'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.

My experiments with MS Paint

Someone needs to take a gun and shoot me. As no one seems to be doing so, I guess I can get on with the erm... questionable things I do.

Today, I might have gone just a tad off my rocker. Yes, I accept that it's so before you take it upon yourself to kindly tell me so. (In fact, some of you have already expressed your ahem, opinions on the same, so never matter.)

My spending the whole day in lab, and my mucking around in noxious glacial acetic acid and hydrogen choride fumes just might have done the trick. Anyhou, I come back to the room after the ritualistic visit to Guru, our friendly neighbourhood 'Gurunath Patisserie', and do the routine search for the latest episodes of all those TV series I happen to follow. And it was good news! Lost, Boston Legal, Jericho, Scrubs, and HIMYM had all come out with new ones. *counts* Almost three hours worth of stuff. Bliss. My day is done.

Or so one would think. Suddenly, I find myself opening MS Paint. I can't quite recollect as to why I actually did that. Soon, I find myself doodling there, drawing a face, whilst things were downloading off the LAN. The face comes out OK, but the hair looks terrible. So the obvious choice? Cut off the poor bloke's head. And fill it with something weird. The result, quite ghastly, was my display pic for a brief while, when TheGreyPilgrim was kind enough to express his horror at the same. I think I'll do everyone a favour and not put up that pic here.

I am a very dedicated person. Of course, few realise that. You may see me idling most of my time, but that is only because most of the time, I'm just waiting for an inspiration noble enough to match this erm... spirit of endeavour of mine. Well, I found one today.

I see BigBet having one of his Anime/Manga pics on his Gtalk profile. It looks particularly elegant and simple. I'm intrigued. When asked, he gives me the image file, rather amused. Ever used the curved lines option on MS Paint? I draw all the outlines using that option. Not the most trivial thing one can do. And then I proceed to spend almost three hours on recreating that picture from scratch.


Three hours, when I could have watched a plethora of sitcoms and series, or when I should have worked on the A slot assignment.
The result, I'm proud to say, was quite good. All who called me a loon did agree with me on that much.

Poetry!

So I was thinking. Why don't I put up one of those Tolkien-poems I've written. Not the most original of ideas I've had, I'll admit.

And so I am putting it up. Written in the back of an Aerospace-101 class, the only piece of third-person poetry I have ever written. (Whoa. That makes it sound as if I've written a lot of poems. Surely people know better.)

Anyhou, here it goes. It's been more than two years, and I still haven't been able to come up with a title. Good, huh?

Mithrandir

In ships they came,
From yonder silver shores;
Soon after the shadows fell,
On woods of green and so much more.

In Moria, in Khazad-dûm,
A shadow's formed in the once clean dark;
Where Durin once had met his doom,
He may not come back again.

In Rhôvanion, in the Greenwood Great,
Where elves linger since age unknown;
A darkness fell over the land,
And fell things came under Oak and Beech.

In the east that was wild, bereft of lords,
The old that was feared had now come back;
Dread was great in these men of night,
For long had they under evil dwelt.


The blessed ones came in numbers five,
Pale and cloaked, hooded and staffed;
Thus they came to the Gulf of Lune,
Where Círdan hailed them from afar.

In front of all was one in White,
A light there was seen in his eyes,
And a might there was seen in his voice;
Leader he was of all the five.

And in his trail came a figure in Brown,
Following who were the twain in Blue;
Lost now they are to the western cause,
Bereft of purpose, roaming the wild.

The last seemed like an old man in Grey,
Seemed less in might than the other four.
But a fire nevertheless was in his eyes,
And a staff much gnarled was in his hands.


They were sent by the lords of the west,
As messengers to the lands in the east;
To form an order, great in might,
To check the growth of this Shadow from the past.

In this they failed, all but one:
The twain in Blue were lost in the east,
The one in Brown took off with Bird and Beast.
The leader in White, the west he betrayed.

Yet one remained, faithful till last.
Webs he wove, subtle their strands.
Prime was he, in cleansing the land,
In destroying the Shadow, Sauron returned.

Mithrandir, O Pilgrim Grey!
He assumed the Mantle of White.
The White he pitted, against the dark:
The White burned the hotter, down fell the Black.

-Pavan Srinath