I’d written a post at the start of last year to document personal milestones / accomplishments / fun things that took place in my life in 2009 and when I look back on it, I realize that the content in that post brings back memories of times that have been relegated to the back of my head, primarily due to other, more immediate things that seem to have taken up space instead.

However, it is nice to occasionally meander around in the recesses of one’s mind to dig up and unearth things that would otherwise be remembered only through memory triggers.

January 2010:

• Another new year’s eve in Mysore at home and as good a start to the year as any.
• Went to IIT Madras for the second time in as many years, this time to have an exclusive interview with Hammerfall. Hammerfall is a fun band whose sound I’d describe as entry level power metal and even though they didn’t hold a candle to Opeth in 2009, the time spent in IIT Madras was fun.
• On a side note, even though I still have the Hammerfall interview recording, the story never saw the light of day at RSJ. Just as well.
• On a lighter note, placements began in full earnest on the ISB campus. I volunteered as a control room coordinator and later on as the point of contact for a few companies including AT Kearney on day 1 and saw all the high GPA studs in my batch juggling between various consulting job offers. This was pressure at its extreme and as sour-grapish as it might sound, I was, in retrospect glad not to have been wearing a suit and making life-changing decisions regarding which job to take. My simple little brain that might’ve exploded in such a situation.

February 2010:

• The pranks on campus continued, as did the extreme debauchery. The class of 2010 hung on in quiet desperation at the prospect of securing employment and breaking away from the vicious circle of the placement rigmarole.
• I interviewed with a whole bunch of firms – I’ve honestly lost count. But the classic blooper moments I underwent still make me smile to this day. One of those was when I showed up half asleep at an interview and after one round, was made to interact with the CEO despite not having worked on a preliminary assignment that was required to be completed as part of their selection procedure. Chutzpah alone didn’t work and I didn’t get the job, though far more dedicated and deserving people did.
• The other interview that makes me facepalm myself was one where I was asked to draw the Porter’s 5 forces diagram on the board. I blanked, forgot and made a mess of the whole thing. The interviewer and I shared a good laugh about it at the end of it all. You remember more of what you missed than of the one shot that hit the target.
• I’d had too much mirinda just before another interview and let out a loud burp while in conversation. Turns out, the recruiters weren’t too sanguine about my prospects in their firm as a result of my orange tongue and teeth. The burp, I suppose, had nothing to do with it.
• Rock in India had Backstreet Boys and Richard Marx perform. The less said about this, the better.
• I finally signed out of the placement process when a business research firm based in Gurgaon (yes, based in and not based out of) decided to give me a job. I didn’t really have to jump through hoops to get the job, but I was convinced in my head back then that this was what I needed to act as a springboard for the next stage of my life.
• I was out of placements, but friends were still in the hunt. They celebrated with me and I tried my best to egg them on as they continued along in the process. Intense pressure and relief, turns out, have similar cathartic vents and the debauchery and the escapades that ensued continued unabated.

March 2010:

• The number of companies arriving on campus for placements thinned down until there was but a mere trickle.
• People gave up and decided to make the most of life and times on campus and March 2010 became one of the most fun months ever.
• The countless instances of hanging out with friends in different circles and indulging in everything except studying seemed to compensate more than amply for all the studying that was done in the initial part of the course (by the high achievers, of course).
• Unexpected visitors from Madras ushered in fond, if transient memories.
• The last full month on the ISB campus saw as much mayhem and chaos as did the previous eleven, so no changes there.

April 2010:

• The ISB rock band, Conjoint, performed its Swansong show for a full three hours in the last couple of days before graduation. We played so much that people gave up and went to sleep before it was done. Turns out, we took their chants of “once more” in our previous shows a little too much to heart. The rock band and all the friends I made that were part of it made B-school special in ways that I can’t describe.
• Got the torchbearer award – this added another cute bullet point to a resume that otherwise seemed average in comparison with those that my illustrious contemporaries sported. Humbling as B-school turned out to be, I learnt that we all have our place under the sun.
• Graduation happened three days before I turned 27. My folks were there. I could, for the first time, know for certain that they were proud of their kid, in just the same way as 570 other sets of families that showed up were for the achievements of their wards.
• My trusty backpack followed me to the graduation ceremony as well and the reason why it was with me is an interesting story in itself, to be told when I don’t have enough to write about, try as hard as I’d like to.
• Spent my birthday in my favourite place in the world at home in Mysore. Did nothing of note and thats what made it special.
• Returned to Hyderabad on the 10th of April for orientation week of the class of 2011. The most memorable thing, aside from the immense fun that it provided was making the entire class keep the faith.
• Left for Gurgaon on the 18th of April and that was when I realized how much South India rocks. I yearn to return, but I will do my time here before I earn my passage back down south.
• The April heat was negated by the fun times had in the first few days at work and the fun times had with the Prince of Gurgaon, Samridh.

May 2010:

• Two trips to Bangalore happened within a fortnight, the first was to attend Krithik’s wedding. The second one was a longer stint that ran through for an entire week and a half and began with the Simian wedding.
• Monkee was expected to get married earlier than most of us, but when it actually happened, one could hear the clock ticking as a countdown to the impending end of bachelorhood, were the stakeholders in my life keen on ending my solo reverie. Turns out, they hadn’t even thought about it. Phew.
• An air-conditioner and a TV (brought on EMI despite having liquidity) in Gurgaon turned out to be the blessing that reinforced my faith in modern technology. Not exactly spartan living, but not conspicuous consumption either.
• The heat made me pray for winters. The cold in the winter (briefly) made me pray for summer. When its hot, he wants it cold and when its cold, he wants it hot.
• Very little time was spent in the office thanks to a plethora of paid leaves taken and as will be seen in part 2 of this series, it came back to bit me hard in the gluteal region.

June 2010:

• And then there were four.
• Another trip to Mysore, the third one in two months was undertaken. The only bright spot in an otherwise bad month.
• More people from the ISB class of 2010 kept streaming in into Gurgaon, making this place better and more live-able.
• Blackberry messenger, as it turned out, was the de facto mode of staying in touch and this piece of software can take credit for some of the nice things that happened in June 2010.

To be continued…..

I then decided to indulge in my current favourite pastime, spending time at a bookstore. Blossoms on Church Street, where I finally went to, has fond memories that will transcend space and time and somehow, each time I visit that place and walk around in the aisles, the soundtrack of my life’s movie ends up playing ‘in my life‘ by The Beatles.

It was there that I picked up two books by Neil Gaiman, ‘American Gods’ and ‘Anansi Boys’. These were my second and third Gaiman books, after having bought ‘StarDust’ previously, thanks to the fact that I’d seen the movie one rainy sunday evening on campus last year when I had lots to do, but no inclination to.

StarDust the movie, I confess, impressed me so much that I decided to buy the book. The book in turn impressed me so much that I decided to pick up whatever else the guy had written, and I am glad I did so.

I’d strongly recommend ‘American Gods’ for its strong link to mythology and pop-culture (both ancient and contemporary) and after getting more fundas about the Gods featured in the book through this page, I’m strongly inclined to give the book another read to get a better sense of the mythological characters the book portrays.

One of the most memorable lines in the book is, “He [Shadow, the lead character] felt a pang, like a minor chord being played inside him.”

For someone who knows what a minor chord is, the sentence is truly truly brilliant in its depiction of the feeling that one would go through when one feels a pang as described in the book.

I remember back in the day when my guitar teacher had just started me off on minor scales and chords, he’d mentioned that one of the easy ways to identify minor keys aside from the technical way in which they’re arranged is that most sad songs are composed in minor keys and said association between minor chords and melancholia has been etched in my mind forever.

Back to Gaiman, a few friends of mine have read Sandman and opined strongly that the series has changed their lives. I have the soft copy for the series of graphic novels, but old school me wants to read it in the hard copy. Anyone know where in the NCR would be a good place to pick it up? I’d have asked if I could borrow the books, but I don’t lend and so, I will not borrow either.

Having said that, most of what actually happened in my life last year is stranger than fiction and hence needs no more fraudness to be introduced for this post to sound weirder. If you’re cheesed off by the post already, here’s wishing you a grand 2010 and goodbye.

Before you go, please check out Aadisht’s stunning preview of 2010 which definitely warrants a read. His years in preview are now a regular feature of his bleg.

Moving on to 2009 in review for me in person. A lot of condensation has taken place thanks to the fact that minutiae needn’t be documented, in the interest of time and space and most of all, your attention span and sanity.

January:

• Went to IIT Madras and interviewed Opeth for the cover story for Rock Street Journal. Got promoted from Correspondent to Staff Writer, though I can’t really tell the difference. The latter title definitely sounds cooler. Never felt more powerful as part of the fourth estate till date, except for while shamelessly flashing press card before boarding domestic flights and getting the aisle seat all the time.
• Got two videos (video 1 and video 2) of me dancing along with Gaurav Basu and Abhinav Yogesh, vocalist and drummer respectively of the Bangalore based Inner Sanctum. It is to be noted that TASMAC shops disbursing alcohol in Tamil Nadu close at 10 PM, and our shenanigans were executed in complete sobriety due to the frustration of not having consumed alcohol, as opposed to being inebriated as it might seem in the video. Potential recruiters, please note that this showcases my light side which might come in handy as a future manager in your esteemed firm.

February:

• Admitted to the Indian School of Business’ class of 2010. Sheer joy at not having to work for a year. Eleven months down the line, I realize I’ve worked more in college than in fifty five months at the office. Go figure.

March:

• Last day at work on 20th March, and the anticlimax accompanying the end of my work at the only company that had me employed made me feel grateful that I could switch companies sans emotion. Being in the system long enough afforded a smooth exit, with all friendly faces helping out with the exit formalities. I still miss my close friends at work, and the fellowship (as we called our elitist clique of ‘cool’ people) shall reconvene again!
• Packed and moved back from Bangalore to Mysore, only to move out again in ten days. Had to bid goodbye to all the good friends I had made over five years in the city which I had just begun referring to as home, along with Mysore. Packing and moving sucks.
• Attended a wonderful surprise birthday party for someone. Surprise birthday parties shall never go out of fashion.

April:

• Turned 26. Was unemployed. Did nothing on my birthday except go out for an hour to meet an old college friend. One of my most uneventful and yet best birthdays till date.
• Finished loan formalities. For the first ever time in my life, I owed someone money that I wasn’t in a position to repay in the short term. I’ve still not come to this bridge that I foresee will be a long and arduous one to cross.
• Joined Indian School of Business’ class of 2010 to become a post-graduate student of management. Yeah, this is most of what my life currently revolves around till date, for better or worse.

May:

• Settled into college life, made friends, played pranks like this one and had a lot of fun. Got adjusted to parties, long hours of working / studying, spending atrocious amounts of time in front of my laptop, answering phone calls like I had to go take an urgent dump and other things that management grad students are usually supposed to do.
• Wore a suit for the second time in my life to get a picture clicked for the student handbook. The contortions involved in getting me to pose that way, as can be seen in my linkedin profile can’t ever be replicated, unless under conditions of threat to my life. The first time I wore a suit was for my B-school interview in December 2008.

June:

• The end of the world as I knew it and I felt fine. Correction. I’ll feel fine in due time, and write another cathartic post like this one and things will be brighter and sunnier again. Until then that far away look where one focuses away into infinity and reminisces about the past when one’s mind wanders shall remain.
• The rest of June 2009 remains a blur.

July:

• Getting used to the academic grind, with B-school keeping me busy enough to not even blog, try as hard as I wanted to. Oh, and I got to be President of the Music Club, which meant that anytime someone’s audio equipment malfunctioned, I was asked to come around and tinker with the wires to set it right, or to play top Bollywood hits music at parties where a DJ was unaffordable, or compile playlists for the most randomest of occasions. In all this confusion, a band was formed on campus (a rock band, no less!) and it was called Conjoint. Bwuahahahaha.

August:

• This was the month of theories when out of class creativity was at its peak, and a new genre of music was discovered, the Samson ratio was discovered and the Infinitely Prolonged Social Interaction theory was formulated. This theory, in some other time and some other place might’ve catapulted me to meteoric fame, but alas, all it got me was a blog post with a reasonable number of hits. I’ve made peace with that. I’m so easy to please.
• New nicknames were given to people, some of which will stick for life. Conjoint made its debut performance amidst as little fanfare as was possible.

September:

• Seems like I’d amassed enough street cred to be considered a judge for rock shows and hence was invited by Xtreme Sports Bar in Hyderabad over three weekends to judge Hyderabad bands doing their stuff. Got acquainted with the music scene in Hyd as a result.

October:

• Tried hitting on a girl at a bar when I was judging the final of the aforesaid set of rock shows. My extent of hitting on was to make hajjar eye contact and then not go up and make conversation. At this rate, I might as well hope and pray that females realize that striking conversation with men is part of the whole women’s lib thing that they’re so proud of displaying or that GSBs can convert easily to Buddhism, whichever comes later.
• Spent a wonderful week in Hampi / Anegundi working on an internship project to develop rural tourism and improve the small scale handicrafts industry in the region. Fell in love with the idea of watching sunsets while walking in paddy fields, listening to Sigur Ros.

November:

• Website told jai, MadMan Madhu Menon repaired it for me. God bless him.
• Fell into the standard issue honeytrap that most stupid people in an educational institute fall for, where someone’s charm is used to extract work from someone else. Guess which of the two parties I was!

December:

• Won a free phone at a quiz. The Nokia 5310 is my first phone with camera, mp3 ringtones, bluetooth, video and a wallpaper that moves!!!!!!!!
• Monkee got engaged, among other fun events that took place on December 13th. His phone bill has since quadrupled and his joy has increased asymptotically. Touchwood, good luck and God bless.
• Opened as part of Conjoint for The Raghu Dixit Project.
• Got shortlisted for a job interview, did crazy things including rush from Noida to the Delhi airport in peak traffic with no less than six near-death instances, beg and plead for a last minute flight ticket from New Delhi which cost a bomb, hugged the Kingfisher attendant who booked me the ticket and showed up in time for the interview. Many days and rounds later, I got a reject. Such is life. The effort made it memorable. Also, it doesn’t snow in Thailand. So there.
• The first of my cousins on my Mum’s side got married. She’s the second, age-wise. Guess which moron is the eldest? Yeah, scary. I know.
• Spent New Year’s eve half asleep while watching TV at home. The tame end to the year was as blissful and relaxing as it could get.

2009 will be relegated to the pages of personal history and has earmarked many changes in my life, good and bad. However, like each year that has passed in living memory, it will, without doubt be yet another year that has gone in shaping life as I know it. If you’ve read so far, Happy New Year once again!

*post fades away into the distance, with Green Day’s ‘Time of Your Life’ playing softly in the background*

Ironically, I am more jobless when I am employed than when I am actually jobless. But, that again is a no-brainer considering the fact that the pursuit of a job requires more effort than to keep it once one has netted employment.

Over the weekend, I had been to Bangalore to attend the engagement celebrations of the Telangana-born Lord of the Simians and despite spending only 13 hours in Bangalore, it was quite a memorable, noteworthy trip.

Not prone to descriptive narratives, let’s just say the trip involved drinking a little vodka first thing in the morning, followed by a super awesome buffet breakfast, a heavy continental lunch, meeting up with band mates and having wine at noon wines and finally going for the engagement ceremony that I was here to attend.

One of my biggest fears in life so far as my appearance is concerned is the onset of a paunch, and if I eat the way I ate yesterday for a week, then I’ll have a skinny frame and an unsavory paunch, to look like one of those US-return techies that spend way too much time at their desk working their butts off, while not going out to have fun or working out.

Thankfully, high BMR will remedy that. All my life. Touchwood.

Other highlights of the trip included the fact that pretty much everyone at the engagement had SLR cameras with multiple flashes that made the ceremony look more like a discotheque with white lights flashing all around.

The obligatory prank of gifting something intensely embarassing did come to the fore when soon to be Mrs.Monkee was presented with pink pyjamas with monkeys on them. Madman and Madwoman must be commended on their intense research for aforementioned gag.

The one thing that did mortify me, that was brought up in frequent conversation was the major reports of unrest in Andhra Pradesh and how the law and order situation was mud. Consequently, Mr.Monkee called me to check if I had reached Bangalore safely. I had people say how they wouldn’t have gotten out of Hyderabad to come to Bangalore and attend the engagement given the circumstances.

I was quite puzzled with this news, considering how I had an easy time moving through from the campus to Kacheguda railway station and I was not anticipating any trouble on my return.

However, my stupidly optimistic mind led me to believe (and I plead guilty to vocalizing this irrational thought to the rest) that even if miscreants wanted to torch the train, they’d ask passengers to alight along with luggage before setting it on fire. This would result in a long trek towards the nearest place where transportation was available, but it would be an adventure at the exchequer’s expense nonetheless.

The others had no such high hopes with regard to my longevity in the event that I’d be subject to an incident as mentioned above, and also requested Mr.Monkee to have a garlanded picture of mine on stage since he would be culpable for my untimely demise, should said torching have actually taken place.

All’s well though and I am back into the slipstream of madness on campus here, having survived many potential near-death experiences, all of which took place in my mind’s eye, though none in real life.

What bothers me most is that while the last call I’d make would be to my folks at home, the penultimate one would be to let friends know which pic of mine to select to frame and put up.

Congratulations to Mr.Monkee and a shout out to soon-to-be Mrs.Monkee who, turns out, reads my humble blog and likes it. Much respect to you on your choice of a husband (and blogs to read), more power to you, and good luck!

I have this policy of doing absolutely nothing, or doing very little on my birthdays because it is that one day of the year where I feel extreme laziness and complete and utter unwillingness to do anything except chill, watch TV, read and just loaf around. In line with that, this year was no different.

What was different was that this time around, I didn’t have to apply for a holiday from work, since I am unemployed.

I must mention here that I am still staff writer for RSJ, but that hardly counts as a job to those who knew of my avatar as a techie in my previous firm. It is more exciting for the most part, though.

So being 26, unemployed, living with family and in debt due to a gargantuan education loan, I had decided in the previous post on this website that I would explore Mysore and see it through the eyes of a tourist, for it is only after you’ve discovered your own place can you venture out to explore the world. (Or some such melodramatic line that sounds like its been lifted straight out of Forrest Gump)

Rather than solicit hanging out with arbit people and seeing Mysore, I decided to hang out with a few friends and explore home, and in retrospect, it made so much sense and was much more fun, than to hang out with unknown people. This exploration bit didn’t lead to seeing all of Mysore, but checking out a few interesting spots in and around the city that made for a highly memorable time.

PS – turning 26, as Monkee pointed out, ensures that I will never be eligible for a Eurail youth pass. I wish I were Benjamin Button here.

PPS – as you guessed correctly, the Magical bit was added for force-fit reasons, and the only thing magical for me personally would be the memories associated with this day.

However, these incidents of attacks on the people from Bihar, UP, Jharkhand and the poorer parts of the country had me speaking to people about it, and some of the information I was made privy to was quite interesting. While what I know is applicable to Bangalore, an educated extrapolation or some parallel research would indeed confirm that the same thing would be applicable to other cities as well, which have a substantial immigrant population from these regions.

One of my good friends who lives here and works at my office is from Allahabad, and speaks chaste Hindi like those in North India (North of the Hebbal Flyover as a certain Monkee would say). This guy has provided me with specific instances of times when auto-drivers, gas-cylinder suppliers, curtain makers and other people who’re also from up north (Bihar, MP, UP, Chattisgarh) have been extra nice to him, and have helped him get his work done faster, and for a discount rate, which they would rarely provide for other people not from their region.

While some people say that it is quite tough in the absence of local language knowledge to survive and mingle effectively with the junta of a place and get your work done, I feel that if you’re able to tap into the network of people that are from around the same place as yourself, as in this instance with the Bhaiyya network, you’d be comfortable without facing too many problems.

This in effect would negate the settling-in blues that most people have while moving to a new place.

In fact, I think that if I were to live in any city other than Bangalore, I’d try to hunt for Kannada speaking people (Konkani speaking people are a rarity) and seek their assistance under appropriate circumstances.

However, one of the strips that I distinctly remember reading was one where Archie was broke, and had to fill gas into his jalopy, and went to a station and asked for 50 cents worth of gas. The attendant laughed at him and said, “wait! Let me fetch my eye-dropper!”.

Last night, at 11-20 PM, I faced a similar situation. Some people who know me decently know of my inherent laziness to visit an ATM to withdraw money. In fact, whenever I can, I weasel out of situations where I have to pay by using my debit card / meal card or worst case credit card, especially if the end of the month is at hand.

On some other occasions, I transfer funds online immediately to other friends after asking them to pay, and people such as Monkee and SKimpy have been at the receiving end of online transfers, for it is convenient, atleast for me.

Last night, having left the office late, I suddenly realized that I had almost run out of petrol. I somehow managed to get the bike towards an Indian Oil station that was open late on Mysore Road, and on instinct, asked if I could pay by card. Much to my dismay, they didn’t accept plastic money, and I was then forced to pay cash. To compound my misery, I discovered that I had only INR 12.50 in my wallet.

It was in these dire straits that I had to politely ask the attendant at the station to fill petrol for 12.50 into the bike, for I knew that the quantity was enough for me to make it home comfortably, and then some.

However, the look he gave me when I told him about exactly how much petrol I wanted filled in was priceless.

In the interest of playing pranks, I would suggest that you all take your cars / bikes and ask for small amounts of petrol to be filled into your vehicle, and observe the reactions that are presented to you. What would be funnier was if you offered to pay for that money using a card.

Drinking on a Sunday Evening: Most people tend to drink on Friday or Saturday evenings, once the working week has come to an end. Thereafter, uncontrolled alcohol consumption eventually results in hang-overs on Saturday / Sunday mornings and screws up most of the weekend.

However, I propose that people who want to drink to their hearts’ content should do so on Sunday evening. This is because one can conserve precious time on weekends, and since Monday mornings are shitty anyway, the presence or absence of a hang-over at work doesn’t really make a difference.

Plus, most watering holes are less crowded with riff-raff on sunday evenings, but that is a moot point, given that you can drink anytime and anywhere in Bangalore city.

It was the cheap Monkee who spoke about this again last night, and made me think about blagging about it.

The Alcohol Buddy Theory: An alcohol buddy is someone you hang out with in order to have a drink. The surest sign that a friend is an alcohol buddy is if you are unable to hang out with this person unless alcohol is involved in the equation.

If you can’t figure out who your alcohol buddies are, hang out with them even when alcohol is not part of your meet-up and see if you end up having a good time regardless. If that is not the case, then you’ve got an alcohol buddy on your hands.

If you’re a social drinker, and you want to kick the bottle, all you would have to do would be to stop hanging out with your alcohol buddies, and all your problems would be solved. Voila!

For those still blinking at the ostensible spelling error – it is plugging my blog. If you don’t know what plug is, kindly refer urban dictionary.

After having engaged in significant drum beating via facebook on its status message, on orkut by finally enabling my updates to be visible for junta and courtesy of twitter and the usual gtalk status message build up, which has resulted in quite a few junta visiting this site, I was having a discussion with SKimpy about other innovative and unconventional ways to blug one’s plog, and we came up with the auto-rickshaw idea.

It would be quite awesome to get some bumper stickers printed, with the blog URL and have it pasted on the backs of auto-rickshaws, so that footage can be provided in the weirdest and coolest way possible. I have seen autos with stuff like ‘Hai! Want to Friendship me?’ and ‘Love leads to death’ and other such nonsense.

I am not sure how much auto drivers would charge for such advertising, but before I go ahead and print stickers, I sure would like to find out. If you have a plog that needs blugging and want me to help by getting stickers printed, drop me a line, and I’ll see what I can do after I’ve done the background research work.

Any further ideas apart from the conventional ones to engage in shameless publicity are most welcome as well. Please don’t tell me I need to write well to make this happen, I’ve been trying for ages to do so and I have now finally abandoned that approach, in a ‘grapes are sour’ type situation.

Edit: Urban dictionary defines blugging as bad blogging. An unfortunate coincidence, I’d say.

Not knowing what to do, I had previously linked my domain name to my blog, which most often than not received random traffic from search engines due to reasons I’d rather not be too proud about, for now.

I was additionally maintaining a livejournal wherein I had initially started putting in any arbit rambling that I wanted to pen down and preserve, and this sounding board then turned out to be the one that I used with greater frequency compared to my blog, which I was afraid I was going to abandon.

In the midst of maintaining a blog and a livejournal, I chanced upon a few blogs that were hosted on their own server spaces and had exclusive URLs, and this, combined with the need to customize what I spew out in writing prompted me to purchase server space and host this website on wordpress, which is what you are seeing right now. In this regard, I have to thank Aadisht and SKimpy, for their random tech support level assistance on gtalk as well as for having guided me to Madhu Menon, who provided me with the necessary server space, and deserves to be thanked as well.

Thanks also to Monkee, the cheap guy that he is, for having been the first person to subscribe to the RSS feeds of my new website, much before I could do so myself, and for some invaluable inputs and constructive criticisms that prevented me from doing some things that I realized in retrospect were stupid.

Shrenik Sadalgi, friend, colleague and photographer extraordinaire provided me with his old camera – a Canon powershot A620, which is super enough for my face, to shoot the pics that you can see in the header. Refreshing or clicking on other links will switch the header image, thanks to a php script written by Matt Mullenweg.

The wordpress forums are stud level so far as resolving issues related to everything under the sun is concerned, and it is a result of their assistance that I’ve been able to put my site in the current shape that it is in.

Clicking on the bars on top will take you to the different categories under which I’ve posted, and I will update and add new stuff to it. Currently, if your office’s internet proxy isn’t benevolent enough, you will not be able to see any media under the music category.

The primary intent of the blog is to fan my already bloated ego, and also to serve as a means of providing me with more freelance writing opportunities, the likes of which I have engaged in for a few print as well as online publications. I have managed to import and include most of my blog and LJ entries into this site, but I haven’t been able to tag and categorize all 400 (approx) of them for now, which means that you will still see that ‘uncategorized’ label on the top bar until I’ve had enough time, patience and enthusiasm to remedy it.

Feedback is most welcome, just leave a comment, and do subscribe to the RSS feeds of my site. This new blogging journey will be awesome!

I wholeheartedly intend to Rock you like a Haricane.