Dead bored

... with the look of my blog. Aren't you fed up already? But, life calls. Earning money takes priority, for now, over redesigns. Sigh.

Whither Democracy?

Ah. I am getting serious again - *tears eyes from Hugh Jackman photo with effort*.

See anything wrong with this picture? The headlines on this page go, "More than 6 million people view Kerry on Iraq documentary" and "Kerry on Iraq" and "Who is John Kerry?" The menu gives subsection titles "Kerry Corner", "Kerry vs Kerry" and "Kerryopoly". In short, about 90% of the space on the front page of this website is devoted to John Kerry.

Welcome to the Republican National Committee's home on the internet, where Dubya's place of honour is a small, translucent image at the bottom left corner of the page.

The Democrats, surprisingly enough after that experience with the 'better half', sport a suitably grinning Kerry/Edwards duo right on top and an appeal for support. The references to Bush are few and far wittier ('Kerryopoly', honestly) - "$1 a day to make Bush go away!" Can't say that doesn't sound like a good deal.

I suppose the Dems do have an easier time of it, what with Bush not being in their camp. And of course, "It's time for a change" is usually easier to sell than "More of the same." I suppose that's why the Reublicans decided to roll up their sleeves and get on with the slander campaign; might as well, since they don't have much else to go on.

Leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, doesn't it?

So I decided to click homeward - checked out BJP's charmingly unsophisticated web presence. It's a novel experience - sad little passport shots of Vajpayee and Advani and Naidu, a few 'news' stories culled from the notoriously slanted Pioneer, menu staring out from a gawky yellow background. All the time you're thinking, is this for real? This is it - this is their official website!

Then when a google for "Congress Party" failed to turn out the required result, I panicked. There was a www.indiannationalcongress.org a few results down the page that didn't work - and in any case, I didn't think they were still calling themselves that. (Didn't they split into Congress-I and O and then a million offshoots so these guys became plain 'Congress Party'?) But I looked here and there a bit and got where I wanted through a cache... It turns out they do call themselves the Indian National Congress. It's a slick site alright, all the bells and whistles and demure-but-smiling picture of Sonia in place. Their banner's this collage of all the Congress leaders ever, with Gandhi heading the bunch. The nerve, eh? But if they're calling themselves INC again, why not, I guess.

But well, no smearing here. I'm proud of that.

Ye Gods

PS: Yes. Hugh Jackman.

The Kid turns 20

Awww....

Happy birthday to Overenthusiastix, Top Kid, Neffy Poo ... or Susheeee, by whichever name you prefer to call him.

Sushee, please don't kill me. You're my friend.

Who... am... I? It's identity crisis time!

Which HP Kid Are You?

For the record, I am insulted.

This is what's wrong with the world

So you're chatting with a random person online and he suddenly starts insulting your race and your country. What should you do?

Surely, this is the most pathetic of responses.

Note all the things that are wrong with this.

1. It's a petition. But what action do the writer and the signatories want taken? *blink blink* "Do something!"

2. It's a petition to the President (with a capital P) of India. (a) Does Mr Sayan Ghosh even know the president's name? (b) Does Mr Sayan Ghosh really think that India is "run by" him?!

3. It's a petition to the President of India that hasn't been proofread. Run-on sentences abound, grammatical errors peek out from every nook and cranny, and don't get me started on the punctuation. And does this guy think he's Keats or something, repeating the last part of the previous sentence as the first part of the next? Ugh.

4. His peeve is that when someone insults his country like this, it "will permanently destroy my confidence and my dignity as an Indian." Wow. Glad to know that the confidence and dignity of India rests on strong shoulders.

5. Most disturbing: the eleven (count 'em!) doofuses who actually signed this thing, and a fourth year comp engineering student who calls himself Deep, the blogger who actually linked this petition urging people who go sign it. (Incidentally, I don't see Deep's signature there. Wonder why?)

BTW I think those 11 deserve to be named on this blog so we can all point and laugh. Here goes:

11. Viral Jhaveri
it should be taken seriously
10. Gaurav Roy Choudhury
Matter should be looked after
9. Prantik
the whole affair as reported is highly shameful and must be given attention to so that no other person like him can abuse any other country like this
8. Diptish Bose
7. lokesh kumar awasthi
6. rohon
5. sayak krishna biswas
4. Arijit Roy
3. Sourav Kumar Dandapat
2. Indranil Sarkar
Good job!
1. Sayan Ghosh
Come forth and strenthen me in my battle.

*points and laughs*

Because I'm bored

Which OS are You?

Ring bell?

Source: random blog.

The Sinking of the Fair Ship S/R

JKR: "No, [Harry] doesn't [have a godmother]. If Sirius had married... Sirius was too busy being a big rebel to get married."

The Me Has Landed

First impressions: USA is huge. Open skies, everywhere, simply everywhere. I'm homesick for skyscrapers already (not to say I don't like this).

And the people here are MAD. There's this grocery store right across the street from my college campus and people drive there. I kid you not. There isn't even a naam-ke-vaaste pedestrian walkway to get there, I have to walk on the grass.

I should do this in a more orderly fashion.

The flight was hell. I'm still stiff from it; I don't think I'll ever truly want to sit again. Food was crap, service was worse and the entertainment was unimaginably ghastly. Don't fly United unless you intend to consume alcohol in large enough quantities to pay for your ticket. (The one good thing is they aren't stingy at all with the booze. There was this woman with a 10-month old baby beside me who was going at it with gusto. Three vodkas, one tequila, one whisky, one beer and two white wines. I kept track.) Incidentally, the service staff on the flight are moderately mad.

I got here on Saturday night, and the boyfriend picked me up and drove me to school. Checked into my dorm, which is a two-bedroom apartment meant for four people which actually houses three now. I live with a Bulgarian female and Japanese female. Nice-ish. The Bulgarian woman's homesick all the time so I find myself doing a lot of shoulder-patting.

I got matriculated today, in more ways than one. Missed my first official class. :) I now have a job with the external affairs office. The interview was slightly unsettling. My job description includes liaising with alumni, handling the publication intended for them and flower arrangement. So yeah, I'm unsettled, a bit.

Weather's beautiful. Makes me miss Ani, though. :D

I'll tell you more about my life if you really, really want to know, but I'd better stop before this becomes the blog that Amit is always alleging it is.

Glad to be getting out...

Because Singapore is rushing to reveal its ugly side to me in these last few days. Here are just a few hair-tearing moments my friends and I have been subjected to:

1. Lady at entrance of American Embassy turns me back from the gate because - get this - all my visa application forms have been filled in my hand, and not typed. Of course, when I say 'lady', I only apply the term loosely.

2. Pallavi and Anubhuti had the absolute worst landlord nightmare: the guy was always lounging around in the apartment even though he had sublet the whole place to them. They'd agreed he'd visit twice or thrice a month, but he'd show up every other day. Peeved, the two girls put a new lock on their door, and then the owner kicked up a huge fuss when he couldn't get in.

It turns out - the dude needed money, so he simply gave up his own apartment for rent, and was dividing his time equally between a friend's place and this apt because he had nowhere to stay! Pallavi and Anubhuti were quick to get out of the contract but they forfeited their deposit!

I think somebody ought to be complaining to HDB.

3. I had my own apartment related trouble. Tenants at my apt have been known to call me all the way over to change a tube light. This time they surpassed themselves. I had some stuff to drop off in the room we keep locked in my apt, so I called them up and told them I'd show up the next morning. Could they please not use their additional locks, if they have any, just for that one day? No, apparently, for "security issues" were at stake.

And this, after I've never, *ever* bothered them before, even though it was previously agreed that I'd visit once a month to check the state of all out furniture. I tried to tell them I was leaving in two days, and I didn't have any evenings free so I could come by when there were people at home, but no avail.

In the end, my agent, that divine man, picked up one of the tenants from her workplace during lunchtime so she could come over and unlock the door for me, waited till I finished putting my stuff in order in the room, then drove the woman back to work. Bah, what bratty tenants!

4. Did you know you can't get a cashcard refund if you don't have a bank account? I closed all of mine because I'm leaving, and it turns out I have to forfeit the $20 or so I have among my cashcards. This, despite the fact that they definitely don't tell you you need a bank account to get one - you simply go pay cash at the nearest 7-11 to get it. More than a mite misleading, don't you say? And for POSB/DBS, the account refund itself takes 14 days.

I yelled at the NETS guys a bit, and they fudged for a while and then said I could get a cash refund if I went to their office - "Special exception for you, Madam." Wish I had the time to do that - and to complain to the consumer protection bureau about this stuff, or at least write to Straits Times.

Got any horror stories of your own?

5... 4...

4 days, hopefully, to lift off. I'm as busy as can be expected, probably more because of superb planning mentioned in a previous post. But you're not interested in that. Fear not, I'm writing this post for a slightly more substancial reason than to 'dear diary' about my life.

I've just been pleasantly surprised to find that I have more money than I thought I had. Ha. Not insolvent after all, and this means I will avoid becoming a fugitive from Starhub for running away from the country without having paid my bills for two months. This also means that I'll be able to make calls again in about an hour's time.

And, I found a $50 note in the pocket of my denim jacket. I'm not allowing this to worry me, despite the fact that (a) I have absolutely no recollection of putting this nore there and (b) I certainly don't have so many 50 buck notes lying around that I'd forget something like this. I don't want to know if you know who this money really belongs to, OK?

The only blot on this topping landscape is the clock, ticking on. 4 days... *sniff*.


PS: New fic rec on my rec page.

Fleur

This is exactly as I've always imagined her... a couple of years younger, maybe, but this is right out of my head.

Artist - Nundu from the Sugarquill.

Marauders with the Map

Awesome, isn't it? I just love dopey!Sirius here! This piece is on Sugarquill and the artist is The Cursed Red Baron.

Reasons to see 'The Village'

• Wanna watch it. So does Kav.
• Have voucher for free popcorn combo, willing to share and share alike.
• Packan recommends it.
• I need to spend money to make myself feel good about my source of income having dried up.
• M Night Shyamalan. Which means at least the writing's gonna be good.
• Heart is now goo (see prev post) and it now hankers for one last (ah! one last!) movie at beloved Singapore theaters.

Mush

Next weekend looms, and a definite sappiness seems to have kicked into my life. I'm going through all the stages in the "moving on to a whole new chapter of life" thing, soup to nuts, missing none, sometimes backtracking and doing things twice.

Wondering where on earth the last four years - heck, the last couple of months - went? Check. Stopping abruptly in the midst of conversation to gaze fondly at friends, words of amiable insult dying on my lips? Check. Thinking things like - "Now, what sort of gift says 'BWAAAAHHHHH I can't bear to leave you!' without seeming too pathetic?" Check. Wilfully looking at HDB flats because I won't get to see them after I leave? Check. Clobbering boyfriend when he tries to reassure me by telling me how he's completely lost touch with college friends, so it's OK, in five years this won't matter? Check.

I'm a wreck. Embarrassing tears threaten to break out at the drop of a smile. As usual, tension about other stuff is the only solution. I very intelligently planned for this very contingency by leaving the really, really important stuff till the last.

So I'm applying for my visa only tomorrow, and I'm afraid I won't get it. (Once again, the boyfriend tries to reassure me by telling me 60% of all applicants are granted visas.) Mild panic is beginning to set in because I can't seem to get a flight booking from any of the three travel agents I contacted. My packing's not done, and the money is tight.

So HA to you, suckers - now I'm too busy biting my nails down to the quick to have an emotional breakdown.

Cackle, cackle

From dear Cuckoo's blog, a crazy Harry Potter joke -

Wormtail: My Lord, will you rise again?
Voldie: Sure, but I may need a hand

Edited to add: I just realised this can be interpreted in a slightly non-veg way as well. Hmm. Voldie's intimate life... plot bunny, anyone?

Quote me someday

Of all the beautiful words in the English language, the best are these: "Three-day weekend."

Naught naught... n' naughty

So I've been calling random big shots up trying to get them to speak for a conference my company is organising. The trouble is, I have to get past the Great Wall of Secrataries. I had one of them thinking I was an industrial spy today, regular 007 -

Yours Truly: "Hello, may I speak to Mr --- please?"
Great big fat Wall: "What is this regarding?"
YT: "I just wanted to know if your bank is implementing any credit portfolio management."
GW: "I'm sorry, I can't tell you that."
YT: (Ani style) "OK... Uh... You do have a team managing your company portfolio, right? Is your bank BASEL II* compliant?"
GW: "I'm sorry, my boss has instructed me not to tell anyone anything."
YT: "But... why? I'm only..."
GW: "The thing is, we never know, you see. You could be our competitor or you could use our information for other purposes which we may not want you to."
YT: Hangs up as unable to control laughter.

There was this other time I called up and actually got through to the big shot. Halfway through the conversation the lady puts me on hold to take another call... only she doesn't put me on hold. I can hear every word she's saying to somebody who could only possibly be a lover... *yuck* Yours truly was not built to be a phone-voyeur. The fun part, though, was when she came back on the line and seemed to realise she hadn't put me on hold. She asked me if she had, and I just said "No," in the coolest tone of voice I could manage.

Talk about bargaining chips. ;D


*Basel is this accord thingy that banks have been 'strongly recommended' to follow; it sets standards for minimum percentages of capital savings etc.

Up for air

I need this. The past two weeks have been harrowing beyond all expectation and belief, and at least part of the reason is that when I do find myself with a bit of spare time in front of a comp, all I feel is exhaustion and the urge to passively surf, not thinking, not writing, not thinking of writing. It's a drain, not looking out for and picking out things to say from the things that happen. I am very much afraid I've been in the classic office-worker rut. Ye Gods.

This, I think, would be my Boggart.