The Seven Tag

Seven things that I plan on doing (its interesting that much of it involves travel):
1. Go see Angkor Wat and more of South East Asia.
2. Eat my way through Thailand!!
3. Visit Kerala and spend some lazy days in the backwaters.
4. Read Joyce - I have been stuck around page 35 of Ulysses for the last 10 years.
5. Cook and eat healthy.
6. Work out regularly.
7. Earn enough to pay for all of the above!

Seven things I can't do:
1. (looking around shiftily while mumbling) Uh swim
2. Get rid of those freaking breakouts - I am the age I am - and not sixteen, good heavens!
3. Find that one thing I can be crazy about. Maybe food eh?
4. Not be lazy.
5. Wake up at sunrise, or even before 8 AM regularly, sheesh.
6. Work out regularly :(
7. Think of any place but Calcutta as home.

Seven things I say a lot:
1. Awwww (What can I say - all my friends are reproducing like bunnies)
2. Hel-LO (Yeah, funny sing-song on the second syllable. Yeah I hate it too but can't stop)
3. Riiight (With suitable amounts of disbelief in the voice)
4. Darn (Trying to get out of the cursing habit, so...)
5. Freaking (Ditto)
6. Dhur (Self-explanatory)
7. Chhagol (Thats for my dear brother)

Do I have to tag anybody? The usual suspects - Priya and Goti! Also may I say that I am honored to tag the famous [drumroll] Arnab of Greatbong fame!!

Coming Soon...

Must write a post with Swati's tag of seven...

Running to keep up!

Yes, I know I have been very very bad! I have neglected my poor blog and its three readers most shamefully and I need to make amends. So here goes with a suitably chatty (yes, no?) post...

As usual, I have been working hard (ahem! I have to say this or Dada will tell Ma and then I will have to ignore all those furious text messages from home). Last weekend though was rather nice. I went out Friday night to attend a program of songs by Barbara Cook and she was amazing. She has a very pure, clear voice and although I may get brickbats from both sides for this, she reminded me a bit of Lata Mangeshkar when she is not shrill. Definitely not the husky-throated jazz chanteuse I was hoping for, but musically satisfying nevertheless. The program was a part of the SF jazz festival, although it was less jazz than showtunes. My friend and I helped to add some observations to the rather slender left tail of the age distribution in the huge Davies Symphony Hall.

Saturday was spent wandering around the Green Festival in San Francisco. It was quite entertaining with maracas-wielding and accoustic guitar strumming white kids with dreadlocks producing surprisingly sweet music on an impromptu stage, and lots of samples of tasty food. There was $1 coffee with unlimited refills they said, except the cup was a little too eager to er degrade. I bought a tshirt made of - get this- bamboo fibre. There was also a rather interesting talk on a business curriculum that emphasizes sustainability. Their affiliations appear to be valid though, so hopefully my good friend Thalassa will not have to run the usual checks!! Although I am being snarky (just a tad bit) about the festival, it was not just the "patchoulli and hemp" crowd from university town just four blocks away from me, but full of ordinary determined people trying to make a difference. All cynicism apart, it was a wellspent day. We ended up with dosas at Udupi Palace in Berkeley for dinner, which was as usual about a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. I do wish they'd add some punch to that sambhar :(

Finally saw an excellent film today - Good Night and Good Luck. Based on true events, shot in black and white and interspersed with the original tv footage, this is one gripping movie. A lot of the lines, based as they are in the McCarthy era, hit astonishingly close to home today. We keep fighting the same wars over and over again it seems. That "we" was a tiny bit presumptuous, eh? Ok, lets just say then, that societies forget too soon and fight the same wars over and over again, hmm?