Virtual Ramblings

All the things I write over here are close to me, but one series which I use to like a lot was my ramblings series, mainly because I have the habit of reading them months down the line. Today when I read some of my old random ramblings, I relive those days, those strands of thoughts, and derive some kind of happiness and satisfaction, I totally sound like a weirdo, don’t I?
I had stopped doing this for quite a while now, people who are relatively new to this blog may not even recognize the series I am talking about, but this week I find myself with a sudden urge to revisit this old muse of mine. Guys I do know not many of you don’t like going through other’s weekly ramblings, and personal thoughts, but just bare with me on this one.

Random Fun:
It was Wednesday, the mid week and I was usual working on my laptop, some official work, and some playing around my blog, reading others, commenting and stuff, and came across this post ‘8-STAR‘ tag!! from NOSTALGIC MOMENTS by Pri. Its been quite a while since I came across the song “hum aapki ankhon mein is dil ko basale toh”, an old song, but kind of struck totally, so it started with just the humming, and then moved onto to singing loudly, broken words, wrong lyrics, whatever it was I was enjoying it, and I get up to make my long walk to the kitchen to fill my water bottle, still singing loudly unaware that’s its almost midnight and people in the house are sleeping. My dad who was sleeping in one of the rooms, wakes up opens the bedroom door, and looks at me puzzled, he had that total “what the hell happened to you” look on his face, he half asleep asks me, whats the occasion, I just smile and get back to my room. Singing at midnight can be priceless ;).

Random changes:
Some of you guys who are talking to me on gtalk these days might have wondered this, why am I talking so much on IM these days, I mean what happened to all that anonymity and stuff, not sure what has changed, but I seem to talking to more people, troubling them, I am sure atleast in some cases, [well a lot I must admit ]. Firstly I would like to apologize to all you guys, sorry people did not realize this until recently, so guys next time you see me pinging you, and starting an unsolicited conversation just throw me out will ya. Speaking of anonymity, I am really surprised that I gave out my true name to four people in last two weeks, what’s happening to me people? Any idea?.

Random Rules:
People who know me for some time now, do know about the various 21 day rules I start committing to, so time has come for my latest experiment, after umpteenth fight with my mother last week, an upset me has started a new 21 day rule, that whatever happens I am not going to raise my voice at home, and will not be angry at my mother. Now I have to admit this is one of the toughest challenges I am facing, I mean you get so used to taking your parents for granted and yelling at them. [If you guys have never got angry at home, nor yelled at your parents, then does that make me a psycho]. The best part is that its working, I have consciously avoided 4 confrontations in last 5 days, and today is the 7th day. So people wish me luck, let me see If I can carry this off, and well past the 21 days.

Random Wants:
I was reading a post about wanting to take vacation, throwing everything the way it is and escaping to a nice lonely island or a mountain top. I am sorry, I forgot where I read this, so people If you are reading this and it happens to be you who wrote that post, please accept my apologies. Anyways, as I was saying, reading that post, made me realize how badly I am looking for a break, break from the current work I have been doing at office, I want to go back to the honey valley home stay in coorg which I like immensely, or go to Pondicherry, have been reading  a lot about French café’s there, or may be go to Dharamsala, want to check out the place. Or may be just a weekend getaway with few friends and cousins would help for sure.

Random Discovery:
Was just answering comments on my blog this week, and it made me realize a pattern, I see that shorter the post more the comments , so do people find long posts boring?, may be people do not have time to read the whole post if it stretched beyond a size, more importantly who would want to read a boring writer like rambler for more than a few paragraphs. Guys don’t believe me, check some of the longish posts of mine ..
Random Fantasies:
Looks like all my ramblings this week are sparked off from the posts I have read. I was reading  the post  The Checkers from Twisted tales on life by Chennai ramblings, this made me remember the fantasy I used to have as a college student, I wanted to pull of atleast one all nighter, I mean where I go out party and don’t come back until the next day you see, I haven’t done it so far, I haven’t reached midnight either, well that’s if you leave out the time I spend with my cousins, never in a bar with friends. This post of her’s made me get back to my fantasy, of spending an all nighter. Ideas anyone?.

Random Guilt:
One of my not so friendly friend had an unfortunate event over the last week, by “not so friendly” I mean someone who I have never been able to tolerate much, somehow I have ended treating the person as one from a non existent rival camp :). I kind of had warned him that it might happen, and it did happen, now there are chances that it might turn worse. Now whenever I think about the incident and the possibilities in future, I feel sad for that person, and sometimes I feel person deserved it. Amidst all this, I kind of hope nothing worse happens to the person, the question thats haunting me these days, is why am I feeling this way?, why am I wanting good for him?, is it because of a guilt that once upon a time, I wanted something bad to happen to the person?, or is it because of a fear of being watched? I mean am I feeling this way only to please the Guy up above so that he does not give me any problems?.

Random Faith:
Suddenly my faith in the all powerful person up above seems to have increased. There is an old saying in kannada “Sankata bandaga venkata ramana”, which means that only when there is a problem we seem to remember the GOD. There have been no major problems in my life as such right now, but even the small issues I seem to be falling to a path of faith in the unknown power and more importantly blind faith in praying. Do any of you go through these spells, where your belief in GOD for no reason shoots up?, or for that matter belief in any other super power. I think when we enter a stage where there is hardly anything we can do to control something, we just hope that someone/something will control the things for us.

Random Realities:
It all started when my friend P called me up last sunday late at 10:30PM, I had gone to bed at 9:30 itself so, I was well into my deep sleep. I woke up and spoke to him for about 30 mnts, but my sleep cycle got screwed, no I did get sleep afterwards, but somehow a mental feeling of inadequate sleep was with me all last week. I was not getting proper sleep, I ended up waking up 2/3 times in almost all nights this week, all this meant that my evenings used to be screwed up, with a sleepy me, cribbing about anything and everything at home. BTW does it make me sound like a cranky toddler?

Random Observations:
I generally loose temper very easily, I think one of the reasons for it is lack of patience. Last week when I lost temper couple of times, I was kind of analyzing what could be the reason for that, I was surprised to find out that, on all that days I was very hungry, I mean as soon as I come home from work, I am generally very hungry and I will be looking forward for my dinner, this is the time I am most vulnerable, if someone tries to mess with me at this period, I very easily loose temper. As soon as I have my dinner, somehow I am a lot more calmer, and I tend to ignore smaller irritations. Have you ever felt this?

Random Coincidence:
Thursday morning, as I was getting ready for my breakfast, as soon as I saw the dish, the only person who came to my mind was my friend S, it was her favorite dish, so was thinking of the days when I used to pack her some of it. After breakfast I totally forgot about this, only late in the afternoon until I got a call from S, saying she is back in town for a day. Busy schedules for both of us meant that we could not meet, but still we did have couple of long phone calls. What a coincidence right?

Random Foodie:
Looks like my stomach is really upset with me for not providing it the usual foodie stuff, so I decided to do something about it, Wednesday evening I gave my stomach a ride towards a local chat corner, and it was treated with couple of plates of masala puri and pani puri. Friday lunch was at kundh in 100 ft road, where I tried a real nice curry, and the Indian garlic bread was awesome. Sunday morning was a treat with Masala Dosa..Foodie days are slowly coming back.

Random Pursuits:
Last but not the least, this week over at pure pursuits I was talking about platonic friendships, I have spoken about that many a times over here too, this time it was from a   different point of view, something that got sparked due to a article in one of the newspaper. Here it is “Platonic, what’s that?”

Random Contrasts:
The week that went by had two extreme days, let me start with the happy one. On Wednesday I had an amazing day, I mean one of those days where because of no reason you are happy. Having lunch that day, we laughed so much that my stomach began to hurt, the reason was something very silly, and I myself may not laugh on that again, but still we were a bunch of four, and I could not stop laughing at all. I haven’t laughed like that in ages. Even after lunch, the whole day was amazingly happy and fun. Thursday was a total opposite, One of the worst days I have had in months, nothing seem to fall right in place, setbacks after setbacks, and more importantly no mental peace at all. I wanted to get over it, I wanted to forget about events, but then newer ones kept on occurring and I was feeling a lot down. This kind of carried onto Friday and a little into Saturday. On the whole it was a week of strong contrasts.

Random Hypocrisies:
One of my friends has decided to get married and has began the hunt for the prospective wife, so generally the point of discussion in the group has become marriage and choosing girls in general. One of these days, we were asking him his requirements, what is he looking for. I would not like to tell what he said, but I was really impressed to see a person who really knew what he wanted. In the discussion, the point of boozing and smoking came out, and I declared that when I begin to search, one of the requirements I would have is that the girl should drink occasionally. My theory is that, I have seen many a girls who come into our family getting a cultural shock when we cousins, along with out immediate elder generations including my father and uncles have an occasional drink at home. I have seen many new women coming into the family not happy with this practice.
The very next day, I was watching TV, and one of the songs of movie “Khoya Khoya Chand” and I saw “Soha Ali Khan” and immediately I got a talk, one should be as demure and beautiful as her. The fact that she looked so appealing was that she was extremely traditional look in the movie, with a antique look to her.
Are we hypocrites in wanting this?, I mean we want people to be modern and accept our lifestyle, however when it comes to women we want someone who is traditional in appearance?

Random Surprises:
Last week I did a post about meeting people online, and possibilities of a relationship with people you meet online titled Love in the times of world wide web. . I have to say the response left me totally surprised. I never expected people to be so open to meeting people online, and more importantly more women trusting people from the internet. Even though I am not completely convinced myself of the prospects, I was really happy to see more people “trusting”, definitely a very good sign for the society we live in. I did get some really practical responses, saying one should do more ground work before going ahead and meeting someone from online, but still on the whole I found people far more trusting then what I imagined we are. Such an eye opener this one was.

Random Romance:
I am not sure if many of my friends noticed this, but most of my posts in last couple of weeks have been in a way related to romance. As I had mentioned before, I did try my hand in writing romance this last couple of weeks, I could not manage a mushy story, not even close to romance we get to see mostly on television or the romantic novels. Still an attempt is an attempt right.
I wrote about a how a woman desires happiness and romance much more than any logic can define as a short story inQuestions unasked... I wrote about how people should blend and not think too much about changing each other or in the worst case change the person itself in It’s not all about change. I wrote about the new age internet romance in Love in the times of world wide web.
I also wrote about the flirting over at my other blog. so how good or bad was my brand of romance?

Random Foodie:
Looks like the foodie in me has suddenly lost his way, I seem to have lost the enthusiasm towards trying out new food stuff, more importantly my partners in crime seem to be very busy with their personal lives, making it even more difficult for me to get motivated to go and try new stuff. Whats happening people?

Random Rants:
My personal PC had died down last week, I tried to get it working last weekend, after about half an hour of struggle gave it up, was hoping the time plays a healer to my PC as well and it will get better as the days progress, turns out time does not help PC’s so had to call a repair person to make it to work. He took 10 mnts to correct it, unfortunately he screwed up a lot of other stuff, so when he fixed the new issues after 45 mnts, the original problem was back on. Finally after about 3 hours in total he found out some wire on the mother board had shorted because of the dust, all it needed was a puff of hot air from his mouth, and my PC started booting. Turns out after years in software industry, my hardware knowledge isn’t that bad, I kept asking him, in fact commanding him what to check next :D. Now that my PC is back, I think I can give rest to my office laptop.

Last year I was saying “this” Not much has changed has it? ..

Random Thoughts:
Recently I read a comment “here“, even though I thought the whole post was with a sense of humor, my eyes did catch a comment which said about about being tongue tied when guys approach a thinking woman. Lets forget about the distinction of being a thinking women, and take women in general, how many of the men really approach a woman and talk freely. I guess there is a lot of difference with boy approaching a girl, and a man approaching a woman. I have seen and have myself been at one point of life in the category where the shyness in approaching a person of opposite sex was very high. I think somewhere we grow out of it, may be that is called maturity, or may be we just grow up. Coming back to the comment about thinking man/woman, I do not think there is anyone who does not think, may be the topics we think about may vary, and also our sensibilities.

Random update:
Driving classes, I have finally started ticking of things I planned to do in next two years. I started my driving classes last week. Waking up early was never an issue for me, but it had been quite a while since I got scoldings from some one, when my driving instructor scolds me early in the morning sometimes, I feel like being in my primary school, where my teacher used to scold me for not doing my work properly. It is almost the same environment as before,where I do some silly mistakes and the instructor is all set to pounce on me. Its still all in fun

Random Reality:
Last week has been really taxing mentally, I had a feeling of an unknown urgency, an unknown mental blockage, I was not able to think for most of the week. It all changed on Friday, as I reached home a little early, there was a big power cut, for about two hours, I had nothing to do, I was laying on the bed, that cleared my anxiety very much. I began to think again properly, and for a change, the unscheduled power cut in my locality had a great soothing effect on me. Well I did receive some comments about writing block on my post of Thursday, more than the writier’s block, it was my mental blockage which was making me very anxious, I am glad to be out of it

Random changes:
For starters I hate to change my routine life, more importantly I hate to change things associated with me. It took almost more than 2 years for my cousin to make throw out my old outdated mobile. I guess I am guilty of attaching too many memories to things. This week I finally am going to move onto a different number, I mean I am changing my network provider, it had been Hutch from last 5 years, and the same mobile number for as long as I can remember. Finally they have lost my loyalty and me my number. Not that many people call me on my mobile.. still its something which I brought with my first earned salary, even though I lost the instrument the number had a lot of memories associated with it.

Random Nostalgia:
Speaking of mobile phones, and memories, the week had a lot of nostalgia associated with it. Somehow I was ending up remembering many people and incidents from the past, not just the incidents even the movies I saw, kind of had memories associated with it. The week had some interesting movies being shown early in the morning in one of the channels, just in time of my breakfast when I get to have 20 mnts of TV time. Why do we do this, why do we associate memories with things around us. Its not just a movie, its the people who have watched with, the state of mind I was in when i watched the movie.
BTW, that reminds me, Its been quite sometime since I watched “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”.. should catch it on DVD

Random quotes:
This was an interesting observation made my fellow blogger shefaly on one of my posts extremes. “Rambler: Have you considered an academic career? I notice you notice things (empirical data) and then try and identify a pattern (define algorithm or propose hypothesis) around them. And of course, from what we know, you are not married so this discussion is purely academic, no? “
Actually this kind of surprised me, she might have just joked about this, but does Rambler really do this?, hypothesize a lot on available data and experiences?..

Random Confessions:
I just have a feel that somewhere as we continue to live, we become caricatures of our own thoughts, somethings I totally believed in have been thrown out of the mind over the years, even in the short time where I have been collecting my weekly thoughts over here in my randomness posts, I seem to be contradicting so many of my own thoughts, why is it this way?.
Contradictions are still fine, I can still stand contradictions, what I am worried about are things we stick on to just for the sake of sticking on. I mean, just because we felt strongly for something some time, we tend to continue blindly to support the same view point, even though our actions are totally in the opposite direction. It looks so stupid when we say something, just because we have been saying that from long time, and then the very next moment do something which is against what you just said, thats when you look foolish. How many times have you felt, that “Hey!, common, wait, I shouldn’t do this, I am against this”.. many times isn’t it?.

Random Thoughts:
When I read my own post “Extremes” this week, only think that I could think of was how much I myself am guilty of faking, when I am sad or low, or even when I am kind of disappointed, or even when I am feeling a particular emotion, I generally don’t like to give it out, and as I always claim, I have the mask put on. However, There is one emotion which is very difficult for me to hide, or may be its just lately, I have become too bad at masking this emotion, the emotion being happy. Recently I had a nice conversation with my manager at work, and there was something he said which made me very happy, I wanted to control and not show my happiness, but I could not stop grinning ear to ear. I should learn better control of my emotions :). He for once could easily make out that I am happy. Not good….

Random Criticism:
I had a contrasting work week, as I said before I did have a very happy day and immediately had a honest conversation with a good friend of mine. A senior, friend, and someone I closely interact with work wise and otherwise. He did point out the small mistakes I do at work, and where he thought I could improve a lot. I don’t think I can call it criticism, its his way of helping me out. I did think over it for couple of days.. I think I have some things planned out to work on those areas. Apart from work too, I did get some criticism from a friend of mine from the virtual world. I feel probably its easier for others to spot where we are going wrong, or where we can improve, it feels good to have such people around.

Random Regrets:
Somehow this week, I missed few people around. I wanted someone for a round of coffee in the weekend, a dinner on Friday night, and a long chat on Sunday morning.. somethings I have been missing over last couple of weeks. In fact I saw an advertisement about high discount sale at PUMA, and wanted to go there, I was feeling bored to go alone, so I pulled my dad along :)..It had been long time since he came along with me to buy something, it feels good to get back to older ways. Still, as I said before, I think I missed some of my friends on almost every day of this week. One such weeks. Guys out there get those telepathic signals, call me up, send me an email, do something.

Random Foodie:
Foodie is back with a bang this week, It all began with a party on Thursday night with a north karnataka special dinner at a local restaurant.. Friday afternoon was a lunch out at Samarkhand, not a new place, but one I had not been somehow for this long. Even though the prices were over the top, the food was excellent, and I liked almost all of it. Friday night was a home cooked palak paneer and nice pulkhas, Saturday evening suddenly I felt the urge to eat a good dosa, so there I went to have davangere benne masala dosa near gandhi bazaar, Sunday was a good home cooked peas palav from mom. Foodie weekends rock.

Random Desires:
I recently started writing fiction, something I wanted to do from a long time. I could not get myself to write fiction, somehow I seem to be trying from last month or so. One thing I want to try writing about romance. I have never written anything romantic, there was a prompt last week to try sonnet, I wanted to do that, but again I went blank, I had no clues.
I would like to try something of this genre soon. Is it true that we write about only what we experience?, I somehow never feel about a romantic subject. I want to, but have not been able to so far.

Random humor:
I am growing old, 26 and old, no way, you might say. Well my beard seems to disagree. Spotted on Sunday couple of strands of white hair on the chin. Now isn’t that old?

This week has been really low in terms of thoughts, I was too much occupied with my work, my regular time with myself suffered because of this. I am not complaining, I did have a good time doing what I was doing, just that I do not have much randomness this week.

Random Return:
Every year my dad’s cousins meet at a place on 26th of January, which happens to be a national holiday here, this has been going on for quite some years now. As a teenager I used to love these meets, because I could meet some of my distant relatives, more importantly, I could meet my second, third and even farther levels of cousins. We used to have a blast during these meets. I was the one who kind of walked away from all that, I don’t know why, but I started avoiding going to these meets, and also we used to meet very often outside as well and I started skipping that as well. Naturally the bond went down, and from last 4 years I had hardly met them. This year even though I wanted to skip as usual, due to a lot of persuasion from my parents, I had to attend.
Man this was fun, getting back at once to the way I had left, and getting rid of the guilt of being the one who went away, both at the same time, was real fun. The best part was to follow.

Random Travel:
As I was saying, since I was meeting some of my very far cousins after a long time, specially whom I was very close to at one time, One of my uncles proposed we should all go for a road trip, just for a day or so. Amazingly all of us agreed, knowing that most of us work for tech companies, this was something close to impossible. It was supposed to be male only road trip, and probably on bikes, but later due to cold season, we decided to take a jeep instead. So there I was reluctant to attend the meet, and within an hour packing for the road trip. Yesterday and today was so much fun, just being with the guys.. who cares if the place we went out turned to be a flop show, and the food was horrible. I had tons and tons of fun. The same old laughters of few of my cousins, after a long time, bought a very unexpected happiness overt the weekend.
Pictures sometime soon.

Random Discussions:
With all of us around, with such wide age group ranging from 65 to as low as 20, discussions and arguments were bound to happen. I was really surprised, this time we had no verbal fights, which is very common when we all gang up. Anyways I really got to relive an old saying in kannada. Roughly translated, it means “Tounge speaks about your heritage and legacy.“, It may look very plain statement, but I find it really profound. When you speak to a person, just the language gives you so many things about the person, When a person begins to speak bad language, I mean not in terms of grammar, but in terms of content, like curse words, or about really bad thoughts, It kind of talks a lot about his bad personality, his culture, his upbringing, his legacy. If you hear a person scolding another person, even though the mistake is really done by the other person, the person who speaks really bad language is the one who ends up being smaller.

Random Regrets:
You guys have guessed I am too excited and charged up with the road trip, I promise you this is the last one from that trip. On our way back on relatively newly laid Mysore-Bangalore highway, we were struck behind a slow moving car. Generally I do not get very frustrated at a bad driver, but this guy was really over the top. I am sure he had no clue what does a lane mean, and whats the slow left lane for. We could make out that he had loud music playing inside his car, and he could not hear any of our honking, and we were almost sure that he was not watching rear view mirror, there were like 10 cars struck behind him, because passing in the left lane there looked too dangerous, because he kept drifting slowly towards left. Idiot while driving slow, did not even know he should be in the leftmost lane, and the right one was for faster vehicles. Worst part was every vehicle which eventually passed him from the left, were giving him long stares, and honking very badly. Still the stupid could not make out he was being an idiot here.

Random Foodie:
Yes guys the random foodie is back after a long time, even though I did not have a big weekend in terms of food, I just made a new discovery. I have been going to an old restaurant on CMH road called, Casa Piccola, a self claimed “Euro Restaurant”. I tried a new dish this week called “Epinard a la Crème”. I have become a big fan ever since. It has crisp outer crust made out of potato, the inner layers of the crust are smooth boiled potato, the crust covers a dish made our spinach, cheese, and cream, with a dash of vegetables like capsicum, corn, mushroom. It comes with a piece of garlic bread. All in all an excellent dish.
Its slightly bland for Indian tastes, but for people who don’t mind bland food, I can say it was just “Yummy”

Random Retrospection.
I was kinda struck in two minds, whether to write about this or not, finally decided to write. I guess over last couple of weeks, I am being drawn blank whenever I speak to a close friend of mine over IM, someone whom I generally have lots to talk about or listen to, both of us seem to be hitting a wall after we say hi, and wassup. I don’t understand the reason, have we lost things in common between us?, or is it just a passing phase. No clues.

After couple of days, where I was kind of taking it easy with my posts, I am back to myself today, so back to my random randomness from this week.

Random Thoughts:
When someone provides you support unconditionally, tries to be behind you in everything you do, not just for few months, but years together, why is that, after all off that,we still can’t be the same to them. The worst part must be, when they see us doing the same thing to others, not for them, it must really hurt. Guilty, we all are guilty, of this.
Taking things for granted, plagues many relationships. I just wish, I could improve upon these finer points of life.

Random Work Week:
In my last randomness post, I had mentioned that week had been highly boring and uneventful, also kind of low. This week was a total different note, was extremely busy at work, so amidst a busy work, there was a good friend at work who kept on interrupting me, even after telling that I am busy and would look into his problem on Monday he kept on disturbing me, and I lost my cool, I kind of had a bad verbal argument with him, and have been regretting that from Friday. I guess its time to mend that on Monday. I have to do this.

Random Turnaround:
I think I commented on one of the blogs I read about this, that no one really checks out pictures we put up on our profile on social networking websites, specially not if you are a male. I was really surprised, when I got a comment from a good friend, he/she said that the picture I have recently put up on my profile was really bad, and it did not look anything like me in that picture. I was really surprised that someone checked it out, and also made the comment. Guys I take back my comment, people do check the pictures I guess :D.

Random Anonymity:
Guys Rambler is not totally anonymous any more, it so happened that couple of my good friends at work found out about my blog on Wednesday. So I guess Rambler is not all that anonymous anymore :).

Random Surprises.
Well not many know about my celebrity likes, well not many times have I spoken about it in open, very few know I am a big admirer of “Kangana Ranaut”. One of these days I was watching a song from gangster on TV, when my dad who was sitting next to me, asked me who this lady was, and he said she looks pretty. Well Just the other day I was talking about children being copy cats, look what we have here, the other way round :)..
Just for curious people, the only other time I spoke about my celebrity likes was here on “Girls on screen“

Random Quotes:
This is my cousin’s wife on listening to my new year resolution of “no alcohol in 2008″, “What!, why do you always do such stupid things, how could you alone take this decision without taking our permissions“. Guys I know it was sweat and all, but I could not stop laughing, just the idea of taking some one else’s permission for decisions that I make, sounds damn scary!

Random Kindness.
I had an interesting conversation with one of my good friends from blogworld, it was about a comment I left on her post “my rose“
Creative that she is, she came out with a poem based on our conversation, here it goes, she calls it “Covet I“

Random Announcement:
My love for music has finally translated into a blog. I know I already have two other blogs already, but still we hear so much of amazing lyrics, I thought I should have a blog of music I like. So here it is
“Song on my mind“
it may not be updated very often, but then anytime a song strikes me its gonna go in there.

Random Surprises:
Last week, Wednesday, I decided to work from home, well thats not a big deal I know, but it had been quite some time, where I have stayed alone at home. Not that I need people when I am at home, but it felt strange. Coming from a person, who has stayed home all his childhood, after school with both parents working, from a person who used to hate going out during college and prefer staying home watching TV or studying, this did surprise a lot. What has work life done to me, Can I not stay home one day with no one else, TV had never been so boring to me. What changed?

Random realizations:
I remember writing, how bad I am with goodbyes, “Goodbye, wish I could do it“. Well not much has changed, I still continue to hate goodbyes. I thought we hardly meet nowadays, and its not like friendships are permanent, and there are so many others, and also millions of other new possibilities, friends really do not matter so much, and it must be easy. Well all said, still I hate goodbyes. Just wondering, how people in real relations must feel when they have to say goodbyes. Oh yes, this was all about the small send off I had to do, for a dear friend this week.

Random descrimination:
I had been to the local RTO to get my learners license/permit for LMV [car :)]. It was a Wednesday, mid week, working day, I saw a long queue of people standing, for the first time I felt old, most of the people there seem to be from college. I stood there silently, cursing in mind people who were trying to break the queue, I hate it when it happens. Suddenly I noticed the old guy who was the local official who was supposed to be minding the queue, shouting at a group of women, well he was just talking, but unless a person knows the local language, anybody would have thought he is scolding them. People can be really rude when they speak. Anyways, the women were all middle aged, with couple of them very young and modern, They were at the back of the queue, and there were at least 100 people in front of them. This guy talks to them, and tells them to break the queue and go to the front. Well all this because they are women. May be he would have not done this if there was an old lady waiting, or may be he was really generous for women. This is what irks me, I do not think showing sympathy is the way to achieve equality. In a way I thought it was discriminating against both genders. Do we really think women can’t wait for their turn?, or do women really need such privileges.

Random restlessness:
This week has been a real bad one, no I did not suffer huge financial losses, nor did I have a fight with some one. It was just, pure restlessness. I had no clue what was making me anxious, or what I wanted. I was kind of bored, a little lazy, a little jobless, a little of everything bad I could think of. I just hope the next week will be much better.

Random Matinee:
I have always been early to catch movies I want to see, but off late I am kind of late in watching movies. Two of the movies, whose music I loved a lot were Saawariya, and Salaam E ishq, both box office disasters. I kind of missed them, when they were running in the theaters. The later one is already on TV, and I missed that too. Both the films have been really criticized as bad movies, by critics and people. Anyways my want to watch a movie has never depended on that. So this weekend I decided to watch Salaam E Ishq, I had bought the DVD last time when I was in a video store. I started watching the movie, it was really really bad, I didn’t like it at all, but music was just awesome. The worst part of the movie was it is 3hr 45 minutes in running length, its looooong. But some really good songs.

Random Avatar:
I am not sure if people have noticed, but rambler now has a avatar, and as always late to jump into the bandwagon. I always wanted to find a face to rambler, and I was browsing through deviant art, and came across this picture, rambler has always tried to find his identity, and has found that in so many different ways, I guess the best way to show that would be through this picture. Every finger of the palm is a different person, a different identity. It also stands for the fact that, our identity is in our own hands. So finally here it is, a face to the “Rambler”.

Random thoughts:
Speaking about identity, this week I was stuck with the old question again, who do we blog for. I know all of us have written about it many times, and I myself have some posts which talks about why I blog. When somethings happen to me, say my day to day life instances, people talking to me, me talking to people, why do I need to blog that. When I started the blog, I wanted this to be my online dairy, a talking one, where I wanted real people to respond to the situation, give me suggestion. So how far have I achieved this?, I guess one thing blog has done is that, it has made me more open, I have started sharing things which I wouldn’t have ever dared. I guess I am blogging more and more for myself now. In a way it is good. I might not be getting many suggestions, or may be not many readers as well, but its helping me to articulate a lot of stuff that happens in life, more importantly relive, retrospect my thoughts and actions.

Random pursuit:
Talking about sharing, recently I had a post “Old habits die hard!” about my old habits, its more or less was a set of confessions, which I may not dare to make in person to someone. So has blog world turned into a confession box?. I read an article today in the national daily, which talks how more and more common people are resorting to confession. So have I knowingly fallen into the same bracket?. Is blogging glamorizing confessions in any way?, or is it more of an yellow bloggarisms on the lines of yellow journalism?, to get more readers. You know, when I wrote that post, I wanted to get things of my chest, which kind of remains your secret. Most of them are not that big a crime, but then why confessions now?, why in the blog world. I didn’t find any answer.

Random ramblings are back, well this has been the first week of 2008, and randomness is still very much a part of my life.
Random changes:
Virtual ramblings is gonna see a little changes, I may not participate it all the prompts I used to, the prompts have been real creative challenge to me, and has helped me develop my own writing style, it has also meant that I am not thinking more on things which I like to think about. So I might cut down on the prompts this year, I may not do “wordless wednesday” and “totally optional prompts” from now on. However I am thinking of writing a little more of fiction, so may be a I will start a fiction series of my own on the lines of randomness series.

Random cubeland scare: Have you ever been a part of exclusive men gang?, the topics that get discussed there are very amusing. It may surprise many people, I am sure even things I talk about may be amusing to others in the gang. For example, they could not digest the fact that I could almost all the time name the season to which any episode of friends that is on TV belongs, or when I discuss a particular book which they have never heard about, or when being from a traditional family talk about religion indiscrimination. But coming back to amusing stuff that gets discussed out, there are people in the gang who can identify if a woman worker, who is not working in the same group, and in all probability has never spoken to the person, has straightened her hair from the curly ones. To be honest this amuses me, what a great deal of attention people pay. Not just attention, he had also done the ground work to find out how much that sort of a procedure costs. and was proudly declaring, it must have cost her 5000rs. Really funny topics. They also have a nice way of keeping track of who is going around with whom, and they make sure they have sources who bring them information. All this scares me a little, what if in there is an exclusive woman gang, who watches men closely, what if they found out, every week I bring out two jeans and alternate then with different T-shirts. Scary!

Random fun:
Have you ever argued with old people?, it is the best fun I have had over this week, my granny at home, and our arguments. Old people have there own principles, some which I stick onto blindly, but very strongly. In most of the cases, my granny would not even bother to know why we need to do a thing in a certain way, but we need to, thats all she is worried about.
Recently a far relative of mine, who has the same name as me, and is an year older to me, declared his intentions to marry a girl. the girl is apparently from a another caste, now he is so farly related that we never get to hear anything about him or his family generally at home, but ever since this happened his name has started lingering around for many other discussions.
So my granny comes up to me and she says, last couple of years it has become very scary and dangerous, you never know what will happen, girls are turning dangerous, I am telling your mom to find you a girl as soon as possible.
Me:Girls and dangerous? all because he chose a different caste girl?.. how can a different caste girl be dangerous,
Granny: They always have a different style of living, so they may not adjust.
Me: So who stays with parents after marriage these days?, there is no need to adjust, even if they end up staying what adjustment should they do?, there is nothing different around here
Granny:they eat meat, so its very difficult.
Me: who said we people don’t meat?, there are so many who do eat meat. may be not at home.
This statement was her breaking one, she could not argue more, infact she declared none of the Brahmins eat meat, and I am arguing for the sake of it.
he he, people of her age, do not want to change, but then I really pity the ignorance, but I like them to stay the way they are, happy contented and living in their own world. Next up I am planning to introduce her to the concept of same sex marriages. Thats going to be a lot of fun isn’t it?.

Random accomplishments:
This week has had a lot of cleaning up, in terms of activities I have always lazily pushed out.
Firstly I went and finished my investments for taxes, I had been postponing this for over a month now.
I went and joined the four wheeler driving classes. If S were to hear this, I am sure she would have shouted “Finally!”. This had been like a 2 year old plan.
I went and fixed my second lasik test appointment, it had been like more than 6 months, since it was due, I Was lazy to go and get them done.
Ah feels really good with nothing left to postpone.

Random Resolutions:
I am not a man of new year resolutions, I don’t remember any of them I have had before, but this year I chose one, just for the heck of it, “NO alcohol in 2008″. I know I had done this for about 3 months in 2007, and I thought it was easy. But this year I want to do it for more time, let me see if I can keep this one.

Random relationship thoughts:
Recently I came across a post about relationship patterns on a very nicely done post “western and russian couple patterns”. One though which came into my mind after reading it though was, how we always see just one person in the foreground, where as there are actually many people supporting him/her. Same goes in relationships. Some times you might just see a single hand, where as there is the other one, down below pushing this one up. A relation need not mean two people being equal all the time, there are times when one needs to be pushed up, and at the same time there are times when you need to feel to be at the forefront, its just natural human tendency to feel a little dominant. But knowing that there is always some one behind and you are not doing it alone is what is important.