Coffee Spoons

I'm a compulsive list-maker. I make lists of things to buy, to do, to throw away, to return, to get back from borrowers, to see, to remember, to make lists of...

So when it's time to take stock of possessions, contact packers and movers, ship everything off to unsuspecting and long-suffering friends while I traipse around the country a bit, what better way to kick off the process than by making a list? So here's the first list of the process. These are the things with which I've measured out my life over the last two years.

1. Music system, double deck (I still believe in making mixed tapes for people) and Disc-man, 1 of. Somewhat battered from 2 years on campus, but still going strong.

2. DVD player, 1 of. First investment after I started working, shows my priorities.

3. TV, 21 inches, 1 of. Brought home in a cab in the pouring rain, and carried up, pictures taken of it being installed in its new home, the modern day deity indeed!

4. Bean-bag, large, 1 of. Comfort-a-mundo!

5. Books, carton, 1 of. Boasting most volumes of Asterix, Calvin & Hobbes, and the rest, an esoteric, ecclectic collection representing book-buying whims over 2-years.

6. Music, carton, 1 of. Rock mingles with jazz, the blues light up the room, and through all of that, childhood favourites - Boots Randolph, Roger Williams and Disney tunes from The Jungle Book.

7. Lamp, tall, black, with orange shade, 1 of. Casts warm glow in shadowy room. Goes with orange bed-spread from Dilli Haat and rust-coloured curtains. Cosy!

Yep, I think it's a good collection of stuff to set up house with again. Looking forward to making new spaces mine. :)

In Which We See That Experience Is That Thing We Don't Learn From

And learn that things sometimes work out in the end.


My experience with flatmates has always been... well, a little [ imagine Psycho theme here] reeee-reeeee-reeee [Psycho theme over; if you're still hearing it, you've got issues].

So what made me think it would be any different this time? Well, perhaps the fact that I've barely met them, and this is just long-distance communication... And yet, already it's reee-reee-reee. Forcing me (and we're coming now to the crux of the matter) to be witheringly, lifetime-scarringly sarcastic. Screwing up, therefore, my chances of someone finding me a home before I actually move.

I'm almost sorry.

So anyway, what this post hasn't mentioned yet is that social gaffes are no longer an obstacle to winning jobs and influencing employers. A change is as good as a feast, as Margo said! The papers are in, the word is on the street, and there's a spring in my step.

Huzzah!

Days Like This...

"Hello, Rabbit," Pooh said, "is that you?"
"Let's pretend it isn't," said Rabbit, "and see what happens."
"I've got a message for you," said Pooh.
"I'll give it to him" said Rabbit.


~ A. A. Milne

Oh! Kolkata!

OhKolkata
Originally uploaded by progga.

Cal. You gotta love it!

And btw, proof of being a true bong lies in knowing exactly where this signboard is located!

Allergies

Since last morning, I've been feeling as though all my bodily fluids have turned to phlegm. I'm sneezing 10 times at a time - body-wracking, ribcage-cracking reverberating sneezes that start at my toes and rumble their way up. I spent most of last night awake because I had to keep getting up to blow by doze. And I'm surviving on hot soup and comfort cocoa.

I think this is an allergic reaction to Bombay. To work. To having to wake up in the morning and drag myself onto a train instead of hollering for someone to make me some tea and then going and sitting outside in the morning sunshine while the doggies cavort around me chasing imaginary squirrels and cats, or get me to throw them the ball. To having to sit in an office with no natural light, instead of spending the morning doing The Telegraph Quick Crossword (By arrangement with The Guardian) To getting home when daylight has died.

Livin' la vida loca sounds suspiciously like "Living in the Virar local."

Co-incidence? I think not.

Thoughts From An Airplane

Vignette 1

Mumbai from the air, at night, looks like a glittering sea creature of mammoth proportions, sprawled across the ocean. A jewel-encrusted starfish with gold spurs and tiny, shimmering, now-you-see-them-now-you-don't blue suckers. Extravagant, with tiny ant-cars and ant-people moving - rushing - to and fro, stringy highways full of absurd traffic crawling their way out of sight as we bank and turn.

How terribly exciting to be able to look down as we swoosh into the air and recognise the roads. To look down and say, "OK, there's the highway, that's the train track (and I bet that's a fast train)... and if so, then that's SV Road and that, Linking Road and hey, wow! That's Juhu Tara. Hurrah, I can see where I live from the air.

Why have I never been able to identify these roads before? Is it just that suddenly, everything seems more momentous?


Vignette 2

Lightning bolts around us. we've flown into mildly bad weather. Can lightning strike - and decimate - an airplane wing? And if it can and does, could an aircraft continue to fly, or would it sort of keel over sideways and fall into the sea? (It must be the movies - I never think of planes crashing on land - only the sea, with a great splash and gurgle and Davy Jones' locker. Death by shark.) No, no, go back to thinking positive thoughts - it's my optimism and faith that keeps this thing in the air.


Vignette 3

The difference between Business Class and Economy is that "in the event of an emergency landing on water", business class passengers have a greater chance of survival. They have life jackets. We have a "Seat Bottom Cushion for Floatation." So when we're all floundering in the sea, they'll be all cushy and inflated and possible passing out the cocktails, while we'll be hanging on for dear life. And if, by chance, a great white shark or other-scary-deep-sea-creature-associated-with-horrific-death-at-sea-about-whom-movies-have-been-made happens along to startle you and you lose your grip on your Seat Bottom Cushion - well, you'll have to hope someone lets you share his. And while you're jerking out of your cushion in horror, Business Class passengers can use their hands (opposable thumbs, hurrah!) to do something useful to scare the shark away and protect themselves. Perhaps they can throw your Cushion at it.


Vignette 4

Passenger next to me just too a wad of gum (less likely) or paan (more likely) or similar gross item out of his mouth and wiped it into the folds of a newspaper in his seat pocket. Lesson: always ask air hostess for fresh newspaper. And never open or touch the seat pocket or its contents again. Ever. Steward, could you please drown me in Dettol?

How To Wreck An Interview

or, Snatching Defeat from the jaws of Victory: A Dissertation

1. Walk in 1.5 hours early.
(How needy can you get?)

2. Carry a book. A Gerald Durrell, for heavens' sake, as though you were on your way to a picnic.
3. Send intermittent texts to the coordinating Catbert-ess, asking to meet your interviewer's boss.

4. Make your interviewer fetch you coffee before the interview begins.

5. At the end of the interview, just before stepping out, turn to interviewer and say, "Thank you for coming" so that he has to revert by saying, "No, no, thank you for coming."

Oh, well, at least it's good for a laugh (or many) over beer.