vie.

I’ve stopped buying Tech mags. Mainly because I can get most of the news from online sources.

**Sigh** I used to buy EFY once upon a time.

I still have a copy of Byron Gottfried’s Schaum’s Outline of Programming with C

Eh well.

Ah, It feels good to be dead!

My parents and I have completely different ideas of preparing for a trip. I veer towards the Wake up, pack toothbrush and a couple of clothes and leave side. My parents however are firm members of the Prepare for Apocalypse cult. This is very distressing for someone as sensitive and retiring as me. One cannot waste time efficiently in a place where people are packing things all day. A person’s Indolence receptors can only function when there are no people working in the vicinity. This is the fundamental identity of Indolence.

The way people are packing here would make someone think that we’re planning to flee the country. Hopefully Mexico will be nice this time of year.

I have realized that I can survive Nuclear Winter. The only part of Nuclear Winter that might cause massive deaths seems to be the lack of Internet and mobile phones. I have been undergoing intense training for the past three years preparing for just such an eventuality. I wonder if all these mess-baris are actually a part of some secret government project to create a race of super-humans to repopulate the world after people die because of the lack of Internet Connectivity. If my mess-mates are the government’s idea of super-humans who should repopulate the world, I’m afraid the world is doomed. Humanity is going to end up serving cockroaches after all.

I actually gave a fairly good semester exam this time. I am surprised. I actually wrote a four-page answer. I’m impressed, Usually I zone out after a couple of paragraphs. Maybe I have ADHD. Who knows?

Well, I shall now disconnect myself from the Internet again.

Excuse me while I go off and establish friendly relations with all the cockroaches I come across.

Sedate walking just ain’t my thing.

I’m supposed to be studying but that is obviously not happening. What I have been doing however is wasting time on the internet and other such things. I have also been running around the house.

Now when I say “running around the house” I mean running. I keep running about, jumping over chairs, bounding up the stairs and generally being a hazard. However I have not been injured.

This evening however…

I was standing in the kitchen talking to my parents. I took a step forward in a calm, measured, sedate manner… and then there’s a moment when I think the world’s suddenly tilted around and then I’m on the floor.

It seems I had slipped on some water, and while trying to regain my balance I caught my foot in this contraption the maidservant uses to cart vessels around and hence I ended up on the floor.

I discovered that I had managed to acquire a barcodesque abrasion on my right wrist and a cut on my foot. I have no idea how I got those. I suppose I got those while obeying gravity. Along the way I also managed to injure my father.

It was an interesting experience, especially since it was completely unexpected. It’s been some time since fell. The last time I fell was when I fell out of that tree at The Indian Botanic Gardens. This was more entertaining. I felt like I was flying when I fell out of that tree. This time I felt confused, as if someone had suddenly decided to change the orientation of the world and forgot to tell me.

I also burst out laughing when I realised I was on the floor in a tangled heap- the constituents of the heap being myself, The Contraption and a karai. My mother, not to be outdone, asks me “Did you fall?”. I’m on the floor in a tangled heap when she says this.

In other news- I feel old. It’s almost the end of 5th Semester. It seems like only yesterday that it was 1st Semester. It’ll soon be 2010. I left school in 2007. That’s a long time ago. 1999 was ten years ago. 1999 seems like a couple of days ago. I find it hard to think of the time period 1996-2007 as a long time ago. I can’t remember a single thing about those years. They’re all a confused mish-mash in my head. I have no distinct, individual memories of those years but those years just seem very recent.

Soon It’ll be 6th Semester and I’ll have graduated. Then it’ll be time to face life. Peter Pan has all the luck.

More In other news I have a strange desire to watch Ninja Assassin. It just looks like a cool, mindless movie. Plus it has Ninjas. How can anything be bad if it has Ninjas? (Enter The Ninja was not bad. It was hilarious!)

I have decided not to watch 2012. I shall watch Ninja Assassin instead.

Even more In other news I’m getting a blister on my thumb. I will get the posters of our Macbeth project printed. They cost only Rs.40 each. There are six of them so that’s Rs.240. I can manage that. They’re damn cool. I’ll put up some once I get the soft copies. They have come out nicely, even if I do say so myself.

Some more In other News I’ve… no that’s about it. I’ve said all I’ve had to say. Oh wait no.

Shoutout All you Lurkers… Delurk!

Yeah, that’s about it.

I shall now waste time on the internet.

Bah! Humbug!

Why am I poor? Money seems to disappear like well, money. It is especially sad when you want that money to buy books.

Damn it!

Where’s that railway timetable?

Excuse me? When does the next train to Hermit Junction leave? I’ve heard Hermit Junction is a nice place. Is this train the one through Bitter Town and Aloneville? Damn! Are there no other trains? Ah well! I’ll get back to you.

Sliders and scenes

I have been really bored at home. So I decided to waste time productively by wasting it on Terragen. Here are the results

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This is a random terrain which I then edited and then played around with the sliders.

The Terrain Map is one I created. The rest are all experiments with Haze density and Atmospheric Blue Half-height.

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I then moved on to Blender 3D. I love this software. It’s powerful, fairly light on the system and is open-source freeware. But just because it’s open-source and free doesn’t mean it’s light on features. It has features comparable to high-end 3D Modellers like 3DS Max, Maya and Cinema 4D. Anyway here’s what I came up with

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The Tumblers are a set of SpinDuplicated Vertices.

The .blend file on Rapidshare

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I’d suggest everyone give Blender a try. It’s a lot of fun.

Download Blender

Also you might try out Terragen^TM Classic.

Download Terragen^TM Classic

And if you have a really powerful computer and the inclination, you might even download the Limited Freeware edition of Terragen^TM 2

Download Terragen^TM 2

Well, see you later.

Spend some part of a Durga Puja in Kolkata? Check!

All right, so I can cross that off my list. It’s just bigger, noisier and with the right kind of people around, funner.

My mother has gone crazy. For the first time in twenty years, she has decided to display a Golu. And she has done so. And she has started buying dolls with a vengeance. Today she went and bought a pair of the most creepy-ass dolls ever imagined by a doll-maker tripping on acid and pissed off with life.

Let me give you a word picture(I’ll put up a real picture later).

The dolls are a big ol’ turbaned, mustachioed North Indian and his grinning, made up, fat-ass wife. The wife has a grin which would scare the shit out of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.^# To add to the horror, Their heads are mounted on a coiled piece of metal so that they fucking loll about as if The Headless Horseman was having a bad day

Yes, Interesting times we live in.

Also, Would you agree that the most frustrating thing possible is when you reach the counter and it closes for lunch? (Yes/No)

Speaking of which, Women should not be allowed to man counters selling bus tickets. When you are standing in a line waiting to catch a bus quickly, you do not want to listen to a bunch of women exclaiming “Oma! Ki Shundor!” and forgetting that they’re supposed to be handing people bus tickets!. You won’t catch men doing that. They may be just lazy, inefficient and corrupt but at least they won’t forget about doing their job. They will willfully ignore it. That’s different.

^# Also check out the picture in the wiki article on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If that’s not gay…

पाँच पहर धन्धे गया, तीन पहर गया सोय । एक पहर हरि नाम बिन, मुक्ति कैसे होय ॥

I didn’t really like studying Hindi in class IX and X. I liked the period because we would have to change classes and there would be the inevitable chaos and struggle for seats. There were quite a few good poems and stories. There were also some good essays. But on the whole, I didn’t really like giving Hindi exams. However I really liked some of the stuff we had to read.

There was “परशुराम की प्रतीक्षा” by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, there were poems by Harivanshrai Bachchan and others. There were essays by Hazari Prasad Dwivedi. It was actually quite a good course. I should actually have studied it with a bit more interest.

My favourites were however the dohas of Kabir and Rahim.

And as usual, you can find anything you want on google.

Kabir’s Dohas

There are also links to Rahim’s dohas and many other literary works.

This is why I love the internet.

It does look kinda cool…

Out of my four limbs, three are currently injured.

The big toe on my right foot got stepped on by a football boot and it hurts a bit. If you’re wondering why it hurts there was someone wearing the boot.

My left shin has a brilliant scrape on it, which runs all the from from my knee almost to my foot. I went to wash myself after a game of football and slipped and scraped my leg on the concrete.

I had to take a TetVac. My left arm is thus in pain.

My parents have so far not said a word about my left shin. This is interesting. They have either not noticed it or they are inured to the sight of me sporting a couple of hundred injuries. I think it is the latter.I came home wearing shorts yesterday. That by itself would have caused comment but it did not. Interesting.

I wonder if the Alien Invasion is here…