Saying a lot, saying a little… who cares?
staying.thoughts
sibling rivalry
Jun 22nd
Purple or orange? Orange or purple?
She looked from one to the other. And back. Then back again.
Someone moved in the far corner, and she whipped around to see what had happened. There was a movement in front of her which she felt, rather than sensed, and she reached out blindly. While turning back to the choice at hand.
The decision had been made for her: she was left with only purple now. Where was the orange?
*******************
“Ammmmaaaaaaaa! Ammmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaa….”
Yes, that was me. Yes, I was whining.
My little sister was bullying me. She wanted my Superman. Actually, she had taken my Superman.
And given my parents absolute lack of concern about my Superman, it didn’t seem like I was getting it back.
*******************
She wanted the orange water-bottle. This purple one was clearly substandard. The cap had come off when she had pulled at it to open. Her elder sister appeared to have an invulnerable bottle. Plus it was orange. Orange was awesome. She looked around, her parents only seemed concerned that she not fall off the table. She had to make them see the point. She pointed at the orange bottle. No reaction. Split-seconds later, she started crying. Out loud. Pointing. And crying. Immediate reactions.
Except her elder sister. Who seemed perfectly content to watch TV while drinking. Out of that awesome orange water-bottle.
“Oh she wants your bottle, P___. Just give it to her. Its ok. See this purple one? Just as good.”
No effect on the older sister.
“She’s a baby, P___. You are older. Give it to her, na. When Daddy says something you’re supposed to obey, right?”
I watched the mother put the orange bottle away, while the father swung the yelling baby off the table. The older sister sat content with the purple bottle, which she now shook tauntingly at the baby who was looking back while being carried away. Fresh sobs and yells. Exasperated admonishment from the mother: “P___, don’t! I’ll take that one away too!”
sachinism, the current religion of the indi-net
Feb 24th
Stuff that struck me while reading about Sachin Tendulkar’s nearly unbelievable* feat, most of which will be repeated everywhere I look over the next few days/weeks:
- On this day 21 years ago He completed a 664-run partnership with Kambli. Twenty-f*ckin-one.
- His 200 contained 25 boundaries (the most by a single batsman in an ODI till date) and 3 sixes. The entire RSA team innings (in reply) had 30 boundaries and 3 sixes.
- He has scored 93 international centuries (combining test and ODI cricket) until today. There was a time when He decimated an Australian team for a whole summer (yes, the great Sharjah innings), which was when I started believing that He would score over a 100 centuries before He retired. That day is nigh.
- His closest competitors today (in terms of statistics) have to currently make
- Tests: 1588 runs to catch up His total of 13447, 8 centuries to catch up His total of 47.
- ODIs: 4170 runs to catch up with 17598, 17 centuries to catch up with 46.
- He made an impeccable, near-perfect 175 while chasing Australia in Hyderabad last year.. only to have the Indian team let Him down and choke once He was out. I remember defending him when people said that the innings was typical Tendulkar – the century was great, but no use if He never finishes what He starts. I wonder if.. somehow.. RSA had successfully chased 400 (they’ve done it before), how sweet would this 200 be for the ungrateful Indian cricket fan?
- The fact that He does not make the ICC list of the best players of all-time in either Tests or ODIs has to now rank as one of the biggest egg-on-your-face (or idiotic) statements until date for the ICC. For a man who is redefining every batting record there is every time He takes guard, a man who has surpassed His contemporaries in both longevity and performance… I guess He doesn’t need the ranking to make His mark in cricket history.
I ask you, does He really have to worry about never lifting a World Cup on India’s behalf? Can we quit wondering aloud about His performance every time He doesn’t make a century?
Will we ever get over Him?
Side note: I noticed that the statistically top batsmen who are still playing cricket today are all 34+ (age in brackets): Jayasuriya (40), Ponting (35), Tendulkar (37), Gibbs (36), Kallis (34). This is to be expected, given the amount of cricket these people have played in their lifetime… but it appears the old guard is never going to make way for a new one.
*I say “nearly unbelievable”, because it is Sachin after all. One can believe that He can pull it off.**
**Yes, the capitalization of ‘H’ is intentional. God, after all.
windows 7 – quirks, quips and quarks
Oct 20th
So I finally moved to Windows 7 on one of the machines I use regularly. It wasn’t without its share of weird-ass issues – I don’t think any M$ OS can be without its quirks. Not issues/problems, mind you. Quirks. I will try to update this based on what else I figure out in the future as well. I’m not attempting a detailed critique of what its like, there are ton-loads of such reviews online (most comprehensively, here). I’m merely noting stuff that stood out to me, personally. I’ll try not to degenerate to ranting or raving about anything.
i should just title this r.i.p. staying.cool
Sep 21st
Among other things, the probability that random ideas pop into my head has dwindled down to zero. Which makes it a little hard to maintain a space that was somehow meant to ensure that I do not lose touch with writing. Now that I think about it, my blog will turn 5 in a month. And here I am writing about how I have nothing to write about – for the umpteenth time. There was meant to be some kind of weekly post thing going on here – which has not taken off. A large majority of posts since then have actually pretty much been mere placeholders. So I can see that my post-count is at a steady 6-8 posts a month.
I have been struggling to find a voice/tack for my blog in recent times. Indeed, going a little further back to the start of this year I see that most posts are either (1) updates about my life, highlighting what interesting things have happened to me recently, (2) movie reviews, (3) frustration at something techie, (4) non-posts lamenting the fact that – well – I have nothing to post about, (5) random news-links to fill up space, (6) recollection/memory posts. I’m pretty sure that if I continue down a little further back to a years’ worth of posts – I’ll pretty much find the same trend. I shouldn’t be very shocked – my blog has been degenerating for some time – but I am.
Yes, yes, this counts as a non-post as well.
This absolute lack of inspiration is scary. I had this page open for most of yesterday, and what I’m writing right now is the best I could come up with. Nothing else. Nada. I can see I have over 180 subscriptions in my Reader (comprising techie, movie, random, news, comment, photo, and digg feeds). None of them gave me requisite amounts of inspiration. Any thoughts I did have about posting on a topic ended in one of two thought processes: (1) Dammit, there are a crap-load of posts about it already, (2) I really don’t know enough to write about it. Yes, this is in spite of Reading about it.
Somehow I don’t feel like throwing in the towel just yet. I keep believing the fact that my blog has not been posted to in a while will eventually result my being shamed into sheer inspired genius. Even though what actually happens is that I end up writing an absolute pointless post like this one. All this Reading, and keeping in touch with current trends – and I have nothing to say about any of them beyond the 4 line comments I put up on Reader shared items. Apparently.
Maybe that is what my posts have to evolve into. Selected shared items from my Reader with my opinion/comments appended. Would keep my blog alive. And any random thoughts that do occur to me on the myriad things I Read about are blogged. Giving reason for this space to live. Maybe some of them will expand into proper “commentary” posts too.
Now that I think about it, that actually seems like a cool idea: Reader-blogging.
I have one other idea, which involves a little more effort on my part. We’ll see how it goes.
Update: Turns out Reader’s nifty ‘Send To:’ feature comes in handy for this kind of thing. Its way nicer than using Postie, mostly because stripping out all the Google Reader header/footer in an email is hard. Plus, links to the original article are better than full-text. My only issue: Reader defaults to using the feed link (based on Google’s feedproxy server mostly) or else a bit.ly link. Both of which seem suboptimal. But the ‘Press This‘ functionality means I can play with these things however I want. Lets see how it goes. Have to remember to use it now 
