Category: General

I normally resort to penile and other technically-lewd means when I’m unable to elicit laughs in other ways. It is a weakness I will overcome…

another day.

I was reading on the BBC about how Durex plans on coming up with a line of extra-large condoms, you know, for all those well endowed South African men.

From the article “This could help condoms become cool,” he said. “Men will buy them to boost their ego.”

Silly people, size doesn’t matter…

if you’re a lesbian.

In response to an earlier comment. Because you might as well reuse what you type.

Let me start by saying the last post was an exaggeration based off of facts I made up. (As I always do, and will proceed to do in the following. It’s more fun that way.) The only opinion (not different from fact, for me, as explained above) I’m trying to put across is that people here, in large proportions, clearly don’t care about anything that happens outside their little bubble. As a result, they lack a clear understanding of most issues.

This is pretty much everybody, I don’t mean some hicks in some small town. I will be having a conversation with a seemingly normal person, and suddenly she’ll refer to communist+dictatorships in the same sentence, for example. As in refer to them believing they are one and the same thing. Even after much persuasion, it is hard to explain one is a kind of economy and the other is a form of governance, they don’t imply each other and they aren’t “inherently evil”. What does the average person know? They know east Europe, and that they were “enemies” and most of them were “commie dictatorships”. This, by the way, is an example of someone who I think has an above average world view.

The root problem? They don’t know because they don’t care, or sometimes even acknowledge the presence of a world outside theirs. What am I basing that on? Pretty much everything I see. It’d be impossible to enumerate them all, so I’ll pick few very different situations:

»News: Earthquake in, say, Somalia. Tens of thousands dead. You know what shows up on the news? “Local newscaster to have third baby”. And, as an after thought, they will (probably) casually mention other horrific events in different parts of the world, as the 43^rd item on the list.

»Sport: People in this country play games no one else in any other part of the world cares about, have a local set of leagues, have a “champion”, and go about referring to them as “world champions”. Don’t they understand there is a difference between this country and the world?

»REALITY TV: Even picking a more intelligent show (carefully hand picked—out of context—for effect) like the “Amazing Race”, you have characters who end up in foreign lands and scream at the locals for not understanding English! Sure it’s not representative of everybody, it’s just three or four people. But even one person is one person too many.

In the end, that’s all I am trying to say. I always tack on the “please be good to geeks”, because I am one (and I can correlate anything to people ogling over people other than geeks). Therefore I tried to tie it in by saying, if “you people” took as much time (doing something useful) as you do obsessing over what is happening between beautiful people (say Brad and Jen), the world will be a better place.

Unrelated site update: After years (literally) of sitting in some corner of bits of paper, I’ve uploaded some testimonials.

Judging by the kinds of topics I frequently bring up, one would hastily tend to assume I am this callous shallow person without a modicum of regard for anything truly deep—and you wouldn’t be very far off the mark. But sporadically, I do ponder over non-self-centered substantive issues, and I do form strong opinions on them.

Today just happens to be one of those days. And you, my lovelies, happen to be the lucky audience.

I’ve been in this country, now, for exactly three years. This country, which abundantly touts itself the land of opportunity, the home of the free, the blessed land of milk and bee regurgitated nectar… you know. In these three years, I’ve had ample opportunity to carefully observe these people, their culture, and society as a whole in an attempt to answer everyone’s favourite question—what’s the deal with this country?

The full blown answer to that question is incredibly verbose and tedious, so I’ll highlight the two fundamental problems which are, not surprisingly, inherently connected. For one, society as a whole is incredibly inward looking. And the second, being smart is not deemed cool. That’s it. I’ve ingeniously distilled all of society’s woes down to derivatives of these two, which in turn share a common root.

To delve a bit into the details, I’ll briefly get into each of these issues, starting with the second one because it is easier to understand, even if I can’t condone it—Being smart is not cool, while being dumb is perfectly acceptable. For example, the average parent here would rather their kid hit a home run in a little league game than get an A in a math test. It gets worse. Hitting the home run and failing the test is great, while not hitting the home run (a failure in sport) and topping the class makes you a geek—uncool. I am not saying being good at sports is bad, just that it needs to be instilled in kids that being well(-enough) read and knowledgeable about things going on is ALSO cool, or at least positive.

Somewhat related to this is our first problem—society as a whole is terribly inward looking—as a direct consequence of ignorance, because knowing stuff is uncool. For the most part, the average person doesn’t know or care about anything outside the confines of their daily existence. You might say this is normal and expected. It is, IF all you do is go about living your life in that little confine. That is in no way the way this country goes about its business. As in it is NOT OK if the average person (and the ones they elect to make major decisions) is retarded like so, and the country goes into war (as an example) and what not trying to impose its whim on nations whose culture it doesn’t bother to understand.

So, in effect, rather than care to understand why people in regions of the world hate them, they proceed to (as they always tend to do) declare these people “hate them for no apparent reason”, or better yet “hate their free way of life”.

I have news for you. No one hates your “freedom”. They hate you. They hate you for effecting arbitrary decisions like the setting up of Israel by displacing people from their existing homes in Palestine.

I don’t have a problem with absolute, indiscriminate (ab)use of power in an attempt to impose one’s views on the rest of the community. If the person doing the imposing is intelligent, it is in everyone’s (the common stupid man) interest to follow orders for a global good. What is NOT OK is attempt to impose views, not realize you’re doing it, have people hate you, not realize you’re causing the hate, and then proceed to follow through with other similar policies and wonder why people hate you so much.

That’s just retarded. Read up on some history or something. Then go out and do whatever it is you do with full and extreme force. Again, I have no problem with extreme violence or anything, as long as the violent party is intelligent about it, and know what it is doing, and why.

So the next time you’re about to exclaim “Just what is the fucking deal with this country?”, calm down, and cheerfully mutter (like you mean it) “Geeks are so sexy”. You know you’ve done your good deed for the day as the kiddies proceed to stay informed in an attempt to impress you. The operative words being “stay” and “informed”.

Good job.

Since I’m having difficulty coming up with topics of conversation—where by “conversation” I mean a scheme where I talk and you listen—I decided to revert to old faithful staples.

I begin with a question. Not a rhetorical question, a serious one. Do women intentionally over-sway their hips when they walk? Or is it one of those natural nature-clearly-prefers-women and loves-to-give-them-trance-inducing-power-over-men stunts I see so often?

If you got that one, here’s another. It’s about pee, so you probably shouldn’t be reading this if you don’t want to. Is it so wrong that some males just prefer peeing sitting down? Or is this just another one of those situations where you can’t win? You sit down, you get laughed at. You stand, you aren’t accurate enough, you end up getting it where you didn’t plan to, and you and you get mocked again. Just great.

What? Put off by questions that don’t follow, what you declare, “appropriate decorum”? Fine. Here are conversation excerpts from the past few weeks, especially picked because I never in my life thought I’d hear them.

“I really need to go. Got to shave my legs. It’s been so long, it’s not even stubbly anymore, it’s getting soft”.

“Anyone who’s even contemplating combing over should shave their heads. Women love shaved heads.”

“That last bus driver was a great shag”.

“Hey, is that a white hair I see on your head? You want me to pluck it for you?”

“Doing the worm reeeally hurt. The last time I tried it, it went well. But I was 9, and hadn’t hit puberty yet.”

After all my travels and what not, I’ve returned home actually motivated to get some work done. Now, being motivated doesn’t necessarily imply a lot of work is being done. It just means I am excited about trying.

Sometime at the end of this month or early the next, I have a semi-major exam in which I present my preliminary research proposal. Unsurprisingly, it’s called the “preliminary examination”. So a bulk of my time from now until then should go toward getting things ready for that. Of course, the operative word there being “should” and I’m actually spending much of my waking moments playing Metroid Prime.

(On a side note, if you have a GameCube, you must buy and play Metroid Prime. If you don’t, you must buy a GameCube, and then follow the above instructions. I cannot begin to describe how freaking awesome it is (yes, as good as Windwaker), and I will reserve spewing tons of well deserved praise for another day.)

Returning to our original stream of thought, after this exam (as in if I pass) I will be officially a PhD candidate. You know, the guys who don’t go to class and lurk around in coffee shops. You know, the ones in all black and shaggy facial hair and pseudo-intellectual eyewear. Yes, I will officially be recognized as one of “those guys”.

That’s pretty much it from the real-life end. That, and during the limited time my mom was around, she kept getting me a ton of random-yet-extremely-useful things, and now, living at home is a lot more fun.

I’d forgotten the joys of spending hours meticulously filing my nails.

Oh, and I haven’t eaten a meal out in a long time. Which is a huge change for me, considering I hadn’t eaten a meal at home in over a year. Just as everything else in life, I don’t use recipes or any empirical rules. I just “wing it”, and things turn out fine each time. Every single time. I am just as surprised as I am proud. All those years of vaguely hanging around the kitchen rather than playing outside or whatever has its uses.

I can try to lie that this change is brought about by my need to be creative and try new things in a totally different environment — the kitchen — but the truth is I have absolutely no money, and eating out every single meal isn’t a viable option.

At least until the travel reimbursements roll in.

Is he dead? Is he missing? Is Texas really as bad as everyone imagines it to be? Is he busy? Is he scrounging around for motivation to write? Is he just fucking lazy?

Is it that delineate is generating the requisite 1000-1500 site-wide hits per day he would otherwise be whoring for? Isn’t he taking his already-paltry loyal readerbase for granted?

In short — no, no, definitely not the parts I saw, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, and thank you.

I have stuff to say, but for now I am content with driving traffic elsewhere. If you haven’t seen delineate recently, I suggest you browse around for a bit. All recent pictures are from the UK. Sometime soon, there will also be a candid people photo; Something socially stunted me doesn’t often do.

Click around, gasp in awe and excitement, comment, worship my skill, get addicted… . You know you want to.

I was scrounging through PhD Comics to find the strip that best represents my current sentiment.

And I did!

It is normal I tells you. What I’m going through is normal.

I’ll keep this short, and informative. I leave early tomorrow morning on yet another trip, to Austin, Texas. This is hopefully the last time I need to be away from home for the next few months to come. I kinda miss my bed. Anyway, in case you aren’t of the assumption Texas is some hick state with their large vehicles (with ornamental horns no less), cowboys and a weak spot for steak, here are some fun Texas facts:

» Rodeo is the official state sport of Texas, though High School Football is more popular.
» In Texarkana owners of horses may not ride them at night without tail lights.
» It is illegal for children to have unusual haircuts in Mesquite, Texas.
» In Texas, it’s illegal to put graffiti on someone else’s cow.

OK, I’ll stop now.

I’ve gotten to see and experience the most interesting things during the course of this trip. Some examples follow.

» I got to spend some time with the first ever open lesbian couple I’ve known. Though they are intelligent and funny and fun to hang out with, this is not nearly as exciting or interesting as porn might make it seem. Speaking of porn, apparently there are courses for such.

» Of course, I got to see men in skirts. (And yes, a skirt by any other name is just as funny.)

» I got to handle a bagpipe. Now I, personally, can play a few other instruments, but this one is hard as hell to get going. This wasn’t just any bagpipe either, this bagpipe was played for the queen.
» I got to stay at a hotel metres away from one of the blasts, just 3 days before said blasts. Of course, I often took the “route with the blast” on the way to and from said hotel. It’s quite humbling to see the same areas reduced to rubble. (There are no pictures of the devastation, because each time I walk up to the area and try to take out my camera, my stomach knots up.)
» I got to see (really rowdy) riots—as in people protesting to have their voices heard during the course of the G8 summit. I saw numerous shops and such boarded up to minimize vandalism as the mobs walked past.

I did scream along with them for a while, as some of the stuff they were fighting for really was worthwhile (but they didn’t seem old or smart enough to realize it),

but broke away as I recognized the possibility of spending the night in a Scottish jail.

The only thing probably worse than being in jail at home, is being in jail in a foreign country.
» I got to spend a couple of days at what is probably the toughest city in the world, Glasgow. Forget New York, this is where it’s at — if you fancy getting arbitrarily mugged. There is no concept of “bad neighbourhoods” and “good neighbourhoods”, it’s all bad. This is one place I will never ever return to, ever.
» I got to roam around Trinity college, in Oxford, where the likes of Isaac Newton worked. That was pretty humbling too. But being asked by the guide, “Are you a scientist? In my 20 years of doing this, no one’s ever asked me this sort of stuff before” felt good. I’m a “scientist”, yay.
» I got to see people being cruel to cute little pink animals.

I’m finally home. I’m leaving again in 3-4 days to Austin, but at least I’m home for these few days. And it feels so good. I spent half my day lounging in my bath tub and the other half in my bed — the operative words there being the two ‘my’s.

The journey home was mostly uneventful, which is good. There were some near ruinous delays and much necessitated running around, but that’s nothing new.

<side story>
One of the first things I noticed on landing in London was that the people there, in general, are less attractive. A couple of weeks later, another friend who showed up there commented the exact same thing on entry. Being the awful people that we are, we proceeded to—on seeing a relatively hot woman pass by—check her out, and if we both agreed, add her to the count of hot women we’d seen.

A week or so later, we reached 20. Which is pathetic, considering over 6 million people, for instance, use the tube to get around each day.

This little game is actually rather hard to stop playing, and I continued on even as I was waiting to check-in to my plane. Within 4 minutes, my count had crossed 50.

Boy was I glad to be getting home.
</side story>

(Anywho, for those curious, it’s girlfriend and not friend. And they live together and not not live together.)

(I’ve started saying “why not” a lot after hanging out recently with a bunch of crazy ozzies who’d go about doing the most retarded things, usually after gettng drunk, by prefixing said activity with a “why not”. Though amusing being an observer, this should not be attempted at home.)

Why not?

I’m just going to go ahead and say it. I mean, I am going to admit what is bothering me. It is so freaking multifaceted, I don’t even know where to start. For one, I look around, and most people I know are “happily settled”, or nearly there.

Just what do I mean by that? — I mean they have their fancy real jobs, the 6-figure salaries, the strong relationship with the hot member of opposite sex, the chic wardrobe, and all that sort of thing.

That’s it isn’t it? What we’re all striving for in some form or the other through whatever paths we’ve choosen? The quest to get to a point where we’re—in a “happily settled” sense—finally contented?

And then, I look in the mirror and see me. An aged, incomplete shell of person who hasn’t in any sense “made it”. No real job, no money, alone, not really all that intelligent or learned… you get the idea.

Of course, this gets worse, much worse.

I’m a pretty critical and judgmental person, and when I see people, I don’t see them, or where they are in life, but my idealization of where I presumed they’d be — extrapolating from what I saw in them as potential. This makes it suck so much more, because in my minds eye, I’m the “cool one” who should’ve made it. The exact same folk I’ve mocked and derided for being less intelligent, educated, or capable, are the ones who seem to be making it.

No fancy diplomas, no eons in fancy schools, no inherent-godlike-intelligence, they’re not even particularly fit or attractive, nothing. And yet they drive in that fancy car to that fancy home from that 42^nd floor office with that hot woman in the passenger seat.

What gives?

Finally, my absolute “fear of the real world” has resulted in taking refuge for eternity in school, further fuelling my social ineptitude. There is a clear difference between being a student, and defining your life around being a student. My attempt at escapism has resulted in me crossing that line a long time ago.

It’s strange how you need to be on a break and really far away from work to get a clear perspective on how much everyone’s grown, and how static you’ve been. You and your numerous diplomas in plaques.

Which returns us to the web log’s catchphrase — emphatically static.

The darshan in Manchester completed, I finally wobbled back to London late the next afternoon. As much as I like the charm and passion of “smaller towns” (I’ve even forgiven their excruciating accents), it feels good to be back in a real city. If there are two kinds of people in this world, there are small-town folk and city folk—and they don’t ever really mix.

As much fun as everything’s been so far, there have been some things that’ve bothered me since I’ve gotten here.

First, what is the deal with the lack of thrash cans everywhere? It’s like this is some concept that’s eluded this geographic region almost completely, and they’d rather employ some odd guy (or woman) to walk around behind people and pick stuff up after them rather than buy a god damned BIN.

That’s not so bad however, as you soon get used to the concept of leaving stuff arbitrarily strewn about, and let someone else pick up after you. You soon realize it’s actually quite handy. And then, as you’re walking toward one of the few existing thrash cans, you begin to miss that guy.

Moving onto more relevant things, I’m seriously bothered by the fact I don’t understand the nature of the relationship between my friend and his “friend”. Technically, in all references, she’s a friend. But in actions, she seems like anything but. It’s not like they’re living together or anything, but only barely. For all practical purposes, they’re around each other every non-working moment—from shopping, cooking, hanging out, and a lot more whose details I will not get into. And it’s not just that, when they’re referring to stuff, it’s always “ours”. As in, the kinds of things I would call mine, like “my couch”, I often tended to hear “our couch”. That’s oddly disconcerting.

(Mind you, I’ve only been around them for less than a day in total. This might not be terribly informed.)

It’s not like it matters in the least, it’s just so annoying that I fell I don’t know something I probably should’ve been let in on. It’s just not the sort of thing that comes up in polite conversation, you know, “oh, so are you sleeping with her?”—doesn’t really roll off the tongue easily. It can’t even be interspersed unnoticed into otherwise innocuous conversation.

These sorts of things rarely concern me in the least; I don’t know what my problem is.

Actually, it’s quite clear what my problem is. I’m just not in the frame of mind to admit it to myself—let alone you.

… after the Oasis gig.

Clearly, the concert was one of the more intense experiences of my life. Like I said, I’d surprisingly easily made my way to Manchester. The concert was at this huge stadium (where football games and such usually take place), and leaving the station, I had absolutely no difficulty finding it—just followed the path littered with ticket scalpers.

I made it there by 4:30, the gates having opened by 3:00 or so. It was about 20-30% full at that time, and all sorts of no-name (and semi-named) bands were busy keeping the audience awake. The most notable ones being the Coral, who, though cool, are seriously overrated. In a little while, I met James and Stewart—a totally inappropriate story, for a later time.

Now moving along, as the no-name bands got more recognizable, crowds started filling the arena. Tens… hundred? of thousands, lost in this sea of Oasis fandom goodness. By 9 or so in the evening, it was beyond packed.

People EVERYWHERE. All (drunk and smoking) and/or (doing drugs). (You need to parse the Boolean algebra on that sentence carefully). The mood was insanely… passionate. Things started with people throwing these big colourful beach balls, then empty beer cups, then cups full of beer, then shirts, then PEOPLE.

It was intense, and Oasis hadn’t even come on yet.

<sidetrack>
I was sitting close to one of the hottest woman I’ve seen, in a figure hugging one piece dress that barely came down to her upper thigh. And it kept riding up even higher as she crossed and uncrossed her legs. Anyway, in these few hours, she’s been sitting all calm and ridiculously gorgeous, continuously drinking and smoking, while her boyfriend (?) is all over her, constantly kissing her knees and thighs in between sips of beer. And then, it happens—she pukes like 4 pints of beer and passes out. He ends up embarrassed and has to carry her out of there.

She didn’t look too pretty then. And Oasis hadn’t even come on yet.
</sidetrack>

Around 9, Oasis comes on, and the crowd goes fucking insane—and the sea of thronging fans flow toward the stage, only a steel, concrete and bouncer barricade separating them from the band. And then, it happens—the teeming masses break down the barricade and Oasis, who’d barely started playing stopped in the interest of crowd safety.

“If one of you gets injured, it’ll show up on a T-shirt on your way out.”

While things were paused waiting for the stewards to fix the barricade, Liam suggests the crowd keeps itself entertained by singing Oasis songs to themselves—but the crowd has other ideas. For the next half an hour, pretty women were desperately climbing anyone’s shoulder they could get on, so the camera (which was hovering over and through the crowds) would catch them, and they could flash their breasts.

This, ladies and gents, is entertainment. Half an hour of young, pretty women (and eeek, some old ones and SOME MEN) screaming hysterically and going topless.

Anyway 9:30, everything’s fixed and the band begins to play. The crowd goes to a new level of insane, me included. Jumping wildly, stripping, dancing, screaming lyrics and generally going berserk. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody died in a stampede or two. They played many old favourites, and a few tracks from their new album “Don’t believe the truth”.

I thought it was all awesome, but an objective observer I am not.

Much later, close to midnight, they were done and as the huge-ass speakers and strobe lights calmed down, people flowed out of the stadium. I then ended back at the station (the details of which are elaborated in a separate story) to find the last train to London was long gone. I decided to, like a 1000 or other so people, camp out at the station for 8 or whatever hours until the first train next morning.

I’m writing this up instead of going to sleep.

Because it was fucking awesome, and I’m not sleepy.

There is much confusion in London, but I am fine (not like you care).

And I’m not in London. Updates will follow when I get access to the internet, as in properly. For now, delineate is your best option, as I’ve uploaded pictures there, which will show up over the next 10-12 days or so.

Here is where I am now, in case you’re curious.

It’s freaking awesome. Enjoy.