148 hours(II)

Such a breather, some plane finally took off with me and Gill in it. Heavy rosed cheeks of singaporian girls gave a full blown smile showing our seats and served hot wet towels to scrub off the fag of the day. I cosily took refuge on the middle seat taking turns between watching movies and eloping with Andre in his Autobiography Open.

The book was a real fun read especially when Andre walked me through all his grand slam experiences and opponent mind reading strategies .He started off the game hitting tennis balls all day thrown at him at full speeds by the dragon machine designed by his father. He would get strong bashing whenever the ball hit the net. He hated it and would do anything to foreclose it returning each serve impeccably. That explains why he was one of the best returners of the millennium. Pete, in contrast, was the best server.Need to read him to explain that. He made his career through hard work in contrast with Andre being a prodigy.The most intriguing part of all was Andre doing so well in Tennis despite disliking it to his core.

His book has emphasized one biggie everywhere - The attitude is what governs winning or loosing.He was so inconsistent attributed to up downs of his life. When he was happy,inspired, motivated and had faith in himself, he achieved the infeasible. His love stories with Brooke Shields and Stefanie Graffe were very amusing and engaging. How he started with Brooke just through fax for weeks when she was in Africa for shoots,no crushes or interests whatsoever but ending up in commitment. This didn't prove to be happy and understanding relationship though.Being in different professions and unable to enter each other's comfort zones, their inter personal chemistry got pretty messed up ending in a divorce.

Andre's solid crush on Stefanie Graffe got a full blown revival after his break up with Brooke. It's just that Stefanie didnt give him a damn before and he didn't push it hard enough before. Experience with Brooke gave him lessons in handling girls and winning four grand slams & Olympics confidence. The words of his coach "Only you and Stefanie have been able to win all grand slams and Olympics, you both are meant to be together" got engraved in his heart and soul.

His coach persuaded Stefanie's in to making her play a few shots with Andre as a practice match. He then takes off his shirt to show off his body and seduce her. He starts cooling down exercises with her on the net although never done before to chit-chat and watch out for her fair slim legs. Initially hesitant in meeting Andre in public,being committed to a German racer guy, she slowly starts responding to bait once Andre gives her a personal surprise birthday card.

His one liner of "we are meant to be together" gave the final requisite blow for commitment. She and the chartiable school foundation gave him enough adrenaline to ward off his hatred for tennis. He started playing professionally as a kid and continued his career till 36 years of his life given the fact that most of the tennis players retire at the age of 30. His whole life was irony.

The book also talks about how his family and friends helped him survive all fatal blows of his life and most importantly his trainer Gill. Once you have love and support, you can come out of any emotional abyss. That explains his come back again and again.

When I finished my trip with Andre, the plane had already landed with no skidding to my surprise on the icy -10 C grounds of Moscow . I was supposed to hop on and off the plane passing through so called farzi security check. Moscow airport seemed like one of the most ancient of its kind portraying the look of a black and white movie of 1950's.I felt like taking a time travel machine with Andre and ending up in the wrong millennium.

The lousy baggage check machine at security check point looked like the first most advanced of its kin installed by Stalin and never changed since. Nobody even asked to take out our laptops or electronics from the bag. Everything looked just like the ritual to appease the old beast machine watching out for Moscow.The tattooed russian girl was just sitting by the side of it,not that she could do anything if a situation demands so except saying NO to camera clicks, fearing that the people would know their crummy lousy security.

Every native looked drunken with red puffed eyes and were walking like live zombies. No wonder that most of the shops were selling liquor and cigarettes. May be that's the only thing they do after Tennis and Math.

As everything else, even the check in seemed like a formality. Singaporian airlines announced for business class boarding, but checked in every class together, carpeting whatsoever for the business class people seemed too far fetched lest they reach safely without a knock out.There was no concept of a queue. The boarding gate looked like the tip of a triangle, everybody converging towards it. No body would even care to apologize if they stumped on you while rushing through. Welcome to Russia!!!

The next move was made from Russian federation to Singapore, the second part of my journey. Russians seemed like carnivores with an acute shortage of vegetarian food. The only food I got was boiled brocolli and some oiled boiled squash and Zucchini. I can definitely scrap Russia for my to be in places list.Going in the city and watch out for the living style of this species would be fun though.

We finally landed to Singapore airport finding such a stark difference. The airport was heavily carpeted anywhere and everywhere and gyms, swimming pools and massage chairs sitting everywhere. Go to the information center and get access for free internet,What more do you want from a airport. No long queues for the check in as every gate had its own security check. I was curious how much money did they shell out for springing up the giant. Even had a well planned guided cultural tour of the city for the people having stop overs.

The government has ensured housing and jobs to every citizen. I presume a lot comes from serving at the airport itself and serving at coast. They claim to have the busiest port in the whole world. Like US, this country also doesn't have natives and a old history to talk about. Chinese, Indians, Malaysians and the mixed breeds make majority of the population. Even the city is organized as China Town, India town and Malay town but thats more due to divide and rule policy of british again. Now that seems to have dissolved more or less.

I came back to the aiport after a 2 hour city/country trip and just lied down on the massage chair for a while and got off only at the boarding time to find myself upgraded for the business class to adjust some family. I seated myself on the cosy big chair with Zen and the art of motorscycle maintainence. When the damsel came to ask for the drink, I ordered my favourite spicy tomato juice which goes with bloody mary mix name in states not making myself clear about the mocktail. I received a concoction of vodka and tomato juice instead for obvious reasons.Sip by sip the lethargy swept over only to find myself woken up in Bangalore by the noise of people getting down. The long awaited moment finally arrived.

PS: This is my first photo blog. Thanks to Anush and Michelle for inspiration.

148 hours(I)

The heat of the Inde trip was on. One by one I bade adieu to all my room mates. Packing up the work left overs all week, the day finally came when gill called to ride over the GREY HOUND (inter-city bus) and catch over the BA flight from Houston.

Seemed like a fine day and a good start with fresh brownies baked by Nani. Weather also seemed promising with sufficient warmth in the air. The bus took a country side route and we could see large people and fields driving large trucks. Thats Texas....

The hound didn't like running on the highway, so we got off his back and took a classy 15 $ bus ride from downtown. Asit tuned out, it ran for us only with no other passengers. Feeling loyal, spirits high, we hopped off the airport. The strangest of its kind, the airport had as minimal signs as they could go with. Problems began their jouney with us from here itself. We moved around in the lousy elevator checking different floors for the counter of British airways until one fine lady told us the way.

Dragging the trolley to the counter, screens with red words were blinking at us mercilessly "FLIGHT IS CANCELLED. No INDE TRIP for next few days, snow storm in full wave".

"Brothers wedding was all the motivation of making the trip, take us poor souls away from this trouble post of london. Send us through the gulf we even don't mind going via moon or mars if we reach to our Inde. This will be a chain disaster of all the upcoming plans to bangy, kurg and mysore. This is not what we wanted, we longed for a beautiful lovely vacation with the family beneath the woods in the middle of coffee fields."we remarked.

The kind angelica did all exhaustive searches and weather predictions to get as through as fast as possible. She finally came up with a flight 2 days later with Lufthansa that will fly us untouched amidst all storms eating up British Airways,Air France and KLM flight schedules. Sad,melancholy souls waited and waited for 2 days at Sheraton and when the happy night before the departure day came, gill just checked Luthansa for next day, eyes got a sudden roll over.

Multiple refreshes, multiple checks every minute, checks on different sites -all gave the same result. "Frankfurt is closed due to heavy snow storm, We apologize for the inconvenience caused.. The direction of the storm has taken as sudden turn."

"Are we spending quater vaction in Sheraton Houston itself?" Gill remarked.

Lord of Rings echoed on the walls of my brain

"But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow in the waters that was soon lost in the West. There he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-Earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart."

Then another echo came in....

"So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil."

And so the swords were reforged and we prepared for the (hopefully)last battle of middle hoston boarding the bus for another grand slam. British airways lined all the broken hearts in queue whose sluggishness even beat the tortoise. It took them 7 hours to process 14 people. God knows if they were learning to operate the software or what.I was the first to sit down and munch on the left over novel but then everyone followed the suit.

The german girls even did some yoga exertions to keep their calm. When we finally reached, we received an awesome itinerary supposed to start after 2 days.

It seemed like a never ending journey of Gondor to Mordor. The singapore airlines would first take us to their home land not through PACIFIC but rather through ATLANTIC doing global bhraman locomoting over the old Caucasus Mountains of cold Russia then going over the top of our home land. The exit of the plane I never dared to use would have been so instrumental if only I had taken some sky diving lessons. Then a 7 hour hiatus for the next flight to Inde from Singapore. With no option left and too scared to take any european airlines, this seemed like the way to go.

The gladiators were again taken back to the three star cell. Seemed to settle down in our pseudo home, we started exploring other possibilites for food with only pasta as the pure veggie option for 2 last days "Can u remove the beef from the burger and replace it with guacamule" or "Can you take off the chicken peices from Quesadillas". Lets watch out for the work out options now that we are eating a lot of cheesy greasy stuff. Harsha and Pranav came to bail us out for an hour drive for beer and show us the city glamor. To our dismay, the clubs around looked pretty shady, so planned to come back. Though had a pretty good time chit-chatting over beer.

We left very early next day to get the first in line in case flight gets cancelled but finally stars took our side and this flight luckily was on time. Checking in seemed the best thing in the world at the moment .

PS:Credits for the namesake blog title stole from 127 Hours movie to my friend Pranav Bhandarkar. Name rings bells of a movie director but he is the Namesake of our gang leader Pranav Karve .

Inde Trip Dairies

Middle of the semester it was; no respite, assignments supposed to be finished till the end of spring break and some exams even. Sinking star of Hindu myths didn’t show any mercy nor would have the scorching heat of summers. Voila, the wedding ceremony of my sister was planned in the blooming springs of March me being summoned to Hindustan. The exhilarating climax of 2 weeks got over with a snap of fingers. Struck in a limbo, the kick of the semester brought me back.

The reel rewinds….

Packed with so much activity the trip set off the mark with the third night out (having spent 2 nights in travel already) with my friend Gogo munching original Indian cuisine from Bikaner after a long year.

Agreed boy that I had no muscle memory for bowling but still I anticipated tendons and ligaments to show some support at least. They betrayed me badly steering the whole bunch of balls in to gutter throwing Gogs in to rolls of laughter. The next flop show was a random sorry movie watch when we couldn’t get the tickets for Invictus taking our adrenaline to lowest levels boosted only by a boot of freshly brewed beer. The booz kicked in the anecdotist skills back in Gogs with him recounting each and every incident of Convo in great detail making me miss it more than ever. The flood gates were closed again only at 6 in the morning.

The fagged soul had no respite for the next four days due to incessant shopping for coming nuptial ceremonies. The fatigue of the day dissolved the jet lag so quick that I used to sleep like a baby in nights.

Different different yumm cuisines are still sitting at Nukkads (street corner) in Delhi .The outlook speaks of no renovation so forth but who cares when taste buds are happy go lucky.

Delhi is a hub of traditional wear with an immense pool to browse from. I picked Rajasthani, Bengali and Western wear but I pity them to have the fate of blooming once like a Star of Bethlehem and then sealed forever in the wardrobe.

It took 4 days to finish rather wind up as it happens to be a never ending hunt for the girls. The most hilarious part though was expending half of the time looking out for Parul’s JHUMKI (earrings).

The next few days started with the card distribution and believe me it was no easy deal when 1500 people are invited. I was wondering how we are going to manage really but then papa devised “Divide and Manage” making a troop of his friends’ sons to manage each and everything.

Small kids cry on the top of their larynx when they come at socials, so papa came up with an idea of KIDS CORNER to gratify the little ones making them feel at a gala rather.

The pack of six (friends) arrived to combat the chariots of the groom not to allow him just unleash our territory before accrediting us. (It’s an Indian tradition to cut the ribbon at the entrance and gift to sister and brother in laws ).

It was a perfect KODAK moment when the best man (me of course ihun ihun :)) escorted the bride under the shroud of fragrant roses with band beats making the moments in the ambiance. It felt like years just vaporized; the sibling I played around with was getting betrothed .And so the moment came when all the balloons kissed the sky and the garlands were exchanged. She became the wife of the man of her dreams.

The bride bade au revoir by throwing back the cereal (symbolizes wishing for prosperity back her parents home) .The awesome sense of humor of my cousin couldn’t let anyone tickle a drop of tear at the softest moment even when the hard hearted fathers cry like babies. And so the movie came to the climax ……..

Passion of a High School kid III

Being air borne and surf as an avian was what he cherished. He used to love the time when his mother used to tell him stories as a kid about Icarus and his magical wax wings. He thought of never going near sun and loosing them like Icarus did once he receive them.

When he got certain that the magical wings were never fashioned again after Icarus fell, he sought other ways when he came across the story book read of magical broom used by witches. He asked his parents where he could find one but they would always tell him that he is too young to steer it not desiring to break the kid’s heart. He was content with collecting the stickers of the witch with broom for time being.

He was so excited when the stories of Harry Potter came and Quidditch became his favorite sport .He used to lay aside pocket money to buy the novel on the same day of its release and would teleport in the novel and race with harry on Nimbus 2000.He always used to wonder why he has not seen anyone playing it in Izmir.

Gone were the days of the fantasy kid world, he was an adolescent now and knew it was all fictitious except the air borne planes. Nothing like a personal air bike or broom exists for the matter of fact. He had to pinch himself to believe when his father got him an air bike instead of counter strike game as he expected. It was unheard of in turkey and his father got it shipped from Germany as soon as the product entered the market.

This was the time to call Cosku to fiddle around with the air wagon together. Cosku had pretty good knowledge when it came to land wagons but air borne would be a new challenge for him too. They will bend the air and cut through the sea of clouds.

After getting expertise in driving, he could ask Aylin for a ride too and it would definitely be the cool stuff Cosku was talking about.

When called, Cosku didn’t believe at first but he was amazed when he looked at it for real and they started trying to operate it that moment only. The vehicle need to be supplied with initial fuel for making up the thrust and but then it was supposed to use the heat from its surroundings to drive through. It took an hour before they could be airborne. It scared hell out of them at first when they couldn’t control the speed of it and regretting not reading about it first. It just cut across the wind like a blade but then Cosku figured out how to control the amount of heat absorbed and hence change the speed. It got soo much smoother and exhilarating.

Being a coastal kid, he started swimming almost before walking and then wind surfing but this experience was different, definitely different .He had been fantasizing about this for so long.He adored his father for the moment.

Bekir !!! Bekir!!!

Ohh Boy!! Wake up, you don’t want to be late for the first day of school, Cosku must be on his way for here already.

Hike...

Hiking seems like the real sport not that I know much about other natural sports like wave and wind surfing. It feels like discovering oneself again in the lap of the sire nature.

In retrospect, I am reminded of my trekking trail on splendid Hemkunt Mountains of Middle Himalayas where blended aroma of cold ice, flowers and wet mud brings even musk to shame .It’s fun to watch how nature seals this place for 8 months to come up with a kaleidoscope of Glaciers, Waterfalls, Mountains, Transparent Lakes and Flower Valleys. When the monsoon rains begin, the ice and snow melt and meadows of ferns and moss and wildflowers paints the lake bank.

I remember how we hiked 22 kilometers steep tracks for flower valley and Hemkunt shrine on the same day and how the hot stew from rice and lentils we got in the Shrine felt like Ambrosia to the fagged souls and how dipping the feet the cold waters of Hemkunt Lake snatched the pain out the feet and made them numb. It was a sight to behold-the cold glossy lake fenced by the 7 mountains and so clear that you could peep in for the rocks on the bed.

We stayed on the small army quarters in the middle of forest and the best thing was the scenic view of snow clad mountain from our window in the morning and river flowing beneath.In India,you are lucky to have an uncle in the Indian army given the fact of all the royalty from the British expire handed over to the army,the most important being the army men still maintaining those British etiquettes and life style.You really feel like a king there and it feels so good for a change with servants at your disposal.Especially if you go to remote places,the army quarter is the best place and may be the only place to stay unless you are backpacking.

This time while googling for a hike route I came across Appalachians and find this really interesting read:

To be honest I didn’t realize there were already the 2,175 mile Appalachian Trail AND the 1,862 mile International Appalachian Trail (IAT) which extends far north into Canada. Unfortunately portions of the Canadian IAT require train and ferry connections and as such only about 100 folks have completed the whole thing.

Technically the Appalachian mountain range exists in Europe as well (you know, the whole Pangea thing) and runs through Greenland, the UK, Norway, France, Spain, and Morocco. The newest IAT extension will also require train and ferry connections and perhaps even a passport. Could the IAT one day become the longest trail in the world?

We ended up doing a minuscule of it with the stats of the round trip being 6 hours for 25 kilometers .Unlike the Hemkunt one this didn’t have a paved path way path to abide by, you could just check white signs on the trees and follow them. It was such a breather to spot out a few blue ones on the way and drink cold fresh water from the rivulet being already out of water stock. You can’t spot out many fellow travelers; may be a few if you are lucky. The ones whom we met were planning to do a quarter of the trail for a month and were carrying bag packs with food and tents all the way. I can imagine how difficult it is to do that on such a severe track and just surviving on the beef stew all along just because it’s very light weight. Only time you can savor a regular meal is when you come across some township in between the trail. I could see the remains of the fire places in between though which people could be using while camping.

Nowadays, it’s so difficult to spare a month or two unless you are in middle of changing your job or so but then you got to be really interested in wildlife or photography to do it for so long but I heard people doing it for 4 months. Kudos really!!

I observed some torn tree trunks and it seemed that they were once home for the bees and then bears had ripped open trees or hives to feast on honey, honeycomb, bees and bee larva. I could spot out some of the wild pink mushrooms too. As my roommate told me, the colored ones are poisonous but the white ones are edible.

When I look back, the visit to the flower valley of Hemkunt was great in the sense of a having a company of a local guide feeding us about the plant species growing out there. Every plant had such a peculiar shape matching its nature like poisonous ones looking like snake fangs. We could spot some birches whose barks were used by our sages to write all our sacred books. The best part of the whole journey was going near the point of no coming back - a deep crevasse on the glacier ice sheet we were walking on ….

Invictus Movie

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

A Victorian poem written by William Henry which forms the central theme and pumps up an inspirational boost Nelson all the eighteen years he was incarcerated in a match box sized prison on Robben Island. Pooh-poohed at first by all teammates when their captain Pienaar suggests the poem as the anthem, the poem later feeds in the adrenaline to the underdog spirits of SpringBoks.

Seasoned like a fine French wine, Morgan Freeman has done a perfect job posing as the protagonist of the movie without any need to pack a new attitude to fit in the character of Nelson. Our Matt Damon alias Jason Bourne has played Francois Pienaar in the movie, the team-lead of the SpringBoks with a new tinge of being a silent leader this time.

The well chiseled brains of Nelson contrived their application in the outset of the movie plot itself stopping blacks when want to use their newly earned political power to detract identity of the springboks by snatching off their colors and logo. Nelson being a tolerant man instead flexed this as the spade to boot out the ingrained apartheid. Had been it supported, it could have thrown the nation to dangerous ramifications like civil war with police being primarily controlled by the white minority.

Nelson invites Pienaar next for the evening tea and tells him of his desire of getting SA the rugby world cup which impresses and perplexes Pienaar at the same time but he tries his best to follow up. With the help of new coach, he adopts the method of self compliance first rather than imposition to bring new ethics in his team. On the request of Nelson, the team travels to all nooks of the nation and organizes rugby camps so as to generate interest of the nation especially kids in Rugby. All the team needed was the support and motivation from their own country and Nelson did all the efforts to get the team that. He even visits them before every match and wears the team shirt to show his support. This all worked in a loop, the support improved the team’s performance which in turn raised the confidence of nation in their team giving more support to it. The blacks and whites got a common motivation which leads the black and white colors to leave Africa rather than the springbok colors. The team dethrones Australia, the incumbent champions of Rugby for the first time and grabs the winner cup.

PS: It’s the best feeling when you change the mindset of the whole crowd and bring a transformation. Few people have the guts to do that and they live for centuries to come.

I would like to recount the similar incident of troy when demigod Achilles visits his goddess mother to seek opinion of whether he should fight the war with Troy. His mother replied in affirmative even with the knowledge that his son wouldn’t survive it ; just thinking that he would be known for centuries for his might in the war but even 3 coming generations won’t remember him if he stays back and live as a normal man.

Life definitely has a purpose, search for it and get it done before you are done…..

Take Home Message: a) Inspiration and motivation has the capability to do wonders and bring the best in anyone.

b) The most hard mélange of people can be brought to terms by smart brains either in right or wrong ways( NELSON and HITLER) .

Arizona Dairies

Trips are such a respite from the 9 to 6 monotonous company routine when you just put all work stress on back burner and chill out. I was jaunting to phoenix for a 3 day family trip to see my sister who is here for 3 weeks to visit her husband.

I was using METRO rail to reach airport for the first time in states which is supposedly very rare here; thanks to the oil and car companies bombarding rail networks and setting up road webs to spread their business in corporate US. So it’s just California, Georgia, New York or a few more who have some internal rail network but nothing similar to TGV in Europe exists across states with aviation left as the only option unless you want to spend days on a road trip.

For the first time I have left my laptop back at home since he companied me during sophomore year and rather decided to grab my pen instead to put down my thinkings. Part of the motivation was watching REMEMBER ME recently where Tyler goes very morning to a coffee shop to write a dairy to his dead brother about his what and where about .I could sense the soothing touch from it when you write your mind on a piece of paper and your thoughts take a graceful form. Now that I think of it, it is making more and more sense to pen down the travel dairies as memories are really lush green as you live them and you don’t fail to mention half of the things you experienced.

Left for Grand Canyons the next morning……..

Every place is peculiar when we view it from holistic perspective. Phoneix is sitting in the middle of cacti clad naked muddy mountains. These cacti are really fun looking trolls with hands protruding from literally anywhere. There are a just a few cities spread across Arizona and you travel like for hours till you reach from one to another not even seeing a fluttering bird for miles. It’s just the shining beacon of the sky making mirages and companying you all the way.

Rather than the curled up snake roads of the Himalayas making you puke out all the time, these mountains have straight gradually steep roads resembling like Aravallis of Rajasthan. The well developed road network makes the road trip such a fun with no hitches and jerks in the feel like airborne vehicle.

It was so endearing to see how the barren spirits of the desert gave away to the country side grass land kind of vegetation when the beautiful town of flagstaff came over. This city is designed with a European outlook to it with the same stony roads and restaurants serving outside on the streets.

Plateaus were nowhere visible for miles now and there were huge grass lands on both sides of the road and we felt like lost in middle of nowhere. The sign board to the Grand Canyon after miles was such a breather and so it became clear that we had already reached the pinnacles of Colorado plateau already and huge gorge canyons carved out by the Colorado was sitting below us shining in different shades of orange.

It was amazing to see how the canyons were being carved out with the forces of nature looking like a stack of plates on top of each other. I felt like a humungous old city came out of the earth’s womb. As I read on wiki that nearly two billion years of the Earth's geological history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channelsthrough layer after layer of rock while the Colorado Plateau wasuplifted. I had never seen such a huge valley and the best part were both wind and river chipping the mountains in their own styles.

PS: Grand canyons have awesome appeal to save in the hard drive of brains. Nothing seems better than a road trip in Sonata humming songs and watching the sun setting on the horizon through the vast grasslands.

Take Home Message :Stone is the most mutable thing given sufficient time.

American Peculiarities

The fun part about travelling and working with new people is getting a bunch of new experiences which keeps carving out our individuation at subconscious level. Every culture carries its own peculiar traits and you just end up saying "Oh boy!! Never mind, just a cultural difference".

As it turned out that all CISCO interns with me are Americans and I am hanging out for the first time with just them. So just felt like penning down their peculiarities.

Americans are a fairly new cosmopolitan breed sprang up with European base tinged with natives Mexicans & Cubans and Africans imported as slaves in the beginning. How can I blank out Asians who keep pouring in everywhere for better prospects (and of course that includes me).Like an alloy, they have altogether different traits from comprising cultures.

They are nurtured to be self dependent from child hood itself as 2 month baby starts sleeping in his own room and hence doesn’t get the habit to cry on the top of his larynx if his mom doesn’t watch out for him for some time. Even when the baby hasn’t even learned to walk properly, he is just being dropped in the pool and swimming gets in his reflex itself. I know it’s like a tradeoff between being emotional and impassive but we Indians are really on the other extreme with really irritating and pampered kids.

You don’t have anyone on your disposal to do all menial stuff unlike in occidental world where lack of jobs makes people adopting all sorts of profession and you end up never learning to rectify anything other than getting the thing to a repair guy. I have to admit that I can’t even change the tire of my bike.

AMERICAN EXPRESSION is neat and most of my blog readers would agree too I guess, watching SIT COMS unfazed with unblinking eyes all the time. It’s sometimes funny how Americans even change the pitch of their voice to describe their IT'S LIKE and keep using phrases every second sentence. They are interesting raconteurs explicating everything with full visual expressions.

These people are binary programmed being either fitness freaks or fleshy crumbs with a ton weight and flesh literally hanging out. I have also started caring about calories in my food intake never even thought before but you really get the hang of it once you start listening about it all the time and then it’s like “Ohh boy ,I really got to have salad tonight as I ate French fries in the afternoon”.

The sports facilities are really awesome here and being a surprise to myself too but I started sports as a graduate student unlike most folks who lose interest at this stage. I started with table Tennis and pool and now can do at least average in them. I am learning ultimate Frisbee , lawn tennis and basket ball these days. Let’s see how far I travel…

Passion of a High School kid II

It was already twilight when Bekir came back from the flashback footage from yesterday and the beacon of sky turned from radiant gold to dark bronze taking away the sheen of the lake. Floral scents began to waft around from fragrant orchids with cool weather making aroma from petals evaporate slower. Birds were chirping as high as their larynxes could license.

The surroundings began to coalesce in darkness and he was drowned in the mélange of sentiment implosion. He felt an invisible burden pouring down making him befuddled.

“I should tell Cosku about it. It seems like a disease, equivalent to mind-fuck. He being my childhood buddy will definitely have some panacea”.

“Or maybe not, my chances seem remote. Aylin is already hooked up with a dandy hunk. Why would she like the geeky spectacle bearing – chubby cheeked-braced tooth Bekir”.

“But girls like intelligent and fast guys; I am much more mobile and strategic than Ali in the sport. She seemed imprinted, at least a little bit, may be / may be not”.

“I don’t have an experience!!!!!”

“Everyone starts as beginner .Stay calm. Keep faring. For the harder you try, the closer you go. ” His teacher’s words echoed deep.

“Cosku has to shape up the script of my love story”, he felt like a protagonist to act in a play for a moment.

Thoughts kept pouring in and continued to tickle down……………..

Ultimately the thought stream geared towards talking with Cosku which untangled the knot in the stomach and the laughter unrolled.

Next Morning…..

Off on the rolls of his skateboard, he headed to Mustafa Kemal Sahil Blvd. to meet Cosku. Coksu was involved with his cousin Alain playing Frisby and learning different throws. Watching Bekir dashing in to the yard, he called him to join them but Bekir’s modality gave him the hint of his queasiness.

“Everything comes so naturally to me, I have never put in any effort. It’s the first time I have this feeling of queasiness which keeps on harping,” explained Bekir.

“Your brain evolved super cool but this is where it left behind. This is a not a programming assignment you will finish in a couple of minutes and get over with it,” Cosku laughed.

“Does this work?” Bekir did a cool somersault in the air.

“Dude, just use your brains to impress her with some cool stuff.” said Cosku.