Battle of Kruger

You have to see this. Few battle scenes are so well choreographed.

All hail the charging bulls!

Ramble on

Mine's a tale that cant be told,
My freedom I hold dear;
How years ago in days of old
When magic filled the air,
'Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor
I met a girl so fair,
But Gollum, and the evil one crept up
And slipped away with her.
Her, her....yea.
Ain't nothing I can do, no.

Hail Tolkien!
Even Led Zep worshipped him.

Yeah yeah, I knew this before. Just putting it up now.

The Old Well.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the oldest public university in the US. Full of old buildings and landmarks and nostalgia.

In the midst of all that, there's this old well. The town's original water source. Now it is but a simple water fountain that anyone can drink from. Or so you would think. It is said that all who drink from that fountain eventually return to Chapel Hill. I decided to test it out.


Actually, I was coming back from soccer football and was just too thirsty. Same thing.

The Right way.

Yes, this is a new post. Not the last one rewritten.

And yes, this is about traffic as well. So shoot me. People here drive on the right side of the road. You already knew that. Which can make crossing the road a tad difficult. The safest thing for one of us to do would be to look both ways a couple of times before crossing. Simple enough to remember.

What you probably did not realise, is that everything is done on the right here. Just like everything is done on the left back home. People walk on the right side of the footpath pavement sidewalk. The doors marked for entry are on the right.

Everything is polarised. Which isn't anything special in itself, except that it's done the wrong way. Okay okay, the way we are not used to.

You would've thought that I should have gotten used to this by now, having been here once before and all that. Maybe some people just can't learn.

You need to bang into a few people on the sidewalk to find out how much fun it can be. Or nearly get run over by a bus pulling into a bus stop.

Right of way.

Once you get used to the fact that people drive on the right in the US, (they felt the need to stick it to the Brits every step of the way, didn't they?) the thing that surprises you the most is who gets the right of way.

Pedestrians. Yes, that's right.

OK, so you shouldn't jaywalk and cross the road wherever you freakin' want to. As long as you don't do that, you're king of the road!

I think this has happened so many times so far - I come to an intersection, and stare into the distance waiting for the vehicles on the road to go past. Suddenly I realise that the car's stopped and the person driving is waving at me to go ahead and cross. And every time, I find myself thanking them all surprised and hurriedly, feeling bad about not having crossed sooner.

Had I expected the same back home and acted on it, I would've been roadkill long, long ago.

'Tis a strange world.

I didn't have much work today and so I decided to leave early from the lab. At a road crossing, I meet this grizzly old man, Glenn I think his name was. Animated, and very polite, amongst other things he asks me where I am from. When I tell him that I am from India, he pulls out a 2-rupee coin, and asks if I have seen anything like that before. Surprised that he has an Indian coin, I say that yes, I have certainly seen those, and tell him the paltry value of it when asked.

We're walking on, and he tells me that he's from Jersey, and he'd come here for an operation, and points at one of the huge hospital buildings. He has a scar running down the middle of his chest, some 6 inches long, I think. He had an aortic aneurysm, and people fixed it. Which means that his aorta was about to burst open. We parted ways, wishing each other the very best.

I've met few people who seemed more alive.

Pad Kee Mao

Pad Kee Mao. Thai "drunken" noodles.
Broad rice noodles, soy sauce, garlic, bell peppers, veggies, and tofu. Traditional Basil and Chilli seasoning. Mmmm. In spite of the tofu.

I ♥ Thai food.

Pain. If only it were so simple.

Gastroesophageal reflux disease. Acid reflux, in simpler words. Stuff that the old, senile and the weak suffer, and even they only after they take inordinate amounts of NSAIDs or downing gallons of coffee or wallowing in alcohol (and vitamin C supplements, curiously enough). The Disease of the Ancients. That was the diagnosis.

I am 20 years old. I am not old, I think I am not yet senile, and I don't believe that I am so weak. I don't have a pain problem or a pain-management problem (now those who recognized where that came from, give me an Amen!). I am not nuts about coffee or alcohol. And I don't get kicks out of downing vitamin pills either.

I would usually snicker if someone were to prattle on about something so cliched like how they were in the prime of their lives and how they would never be able to best their ahem, current brilliance. But really, could this be me at my very highest? I've been asked to take medicine for the next two months, doesn't one have to be at least 60 for such a thing to happen? And pray, how bad would it get when I turn 60? Do forgive my involuntary shudders. Unpleasant questions with unpleasant answers. Much better if we assume them to be rhetorical.

In related news, I had a tube stuck down my throat today. Yep, that's how they confirmed the diagnosis. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy. Apparently the word endoscopy can be used in the pretext of sticking a tube into any of your orifices, as he quite fondly let me know. (:P) So Esophagogastroduodenoscopy it is. The procedure was not really necessary (their words, not mine!), but it would be nice to get it done. Nice was the word used. Harrumpf. It isn't among the better ways to spend your day, take my word for it. Well, maybe if you are deviant. Maybe not even then. The fact that the tube was as thick as my index finger didn't help all that much. And here I thought that they could fit a camera on the head of a pin. Not the same 'they', clearly.

Oh, and there's more! Dietary restrictions. That has such a ring to it, doesn't it? Amongst other boring things, no CHOCOLATE!

Monsters.

I will not pretend to possess the same lust for chocolate truffles and milkshakes, black forest cakes and snickers bars; that some of my friends have... but life without chocolate!

Me, I'm speechless.

OK, I am off... to go sleep on the regulation two pillows. It's alright to herniate one of my vertebrae as long as it can stop a li'l stomach ache, eh? Ok, not so little. Even then.