Where i couldnt think of a subject...

I did think of calling this post, "Where I am alive to write about it...(Part 4)", but I decided against it.

It's been two weeks since New York, and life has settled back to normal, or as close to normal as it gets. Well actually a trifle boring.

Saw just one movie, Alien versus Predator. The Predators won. Kind of. Watch the movie. It was not as bad as I expected it to be.

Daya should be in Bangalore about now. Meeting my parents. I wonder if that will set off any explosions. Hope not.

The apartment is finally clean.

The part of the blog that is below this statement was written a week after the part of the blog that is above the part of the blog that is below the part of the blog that is above. Chilli, your favorite prof.

Saw another movie. "Open water", and now I will never go scuba diving ever.

A short and sweet post.

Later people.

Where I am alive to write about it...(Part 3)

And now the concluding part of our epic saga.

When you last saw them, our intrepid hero and his companions had just returned from a second night out in Manhattan. The task that lay ahead of them was two fold, dropping Divya off at Newark International Airport and getting back to State College.

We woke that morning, a tad late. Just an hour and a half late. I got just four hours of sleep. After being woken by Daya and getting directions from him, we set off on what would become an epic journey.

We reach Newark Airport completely incident free and drop off Divya at Terminal A (Delta Atlanta). And then we leave for good old' State College.

We reach it without incident four hours later.

Um...

No.

We reach State College, seven hours later after just a few minor incidents.

So there we are. We've just left Newark Airport and we actually make it to I-80 incident free. I was hungry so we decided to get something to eat. The first detour we took got us lost in the wilds of New Jersey (Surprisingly New Jersey does have wilds). We end up at a really desolate lawyers office where a secretary and a cop point us back to the freeway. Well, the secretary gave us the correct directions; the cop gave us the wrong ones. He did follow us and then give us the correct directions.

The next detour we took resulted in us reaching a PNCBank branch, which was convenient (My bank, so could go to the ATM). Now we have money but still no food.

The final major detour for food was then taken (My grammar sucks and I'm pretty sure that I am mixing up tenses with, for lack of a better phrase, gay abandon). We reach this nice, friendly deli place off I-80. Good food, egg and cheese on rolls and a Danish. That’s what I had. And a cup of coffee.

Well…

Um…

How do I put this?

No way of sugar coating it.

The car caught fire.

Smoke was pouring out from under the fucking hood. I kid you not.

Stepping back a bit.

Breakfast being eaten. Nice. Pleasant conversation and company.

A guy walked up to my table, points to the car and asks if it’s mine.

Hmmm…Lets do this as a dialog.

Mustached Guy(MG): Hey, is that your car?
Me: Yup.
MG: I think it’s on fire.
Me: Whaaaaaa!
Me: Running frantically outside.

Actually I did not say that. I did that.

Back to the story. The car is on fire. And then a bunch of guys appear from nowhere. They pop open the hood, remove the burning clumps of grass. Pour water over the smoking innards, close the hood and disappear.

The fire incidentally was clumps of grass stuck under the car from Friday’s incident. They decided to catch fire for some reason on Monday.

The fire is out. We go back in. Finish our breakfast. Fill up on coffee. And leave.

That was a rather inadequate narrative, but that’s the best that I can do.

Well, the rest of the trip was really pretty eventless. Made a lot of rest stops on the way because I was so sleepy, drank heaps of coffee, ate lots of chocolate and stayed awake.

Thirty miles outside of state college, I smashed my right thumb in the car door. Just to make the drive back more challenging.

That’s about it.

Dropped the car off at Enterprise. Didn’t have to pay a cent. A bit of advice gentle reader, if ever you rent a car, TAKE EVERY POSSIBLE KIND OF INSURANCE.

The saga ends.

The cat is in Manhattan.

Where I am alive to write about it...(Part 2)

As promised, the rest of the epic weekend.

When we last saw them our intrepid hero (that's me) and his inept, helpless companions (that's my inept helpless companions) had just left JFK. And now the story continues...

We left JFK at two thirtyish and promptly got lost in Queens. So I asked some dudes for directions and finally got pointed towards Manhattan (The directions pretty much were, go straight and stop at the river). We drove over some bridge and managed to get to Manhattan at threeish. The view of the skyline from the bridge was breathtaking, or so I have been told, since I had to keep my eyes glued to the road and could not see the skyline.

Well, it's three in the morning. We are in Manhattan. We have no place to stay and I realize that we are pretty much out of gas. Yes, a nearly empty tank. Yay.

We then decided that it would be prudent for us to get some gas. And this is the US; getting gas should not be a problem should it? This country is in love with the automobile, isn't it? Small hitch. There do not seem to be many gas stations in Manhattan. As a matter of fact, I am now convinced that there is only one gas station in Manhattan. Again I get directions to the gas station from some kind late birds. The place naturally is as far away from our present location as possible, without actually being in the river. After a lengthy struggle, which involves me trying to navigate the one ways and having Divya (person picked up at JFK) hop out and ask for directions from a deli we finally arrive at the gas station.

Naturally the guy in charge at the gas station was a desi.

After a minor struggle to figure out how the pump actually worked, we filled her up and were off on our merry way.

Um...

Not really.

We still did not have a place to stay.

So, we begin the search for a place to stay. Both my passengers are now comatose. We drive up and down Amsterdam Avenue looking for a cheap hotel. Notice the emphasis on cheap. A guy at an all night deli told me about a cheap hotel. Unfortunately his accent was so thick that he might have been telling me about his granduncle's back pain condition for all the sense he made. Another guy at an all-night cafe told me about a cheap place called the Amsterdam Inn.

Ended up there. The cheapest available room cost a hundred and fifty bucks a night. We left.

I finally broke. Called Chinmay's friend. It was now five in the morning. He arranged for us to stay at a friend's place on 109th street. And that is where we finally ended up.

I dropped off the passengers and then spent 10 minutes hunting for a parking place. Made one abortive attempt at parallel parking and then gave up. Finally found a spot on Cathedral Street. Parked there. Before that I was pulled up by a cop on suspicions of being a terrorist (The car had a temporary sticker and permanent plates, which is highly suspicious, I do agree).

I finally hit the sack at five thirty, and sleep the sleep of the dead until I wake at eleven thirty.

We then made another stab at the Amsterdam Inn. The cheapest room is still a hundred and fifty bucks. We decide against it and I make a call to Daya and we get to crash at his place.

We reach his house in Summit at two after I drive the treacherous route from New York with crazy drivers driving at insane speeds. One small deviation, when I missed an exit but we found our way back, and ended up in Summit and peace.

We leave by train for the city a few hours later. We take in Times Square, I was amused a great deal and we arrived back in Summit at three in the morning.

The next day we left for Manhattan again after a smashing brunch provided by Daya. Roamed Manhattan a bit, had to restrain Anusha from going into a gay bar and took the Harbor Lights boat ride, which was truly fantastic. Had dinner at a truly expensive Mexican place and ended up at Times Square again before we returned to Summit.

The conclusion and the exciting fire in the car, in my next post.

Um...

I also wish to reiterate that I did not start the argument on the train.

Where I am alive to write about it...(Part 1)

Well, here we are again boys and girls. Been sometime since we last met. A bit has happened in the interim, and as the title says, I am alive to write about it.

It was a blustery Friday evening when a passenger and I set out to New York City in a Nissan Centra. We reached I-80 relatively incident free and were going on our merry way, when I drifted off.

Yes, gentle audience, on I-80 West at a speed of seventy miles an hour, in the fast lane I decided to drift off. I drift back into semi-consciousness and notice that I am on the grass divider. That's no big deal. All I'm supposed to do is to drift gently back onto the road.

What I instead decide to do is panic, (Why? Coz it seemed to be such a good idea at the time) and slam on the brakes.

Not a good idea.

Not a good idea at all.

Well I then promptly lose control of the car and it spins and does a complete three sixty a couple of times before coming to a stop with the front bumper against the railing in the service lane on the opposite side of the freeway, which is I-80 East. Notice that the car managed to miss the traffic that was coming down the two lanes at seventy miles an hour.

So there we are.

In the service lane. Perpendicular to the road. A couple of old men stop their cars and tell me to get mine out of the way, because I could still get hit. So I backed onto the road (Notice I was not thinking clearly.) and drove to an exit where I cleaned the car at a car wash and continued to JFK.

Got lost a couple of times on the way. Took a few wrong exits and ended up in some really bad neighborhoods in Newark, but we finally reached JFK. I did have to drive through Manhattan to get to the airport and that was great fun.

Well the car was pretty badly fucked. The air conditioning was destroyed and the steering column had this disconcerting tendency to vibrate when I went above sixty. And occasionally the gears would not shift properly from neutral to drive.

So we finally picked up the person from JFK and...

Well the weekend in Manhattan will be described later.

So will the drive back, when the car caught fire and I was falling asleep…
That’s it for now folks. More later.

Where I am awake in the emptiness of my old apartment

Here I am again, the rest of my worldly possesions have been loaded up into a cart and await the push to Nittany. I await the carpet cleaners, after which it shall be farewell Parkway Plaza.

Well just farewell C building. I'm pretty sure I have a friend in B building.

She may disagree though.

I have been up for ages now, cleaning this blasted apartment. The oven was the worst of the lot.
But I'm done now.

I still havent disconnected the modem or the router. I'll do that when the cleaners arrive. My last few moments of broadband. Well at least until Thursday.

I'm tending to drift a bit as I type. I need to sleep.

Inders online right now and he's turned antiblog.

Anusha's online and sending sad smileys and sighing.

Achu's online and he's silent.

Inder just bought a new car. He seems a tad excited about it.

Where I am asleep in the mess of my old apartment

A slight recap.

I did not focus on my first long drive alone, in my previous post, so I shall do so now.
Yes, my first long drive at the tender age of twenty five.

I took West College Avenue out of town and drove to parts of State College I hardly knew existed. I couldn’t see much; the night was a tad too dark, the road a tad too narrow, the driver a tad too nervous. But I enjoyed it. A few bad moments, when the windshield fogged over from the outside, and I kept desperately wiping it from the inside. And when I ran through a red light, because...Um no excuses. I just didn’t see the light turn.

The drive lasted an hour. A very enjoyable hour. I think I will be driving a lot more.

A brief interlude.

A word from our sponsors Messrs Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr:

The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me her
Lead me to you door

The wild and windy night
That the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears
Crying for the day
Why leave me standing here
Let me know the way

Many times I’ve been alone
And many times I’ve cried
Any way you’ll never know
The many ways I’ve tried

But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Don’t leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door

But still they lead me back
To the long winding road
You left me standing here
A long long time ago
Don’t leave me waiting here
Lead me to your door
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

I rather like that song.

Well we moved. Partially. I think I will have to junk most of the furniture. I find that I will actually miss Parkway Plaza, and I wonder why?

Time and distance. Time and distance, is the answer, I suppose. Time is not on my side, and distance has decided to be a bastard too.

What I need is a TARDIS. I'd rather fight Daleks, Icemen and the Master, than continue to do this.

Since this post has pretty much gone the way of the previous one, I will ramble on a bit.

I am twenty-five. I might have mentioned that fact before, but do try to remember it this time, gentle reader. I am twenty-five and I wonder whether the best years of my life are behind me, and all that lies ahead is the long slippery slide into adulthood? A future barren of fun and excitement? Where boredom rules and mundanity prances in the prairies of normalcy.

That scares me.

A lot.

I did once say that the perfect age was my current age, whatever it is at that time. I certainly hope so. But I begin to doubt it.

Incidentally Doom3 released. To the instruments of death and mayhem people.

The cat provides backup.

Where I wax seriouser...

Well, I'm depressed. Really, really depressed.

Bear with me as I proceed to do the famous "Rajneesh wallowing in self pity" act.

I suppose I should start at the very beginning. To my ardent fans this is the event that caused me to get so memorably drunk. This is the event that caused me to rant. I don't think I have been able to get out of this blue funk since then.

At least I haven't been able to get out of it for long. And each time the non-blue funk intervals seem to get shorter and shorter (Chilli funk isn't funky so let it go. Please.).

I'm moving into my new apartment this weekend with a couple of new kids and this seems to have added to the depression. Apparently, when you expect one roommate and you instead get two brand new roommates who aren't your good friend, you tend to be a bit disappointed.

Um...I apologize for the rather muddled grammar and unclear thought in that previous paragraph, but you get my drift.

We rented a car. I drove it around a bit. A little more than a bit. I have found that I actually enjoy driving. This is inspite of the fact that I pretty much suck as a driver. So I filled the tank with gas, and drove out of town around midnight. Ended up in the middle of nowhere. Nearly gave a poor dude a heart attack when I ran a red light.

I literally tried to drive away my depression, but it did not work. It left for a while when I rode into town again, but it is now back and worse than ever.

I saw her today at the reception
A glass of wine in her hand
I knew she was gonna meet her connection
At her feet was a footloose man
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you might find
You get what you need
...

I tip my hat to Mick and the boys. Rock on, dudes.

I will contradict myself.

I haven't been in a blue funk all summer.

I have had different, completely independent blue funks with intervals of non-blue funkness.

Yes, that is better.

Redemption. The world has to redeem itself in my eyes. It can go about this in two ways. Either go through the crap that I have had flung at me, which would mean that this planet earth would have to blow up in a giant fireball. Or make up for the crap with five hundred billion dollars(US) in my bank account(PNCBANK, routing number and checking account number available on request).

This is probably not the right time for me to post anything. I am pretty sure that I am not thinking clearly and that my judgment is impaired. But I do not seem to give a fuck.

I will ramble on.

A new word courtesy of Pearls Before Swine : A Rajneeshcentric universe. Ah if it were so, but tis unfortunate that it is not. A tiny unimportant speck is the Rajneesh. The aliens on Grabloyx, do not give a damn about him(Him = me). They are all busy watching "The Bold and the Bractowwoxmok".

A shout out to Chilli's blog. A word I hate: Funda. A phrase I like: "Life, she goes on".

An apology.

This blog will continue to be intensely personal and irritatingly cryptic. I do wonder who would want to waste any time reading the maudlin thoughts of a perpetually spaced out grad student.

I should give you, my gentle reader a trenchant, forthright opinion on the matters of the day, art, philosophy and life. So here goes.
Matters of the day: Kerry should win.
Art: If it looks like crap, dont buy it.
Philosophy:
Life: She goes on.

I can't resist this. What the fuck was the deal with the well and the candle? Please someone do explain that to me.

I used to be cynical and hard. I do remember that. Please, can I go back to that?

The clock has struck four and my eyes begin to shut. I bid thee a fond adieu, gentle reader.

I wait for Starcraft 2.

The cat is actually an alien explorer from Grabloyx.

That's all folks.

Have a great night.

Where I wax serious...

Redemption.

I am going to be cryptic.

Redemption.

Not my story, so I am going to be cryptic.