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It’s 1.30AM I’m having the first of possibly many insomniac spells and I’m writing my first post on a mac book air. It’s a nice machine. They keys are responsive and make me honestly believe that I can type faster, longer and perhaps funnier than I could on my Dell Latitude. Which I must admit is the hardiest laptop I’ve ever seen. Barring the stuff that they sell to children nowadays.
This blog’s been dormant for over a year. With possibly good reason. I recently became a licensed neurosurgeon and the better part of that year of ignoring this little space was dedicated almost solely to the pursuit of this lofty ideal.
Now that I realise that my current situation is not lofty and hardly ideal, I do suppose this is a good time to get back to writing.
What do we write about? My last wish list was a hopeless failure. I didn’t get any of them. Thank you gentle readers.
There’s the deteriorating traffic but that’s now so much a part of our lives in Bengaluru (or I could just launch about how terrible a name that is) that the average 7 minute drive is 7 minutes because of a minimum of two snarls.
There’s the metro, who offered a hundred thousand in cash for a cool 4 second jingle, in mp3 format preferably. mp3? Seriously?
There’s the new ink pen from Flair. Called Inky. Which I quite like actually, not withstanding the fact that it’s less than 1/20th the cost of the Sheaffer Valor which I so completely lust after it’s borderline pathological.
There’s the Hidden Orchestra, if you can find them, they’re a very good listen.
And perhaps work and it’s skullduggery it involves. In every way possible.
There’s a conference in Malaysia, a host of new TV shows that I came across – old ones with new seasons and new ones.
There’s Android phones and the N8 with Symbian 3 (Symbian 3? Why?) and the Chiphone, Chokia and Blackcherry that crack me up every time I see them. And the Micromax with a universal remote.
And perhaps the intense masochistic joy in soaking chili flakes in vodka for a month and then gingerly tasting one drop.
As Bill Waterson said, it’s a magical world.
Time to go grab it.
Watch this space. I just might be back.

Oh my God! This is what this blog looks like. Derelict, dilapidated, abandoned and all that. Hell I’d like to say I was insanely busy doing this and that and hacking the occasional head and dealing with didactics but nay, those are just excuses for the lack of a muse. A-muse, get it? You do? Great! We’re back in sync gentle readers and this ride’s going to be a roller coaster.
So it turns out that we’ve decided to vote again and despite every reservation we had about democracy being a waste of good money and in this part of the world it being a way to waste bad money too, we filled the forms and dropped it off at the local poll office. We jaago-re-ed so to speak. Rose to the occasion. Woke up and smelt the sweaty armpits. Needless to say Murphy chuckled in his grave and we found that the good name was not on the good list. Or the bad. Or any list outside of the list of residents posted for emergency this month. And despite writing to the EC, Jaago Re and the local MP promising him my vote in an act of final desperation, we ended up inedible ink less. (Yes, I know it’s spelt differently but it’s supposed to be a pun. I couldn’t have been gone so long, could I?)
But in funny news I know someone who wanted to vote but didn’t want to be marked for a month so she painted on transparent nail polish and did a quick one with some acetone and now all she has to show for the whole franchise deal is… nothing. But a good idea it is.
In other interesting bits of information the sixth pay commission comes to the rescue of all previously underpaid doctors who worked for the central government (not the state government if you’ve been reading the papers). As a result of recession and fiscal policy Doctors apparently rule the roost at shaadi.com and bharatmatrimony. The hits have, if google analytics has to be believed, risen exponentially. Of course we are at our usual Murphy moment of being the dog in the manger sitting on the proverbial golden egg largely due to the lack of time to spend the new found booty. And I am talking of financial booty. Not the other one. The one that can be attracted with sufficient finances.
Add the arrears to that and we have a new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and a black acoustic guitar. And the dream that little white boys and girls will one day play with little black boys and girls and realise that white men can’t jump.
Flight of ideas apart, I can’t for the life of me remember why I’ve stopped writing. It’s fun and even the thought of repetitive stress crippling my wrist doesn’t deter me. I’ve learnt that there’s light at the end of the carpal tunnel.
Oh yes, there’s a few months worth of bad puns coming your way.
In cooking this month, we speak of 2 interesting ways of eating bread. The first was featured on some travel and food show on one of the travel and food channels on Tata Sky (my life is jhingalala, yours?) . The first involves a whole loaf of unsliced bread which can be easily sourced, albeit with the risk of a suspicious stare from the local bakery. Speaking of which there’s one in Pondicherry called “Bangalore’s Famous Iyengar Bakery”, run by a malayalee of course. So we have this loaf which we shall cut in half. The only way it should be cut in half, before an inane doubt creeps up in your mind. and we scoop out the inside to make a bread bowl. Fill it with some nice chicken masala or beef stew or even the bhaji of the pav fame and proceed to demolish it with the inner bits and thence to consume the bowl piecemeal. While not spectacularly different from the taste of sliced bread with any of the aforementioned accompaniments, it is novel in its presentation and therefore worth a try before the realisation sinks in that it really tastes the same.
The next bit of bakery wizardry comes from the National Law School where an enterprising cheta decided to slice a bun in half, keep a good sized bar of chocolate within and pop the result into a microwave for 30 seconds at full power. Here we shall stop and imagine the molten chocolate sandwiched in soft warm bun. Once done we shall mop up the drool from our keyboards before typos become the norm.
Speaking of drool on keyboards, there is a commercially available rubber key board that rolls up in to a crepe bandage sized cylinder and being rubber and all that is impervious to drool, coffee, coke and single malt scotch. Other hazardous substances may be tried on request and the promise of replacement if the rubber dissolves or something.
There’s been little on the music scene. David Cook and American almost Idol or Idol or somesuch is out with an album that sounds identical to Daughtry so it is miss able barring maybe one or two songs. The Dave Matthews Band releases it’s interestingly titled album next month, the single “Funny the way it is” from the same is brilliant. As is the Freddy Jones Band whom I just can’t find enough of despite scouring the web.
The Big Bang Theory is the new addiction. Remarkably sharp comedy that is and it comes highly recommended.
So that’s all there is considering I have about 4 hours to get back to work for the night and I’ve already pulled myself up off the computer for falling asleep on it. Hope there’s more in the coming weeks.
Toodle–oo and pip-pip.

So after many profound brain things inside my head I’m back on Facebook. While my angst against social networking is not entirely gone and now that there are a million others claiming their individual superiority and new nifty applications that get sued by toy manufacturing giants, I’ve decided that a known evil is better than an unknown possibility of a good time. Yes, I humbly accept that that makes no sense. It wasn’t meant to.
And thus I’m back on the wild world web having decided to let nifty little applications determine my social life. Of course there’s also the fact that compared to the real world, the illusion of the matrix is pretty good.
Anyway profile updated and random socially acceptable likes and dislikes are in situ and I can go back to ignoring the site.
In interesting news Madagascar 2 has finally arrived in our fair part of the world and much as i would like to see it… again… for the fourth time I think I shall pass. I can now recite King Julian’s new and improved insanity when woken up from a dead slumber. I feel, deep inside, that it will not be appreciated by the hoi polloi around me. So I shall continue to watch it in the privacy of my laptop. Streaming is so cool. As are cheap dvds of the streamed videos. Except of some time lag in the audio which was, after much wrestling, fixed.
But as I wanted to say but as usual got sidetracked, Madagascar 2, some say is not as funny as the first installment. Nay. I refute thy claims, critic. King Julian of course has been put on steroids for his mental condition and it’s worsened. The penguins are a trip.
Alex, Marty and this time even Gloria and Melman go into the usual sentiment trip and considering this time it’s in Africa, some much self-discovery and emancipation and yada yada happens that serves only to distract us from the real hero.
Bernie Mac will be sorely missed.
Go watch. Watch it. Maurice, you naughty little monkey, shake my arm.
In other such things the Mekaal Hassan Band (which I remember mentioning) and Shafqat Amanat Ali’s solo album (Tabeer) and to say the least very good. I’m not going to go into the cool production, the mature fusion of hindustani and rock and the very excellent voices in detail but you get the gist. Some disappointments though especially with Tabeer. Dum Ali Dum and Naina in particular lack any kind of substance. But like always it’s worth a listen and some songs will stick on.
So there it is life in a nutshell. More whenever.

PS I’m back on facebook because some mental plans for ganging up and consuming insane amounts of alcohol are made and propagated therein. It’s just easier to plan the hangover thus.

So as time and space and planetary alignments would have it I find myself way north of the usual latitude in the NCR recovering from the acute removal of a parotid. Long story but the bottom line is I have a funny haircut, a lopsided smile, an aching face and am grossing out the north with a suction drain sticking out of my neck. Which one hopes will come out today.
I also haven’t been writing for many reasons. Primarily since I’ve had nothing to write about, or if I have it’s just way too technical, neurosurgery-wise, since that’s all I’ve been up to.
The entertainment industry is in shambles. With the possible exception of House being available as a streaming video nothing spectacular has happened. We’ve finally as an industry broken into the hallowed grounds of animation with Roadside Romeo which as a movie sucks. I’ve been listening to the absolute worst music courtesy the radio.
Let’s play a game. Think of the worst song you’ve heard in modern times. The chances that I’d have operated listening to it and worse yet would know the lyrics and in moments of stress have even hummed it are close to 95%. The latest in the long list is the not so new Sajanani Vaari Vaari from Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd. What a song it is! But that is just one… there’s come songs from Cash and Race and other such monosyllabic movie titles whose soundtracks inundate my consciousness from time to time and in true altruistic fashion I ensure that the consciousness of all around me are also inundated by the same bad music.
So there’s the rub on work and entertainment.
What else is happening? The usual wikipedia trolling is getting me nowhere.
And yes a new day has dawned. America Voted for Obama, despite all the jokes and misgivings this is a momentous occasion. The world will not be the same and history has been rewritten.
Watched his acceptance speech through the haze of post operative delirium and I found myself thinking, “Yes, we can.” Brilliant speech. Now all we can do is to hope and pray he doesn’t go mental. Which is the word of the day by the way.
That’s all from here and now, from the other side of the knife and the back of beyond. As usual we end with promises to write more and draw more, to fill lives other than mine with joy and humor but we know deep down that the only thing that will actually happen is I’ll hack more heads and drill more holes and occasionally get mails chastising my choice of profession and the resultant step motherly treatment that this blog gets. Oh well, such is life (since I forgot where the apostrophe’s come in c’est la vie…)