Friday, May 30, 2008

kahin toh

my current favourite song from 'jaane tu ya jaane na'. it's on my stickam player if you want to listen. click play on the right. vasundara das' part is my favourite.

saansein kho gayi hain kiski aanhon mein
main khogayi hun jane kiski baahon mein
manzilon se rahein dhundhti chali
aur kho gayi hai manzil kahin raahon mein

i've always liked her voice because it's very urban sounding if that makes any sense. it's not the typical filmi sugary sweet horribly high pitched flutiful voice we've grown accustomed to and more importantly she sounds believable for a youngish heroine. plus she's easier to pull off in the car compared to say a shreya ghoshal.

p.s. how adorable is 'hey aditi'? also 'nazare churana'. damn it even 'pappu cant dance' is kind of catchy. ooh and the jazz song. lovely album. it's like they told rahman "make it fun and sweet and light" and he did just that.

alright good nite. muah.

update: never mind. just read baradwaj rangan's take on it. warning - his first sentence lasts an entire paragraph but it ends wonderfully. and by the way how awesome is rangan? every time i read his reviews i find myself nodding stupidly, going yeah yeah dude totally. how the hell do you always say things the way you say things? see that right there is being good at what you do.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

mother is convinced the three mexican men who helped us move stole her precious sewing machine and four of her set of six wine glasses.

happy memorial day weekend! don't you love holidays that fall on mondays? i spent my saturday sleeping. like seriously all day i napped. sunday morning i hung out with gaysin in front of the couch watching ntdv. we watched yediyurappa do his thing. we laughed every time he said gornamint instead of government. i letched at sreenivasan jain. so hot!

the majority of my sunday afternoon i spent inside a car with aunty, gaysin and mother. we had to drive an hour away to find this church mother has to go to next week for a wedding. she's on a roll with the wedding invites. anyway she wanted to practice driving there so she doesn't get lost next week. a dry run if you will. have you heard of such a thing? and she does this a lot too. it's ridiculous especially when the destination is like an hour away. once we found the church she wanted to practice driving to the reception hall. i was like well you could always follow someone from the wedding to the reception but she insisted on completing the dry run so we just let her drive. did i mention she wont go above 30? and i'm not allowed to play music because it's distracting. oh and she does this thing where just when she's about to change lanes she will first move in the opposite direction almost like she's making space to do a u turn onto the next lane. it's fucking scary and it's hard when your mind is going 'holy crap lady wtf are you doing?' but all you're allowed to say is maaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! and it's even harder trying to stay calm when you're starving. also i'm somehow supposed to be able to read aloud the names of the roads for her miles before we even reach the lights. this is just in case it happens to be the road she needs to turn on. also she prefers to be on the lane she's going to turn from even if said turn is ten miles away.

as soon as we located the reception place i made her get in the passenger seat and then drove at record speed to the pakistani buffet place where i met a lady washing her feet in the sink. true story. there i was washing my hands and this woman rolls up her pyjama and proceeds to put her leg in the sink and starts washing it. i stared at her in the mirror. i couldn't take my eyes of her and then we had this awkward moment when we made eye contact in the mirror after which i did not look up again. i dried my hands and ran out before she tried to attack me with her drippy foot.

lunch time conversation was fascinating. gaysin was bitching about the service as usual. he wants to start some type of etiquette program for desi waiters where he will help them with their grammar and customer service skills. things like how to smile and bow and explain the various levels of spice to white people. also teach waiters what not to say thereby preventing a situation where the waiter might say "will you be taking sambhar?" and the white person misunderstands what he is saying and instead assumes he is talking about getting the sambhar to go. gaysin is determined there is a huge market for this. the sad part is his mother encourages him.

after lunch we went grocery shopping. i flirted with minor pakistani boy in cd shop. he gave me 50% off. ooh i can now listen to "happy in my hort, dil dance maare re" in my car. take that tgfi!

as we speak mother is drinking lassi made out of non fat yogurt and sweet and low. gaysin is drinking his chai and aunty is planning to cut open a poly mango and add salt, chilli powder, sugar and vinegar to it. i nodded enthusiastically until i heard the vinegar part.

rediscovering hedberg

i really really like stand up comedy. when i first came to the us i wasn't the tv expert i am now. i mean i knew what to watch when to watch in india but it took time for me to discover excellent shows on various channels here. one of the first things i got hooked onto was premium blend every friday on comedy central. i remember watching this one guy and i could never remember his name. all i knew was that he had long hair and he told brilliant jokes. something about a receipt for a donut and when people go missing at restaurants. i also remember reading at the end of the show that he had died a couple of years ago. he was young. like forty something. anyway last evening i saw him again on comedy central. it was the same show i had seen before. it had my donut joke. this time i took down his name and right after the show i youtubed him and watched all his videos. mitch hedberg is his name. i read this article where they've compared him to seinfeld and seinfeld's cool and all but hedberg is hedberg man. completely original. all observational humour. and dry. no drama. this isn't chris rock. a robot could tell hedberg's jokes. only he does it better. he's just a stoner guy standing on stage talking about frogs and ducks and sandwiches. just lots of completely random stuff - like the buoyancy of citrus. google that joke. i highly recommend you watch him. if you're already a fan then hey you have excellent taste. it really sucks that he's dead though. really really sucks.

You gotta love Olbermann.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

your birthdays

i did not forget to call you last year. i called a bunch of times. your stupid phone was out of range but i called.

also it is proper etiquette to inform your friends when you change your cell phone number. also who doesnt check email on their birthday?
***
my favourite birthday memory so far was the one when you, me and kb went to eat at that chettinaad place on 100 ft road and i tried to hide the cake in the back of the car but you saw it way before it was time to see it. you ate that entire cake all by yourself. i'm pretty sure kb only had like one piece and okay maybe i helped a little. ooh isnt chocolate mousse cake from sweet chariot like the best cake ever to dig into? no knives or serving plates required. just two spoons. because who shares spoons? that is not romantic. that's gross.

the only other birthday i remember was at that thai place. you and all your friends, me and my portable reliance landline in case dad called from his lions club meeting to check on me. and yes if the phone had rung in the restaurant i would have answered and done the whole "nothing daddy, im just watching tv. when you coming? dont forget to bring me ice cream" speech. but the phone didnt ring. instead i got to enjoy the excellent satay chicken while pretending i was totally okay sitting between you and whatsherface. *awkward*

***
i always bought you cologne for your birthday. and nice cologne too cause i have good taste. ooh one time i bought you that guha book but only because i wanted to read it too. and one time i bought you that blue checked shirt. and you dont know this but the only reason i bought it was because it reminded me of the shirt rahul dravid was wearing in that poster in my room. hehe.

happy sidmas stupid! i hope you had good cake.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Saturday, May 17, 2008

mi madre es tres dramatico and other fun sentences i make up from the mixture of french and espaƱol i have learnt and since forgotten.

the other day i thought i was asking eric [in spanish] if he liked boys and to my great surprise he looking very amused said "um okay." turns out i had just stated to him that i liked boys. gahhh! moving on the real post - mother was invited to a wedding this week. she was over the moon. [do you instantly imagine a cartoon cow jumping over a cartoon moon when anyone uses that expression?]

mother loves weddings. in bangalore she went to at least one a week. funerals and weddings are her most favourite things to attend. sadly she doesn't get to go to many here so when her co worker invited her to her daughter's wedding she was very excited. she has been talking about it for days now. i have been pretending to listen. my brother, the new bakra really makes an attempt to listen. this is great for me because weeks after she has shared with us a fascinating bit of information she'll order me to do something that requires detailed knowledge of such prior information. with brother doing the listening i can always go back and get a quick recap of whatever he understood from all her rambling.

right, the wedding. mother visited bed bath and beyond to buy the happy couple a gift and came home with two exquisitely packed boxes of something householdy they had requested for. the two boxes have since added to the ambiance of our living room and today i kinda sorta miss their pretty blue blurred image. now the corners of my eye only have the dying plant from mother's day to look at. [dying plant courtesy brother "succhay goodd son!" who even bought a gas balloon which is now dead and gone and two cards for mother, one from him and one from me, which i duly signed and handed over to mother. yes i am a terrible child.]

earlier today mother was up at an unearthly hour. she dyed her hair for the special occasion and picked out one of her 113 sarees, an uber chamki majenta one if you must know, which made her look like a character from saas bahu. she then proceeded to pile on all the jewelery that wasn't in a safe deposit box somewhere on herself and then went off to grace the wonderful occasion that was the nuptials of her co worker's daughter and some fool, apparently determined to legally share some fraction of their lives together.

she came back a few hours later looking quite disappointed. apparently it was a very casual affair. "some people were even wearing hawai chappals. can you believe it? pah these american weddings!" also apparently the guests were served some type of a sandwich out of a box. she was most pissed off. since then she has acted out by opening up boxes marked 'showcase things'. how very desi of us.

the showcase things were then arranged in the showcase in the exact same order they were back in the old apartment - african art section, glass object section, silver and bronze object section, doll section, extended doll section, mini altar section [which includes this angel shaped open bible. i can't think of a better description for it], candle section, picture frame section, spoons from around the world section and other worthless junk section.

i was yelled at when i mentioned how everything was in the exact same spot as before. i mean who would've thought packing and boxes were involved in this process. it's as if she hired a giant person to carry the entire showcase from the old living room and place it in the new living room. sadly she did not share my fascination and said something about me only knowing how to make comments and not lifting a finger. another common expression old people like to use. i am all for lifting fingers. i am lifting fingers as we speak. alright, got to go. she just bellowed for me to transport the remainder of the things we never use from the dining table to the living room. i estimate this task should take me at least 8 trips back and forth depending on my balancing skills this evening. why anyone would trust me with breakable objects i don't know. i have to make it all the way from the dining room past the long corridor and into the living room and i'm wearing pajamas that are a little too long for me. bhagwaan jee mujhe shakti de.

in other tragic news i found out a few hours ago that memorial day is not for another week. here i was dreaming of a three day weekend only to be crushed by rude co worker's ill timed comment.

bm jee aka otp - WRITE! i beg you. i am on a fast until you blog again. details of fast will be emailed to you.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

complicated vacations and why people who agree to it need to be shot in the face.

i feel guilty. like im cheating on you with directv or something. i guess technically it's the other way around since directv is my true love. anyway since y'all are so sad i'll copy paste email conversations for your amusement. back in the day every third post was a gtalk conversation. i kinda miss that.

karen sends me some lame forward about eye donation. he adds "plis to be understanding spam value with a message."

i reply: benchod!

karen: is that your new favourite word?

me: what are you doing? how come you don't call me anymore? like when you're drunk and roaming outside my old school at 2 am? and when are you going on your trip?

karen: Going to Delhi on Sunday to meet the other boys and their wives and then we're going to KL on Monday. Ok, I think I'm the only one not really excited about the trip somehow. Except this one place I have decided to eat at, but again, not about the trip. Also, I also found out that the chocolate massage is only for women. I dont really care about the massage, i just want to be dunked in chocolate. It's kind of kinky. All the others have planned what they're going to shop for, where they'll shop, what they will do during the day and night, where they're going to buy their stuff because it's cheaper/not fake, where they'll get their LV purses, where they'll get their cameras, their laptops, their mobiles and even where they'll get their fuckin' underwear washed. Who is abnormal, me or them?

I don't see the fun in the trip if they do that no? WTF happened to walking on the road and wanting to eat something you see on the picture in the window and then going to some mall and buying nonsense you will never use?

me: yeah yeah i hate it when people have everything planned out for their vacation. full schedule from morning to evening with tour guide and alarm clocks. "you see, we must get up at 4 am to trek up a mountian to see the sunrise etc." so lame! vacation means sleeping till some 10:30. the only reason u even wake up at 10:30 is because most hotels will act like benchods and refuse to serve you breakfast after that. after that you relax in your bed and order room service for lunch. then you take a long bath in the exotic tub and roam around the city with big sun glasses. you buy nonsense, stop and point at things in the distance, drink litttle daroo, buy more useless things and if anyone mentions camping, trekking, rock climbing, fishing etc you thup in their face. like that vacation should be. oh and at night u should come to hotel vaapas and get ready full jhaang and go out partying. then get drunk and make out with hot boy or girl of your choice and come back and sleep. rinse. repeat. no?

karen: Your description of the perfect holiday sounds more like a sindhi wedding. Yes, i like that too.

Talking of sunglasses and useless things in the same sentence - i've bought so many pairs but have never worn them because then i have to take off my regular glasses which makes me blind. Whenever i've tried to change the lenses to powered ones they say they can't do it for that particular pair i've bought and then my chutiya brothers flick it and land up losing it in a week. I can't wear contacts because it's too complicated in life.* There is this new awesome contact lense they've come out with which you wear and must take off only at the end of the month. You can supposedly swim, drive, sleep etc wearing it. But my assholing doc didn't "recommend" it because "it is after all a foreign body in the eye". Chutiya.

me: OMG! just get the fucking lenses. or get another doctor. i would have killed myself if it wasnt for contacts in the 10th std. how is it like a sindhi wedding?


* i haven't heard anyone use that expression since the 6th grade. have you?

we can't help liking this boy even though he sounds a little drunk here.

Monday, May 12, 2008

you. complete. me.

dear blaudience,

look. directv is back in my life. we have spent the past week exploring each other in ways regular tv viewers wont quite get. hence the blog has had to suffer. be patient. watch some tv or something.

muah!

p.s. i am dying to watch jimmy starring mimoh but rbr is being a total bitch. he's taking forever to find the illegal online copy for me. i will promise you if it's even half as fun as aap ka suroor i'll do a review.

Monday, May 05, 2008

my sicrit plan to get rich - ridding the world of cats while ensuring there are enough adorable babies around to make up for the lack of cute kittens.



did you hear?


now here's my million dollar idea - instead of celebrities adopting random babies and giving them exotic names they should instead make exotic looking babies and give them up for adoption. you know, to the general public. of course there would need to be some type of a bidding process and all the money could go to charity - a mirror less home for ugly babies with no celeb parents or something. i'm just saying the world could use more good looking babies. don't hate me. i'm just trying to be an entrepreneur. call me, donny deutsch.

p.s. if you're wondering what brought on this wonderful mood i can confirm that it was in fact the rain. it rained all morning and now it's all green and hill stationy outside my house.

p.p.s. we have now been cat free for almost 40 hours. life is good.

also dude tashan wasn't terrible. that u me aur hum on the other hand. good god!

Saturday, May 03, 2008

fascinating little stories [code for - crap i think of when there's no tv]

the other day i was bored and i didn't have anything to do except unpack boxes. this was before i figured out i could steal the internet from unsuspecting neighbours. anyway i found this box of stationery with new notebooks and pencils and a box of dried up pens. i sharpened a bunch of pencils for a while. it was very calming. you should try it. then i started trying out all the pens and i ended up writing some 6 pages of absolute nonsense but it was very therapeutic, actually physically writing something. plus there's no backspace button so it's exactly how the thoughts flow out from your head. unfiltered and mostly gibberish. it was pretty cool. i would show you guys if i had a scanner. it's not like you could read it anyway, i have terrible handwriting.

my nose hurts. it's like someone secretly injected it with something when i was sleeping. it hurts when i touch it.

i found out the cat does not belong to the gaybours. i don't know how to get rid of the thing. anyone in the area want a kitty cat? it's tiny and black and i'm sure a lot of people will find it adorable. ooh i did get to meet the "roommate". not so hot. also i realized there's no way i could go watch tv with them. not with all those cats. and it's not like anyone invited me.

monday is when the directv people are supposed to show up with that extra receiver and the international dish. i'm going insane thinking of all the things that could possibly go wrong. there's like this evil force out there that is hell bent on keeping me away from my directv. is there a puja for that? let me know asap cause we just got back from the indian store and we have fresh coconut.

there's this open space between the garage and the back door where you can sit. and it's breezy and there's a step and for some reason it reminds me of bangalore. just that patch. i plan on sitting there a lot, in the evenings when it's cooler. see this is why we have to get rid of the animal . i'm not about to share my special space with a whiny kitty cat.

i think i'm done for now. thank you for listening.

***

hello kitty update - gaybour came over to see the cat, fell in love with it and took it to bottle feed it special pet milk. brother wasn't here when it happened. now we're trying to come up with a believable story for him. so far we have -

a: it saw something and took off. sadly this happened right as bastige was driving into his garage and ......... sob..... i'm so sorry for your loss.

b: its mother came looking for it. she asked that you meet with her later.

c: a little boy rang the doorbell crying. he said he had lost his cat. we returned it of course.

d: it accidentally got into the washing machine....i'm so sorry for your loss.

e. it looked hungry. i tried to feed it mosaranna. it threw up instantly and jumped over the neighbour's fence.

houston, we have a problem.

i can't believe i hadn't used that as a title yet.

there is a cat in my house.

a real live cat. it's about as big as my blackberry. my brother is responsible for its presence in the building. he claims it wandered into the backyard. i have a strong feeling it belongs to the gaybours. they have a cat. it probably just birthed a dozen or so such mini cats and it probably hasn't missed this one yet. or it has and at present it is plotting its revenge. currently kitty cat lives in a box in the garage. during the night when mother is asleep brother brings it up to his room where it makes strange creepy noises. i'm scared to walk down the stairs at night for fear of tripping over it. the gaybours aren't home right now and brother refuses to take it to a shelter like mother insists he should. he also refuses to just make it go the fuck away.


in other news kindly be seeing.