slippery reflections

Melancholia

2012-01-08T17:23:00.001+05:30

Beautiful an all but super slow mo, in a movie, should not be overused. Simply because of the epic waste of time that it is. Starting off as a wedding reception, it seemed to be all happy. Then I saw Kirsten Dunst's face, that could only mean one thing. Blood will be spilt. Someone's, something's blood. Something in my vicinity. Then they make her act in a psycho role, again. Such a happiness lacking world she lives in always. Her poor new husband must be scarred for life, but then again, life doesn't last too long in an apocalyptic world. I'm beginning to think Charlotte Gainsbourg can talk only in wheezes. Everyone is going mental in different ways (this is without them having a clue that they all won't be alive too long), they all hate each other (makes you think that they just picked random irritating characters and put them together to make a movie, no back story, no logic, just full of hateful smiters), they're all going to die together (no, they don't know this, none of them watch telly, listen to news, nothing, they're devoid of all hype that the governments and media would create around apocalypse which makes it even more moronic). Makes you think about what you would do if you knew death was approaching (during the movie. yes, there's that much time during the movie, you could even construct a blog post about it in that time.). Death not just to yourself but death to the whole of life on earth… Isn't that the most insanest ways to die? I'd fucking love it. No one to leave behind, no memories left, nothing to worry about, quick and easy. Isn't that even better than immortality. Dying together, mhhmm, best! Fuckall lead, aimless and plot-less, all of them needed to be awoken from a dumb trance and made to converse, deep conversations about what they really felt. Then maybe you'd have a halfway decent movie. An artsy pastiche is not good enough. No, it does worse, it makes you consider breaking your nice mac for having downloaded it at all and then showing you it, in super slow-mo.

I mean come-ON! (in true bluth style)

Machete Don't Text

2012-01-03T10:53:00.000+05:30

this is where people's lives differ from each others'. you see a potential opportunity, far-fetched at the moment, but it won't be a 'potential', if you don't wait around for fate to do its thing right? waiting for fate is such a grey area and sadly i only like blacks and whites. other people might prefer shades of greys to flat colours yes? either you get slapped or snogged in life, i prefer the slap/snog situation to hoping/speculating/assuming/deriving.

On another note:

"You just fucked with the wrong mexican."

the wrong mexican

(image found here, NOT my work)

i wish i could say that to someone and mean it (not the mexican bit). it would fit with the enraged image no? Machete (ma-cheth-ey) must've been muchas awesome before all the cutting and chopping to suit tv audiences. watched it on tv yesterday and i sensed the awesome it could be, if only i could see how the blood spurted from his forked eye or how the flesh cleaved when he used the garden mower on that fellow's face. for this genre of movies, it becomes almost boring without the violence and blood. the story and surrounding scenes is just a build-up to the grand, full-of-WIN violent violence. it just teases you now and indian tv has increasingly become full of nothing with all their dumb rules. make everything generic then, so that people who can't stop their bratty children from watching inappropriate content on tv have less work to do. they can continue being spineless dipshit parents while we suffer the death of good telly.

but whatte hot she was in this one! i have massive drool-love for her, just look at that, faaaak!

The World Is Quiet Here

2011-12-31T19:43:00.003+05:30

Happy New Year. Be merry. I made a Things that look like other things-esque greeting card that doubles as a desktop wallpaper. Mighty clever eh!

Download 2560x1600

Slow Storm

2011-12-30T14:34:00.000+05:30

image ©ibnlive.in

it's such a lazy day. things seem slow compared to the wind. rain falls from everywhere. the sky remains a constant 10% grey. work's been suspended, the cyclone's just an excuse. it's the end of the year and it doesn't feel any different. measuring intangible things sounds a bit dubious to me. it's the time to do nothing. watch a movie maybe. let me go scour my collection to see what i might want to watch: the princess bride maybe?

a song for the rainy end of days:

also, have you noticed the christmassy youtube scrolling thingie? looks like a spider.

like that saying "live enough and prosper".

House

2011-12-24T19:50:00.000+05:30

house has turned into a show i watch every week to discover one cool song. that one song they pick to end the episode on. i'd fast forward to the end to catch only the song since the show's become a repetitive, slightly annoying ordeal but i'm giving it another chance. it's house! i'd never have guessed that House would pain me but his steady build-up of depression, solipsism and his utter contempt for grown-up adult behaviour when a situation calls for grown-up adult behaviour becomes a bit much for me to take. a lost-like blind belief in the show can only take it thus far. now 13, chase and taub are all missing, so is cuddy. so we're left to watch a fakely pissed off wilson, a fully mental house, a needy foreman and a clone-ish replacement for that intern chick Masters do all the things others have already done on the show. so why has it suddenly turned into annoyance? because now i get the feeling that they're taking us for granted. we'll make a show from a recycled shit script, with only 3 of the original cast members and you'll all still watch it right? right now, yes, 2 more episodes later, i might not. anyhoo, the beautiful voice i discovered via house:

Inni

2011-11-22T19:52:00.001+05:30

The thing about sigur ros is that they can accurately repeat seemingly random sounds (which is sweet music to my ears, might not be universal) an infinite number of times. That's why they're so good live, you disperse in awe of their superlativeness. :p Such a good buy inni has turned out to be (how could it disappoint?). Fully worth the cashes i gave them. Want another live gig now! The black and white grainyness of the video fits their genre of music, the camerawork and editing are perfect, the sublime coming together of sound and images is as good as experiencing them performing live. This is good documenting.

Underside View

2011-11-18T22:26:00.001+05:30

i saw this article in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago and it brought back a buried memory. this is a situation i'd pondered quite a bit while i travelled by train to and from kerala during every summer vacation: what if i happened to fall under a stationery train while i was boarding it and then the train started to move before i got out (it had to be stationery while i fell in, otherwise the cow-catcher'd get me)?

i'd done quite a bit of visual probing to piece together a clear picture of the underside of the train, finally deciding that if i lay flat near the centre (but not bang in the middle because of the kakkoos outlets) i'd live to tell the tale. i hadn't considered my heart seizing of its own accord or the smothering of my wind pipe with varied excreta or the wind sucking me towards the wheels or anything else as a serious threat. but yeah, that article just proved that my child's-brain theory of seeing the underside of a speeding train and coming out in one breathing piece was practically possible.

Lessons learnt the hard way over the last 3 days

2011-11-10T11:46:00.000+05:30

1) Never fly when you have a cold. It shatters even the strongest heads into splinters inducing tear-like secretions from the eye which my mum claims is crying.

2) Complete, deaf-and-dumb style silence is the best prescription when dealing with relations and their endless sermons.

3) I only lie to myself when i say that i won't buy books for "a while now"

4) Tamil hero movies are great only if they don't take themselves seriously. 7-aum arivu sucked cause of the stupid this-movie-is-so-informative-for-the-dumb-audience style as opposed to velayudham's brilliantly mindless, flippant take on a superhero.

5) I'm a Chennai-ite not a Keralite.

6) Kids-on-planes's mouths should always be full of something large and their parents should never have become parents.

7) I only ever get ill every 3 years but holy mother of god, it's bad when it gets its chance.

2011-11-04T21:59:00.001+05:30

Every home must be this way. Because it is made up of people. No body else shares your same idea of this same world that we're all living in. Makes everything complicated. There's no way out. There's no way in. The exact same things keeps turning around and around and around. A finite infinite loop of sadness and happiness. There's no in between. There's only many levels of letting go. Stand without you and look at yourself, do you like what you are? Changed but not.

Young Adult ah?

2011-10-24T16:28:00.000+05:30

pavi and i, after going on a book buying splurge over the last 6 months, are now panicking, what with the tall pile of unread new books giving us the eye. And suddenly we found that we couldn't go on reading our books. The very thought of the pile makes us crave something else (the perfect 'spoilt for choice' example). So we decided to break the jinx by exchanging 5 books, numbering them in order of reading. So the 5 i've been given are:

• The Secret History - Donna Tartt

• Looking for Alaska - John Green

• Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

• The Tesseract - Alex Garland

• East of Eden - John Steinbeck

Reading Looking for Alaska right after The Secret History was such a dull. There's this beautiful 650 page book talking about perennial drunkenness, student life angst, annoying people and the general inevitability of drama in Life. Quick, interesting, loved it, naturally flowing writing, made sense for young people to be thinking the way they were. On the other hand, there was Looking for Alaska. very ordinary plot, so-so writing style, horribly selfish/shallow protagonist, just get-to-the-bloody-last-page-already type. it's young adult fiction it seems. meaning dull? meaning juvenile? meaning stupid? yeah i was much disappoint. some hot chick kisses this protagonist fellow and drives off into a police car and dies, and the only thing the kissee can think about is "oh she said 'to be continued' right before she went off drunk oh so sad my life is, the one who said to be continued has died, how will i cope, i should blame myself for this right? because we should've stopped the unstoppably spoilt child from driving off to her death because we're somehow meant to know right?" yeah i probably am overreacting. it's been a week since i finished the book and i wanted to complain sooner. my memory of it seems to have worsened the story for me. only the dumbness has filtered through the sieve that is time. john green, don't hate me, it just was a bit too bleh for me. and it's not like you're a young adult, cause you're 31, so you must be capable of saner thoughts right? so why didn't you put it in your book? it seems like a book built on self-pity and self-pity i hate. *shrug* so many beauteous books to read, so little time and so many bloody distractions.

Do Panic

2011-09-19T19:03:00.003+05:30

We were having a nice chilled out weekend in Bangalore. This time, we'd decided to rent a serviced apartment and do nothing (read 'sent' and pissed). And the apartment was brilliant for that purpose. It was a house among other homes, so we pretty much merged into the habitat. We were on the balcony one afternoon sending one and we hear a man's voice through the window of the next house that is pretty close to our balcony screeching "You had to pay a 100 rupee fine! 100 rupees!" and then we heard this woman whimpering something, and he continues screeching on in english about how she spends so much that eventually ends in a loud slap and him yelling for her to get out of the room. And we froze. It's right there, happening about 10 metres from you (although it's in their private space) I mean what could you do in such a situation. More than anything else, i was ashamed. We're the ones asking for change and spouting some spiel about standing up for our rights and 'doing' something about the situation around us. and yet, three people in their mid-20's froze. at that moment, we weren't thinking about what we could do, we were shocked that something we read about in the papers just happened live. in retrospect, we could've called the police but would that have helped the woman? how do we know if we're making it worse for her? what can you do other than panic?

I haven't recovered from it. You have to be made of something else to take that step from yelling to actually hitting someone (in this situation, weaker than him). I was subconsciously scanning the people on the train back this morning and found many many potentially violent types but that's just me being freaked out. You can't really spot one out of the blue can you? That's what's creepy. But other than the dumb, indian, can't-go-back-to-parents-house taboo, why do you think the women take it? sometimes i just want to live in a series of 'one day in the life of ________'. I'd have a better idea about reacting to this non-sense but there's about 500 million other conked in the head people right?

*confused, afraid and angry*

Same Pinch

2011-09-05T19:29:00.002+05:30

The blogs i follow, the blogs i've come across and have cared enough to read, decent blogs generally, are very similar to each other. the style of writing is so 'blog-like'. they all sound sort of the same. they all have epiphanies, all have bitching, all have introspective writing (although they're a bit like "i think it's this way but i could be wrong, it's MY opinion anyway, so fuck off"), all are pseudo-honest (you *think* that you're being honest and soul-revealing and all that shit, but somehow you end up filtering the amount of shit you write about your own life), and finally, they all have a "go fuck yourself if you don't like what i'm writing about" tone about them. some are better purely because of their story-telling skills.

so how much of yourself would you feel comfortable about sharing with an anonymous audience, because surely you're not deluded enough to think that you're blogging for yourself right? what is your subconscious telling you when you blog? are you constantly in fear of being judged by a "world that you don't give a fuck about"? or might you be writing to give life to an alternate-universe version of you cause you're not *that* cocky or direct or sweet or whatever subtly different you you're trying to be?

p.s. it's funny how silentq and i had the same "decent bloggers sound the same" thought yesterday in our own unconnected brains :D

Spaces

2011-08-11T22:26:00.002+05:30

i have three memories of my dundee flat. 3 completely different vibes for the same space. first of a very lonely time: an empty flat in a new country, alone and lost. second of the happiest time when my flat was warm and cosy, my haven filled with me, masha to hang out with. the third is the time when masha had left and i was back to being lonely again. this is when dundee was coldest, even in summer, everything was quiet. the vibes of spaces is completely dependent on how much you love it, how much you want to be there and how much of yourself you're willing to put into it. i love the idea of it. there's hope of making yourself a home where ever.

"What is essential is invisible to the eye.” - The Little Prince

Getting Better

2011-07-10T14:47:00.004+05:30

i might be ignoring something that's right in front of my face but what is it that drives people, animals, plants, life in general, to carry on living? what is that something which tells you that your natural state is life? that ceasing to exist should be the last option. how come so many millions of people have this same urge to live on at whatever other cost? surely the easy way out is to end it all but why don't you more naturally and logically choose it? it's been brewing in my mind for a couple of weeks, i don't think i've still communicated what's in my head. the meaning of the written word is subtly different. i mean, simply put, why is broken bone when set right have the urge to re-form? why do people get therapy to get better from an illness of the mind (or whatever), why not just accept it as your state of being? what is that which makes you want to get better?

thought added later: a toy soldier's leg remains broken. difference here is he's missing an organic mechanical system working to heal him. so now, what is this healing power?

edit (after many days): i probably _was_ overlooking the basic mechanical machine that runs till wear and tear stops it. but i still don't know if that's what i meant on the other day. hmm.. confusioned.

Notions about marriage #n

2011-07-08T22:45:00.001+05:30

There are some kind of marriages these days. What could possibly be the point of getting married and living in different countries for the first crucial years of your union? Why would you pop one out before the first anniversary and say it was an accident? I mean does marriage make you daft about the pills? Why would you agree to change who you are to be married? Why would you get married and pop one out in college, get a divorce 20 years hence, and in the meantime pop another one by accident (this is closer to the divorce than the wedding) and now bring some random dude to live in with you and your just-turned-teenage daughter? (Holycrap, that sounds like Lolita's plot!) Why would you get married just purely because you see no other path in sight? The next step. Logical? No one will know. Why would you agree to get married to a stranger you've been 'shown' once but many times on matrimony.com?

So many people, so little time.

Stupid Packaging FTW.

2011-07-04T23:04:00.000+05:30

I uncharacteristically happened to go mild-grocery shopping recently and as I came to the toothpaste section I flipped. I go mental over what each one says it will do to your teeth and gums and instantly start dreaming of better oral days. The cool and hot toothpaste with appropriately chiched-ly coloured blue and red fiery icey packaging. How could I resist? And the bubble burstly splash of cool peppermint! If I could skip forward to the next toothpaste choosing trip, I would so badly. The irony of the whole thing is that it's all so stupid. If toothpaste came in pure white tubes with toothpaste written on it in caps, no other bullcrap, then we'd just be so bored of brushing. The stupid packaging sells you an idea but it all just tastes more or less the same. It's such a high though, it's not only toothpaste, almost everything excluding the mundane rices and dals are heavily packaged. which means more to read. which means more to cook up in your head about its benefits. Even salt is fun to pick out. I *bow* to the advertisers who brilliantly came up with stupid shit that gets me highly excited and makes my world a better place to live in. Sometimes clutter is good.

Venting for the month

2011-06-21T20:21:00.001+05:30

i should have the bestest life in this world: no shortage for anything, loving parents who are living for our happiness, happy job. But why the fuck do i feel suicidal, metaphorically speaking? Why do i feel like bawling my heart out because i see no end in sight? Why can i see no end in sight, or rather, why can i see no future for myself other than a carbon-copy repetition of today? the suffocation of having grown too old for your home is hitting me. my parents are never going to accept that i can live my own life, take care of myself, not be "poisoned" by the "other" people, that i can have people outside of my family that i want to hang out with, that i don't want to turn into my parents. try as i may to tell them slowly, tactfully, that i am me, i have likes and dislikes independent of theirs, that i might not want to replicate their lives, they never seem to get it. they always go for the "we haven't done that badly in life, just what is lacking in our lives? only people from abroad live an aloof life" just what the fuck is the meaning of "aloof"? wanting to do a play? wanting to sit in a coffeeshop till 9 and chat with a friend? going for a weekend trip to somewhere? or is it doing anything without the family? i simply can't seem to take it anymore. i have to move on. i have 3 options to change my life from the fucking mindfuck that it is now:

1) Get a Ph.D. (brilliant plan but i have to research fuckloads and write and write and write in the third person)

2) Get a job somewhere far away from home and leave (relocating jointfamily will be the awesomest but yeaaaah right)

3) Get married (to just who the fuck?)

oh marriage. fuck that fucking bullcrap. every time someone "likes my profile" on keralamatrimony, i'm thinking, oh cool, i could go check him out, yes, sure, everyone knows that i haven't had a relationship in a… fuck knows how long, so yeah, he sounds ok… and that's when it hits me, i hate the concept. i just simply HATE it. it's so flawed. why do people get married? there are just a fuckload of rules. if i was with someone (pre-marriage) i would probably follow all the rules of marriage without any qualms, because that is called being decent. it's when they become rules that i want to break them. something just keeps telling me that no one can *make* me do anything.

but fuck. that's just my delusion. cause i'm 25 and i haven't done anything other than follow rules all my life. rules set by the family. rules set by the society. the only time i tried breaking them was so fail. but i'm ok with that. that was my call entirely and it backfired and i have no regrets, i fully take on the responsibility and honestly that made me feel human. but now i'm back to living my hollow pointless life, following rules, living for other people, wanting to break the rules but not having the balls to, wanting to run away but having to think about the consequences, thinking that i could be living the life i want to but mindful all the time that that's a cheap delusion that my brain seems to hold on to. how do i make my life better? how then would you live your life if you had to decide, without thinking about family and all that spiel you ask, how then would you add value to your life? at this point, i just want to be left alone. i want to sit by myself in my apartment in some unknown city, go out when i want to, come home when i want to, with no one, absolutely no one getting on my case about anything. that's what i want.

all this vocal pressure from the extended family and unspoken pressure from the immediate family makes me feel like i'm useless without a husband. that my life is worthless if i don't have a man to share it with, that i should just get married already. yes, sure man, i will but only when i feel ready, only when i meet one fucking guy who i feel the need to share my life with, and this pressure makes it all the more depressing that i can't find that guy. i'm not even leching over anyone now, i have no secret obsession, i have no one that i want to be married to ideally. that sucks. it can't even be my fantasy anymore. even flings are hard to come by. i'm not THAT unattractive also. ah, strange that i'm having a pms-like venting day post the time. i can't even blame it on my period anymore. fucking ironic.

Dirty words

2011-05-28T14:36:00.001+05:30

26 May 2011, 23 something hours:

it's a nyeh sort of day. we established some important unshakable facts that we think way more than most people, that we GET it, that we are emo, that we'd make awesome parents.

just today i got the feeling that i shifted gears again. i can feel the change in revs. my mind's working too much, exhausting me. i need the water.

it's insane how much shit we don't know about ourselves. the connections are so complex. how could the research people locked up in rooms doing tests on subjects possibly understand what we're made of, not the stuff you can see with scans and xrays, the other stuff. the stuff that shows in your face in pictures, the stuff that your eyes betray, the stuff you feel inside. it can't just be organic wires connecting perfectly. dirty words like vibe and energy and emotions are just dirty. how can you 'test' for one person's stuff coinciding with another's? true, the physical readings might change but can you really believe that that's all it is? can't you FEEL it around you? don't we all have built-in sensors that seek out another beyond the physical?

hehe, makes it sound like we'd fit in in the x-mansion :D

BS

2011-05-20T22:31:00.000+05:30

So much they bullshit. I love how they sound just like us.

One boat only.

Comparing Murakami to Life

2011-05-17T20:20:00.002+05:30

I ration the Murakami's I have left. I allow myself a Murakami when everything seems a bit pointless around me. It's strange because Murakamis are depressing. So why then do I want a Murakami when I feel like that? It's also strange that even though all his characters are pretty or handsome, it's very difficult for them to have families. They almost always are single single or divorced single. Which reassures me about my lack of a boy. Some people can never 'settle down'. Money is never a problem in the Murakami world. He builds this seemingly perfect life for his characters and makes them lonely, thinking people. Job, Money and Sex - plenty of that, perfect, but then what else do you need to live a full life right? Why do his characters always think this much about mundane things and feel insignificant feelings and look no further than today? Who do you think has lived a full life? Who dies satisfied with his life? Everyone has regrets. Have to have regrets. The only thing you can do is to try and minimise the number of regrets you have. That would be a close-to-satisfactory life. I wonder what happens to Murakami's people when they grow old. What do they do? How do they spend time? How can they pass by life without anyone to share it with? Talking of sharing, I think it's way better to not share your life at all until you find someone worth it to share it with. But even then, what if you wake up one day and see that person in a completely new light and you're repulsed? What if everything he had to say to you was suddenly boring? What if he just vanished one day without any notice? What if… Sometimes it frustrates me that I have to deal with all these questions in my mind. Is it better to know as little as possible about life and its periphery to glide by without worrying? One thing I've noticed with growing older is that you're ok with not knowing the answers to your own questions. It's ok for me to ask and ask and think and think and not get anywhere.

Rape

2011-04-20T23:44:00.000+05:30

Watching the news on tv, i hear a father of a rape victim who'd attempted to commit suicide saying "She was taken advantage of by him, she didn't know how to face the world after that atrocious act, what could she have done? That's why she tried to burn herself." (paraphrased by me but the gist is there)
This attitude pisses me off. Why in hell is the girl to be blamed if she got raped? Why should she be the one ashamed to face the world? Because some strange fuck saw her naked and stuck it in her without her consent? Because she was powerless? Because she was beaten and kicked and strangled? It's almost like the society wants you to kill yourself after you've been raped. I hate (most) feminists and their stupid shallow ideas for "equal opportunities for women" but this girl-not-being-able-to-show-face-to-the-world-after-a-rape is just a warped concept. I've been trying to think of a logical answer and it beats me. Some questions that irk me because I have no answer yet:
• Is rape less "shameful" outside India? (Why, why not?)
• Is it because the girl is meant to be pure and virginal, and therefore getting raped obviously poses a problem for a happily married future? (Can't have significance in today's "modern" world)
• Is it religious? (all religions unanimously say this?)
• Is this what sane feminists are trying to change? (the insane ones are the ones you see screeching out about -generally- wanting to be men)
• Can a man be raped? (i can't think of many ways, they'd just enjoy it)
• Can Indian pop culture be worsening the situation? (eg. In enthiran, this stupid bitch kills herself because a robot rajini saves her from a burning building while she was bathing - so obviously she was naked and everyone sees her, so she just jumps in front of a conveniently speeding lorry, erm… stupid bitch)
• Why do raped women go through with their pregnancies and have the friggin babies?

I fathom not the strange workings of society's wicked brain.

IE is being mean to me

2011-03-19T16:48:00.000+05:30

IE is to the internetz what trepanning was to brain health.

cracked me up:

A Premature Eulogy

2011-02-16T23:58:00.000+05:30

My life's about to change. I'm going to be jolted one step up into my adulthood. The favouritest person in my world, my appoops is going to pass. the man who taught me the most about life, about my beliefs, about my favourite city - a city that i have grown to love because he taught me to love it, about teaching me how to live practically yet fulfillingly, about loving the past yet looking forward, about loving the traditional but also loving the new, of resisting change and bringing on change mindfully, of being wild at the world, without malice. I have never imagined a world without him, he has been my mentor, he has shaped the way i think, he has been my voice of reason, my perspective, i'm modeled after him he says, how happy i am to hear that! an era is being rapidly fed on by a cancer. impermanence is cruel. we can only weep, until the oxymoron saves us.

Nocturnal Rants and some General News

2011-02-01T00:38:00.001+05:30

Middle Age:
This is a recent development. Every time i see a middle aged couple (happy or grumpy or excited or normal), the first thought that formulates in my mind is: do they still have sex? Not in a pornographic way but just plain love-making, the action, the emotions.
When does attraction turn into love?
When does love turn into routine?
When does routine become a habit?
When does habit turn into boredom?
When do your bits eventually stop waking up?

Me, Now, (Nocturnal Rants):
I think way too much these days. Maybe i'm getting older but maybe i just was programmed to overthink about insanely inconsequential things.

I went and saw the republic day parade this time and i realised, first hand, that men in the defence force are hot. i've asked my mum to find me dashing young men who're in the air force and she said to join the air force now and find myself one. she basically gave me the finger. No hope there.

Many rums and cokes at morrison's cafe had me chatting up a cute argentinian art director dude called rafael from buenos aires. He was wearing joy division's closer tee! I almost flipped. I've never seen another person (other than pavi of course) share my love of the band. Smoke-drink-talk-smoke-drink-talk-exchange business cards-email me-vamoose from life. Sad. Maybe i should go abroad and scout for boys. They seem like the correct sorts. Or maybe i should live in delhi. But delhi will turn me into a murderer and i love my freedom.

I have someone who just got added to my lewis hamilton list (my personal 'torture and bring death upon them slowly' list) Mr.Sid. i hate him more than words can describe because he's a fucking selfish rat-cunt bastard. He probably hates me as well and always has some wise ass comment to crack and that really gets me going psycho. Civility demands that i don't punch him in the face but how much satisfaction it gave me to act like a bitch and whip his ass gently! I didn't even say all i wanted to say. My time will come. Lay low and wait. Lay low and wait.

Do selfish people know they're being selfish? Do they really think that their interests are all that need to be looked after in this vast universe? Do they stop to think that they only have the intelligence of a threadworm?

Lower beings, they deserve sympathy*

*i think conceitedly, because it gives me great pleasure.

The Last Lawn of the Afternoon

2011-01-17T22:53:00.002+05:30

felt to change my waper.
brain drawings from http://ashiro.posterous.com/
1920x1200

Workaholism

2011-01-17T19:46:00.001+05:30

this is strange behaviour of my mental workings. all my life, my dream of a perfect life was to have no responsibility, be answerable to no one, be rich enough to buy endless amounts of books, read all day long and travel loads. and now, i'm almost there. i earn my own cash doing design, i have no husband/boyfriend to worry over, i have plenty of bought books that i haven't read and i have plenty of time in hand to lounge about and read, with no one to bother me. good life. perfect life. but. but the bloody problem is the moment i pick up my book and get through half a page, i start thinking about what work i might have and start feeling like a loser. i'm thinking: i mean who reads on a working day afternoon? only losers right? but i have no work that needs to be done by this week. so chill out and read. but am i absolutely sure that i'm not missing anything. *checks mails to see what i'm forgetting* nope, nothing. READ fer feck's sake.

i like having work done before the deadline but currently i have no deadlines to meet and i canNOT start work without a deadline. and setting my own deadlines is more loserly in my book than being jobless. so there you go, i blame the ever-morphing nature of wants and dreams for feeling this way.

concerns in life at this moment:

• brother is far far away.

• granda's not feeling very well.

• SocialSafe (an app to save all your pictures - and other things from Facebook onto your hard drive {i'd lost all my data from a failed hard drive last year, with which went proof of ever going to dundee, my work, my music, my photos, my movies, my everything}) - so i was saying, the clever cunts at SocialSafe give you a free version that downloads all Facebook pictures to this app on your computer but you can retrieve it only if you buy the pro version. is £4.99 big money to get back all your lost pictures? hells no but still, they didn't tell me this in the beginning. that's what pains me.

be honest all you fuckers. that's all i ask. tell me the truth.

TeuxDeux

2011-01-07T22:05:00.001+05:30

i finally succumbed to the bloody persistent nag, The Apple Apps Store. I made my first purchase today and i bot this:
for

simple, brilliantly designed, no-nonsense planner. i want to write down my activities through the whole day now.

Also funny inappropriate video watching accident happened at pavi's. read about it here.

Call of Duty

2011-01-07T00:03:00.001+05:30

Kickass ad. via overthinkingit.
it's one thing to watch trained ppl shooting bad-ass guns, it's a fully different high when you watch "normal, boring" ppl shoot them like pros!

Magic!

2011-01-06T23:46:00.000+05:30

repeatedly screenshotted my desktop. magic! :D

And let the games begin!

2011-01-03T22:21:00.002+05:30

and so it began. i met my first parent-approved blind-date yesterday and i already love how it's going. i was freaking out, sent in the afternoon trying to calm myself down and then we met at anokhi for coffee. my brother escorted me (and left after a half hour), trying to break ice and the lingering weirdness. ...Mwahaha! Conversation was so dull, uber decent dude, good looks an all, but one of those will-blend-into-background types. i couldn't even hate him - personality lacking. He was so opinion-less. all i know about him after 2 hours of trying to make conversation is that he likes to party and has recently started taking an interest in photography and dancing (at clubs, fer feck's sakes!). 'nuf said.

Dude vs. Me

what are your hobbies? - erm… i read shitloads (jawdrop, faint smile), i like movies, theatre, photography, and you? - travel and photography - oh cool, what camera do you have? - nikon d (something), you? - oh nice, mine's an olympus e-50 or something - (blank stare) - it's a digital slr - oh it is? - yes it is - ah, i only got into photography 6 months back - cool.

Me vs. Dude

so where do you hang out here? - 10D, it's our favorite place, i like partying - oh, you do? i don't like to party, i'd much rather sit and drink at home with friends - i like dancing - oh great, i don't really dance…

Me vs. Dude

so do you smoke? - socially only - oh so you mean you don't have any on you now? - no, i really do smoke only socially, when i drink i smoke - oh like that, i smoke tho - oh you do? (SURPRISE) - yep, i roll my own ciggies - oh you are a chain smoker then? - uhn… no, i'm not a chain smoker, i'm a regular smoker if that's what you meant - yeah, so how many do you smoke a day? - erm.. 6-7. - oh that's a lot! - (blank stare) hehe no it isn't.

Dude vs. Me

so you're done studying? - yes, altho i might do a typography course sometime in the future - erm… ermm… you want to learn typing? (with hand gestures indicating typing) - no typography is the study of fonts, like letterforms - oh, what can they teach you about fonts? (rhetorical question i figured) (aside: i forgive him for this one, no one really knows what typography is outside of the design field, it was funny for me nonetheless :D)

1.30 h were spent more or less like this. pointless questions leading to nowhere. the sucker punch was delivered when we got up to leave and i spotted that he was my height and i'm a shorty! and yet i would plainly overshadow him, literally and figuratively.

armed with this experience, the next date will be easy-peasy. i'll get there one hour ahead of schedule and sit reading my book with a coffee and welcome him warmly and get him to tell me about him :P fun times! plenty of time. what do i have to lose?

Jan 2011

2010-12-26T18:22:00.002+05:30

Waper for @dineshkymal.

Living Geniuses

2010-12-17T22:26:00.000+05:30

i love that i love living geniuses*! i, at least have something AWESOME to look forward to all the time.

like this documentary by gondry:

*i bow to gondry, gaiman, murakami, sagmeister.

iPhone Waper: Photo-ey

2010-12-17T00:00:00.000+05:30

*all photos were taken on the iphone.

New Addition to Wall

2010-12-16T22:55:00.000+05:30

i've wanted it for a long time. and now it's mine, my precioussss. today was a good day. we did quite a bit of work:

Paper windmill making for a project.

Funnest Button Animation

2010-12-06T20:49:00.001+05:30

i was dl-ing some music through rapidshare and it had the most funny button animation to get ppl to upgrade. it's not subtle and it's not irritating! i really like how sadly he looks at you and then points at the button (which he pumps up).

(go try it yourself, click on the link and click "slow download" and wait for it!)

Men are better shavers than women

2010-12-06T20:31:00.000+05:30

(context: i'm getting laser hair therapy done at kaya and it involves shaving of hair - not in shady areas, don't start thinking dirty things - normally women do this for me but today i had a man do it. 'nuf said.)

observation i made (until i made the observation i didn't know there was a difference): women shave with long, gentle strokes, handle the razor precariously like they're afraid that they might cut things if they're not concentrating fully on the task. But men! this dude was so awesome with the razor. he went about shaving with short, quick, strong strokes and i felt like a man! weird, but the feeling was awesome, he must be shaving his face the exact same way! i guess it's because men have to shave off a thicker stubble, smaller area and women are always having to deal with a larger area with softer hair.

vs

ok doks, i had fun analysing completely irrelevant things! until next time.

new colours and the bday

2010-12-03T10:13:00.002+05:30

plastic crayons, so long since i coloured with some. one of the many gifts from pavi for the bday. they're good for nibbling on too (old habits die hard).

discovered tryst cafe 10 paces from home. most awesome dessert place. had macaroons and this chocolatey strawberry thing. most yummy. who knew you could get macaroons here!

good day.

(edit) i received a late gift while i was sleeping. most hilarious! i <3 it. from pavi again.

2010-11-17T00:02:00.000+05:30

A day well-spent

2010-11-10T19:38:00.064+05:30

Layer Tennis* is an awesome idea to kick procrastination and laziness in the balls. So that's what pavi and i did today (because we've been trying for ages to make some tee designs for JointFamily). We played a game of our version of Layer Tennis:

Rule 1: Pick the 15th song from iTunes in Random**.

Rule 2: Use the title, artist and first four lines as a start point.

Rule 3: 15 mins, 400px X 600px canvas on Illustrator, 10 layers

Rule 4: Toss to begin. (Pavi won and began)

Rule 5: The following person picks the next song in Random BUT! uses one or more elements from the previous design to make her own design.

*2 ppl from anywhere on the planet compete against each other. Fixed space, any medium, 15 mins, any theme. using one or more elements from each other's design when they make their own. Kickass concept.

**The Original Layer Tennis does not involve songs.

Here is the result: (edit: tried for about an hour to put individual bigger screenshots of them but fucking blogger wouldn't comply so you'll have to make do with this long jpeg)

(edit again: oh it doesn't work cause blogger compresses the picture auto-fucking-matically for me. so here's a saner, editable website that let me put it up in a slide-fucking-show)

CLICK HERE TO SEE BIGGER AND IN A NICE SLIDESHOW

Bash my head in for me will you?

2010-11-09T16:52:00.002+05:30

Most annoyingly enragingly stupid movie that i paid hard-earned cash to watch: Endhiran. FUCK! i can't begin to explain it's fuckall-ness. it creates a whole new genre for itself, it's that bad. enough said. go watch it to begin to understand what i'm talking about (or watch just the trailer, i wouldn't subject even my worst enemy to such a crap-filled full length movie).
p.s. if i see aishwarya rai somewhere i'll chop her up and feed her to shankar.
p.p.s. shankar will burn in hell.
p.p.p.s. rajni's rolling in cash that he made by making jackasses of millions of ppl.

sivaji was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better as a rajni movie.

Daft Punk's Around The World

2010-11-05T16:43:00.000+05:30

so technicolour. i'd dig it if i could see it live. it's a michel gondry video. <3 both.

Espionage

2010-11-05T16:29:00.000+05:30

I'd rather not meet Ted

2010-11-05T14:20:00.000+05:30

Was How I Met Your Mother this OTT? Was it this Oh-God-Just-Get-A-Move-On feeling inducing? And then i figured it out. I don't give a rat's ass as to who Ted ends up with. I mean what sort of a douchey protagonist is he? If I said describe Barney, you'd have no trouble (suits, women, sex), if I said describe Marshall, you'd still have no trouble (big, George from Of Mice and Men-like, faithful). But if I said describe Ted, you'd be stuck. I don't know what Ted likes or dislikes. True, he's meant to be passionate about architecture but that episode about GNB wanting to use Ted's design just proved that notion wrong. He's character-less, boring, goes for any type of woman and is so shallow. He pretends to like what you like, he'll be a pushover for you and doesn't say anything of interest ever. And now the show's turned into this horrible mess where even the makers are not sure what to do with Ted. And so, the show drags on. I honestly don't care who he ends up with and for me, it has become like our Malayalam/Tamil soaps where it's so pathetic but ppl who follow it still follow it cause of sheer habit. I really, honestly hope that season 6 is the last season. I might have to chuck it otherwise.

he's just there.

The Monsoon's Here!

2010-10-30T22:05:00.003+05:30

and our road doesn't flood anymore. it's the best time to be in madras. oh how i love it!

loving the colour co-ordinated lady.

xx/xy

2010-10-24T14:55:00.000+05:30

A full length movie dedicated to a story of relationships built on dropping pants. Very awesome. Lesson learnt.

Hell's Angels

2010-10-21T19:45:00.001+05:30

I just finished reading the Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. Bloody brilliant.

RELATED FACTS:

• His language/style is so good that you want to make a face pack out of it and slap it on your face and let your body absorb it.

• Met a Swiss Hell's Angel (called Speedy) at a pub in Delhi who was full on looking for some action and thought i 'was a perfect with perfect beautiful body and face, listen heavy metal, already visit interlaken, indian who doesn't look like indian, can comprende francais and was all in all most perfect girl. (ignored call the next day and i got a text from him reiterating the above) :S

Drunk people are funny.

• Saw a Hell's Angel Delhi sign in a rock pub in Delhi. Squee!

• Nothing, NOTHING can beat experiencing things first hand. That's what gives him such rich insight about the Angels. And i love how he delivers that insight with almost no bias at all.

• There are books you love because it's exactly like you might have written it, exactly your thoughts, exactly what you're feeling. That's what reading Murakami makes me feel. And then there are books you love because the writer is so awesomely intelligent/talented/gifted/awe-inspiring, you know that you could never write like that and that's what Thompson's books are. I WANT MOAR!

What's the point then?

2010-10-21T18:54:00.002+05:30

Most awesome! So horribly corny, i'm in love!

Shiny

2010-10-09T00:42:00.001+05:30

Golden Temple, Amritsar: July 2010

Sixty Symbols

2010-09-27T18:48:00.004+05:30

i love physics. i studied it till the 12th std and i loved it enough to get 99.5% in my final exam. now, everything has fizzled out of my brain but i feel like i know the logic behind how things work. i mean i can't explain in plain language but i have a sense of how it might work. and if someone explained to me step by step, then i could really understand it's logic. that's when pavi pointed me to these videos on youtube about physicists and astronomers explaining very plainly about how things work in the universe. i love it! makes me want to go back to school and take up physics again. so many questions, but no one to answer them! :/ i think if i dug into my huge ass collection of old books i might be able to find a 'how the universe works' book somewhere. but here are a few questions i want answers to. i could read up on them online but what fun is that eh? having a brainy person to explain these things would so make my heart flutter. :P

• How do you explain a parallel universe?
• If it does exist, then how can you exist in more than one place physically at the same time? How can the different universes not cross paths ever?
• How can gravity have the speed of light, isn't it massless?
• How can massless particles have any speed at all?
• Can mathematics one day realize that 1+1 is not equal to 2?
• Why are dimensions limited to 3? What if there are more but we just don't know yet? Wouldn't that have major consequences on every other calculation made to that date?
• I heard that the people at CERN have found out that the size of a proton is actually 4% smaller than what was believed. Now discoveries like this must have a major impact yes? Isn't lots of physics-ly calculation based on the sizes of subatomic particles?
• Why can't we dump waste into space, outside our orbit, since there's no real sign of life in the universe?
• Do astronomers believe astrology is a science?

yada yada.

But check this out:
www.sixtysymbols.com

Random takes over

2010-09-26T14:51:00.001+05:30

Guy Ritchie's Short for Dior Homme. Loving the randomness :D and there's jude law and Muse music!

on a more random note, if you have time to kill and a lowly sense of humour: http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com

Soundmakers

2010-09-25T15:37:00.000+05:30

i've noticed that i can learn things quite quickly if i observed with concentration and interest. like my taking to rowing or life drawing or changing tyres or beating metal to make art or gardening or knitting or you know... things like that. i observe and i learn. but musical instruments! fuck no. i just can't seem to co-ordinate everything well enough to make music. observing, reading up, physically trying it out, nothing works. i just can't get my mind to think about 3/4/5 different faculties at the same time. that's why i search for videos such as this one below. so that i can stare in awe at the sounds he makes the guitar make. *drool* i want a personal guitarist, or better still a multi-instrumentalist! bow to all the soundmakers.

Arriving Somewhere

2010-09-22T23:46:00.003+05:30

Porcupine Tree - Arriving Somewhere, But Not Here.mp3

This is the song i've been looping for a week now. Inadvertently looping. 6 months ago i hadn't connected with this song as much as now. it's like i want to eat the music. you know?

Experiment

2010-09-22T21:51:00.002+05:30

Random experiment.
Pics from ffffound and words from some online random sentence generator.

Unchanged

2010-09-21T19:02:00.001+05:30

Found this 1972 box of Johnson's Baby Soap, made me google for the current packaging and i love how so little has changed. They've kept all the elements, just changed sizes. very awesome.

Strange Girls

2010-09-21T18:41:00.000+05:30

Found this on Tumblr. Dunno who made it/photo-ed it. so obviously copyright's not mine.

But lookit. Pavi and i have had only some 5 million conversations on this topic. amusingly distressing, no, distressingly amusing.

Pantone iPhone Wallpaper

2010-09-16T20:33:00.000+05:30

Proper Pantone shades. it drove me a little bit insane making it but i'm that sort of a sadist.

Calicut ➝ Gulf

2010-09-12T19:02:00.002+05:30

i just got back from a short trip to calicut. and i've never been this pained in my life before (course i have, who am i kidding, but let's assume that i haven't, to give this theory of mine some more oomph). the airport! the airport! calicut has an international airport (i used to think why? why should calicut have an international airport?) and now i know precisely why. it's to keep the cattle away from normal human life. a little harsh you might think... but man! i am not kidding. so this why 'the gulf' has so many mallus. they are born in calicut, their reproductive organs reach maturity and they start reproducing. they all go to the airport thinking it's a theme park (the outside of the airport is teeming with whole families and extended families) i've never seen so many annoyingly annoying children in my life... they literally run between your legs while you try and navigate through the sea of ppl to the airport entrance. then you see that these ppl are having an awesome time cause they're all packed, have bottles of pepsis, many puffs in hand, many packets of lays and are all waiting to get on a rollercoaster ride. and when they get off the rollercoaster, they don't realise that they've reached a different country and carry on with life like in calicut. (i do NOT blame the foreigners for thinking indians are like cattle, because if you'v only seen these types, then what else could you think? even the indian airport officials act like they're herding cattle). they litter, they yell, they don't know which their children are, they pee all over the toilets, they make children, they eat, they get on the rollercoaster, they get off it, they make more children, they forget about the old ones, they live.

it's sad really. i mean why dyu have so many children that you cannot tend? or remember the names of? they're running all over the place, putting their hands into running fans, rolling on the floor cause they cannot think of better things to do and the parents pretend like they have nothing to do with their offsprings. it's a sad world and you begin to understand why india is the way it is. how do you control them - them who do not understand a language other than their own, have no basic human manners (i don't expect them to act like the brits or say sorry or hold the door open for you or anything, that's the other extreme) but just plain manners that is coded naturally into your system if you're born a human. why don't they have that? i don't understand.

what can you do? avoid calicut. avoid the airport. even if you land in trivandrum or cochin and have to drive 8 hours to get to the malabar area, avoid that fucking shithole of an airport! keep away. you have been warned.

p.s. i love my country and my countrymen, but today i'm PISSED!

You get the idea yes?
(i googled this pic btw)

Housing

2010-08-19T23:26:00.000+05:30

Shimla, almost all the local housing looked as dilapidated as this. i was imagining this in the snowtime all the time. mental.

Door that leads to Nowhere

2010-08-18T22:28:00.000+05:30

fun no? i love this country for it's randomness! :D

Photos and photos

2010-08-17T23:45:00.000+05:30

Went on a slight vacation to Shimla-Amritsar-Delhi for a week(ish) and have come back with many photos. planning to put up one everyday. also i'm going for a wedding+kovalam trip to kerala, so there'll be more pics then!

Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla

The Typical Chennai Boy*

2010-07-23T22:26:00.003+05:30

and why they ooze hotness
(my well-researched theory)

Clothing:
a) old lived-in tshirt (they don't give a shit about taglines/images on them and anyway, it's too faded to show)
b) shorts (also well-worn)
c) ACGs, this might be the only thing that they meticulously replace when tattered

Facial Hair:
a) clean shaven (in a i-have-to-shave-everyday-cause-it's-a-habit way)
(or)
b) full blown unkempt beard (what i mean to say is that they don't "style" it)

Hair:
a) 30 rupee barber shop haircuts
b) no gel, no styles, no comb, no brushes, no hair-driers, no nothing

Glasses: (if they do have to wear them)
a) proper basic rectangular black frames (no big brands, no reds/blues/violets, no weird ass shapes)

Mode of Transportation:
a) Bus
b) Old kickassly awesome great-grand-uncle's bullets/enfields or Dad's first bike ever
c) Fourth-hand cars they bought with their own saved up cash
c) Walk

Occupation:
a) Doing what they love doing, passionately, wanting it to work (this means you could find fully poshly educated boys {masters from foreign lands an all} running a book store or a nice little bakery or doing theatre or managing a snake farm or … you get the point right? something fully off-beat)
b) Money is never the first priority

Attitude:
a) Uber Chill
b) I'm-Comfortable-With-Myself-And-Everyone-Around-Me
c) If-I-Like-You-Why-Should-I-Hide-It?
d) Will ask questions if he doesn't get things

*born and brought up in chennai. It doesn't matter where his ancestors are from, as long as he's lived a good majority of his life here.

I'll add more if more things come to mind :D

I've been spotting more and more of these types, probably because i go out more these days.

My Life: Perfect! I am where I want to be, doing exactly what i want to do. (I think the tyranny of parents was a knee-jerk reaction. They've always been chill, now they're even chiller, in between they worried a bit about where i was going to end up, they're back to normal now. phew!) i live in calmness, for now :D

yay!

Delusional

2010-07-20T21:51:00.001+05:30

you think you are a certain sort of person who reacts to certain situations in a certain way.

but you actually, deep down, feel differently about those situations.

you're being delusional about your personality. you hate yourself for it. you want to be that person you think you are. and that's where everything gets fucked in your head.

you lose your identity and whatever's left of your friends.

you become a selfish bitch. you can't fit into anyone else's shoes.

Now, YOU'RE ROYALLY FUCKED.

p.s. nyah ha ha! ;D

2010-06-23T23:18:00.000+05:30

Lookit all! We (amit, pavi and i) have a proper graphic design company!

www.jointfamilydesign.com

I'm happy! :D

West of the Sun

2010-06-21T13:24:00.000+05:30

I'm reading a Murakami and i liked this paragraph, i was going to type it in but thot i'd at least lay it out neatly. Here:

some people will never change

2010-06-15T14:30:00.000+05:30

pavi and i were hanging out at coffee world on c.p.ramasamy iyer rd (we were wishing we could rebrand them, the logo pains our eyes, blue and yellow? that blue and that yellow? tch tch!) and then my childhood friend/neighbour from our old house (roshan) walks in and sits on the other side of the room. we used to play many many many boy games (since i was the only girl in the building) together, hang out at everyone's houses and play dark room and video games and pretty much lived about 14 years of our lives in the same building. and there he was, all grown up, a total stranger. only, i was watching him drink his coffee and eat potato chips and everything came back to me. i knew the mannerisms of a total stranger (he doesn't look anything like his old self), he ate potato chips (his favourite snack) in a particular way, he held his coffee cup in a particular way (always with his middle finger in the cup handle and with the handle turned away from him, so he could sip from the bit of cup that normally wouldn't be sipped from) and i could've sat there watching him and feeling all nostalgic forever if pavi hadn't pointed out how creepy and stalker-like i was being. so i did go speak to him. same old same old. i love how some ppl never change.

that's him at my birthday party being the break-dancer. lol! (scanner is in the other corner of the house, sorry)

Temper Check

2010-06-08T21:29:00.002+05:30

i aggrandize myself. (yes, i did use the thesaurus, new word for me an all.) nobody gives a fuck that i'm angry or don't agree, so i must not show/say it.

the matter of my temper is not a joke anymore. i fear that i'm becoming a horrible person. people are scared to talk to me, lest they say a wrong word. what am i turning myself into?

*bawl*

noida an all

2010-06-04T00:58:00.002+05:30

when you say a place is hot, it could mean so many different degrees of hot based on who exclaims it. now i, being from the hot chennai an all, humid, sweaty and sunny, thought that i could survive ANYwhere in the world. but, maaaan! delhi? fucking fuck. phew. i just got back from delhi after a fucking exhausting couple of days (to be fair, i had no ac during the worst time: the day and i was cleaning and scrubbing my brother's new room) and shit, the heat is something else. i can fully picture people falling like flies to the ground purely cause of how hot and polluted and thick the air is. the last time i was in such a hot place was when i was standing in front of the glass-blowers in murano. and i'm not even kidding. the air was so thick that the sun was a white ball at 4 in the afternoon, i could look straight at it without squinting and it looked other-wordly. i was comparing how my brother and i were feeling in a new city and i realized that i could bring myself to love any city, anywhere in the world (at least the ones i've been to). i could mould a home out of any place. as long as there are lizard chasers about, i'm fine. that's probably why i loved my little room in dundee. imagine getting a room that sized and having ballis running all over the walls, fuck i'd have died! anyway, i hadn't carried my proper camera along, so my iphone pics would have to do. noida.

p.s. people should have to go through a parenting test to have kids. if you don't pass, you can't have children, and then mebbe we wouldn't have so many fucking brats running about everywhere. fewer "disturbed" children about. the (incompetent) parents can go spoil their own fucking lives and not bring up blood-thirsty satanic beings.

< expand!

Weddings and Hang-outs

2010-05-26T19:50:00.006+05:30

a friend of mine from college got married today (the build-up began with the bachelorette last weekend and there were other marriage-ly functions almost everyday since, hence making me realise that i have loads of ppl who know me or want to meet me in this city. i feel all happy and wanted now {i was in a "why do i not know fun ppl" phase, but it has flown away... last week has been uber fun :D)... marriage: cute boy, nice girl. should be a happy marriage right? just, the girl didn't seem overly excited... i might be imagining it. but even my durex play ultra (vibrators for the couple) bachelorette party gift failed to excite her (the fellow texted saying he wants to skip to the honeymoon but no stirring from her side :S) but if, if i'm not swearing and laughing and making jokes and getting pissed and generally... not being me at my wedding, you promise to come and rescue me from the stage right? someone? anyone? pavi swears that she'll learn to drive by then and make a quick getaway with me but i need a plan b. i fear she will get performance anxiety... putting too much pressure on her driving skills is not the best route to take...

Fishy

2010-05-15T11:52:00.001+05:30

I made a photo + type design for a short story a friend of mine wrote. I like how it's come out.

Boys

2010-05-13T00:17:00.000+05:30

Starting to carry my camera around again.

Thapasya

2010-05-13T00:05:00.000+05:30

Vishu: Home

2010-05-12T23:00:00.000+05:30

3 pics: sequence of events.

Madras Croc Bank

2010-05-10T13:54:00.001+05:30

sunday afternoon, about 40 degrees C, 2 bottles of water gone warm and insanity.

DKDA #08: Isometry

2010-05-04T18:55:00.001+05:30

Been working on a project involving isometric paper. Thought I might as well make a waper out of it.

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'Indian' Shoes

2010-04-24T18:25:00.001+05:30

Cousin in London wanted shoes with Indian patterns on them. Bit of a deviation from my style. Hope she likes them! Here's a picture before I pack them off.

Repeat-x Repeat-y

2010-04-23T19:30:00.001+05:30

Quick pattern I made for Repeat-x Repeat-y: an awesome collaborative that showcases repeatable patterns. Want to make more and more but i dunno how many they'll take. This is my first anyway :D

DKDA #07: Fevicol

2010-04-18T17:16:00.003+05:30

been peeling fevicol off my palm all morning.
old packaging this is, i love it. showing my love!

disclaimer: i only re-drew it on illustrator, obviously the copyright of the design is some genius man's and not mine.

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DKDA #06: Plot of Land

2010-04-12T13:40:00.000+05:30

Words from Joanna Newsom's '81.

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A Book Review After What Seems Like Aeons

2010-04-09T13:19:00.004+05:30

I finally ticked off one event on my life's ambitions list. I'm now a proud member of Eloor lending library (only the most famous and best library in our fair country imo) and as i didn't have much time to browse through their vast collection on that fateful day, i ended up picking the first book i laid my eyes on (twas was on display). and that brings me to now, almost 2 weeks later (as i only just finished it), planning on reviewing it (i haven't reviewed a book since school methinks). oh, btw, the book was "Stephen Fry In America" by Stephen Fry obviously.

I picked the book thinking that it can't be boring (knowing Stephen Fry), would be an informative if not illuminating read (since i can't for the life of me remember where the hell nebraska is or if maine is a state or a city or if florida is in the west or east coast - it's only with USA that i exhibit such appalling degrees of geographical daftness) so what the hell, i began reading. well, mr.fry starts from the east coast in a london taxi and drives through all the states (sometimes dedicating a mere day to a few, which i thought was very unfair of him) and gets to hawaii where his trip ends. i was good, i began reading with genuine interest, tried memorising state names and capitals but it quickly got boring. his writing was to put it very mildly, very boring. there was a serious lack of insight, he simply meets the (second-best) big guns from every state and lives their lives for about 5 mins. to demonstrate what i'm trying to say, let's pick vermont. he gets there and goes to the ben and jerry's factory and makes an ice cream flavour. yeah that's all he does in vermont. surely there's more to vermont than ben and jerry's? he says nothing much about its people although he does give a lengthy description of its terrain. it seemed like he was going through a long list of very impersonally picked places, fast. i know, i know he can't have gone through america like che travelled through south america (he was shooting for the BBC after all) but it seemed like he was doing a tedious chore. you could see that he was trying so hard to be politically correct and non-judgmental. i haven't seen the tv series but i have been put off it now. it's bound to be boring if the book was this bland yes? he keeps repeating the phrase "i haven't done/tasted something like this in all my 50 years" like that's supposed to get the reader interested (he's only canoeing or being pulled on a sledge or fishing or doing something ridiculously bleh like that). he's easily amused and entertained. i skipped entire states by the time he got to the west. it was the same old boring "visits" without adding anything valuable to how he "sees" america. i did read california though, since i've heard it's got so much going on there, and i was a bit disappointed because all he did was get an on-the-move interview of sorts in with jonathan ive and wipe his obviously dripping drool (very decent of him cause all hard-core apple fans would've jerked off in front of him). anyhoo, i know i'm guilty of not having watched the show and skimming through certain states but i'm sure i couldn't have missed much. i didn't think mr.fry could've written a book that was such a drag. where was the humour?

i don't normally launch into prostitute metaphors but this books asks to be metaphorised: it was like bringing a prostitute, who was paid for by your boss, to your posh hotel room (paid for by your boss) and talking about the colour of her top. (and nothing much else, no talk of how she managed to get that tight a top over her double D cups even)

i know, tis a bit harsh of me to deride mr.fry's efforts so, but the book has nothing to offer, not to americans nor the foreigners or people with a genuine interest in learning more about america.

*sorry mr.fry, i love you an all but i can't believe you wrote this book*

DKDA #05: Quondam

2010-04-05T01:36:00.000+05:30

Here it is, this week's desktop wallpaper. Like always, there'r 2 sizes.

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DKDA #04: Let Down

2010-03-29T22:21:00.000+05:30

A little bit of recycling on my part, no time or machine to make a new one you see. i dug it out of my old(ish)(2009) doodles. lyrics from radiohead's let down. here:

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DKDA #03: A For...

2010-03-21T16:08:00.001+05:30

What will the world do without us eh? :P
This week's waper:

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xo

Bitter Grounds

2010-03-19T15:04:00.000+05:30

In a perfect perfect world you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of your heart you'll never see again.
Until walking (waking? calling?) on your own is unsupportable.
- Neil Gaiman

Giants

2010-03-18T10:03:00.000+05:30

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.

Such a beautiful video this is. makes you feel all calm and giantly. awesome song too. it's funny how you think that the world is such a safe + happy + mechanical place when you watch this video. no deeper meanings to anything. just a battery operated game.
<3

DKDA #02: Do not want

2010-03-14T17:00:00.000+05:30

Waper Number Two:

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Peace! :D

DivyaKymal DesktopArt #01

2010-03-08T09:57:00.004+05:30

oh well, here's another of those projects that i begin all hyperly but don't follow through. but notice that i always always make one minute logos for them :D anyhoo, the plan is to make one desktop waper every week in 2 sizes. so here, the first one:

LOST

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(edit: flickr is resizing the larger sizes i put up to 1024x768, so i thot i'd get rid of the extra layer and put it up here itself, any suggestions on how i could make it easier?)
(edit #2: ok mediafire for larger downloads)

oiled and sunning

2010-03-02T17:40:00.000+05:30

204 kitchen

2010-03-02T17:36:00.001+05:30

:( was emptying camera and found this! i feel like that house is still there untouched, waiting for me to get back there and live in it.

Uzi

2010-02-17T00:49:00.000+05:30

February 08, 2010: Palakkad, Kerela

Liars

2010-02-16T16:31:00.001+05:30

Authors are liars who convince their readers that they've experienced a completely made up reality.

right?

don't get me wrong, i'm not saying tis a bad thing. i love books and the very personal, intense experiences that they give me. it's just that, it's all giving us false hopes for real life. which we need most of the time yes? to survive. cause life mostly sucks otherwise and as long as we keep looking at our lives thru someone else's eyes, we can be detached and objective and make sane decisions yes? my ass.

Lookit!

2010-02-02T19:04:00.000+05:30

My portfolio is finally up on the interwebs :D

take a look> www.divyakymal.tumblr.com

gimme work now.

the dicks that they are

2010-01-29T21:20:00.001+05:30

This, I'm afraid is what I have to deal with. The stoopid matrimony sites have these dicks on: (this is by far my favourite! ROFL!)

I am a simple guy.i will speak very openly to anyone.My aim is to do business in india else to settle in europe countries with my wife.i will give full freedom to my life partner.But anycost she should not take any advantages .she should be charming and inteligent and co operate with my ideas and values she should be very adaptive to my family values .girls who has not intrested in doing business need not to look at my profile why because our thaughts may not be match in future.Only people can face challenging enviorment can proceed with.

WTF!!! he says "why because". now really! my mum's given up and thinks the right guy will just appear out of nowhere (which is what I've been trying to tell her from the beginning). it's become amusing for her too :D

in other news, i'm back in my birth city trying desperately to get on my own feet. i could easily make cashes doing brochure work but doing something different is the challenge i'm going to have to face. i wants to do branding! full on branding. and i need good cash for the work. and i want to fast forward to next year. then hopefully i will have something going with amit and pavi. :S

hydraulic drop

2010-01-17T12:57:00.002+05:30

at this juncture in life, today, just today, i feel like i'm standing and waiting to get on the hydraulic drop in a theme park.

i want to be there on top, wait for the fucking drop, and get mind-blown by the adrenaline.
it's a broth made of excitement, fear, fogginess of future and confidence.

hope it lasts eh!

i have 500 days of summer downloaded. when am i going to watch that?
flash-plan to ooty, leaving tonight and meeting archana there. will be fun!
fuck work.

It's another brand new year

2010-01-02T18:50:00.000+05:30

This year is different. i feel it in my bones. 2009 was craptastic. the fist half was ok more or less, then it just slipped and fell and broke its neck. this year is my year, the year i won't wait for anyone else. the year i'm taking decisions that suit me best. the year i make plans that involve just myself, the sort of plans that work out best. this year i want to live. this year is it. it's going to be fantastic! i have hope. it will satisfy me.

i have hope.

design rants

2009-12-11T16:01:00.003+05:30

shit, i thought and thought all morning and decided to write down some of my thoughts on design (came partly from frustration at current workplace and partly from wanting do be my own boss) anyhoo, it's turned out to sound a bit like something from a dissertation and i'm a little lazy to want to rewrite it. so here tis:

How can you design a design studio that reflects the designer's thinking, without it turning into a shambles?

• be brutally honest. show it like it is. consumers like it when a company's being honest.

• your clients are not going to refuse implementing a great idea that will benefit them, process-wise and financially. if they don't buy it, then you're not explaining well enough. if this means doing all research and presentations yourself, then do it.

• looking at design as a way to simplify life will solve most problems the design world faces. good design is inexpensive, the ideas are what needs to be accounted for. as long as your idea succeeds to solve one person's design problem, then it is worth executing.

• this brings me to the point of expansion: if you can hand over a project to a person to be responsible for it, design-wise, quality-wise and execution-wise without having to explain to him the best way of doing it, then that is the person you should hire. design is based very heavily on a give-take relationship. the moment you're only giving and are not getting anything in return, it's time to reanalyze the capability of your employer/employee/partner.

• the natural problem that arises from being honest is that some clients don't want you to be honest. for example, i find that mobile service providers are guilty of this. it is clear from their millions of publicity campaigns that transparency of their processes is the last thing on their minds. one way to get around this problem is to pick your clients based on their ethical and moral compatibility with you. it would surely make your life much simpler. but being picky doesn't do much to help the rest of the world. answering this question will automatically make your values and ethics as a designer clear to yourself. honestly i'm not really bursting with ideas of how to solve this problem. how do you deal with clients who don't want a crystal clear message to be communicated to their consumers?

• starting small and staying small is the key to a successful design business. ideas have to come from the top and if, only if their hired designers 'get it' can they do any justice to the idea's implementation. hiring designers is a bit like picking your life partner. since design AND life are very subjective topics, there is bound to be major differences of opinion about how things are run/done in both.

these are merely my thoughts and half-baked theories. point out holes and get me to argue my point!

a little time wasting i did at office (words from john mayer's 'edge of desire'):

i <3 my home

2009-12-07T12:01:00.001+05:30

04 December 2009, Bangalore: Drawing Room window

The Lamborghini Brothers

2009-12-07T11:57:00.002+05:30

Found 5 puppies in office full of fleas and shivering. we took them to the vet and fed them and did some virtual adoption and named them. they are the lamborghini brothers and the brown one's mine, Diablo. his brothers are:
plain black: raptor
white + brown (dinesh's): muira
plain brown: diablo
white + black goggles: athon
white + black head: spyder

edit: and there's one more black one! appeared out of nowhere with fleas. we're calling it countach.

03 December 2009, Bangalore: spyder is hidden under his brothers

Topmost

2009-12-07T11:50:00.000+05:30

02 December 2009, Bangalore: Fraser Town

Madras Madras!

2009-12-01T11:33:00.000+05:30

Train pulling into beautiful madras! oh the lowe! tears flowing down my face, happiness filling my 'ort and beautiful coloured sunlight :P

01 December 2009, Bangalore: Drama :P

Late night doggies

2009-12-01T11:29:00.000+05:30

For some reason these 2 dogs at the station were in love with us. they kept jumping on us and following us about everywhere. they like drunk people you think?

30 November 2009, Bangalore: The doggies who loved drunks.