Chez Moi

Ok, with this I confirm that I am a first class saddo but I cannot help it! BOYZONE ARE BACK! wahey!!

I know, I know, how childish can one get, yadda yadda yadda. I have always been a Pink Floyd, Eagles, Sting kinda mixed up music fan but mid-teens, I discovered the lads from Dublin. I loved their songs (well, most of them) and their website was so good that I made friends with some really fantastic folks from across the world. The site depended on its fans to keep track of the news so there were ‘correspondents’ reporting from every corner of the world. And I was *ahem* the Indian correspondent.

Yeah yeah why the hell would we need one, you wonder. Well, they made a trip to India - to Bangalore in August 1997 - and I was there in the front lines, er, reporting news as it happened. As you can guess, I sorta went crazy and it was surreal. The best bit about the whole thing was - I fell in love with the whole web technology. Websites, writing content, design etc - I learnt all that during this time and so, I do not mock it one bit.

I had some brilliant ‘e-pals’ from the world over. There was even one in London and we met once, soon after I arrived here. We promised each other that we will go to a live show but that didn’t transpire as the Boyz broke up by then. But now, thanks to Children in Need, they are back with a show next May at the swanky O2 arena. If I get a ticket, I’m thinking of going. Saddo complete eh?

Anyways, here’s the video of their performance last Sat night.

Lots of cringe making opportunities but all worth it, to catch a sight of the gorge Ro! Ee-yeah-oh!

It was like a scene from the Twilight Zone; flickering light, damp floors and women in various stages of undress. Within minutes, squeals rent the air as one by one we got stuck into our neoprene suits that seemed at least two sizes too small for each of us.

We were getting ready to go white water rafting. Outside, the weather was a nippy 10 degrees or so and the buffeting wind made it seem worse.

We must be crazy.  

As we walked out, I could see my family huddled over frothy mugs of hot chocolate, in a warm café and here I was, sat outside in the cold, along with few other loonies, getting ready to go out into the chilly waters of the River Nene, in a raft.

I must be insane.  

And to think this was an anniversary gift. Before thirty minutes were out, I would be inclined to believe my instructor, who was guffawing at a few of us lucky sods that got ‘gifted’ this experience and loudly wondered if the beloved in question wasn’t trying to do us in.

The fact that this was an artificially created environment, with none of the dangers of the natural, rock-filled rapids, didn’t instil much courage in me as I stood at the banks of the river, about to jump into the raft. The six of us who were carrying our raft to set it down on the water looked eerily like condemned men carrying their coffins before climbing helpfully into it.

Before we could chicken out though, we could hear the instructor screaming for us to get in. And like docile lambs to the slaughter, we did.

‘Bums on the blue strip’, shouted he. Said strip was on the outer edges of the raft and as such, was in the tipping in zone as far as we were concerned and time and again, one or the other of us would try to plonk ourselves as close to the middle as possible.

We all left shore and safety to the cries of ‘paddle forward’ and went towards the churning waters. The force of the water so close to the motor was such that the raft was wobbling something fierce and we all took turns in landing on the inside of the raft. Better inside than out, we thought to ourselves, even as the guide hollered at us to get paddling.

Down we went the narrow canals and you could literally feel the adrenaline rushing through your veins, with fear following just behind. Though this was an artificially constructed course and the water just came till my thighs, I am not what you’d call an expert swimmer and landing in the freezing, frothing mass didn’t actually suffuse my being with joy. Nonetheless, what a rush it was! We paddled furiously down the course and every time we sailed past the raised ramps and whooshed down, my gut and heart jostled into one another. Our families had all gathered along the grass verges, clicking away at us and we felt like a bunch of celebrities being chased by the paps.

‘Til we went past the highest ‘rapid’ and an overexcited girl sitting ahead pulled the swimmer’s line with gusto and tossed us into the drink.

One minute, we were grinning like a bunch of idiots, feeling supremely cool. Next minute, we were freezing our collective asses off, floating like jetsam in the ice cold waters of the Nene.

Whilst we were all trying to stop our teeth from chattering, our guide calmly brought the floating raft back to us and made us climb back into it. The other guides were heckling at us for being the first ones to get chucked in. After that, it was like a contest to see who could dive in first. Every time we would grab the raft, come coursing down and one or the other of the members of the four or five rafts would topple in and away we’d go.

Other than these random and wholly involuntary slides into the water, the sadists masquerading as our instructors came up with ingenuous ways and means of scaring the pants off us. When it was my turn to sit in the front row of the raft, our guide made us get as close to the churning waters as possible and bend forwards. Into the frothy water! Next, they made us jump in the deepest part of the water and float to the other end. Standing up was impossible as the bottom was slippery and I just kept getting washed away.  

For the finale, we did the ‘rafting rodeo’: two of us sat facing each other in the middle of the raft, not holding on to anything, while the guide took us as close to the churning mass as possible. Needless to say, in we went. But this time, we were in the thick of it so the current kept pulling us in. It took mere seconds for me to panic and I tried my best to kill the other guy who was valiantly trying to pull me out. The poor bloke had come on this cos his girlfriend had gifted this experience to him as a birthday gift and I almost killed him the day before!

After two hours of this, we finally made our way back to the shore. Our guide went around asking each of us if we would do this again. To our own surprise, every one of us shouted: ‘YES!’

Everyone has a favourite song. Couples have their own “couple’s song”, a bar of which triggers powerful harmone-induced reactions in them. Inspired by the movies, most families have a kudumba paatu, mainly so estranged members of the family can find each other in situations like Trade Fair, Ideal Home exhibition etc.

Me, I have a whole soundtrack to my life. Let it not be said I do anything by halves!

This is highly unintentional though. For the past week or so, my ears have been constantly assautled by Channel Five, day and night. I am not hearing things - well, I am but not in that way. My neighbour upstairs has, for some strange reason, been watching the telly with the volume on FULL and nothing I do has made him change his mind about the decibel level.

I can hear the programmes perfectly when I am in my lounge, kitchen, bedroom, loo - you get the pic. Before anyone asks, we have tried to tell him of our displeasure at this radio effect we are being subjected to, willy nilly. But no amount of banging on the door, and of late, the ceiling, has had much of an effect. I wake up at 6.00 AM everyday to the tune of ‘Milkshake……’. (well, going to sleep in the first case has become well nigh impossible!)

S if of the mind that the chap has died and left the telly on. I disagree. It has been almost a week now and our noses haven’t been assaulted with a ‘bad smell’ - yet. The bloke has pulled similar stunts before but every time, furious banging on his door has brought him, along with the plaster on the ceiling, down and he had sheepishly complied.

But not this time.

I still think the chap might have gone on a bender last weekend and hasn’t come out of the other end yet. But my only question is, why Channel 5?

So, who has any bright ideas about how to shut this bloke up? First decent suggestion gets a Freeview box!

I tried… I resisted but I give up! I have to pay homage to Krish Ashok and I shall!

I came across his blog, entertainingly titled ‘Doing Jalsa and Showing Jilpa’ awhile back, whilst searching for, of all the things, Chennai 600028 mp3s! (Okay, for the illiterates out there, the title of his blog is a loose translation of the hit number from the Tamil movie entitled Chennai 600028.) I moved swiftly on, when the said jalsas and jilpas weren’t the ones I was looking for. Then, I tripped over this blog again and decided to delve deeper.

That was yesterday.

I still haven’t finished splitting my sides. The dude has a real quirky way of talking about stuff and the fact that he’s from my own neck of the woods means I can actually understand what he’s going on about - most times, that is! Where else will I come across pearls such as ‘nor am I fully cognizant of social mores and anto-social yogurts’, ‘How does one make a quintessentially Italian dish Russian? By Putin in to it, a glass of vodka?‘, ‘Jabba di Hutti (Finest Pnjaabi cuisine on the planet Tatooine)’ and the incomparably ’snooty’ Les Sappadeaux. He killed me!

So, as you can imagine, browsing his blog was more enjoyable than wading through Interactive Design : beyond human-computer interaction. (No offence to Jenny P, et al)

From a louwr’s guide to Chennai to Navrathri to desified Chinese cuisine to Delhi survival guides for Madrasis to the funniest review of the Order of the Phoenix, the bloke even has a funny map of Chennai and when I came across the area labelled ‘Weekendboozapuram’, I fell apart. Krish Ashok - you so totally rock, dude!

Whilst on the subject of funny Tam stuff, the following vid is unmissable. I found it thanks to Sayesha’s entertaining blog. Please do not sue me if you split your sides and are unable to put them back together. There! I’ve warned you!

Thank you Sayeesha and Buffalax!

Dee had written a post about JKR and Warner Bros’ action against the poor bloke who ran the Harry Potter Lexicon for years. It was irresistible and I started typing out my comment till it got so big, I decided to transfer it here.

My respect for J K Rowling as a writer was directly proportional to the quality of the work she churned out, which started on a slow downward swing post-Goblet of Fire. Undisputably, she created something mega with Potter and blew the whole children’s genre out of the water. But IMO, she peaked with GoF and every book after that was more like an exercise to make money than a creative output.  I mean, what’s with the Order of the Phoenix? ‘More verbose than Bible’ - so bloody what? So many words to explain so few things? Crime against Goddess Saraswati, I call it!

Declaring Dumbledore as gay was nothing but a publicity stunt, to generate a buzz amongst the fans - something to keep them talking till the movie is released. Pottermania has understandably ebbed after the release of the final book and they need something to create a buzz till they can start publicising the movie.

Now this…. she’s just proving that she isn’t different from anybody else.

Most things she’d said are a load of tripe - take the oft-repeated ‘oh I hate this merchandising palaver’ statement. She went to great lengths to assure one and all that she had to put her foot down else we would all have been saddled with a Moaning Myrtle toilet seat the Christmas after Chamber of Secrets. Now, had she been such a do-gooder, why the hell did she say ‘NO MERCHANDISING AND THAT IS IT’? If the thought of Potter dolls and Myrtle loo seats made her shudder so much, why the hell didn’t she say ‘let us do away with the whole thing’. Simple reason - moolah.

That’s what it all has come to. That’s what everything boils down to. Doesn’t matter if you are richer than the Queen. Let’s face it - there cannot be another Potter phenomenon. Even is she turns out another bestseller (who am I kidding?), chances of it reaching the heights of HP is slim. So, I suppose, it is a case of making hay while the sun shines.

Meanwhile, Steve Vander Ark, good luck to you, mate! And good look to all the owners of the other Harry Potter fan sites - keep your fingers crossed that she doesn’t turn her guns on you tomorrow!