Off on a Hiatus,

Packing time again, and then I leave, first for my last night-shift for a while, and then come 4 pm tomorrow, I go home. Not so easy, in between will be "the journey", Any one who knows where Haflong is and its relative distance from Hyderabad will get the inverted commas, I am expecting to be with Mum and Dad by 5 pm on the 11th, that is if all goes well and there are no unaccountable, hitherto unseen delays en-route.

I am on pins and needles, this is going to be my first really long train trip, fingers crossed and all that. I have got my hands on J K Rowlings' new offering, "Tales of Beedle the Bard", and intend to carry it with me, let us see how that book fares.

I shall be away from my blog for the duration of the trip as the GPRS connections at home are somewhat awry, what with the stringent security measures we live with, and I am not very used to blogging from Internet Cafes,, so, till next time, Take care and wish me a safe and uneventful trip, and you could also wish me a nice travel partner for a change,,

I hope to have great stuff for you when I get back.

Bye.

More Ravings.

So it is after yet another night-shift I find myself spouting more nonsense, is it the lack of sleep that is responsible for my subjecting you all to this verbose torture?

Anyways, it happens to be the birthday of one of my friends and yet another friend has written a post on his blog of the inconsequential nature of B'day festivities, shall I go ahead and add my two-bit to it? Birthdays, I for one love them, be it mine or someone Else's, when I was in school they were a chance to get rid of uniforms, for a day at least, sweets distributed in class, everyone standing up to sing 'Happy Birthday' to you, while you stood silently, simpering and trying to act coy and that was a difficult combo, let me tell you. Come evening and the guests are due to arrive, you are bedecked in some silly outfit that your parents picked out for you, and in which you loo too pretentious for words, anticipation builds up, and I always used to be anxiety ridden till the first guest showed up, somehow always sure that nobody would actually show up and the party would be spoilt. Then came the turn for me to act surprised as I got the various gifts, surprise because I invariably got what ever I was secretly coveting,, and why not, I ask? When I had gone to such pains to hand out complete lists, well in advance..

Years rolled by, quite a few of them, and still birthdays are a time of happiness for me, so what if the number of people to wish me have dwindled to just family and two or three very sweet people who bother to remember. Gifts still matter, but now they are more from me to myself. As each year rolls by, we grow older and every year on the day we happened to be born, we tend to look back, with regret, longing and look ahead with dread and trepidation, the future looking bleak, unsure and so scary.No one likes growing old, at least I do not, ergo, the Henna in my hair today, but grow old we must and isn't it better to take the inevitable with a pinch of salt, and try to make the best of it? I shudder to even think that I might have a birthday, ever, when there will be nobody to wish me, no one to ask for or enjoy a party.

So, have a blast while you still can is my advice.

Cheers!!

Vampires and Graveyards,,,contd.

Treat this as another PS, albeit a delayed one,,Went out and got myself the remainder three books, and have already started on the second one in the series, "New Moon",, Bella and Edward have broken up, so that she would stay out of danger, this is after she is nearly killed by Edwards' brother who is still newly "born" and is therefore adjusting to their family norm of 'No Human Blood Shalt Ever Cross These Here Lips'. Great reading so far,, anyways, got to go and bathe, get dolled up to start my own graveyard shift, thanx to afore-mentioned sadist of a boss.

Did I say dolled up? Out of the 9 patients in my ICU, 5 are in a coma, 3 are not totally in their senses and 1 bed was vacant when I last left,, so you can see who I try to impress when I play dress up. No wonder this world of Vampires seems to appeal to me, am nothing short of one, myself.

Till next time,, stay safe.

Of Vampires and Graveyards..

Back from another night of fun, sheer fun at the ICU where someone, (read irate attendant who was not allowed entry into the ICU at 11 pm by yours truly) gave me a lesson on the WHO norms for transperancy in ICUs and I got a chance to be at my silkiest and sarcastic best, after a long, long time.

As I have no doubt enlightened you earlier, I am in the habit of buying books in bulk, whenever I have the requisite resources and then enjoying them at leisure, much like a cow ruminates, this time I picked up the first book in Stephenie Meyers' vampire series, "Twilight",,,,,and I simply could not put it down, it was that good a read. Written in the first person by this American teenage girl 'Bella' which is short for Isabella, by the way, who relocates to stay with her father, both her parents live seperately being divorced and all that, and there, in small town America, she comes across this family of atypical vampires, by which I mean that these are not your run of the mill blood-sucking monsters, they do suck blood mind you, but only of animals, and this girl falls in love with the youngest son of the family, who is just a century old by the way, and the (?) guy too is irrevocably drawn to her. The one-liners here are fabulous and the whole thing is one great page-turner. It ends with a prom, leaving you, thirsting (?) for more.

So I am going to post this freshen up and go get me the rest of the three books in the series, inspite of being half-dead from lack of sleep, which by the way does nothing for the way I look, and despite the fact that my sadist of a boss has me on another graveyard shift tonight.

So, if any of you have not read this book, and do not belong to the so-called clan of Intellectuals who would rather die than be caught with pulp-fiction in their hands, go get the books and read them, you are gonna love them.

PS. they are making a movie out of the series and the first is due to release soon.

PPS. This is a special thank you to those guys who are from Kansas and California, who stop by regularly, waste enough of their time to go through this. Thanks guys, wish you would leave a comment or two sometimes though.

PPPS. "J", why aren't you writing at all?

Woolies,,,

Any levity at such times seems so treasonous but then you do need to hold things together and so this post, this is something I had been meaning to share for quite a while,, a fortnight back when things were really rainy, cold, clammy and absolutely 'yummy' here, my Mum who spends a large part of her now retired life , when she is not in the kitchen, on the 'phone, reading or out in the garden fussing my dad while he worked (no he isn't a gardener by profession, he is retired too), she is surfing the news channels, and there are quite a few of those as you know, so anyways, she is watching how Chennai is flooded and the Low-pressure area is building up, she sees me, shivering in the freezing cold, though being from Haflong, my town, how she ever thought I was cold, is beyond me,, she sees me in tatters, blue, and three days later the Courier guy delivers a parcel that is half the size of my lodgings here, and from its depths appear a Red Jacket that served me very well last winter while I had to go to work, in the Tea Estate where I worked, at a God awful hour of the day,(my faithful readers who have been reading this drivel since the inception will know what I am talking of, and for the rest, go and read my Dec, Jan and Feb '08 posts),, and along with that were a blanket, another lighter black jacket, and a sweater..

Parents,!!! Mum conceived the whole plan and Dad carried it out, a good team they make,,Parents,,!! you just had to love them,, wasn't that sweet of them? It is a different matter that I have the jacket and other things neatly folded on my shelf, waiting for the next cyclone to hit, so that I can wear them.

Mum, Dad, you are the greatest, but then I guess they cannot help loving me, I am their son, after all.

PS. Got my tickets and am going HOME for 8 heavenly days, on the 9th. Can't wait to be home, in the cold. I love the winter and here every time you start thinking it is finally here,,,Gotcha! And it is sunny and muggy once again. God game it has got going here.

PPS. I was kidding about my readers being faithful, they are Heavenly. And patient and bored and kind and compassionate and dedicated to the cause of the mentally retarded, why else do they come here? ;) Love you all, I really do. There, I said it.