Year: 2007

?is

‘s alter ego

I had a haircut today. I don’t think i’ll ever have long hair :(??

Following a 2-minute chat with #1 half an hour back, it turns out that I’ve talked (through GTalk, mostly) to all my “old flames” in the last thirty-six hours. Conditions for someone to be on this list is that the person in question should know me (rules out Kajol, etc.) and the crush should have lasted at least a week (else it gets unmanageable).

Quite an incredible occurence, not unlike the lining up of the planets. For, there were some pieces in the puzzle (eg. #2) that were lost until a couple of days back, while interaction with some others (#3) is extremely infrequent, limited to about two chats a year or so. The others are better off in this regard. I’m in touch with #4 on an almost daily basis (through email and chat), and chat with #1 and #5 quite frequently (about once a week).

Interestingly, all five of them are now outside India, in four time zones across three countries (#4 and #5 are in the same city). So it did help that I was online practically all day yesterday, so that i could catch all of them at some point of time or the other.

And in some sense it feels good that I’m not in touch and on fairly decent/good terms with all of them, considering the extent to which I had messed up things with each of them! And to think of it that with each of them (apart from #1, maybe), I had messed up things to such a bad extent that they had all cut off communication for a while.

Ah, those good old days when I used to fall in love with someone at the drop of a hat! And to now think that I haven’t even had a one-minute crush on anyone for over a year now…

By the look of things, it might not be too long before it happens.? With Saqlain Mushtaq gaining British citizenship, it may not be too long before he will want to play international cricket for England. Of course, he’ll need to work on his fitness (he seems to have become four times his original size) and stuff, but as he showed in the tour game against India, he can still give the ball a tweak, and also bowl a mean doosra.

So, with Monty and Saqlain, soon we will have the unlikely situation that England has the best international spin attack! And with the fast bowlers not really performing too well of late, and being plagued by injuries, it would be interesting to see what kind of pitches they’ll prepare for home series! And who knows, some stud leg-spinner might come up from somewhere and England will be ready to avenge the 1992-93 humiliation.

hmmm??

Once again, in a moment of madness, i’ve shaved off my sideburns. Thankfully i haven’t gone all the way, I have stuff that reaches till the bottom of my ears. Still it’s bad enough. I’m kinda losing half of what I think used to define me – they were so long and growing that in a month they’d’ve met. But one look in the mirror yesterday told me that I’m bored of this same look.

Initial plan was to just shift the location of the facial hair. i was planning to leave a stubble on the chin. But then I got faced with the problem of the monkey and two cats – I take off a little from the right and the left looked too long. Now, there seems to be too much on the left, and I have to take corrective action for that. After a while I got disgusted and decided i’m incapable of precise measurement of things on my face, and shaved it off. The only thing that might have been left was my moustache, but again it didn’t look prominent enough , so off that went too.

Is there some device available which allows me to precisely measure things on my face, so that the cat and monkey problem doesn’t occur? So many times i’ve had to shorten my sideburns much more than I wanted to because of this, it’s disgusting. And I don’t want to trust hajaams with my face, and prefer to shave myself.

More madness will result shortly. I’m thinking of giving up on my efforts to grow my hair (it’s an ugly in-between length now) and have a haircut. And this would be the fourth or fifth time, maybe, that I’ll be giving up at this point. First few times, it had resulted in dandruff and forced me to run to the barber. This time I’ve taken enough care to ensure that doesn’t happen. But it looks like it’ll be in this woresht in-between length for a while so i’m losing patience.

When I blogged about my NED last week, some people suggested that I re-start on some old hobbies, and that it should help. So I have started to try play chess again. I haven’t found (and haven’t tried to find) any human opponents, hence so far i’ve been playing with the comp.

Also, a couple of days back, I stumbled upon this website, which seems to have an excellent collection of great games. And in an excellent format in which I can follow them online. And it’s all available for free. And the best part of the site is that it seems easily searchable, and also that the games are classified by openings. So in the last one day, I have “seen” Spassky trapping Fischer’s queen after he took the “poisoned pawn” (Reykjavik 1972), and the Capablanca-Marshall game in 1918 where Marshall (albeit unsuccessfully) unleashes the powerful Marshall Attack.

Looking at grandmaster games is one way to get back to the game. The other is by actually playing. And i’m looking for opponents. I’m not looking for humans right now – i don’t know when I’ll have time to play and for how long, so I don’t want to pain anyone else. Maybe once I regain my touch with the game, I’ll start really playing.

For now, I need a computer opponent. So can you please suggest some good (preferably free) computer programs? Right now i’m using a system called Arasan which i’d found somewhere long ago. Decently good, but I’m sure there will be better stuff available. Or if you are in Bangalore and have some good programs, I can take it on CD also – it need not be online. The system should have a good display, and I should be able to use the mouse to make moves. Then, it should allow me to specify the opening so that I can practice specifically. And I should be able to adjust time controls, and also the level of difficulty.

Any ideas??

Kafeel Ahmed, one of the terrorists recently arrested in connection with the proposed terror attack in Glasgow, went to our school, it seems. The Times of India reports:

He stayed at his house with his aunt and her family and enrolled for 8th standard at Aurobindo school in Banashankari

Death wonly.

(hat tip

)

I seem to be suffering from a massive bout of NED (no enthu da). Reasons for the same unknown. Some people blame it on the Quarter Life Crisis, but I’m not completely satisfied by the explanation. Rather, it doesn’t help in any way. Any bright ideas on how to combat it?

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody’s help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I’m not so self assured,
Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I’m feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won’t you please, please help me.