region of no capitals

what the observant reader might have noticed, the cynical reader might have not acknowledged and the casual reader might have missed is that the there have been no capital letters in the past few posts.

yes, the new addition to the policy set of this blog, which earlier consisted of just one member -- no images -- is that there will be no use of capital letters anymore.

why does english need capital letters? none of the indian languages have two sets of alphabets and they are just fine. on this basis, the hypothesis is that english too can easily manage with just one alphabet and do away with the letters of the capital kind. an experiment in this regard has now started on this blog by eschewing the use of these proud characters.

hence, the new subtitle to the blog.

ofcourse, like every good regulation, even this one should permit some exceptions. Therefore, those posts, which are basically pieces of fiction, that i type down using some word-processor are allowed to possess capital letters.

another such exception is obviously the title :p

2008 went by but who cares?

so, how did i spend my christmas vacation? by roaming around scotland. no don't worry, it wasn't too cold. the least temperatures we faced were -7 celcius only. so it was fine. but sadly not much snow to be seen either. so what places did we go? i know no one cares to know, but i will list them out just to act as an archive.

edinburgh - we left by train from southampton to reach the capital of scotland. it was a long journey obviously. but edinburgh looked fantastic. all the buildings look ancient, the cobblestoned and often winding roads giving it quite a character. and ofcourse, there were tall cathedrals and a hill-top castle, a river with many bridges across it et al. in summary, edinburgh is definitely a city to be visited. and i guess that is the reason it is the most visited place in the uk after london. sadly, we couldn't go on one of those ghost tours or even the free 3 hr city tour.

aberdeen - am not sure what it's claim to fame is, but it seemed like any other city. and it surprisingly seemed to have a huge indian-origin population. nothing much to see in the city though, went to the beach to enjoy icy-cold waves and wind.

inverness - it's claim to fame now is that it is the northern most place that i have visited, in the world. ofcourse, it is also famous for being next to the notorious loch-ness which is famous for housing the legend of the never seen nessie monster. i liked inverness, especially since it had a river flowing through it and was very cold. the lochness also has a castle next to it, is very very long and has a visitor attraction center for monster sightings etc. also has quite a few drinks named on the monster ;).

glasgow - i had briefly seen it before, and saw a bit more of it this time. it is like a poor cousin of london, as busy as london, but lacking in the character and feel. nothing much there ...

edinburgh - yes, then we came back to edinburgh to welcome the new year by participating in the edinburgh hogmanay street party. it was true to its billing as one of the best new year parties in the world. the number of people attending was unbelievable, must have been in hundreds of thousands (was apparently a record attendance this time). the fireworks were definitely the best that i have seen live. the funniest part was however this- on our way back, we did come across lots of people dancing on the streets, mostly to scottish music etc. however one group of people (which included british, other europeans, chinese, south-asian etc) all dancing to "hare rama hare krishna" with one white guy playing the dhol kind of thing!!

anyways, i shall end talking about the trip. let's see, what else might 2008 be remembered for? my brother's marriage, me buying+wearing a suit for the first time (for the marriage obviously), trekking up a mountain and then almost sliding down, flying a glider (with an instructor sitting behind me, ofcourse), presenting my research paper at a top international conference, forgetting everyone's birthdays, reaching the £1000 limit of my credit-card, enjoying trips to brussels, portugal and india (twice), and many other things that cannot/should-not/will-not be mentioned here ;)

finally, my friend prashant jaikumar aka paccha aka thread aka rmstar and i have started a blog to post the collection of open login mails that our IIIT batch (UG2K2) had to endure over the four years. ofcourse we don't have most of the mails, just a few that were too good to not be deleted from our inboxes. here it is - link

planes of paper .. to savour

paper planes do not fly high
folded creased, with fuel of air
glide and dip to their doom
but no weapons, so no 'boom'

curving up to reach a peak that's
marked only by start of the fall
carry up hopes of those creating fingers
crash upside down, but the wish lingers

hundreds of planes, an army of dreams
one by one or ten together, flung up
a rising sea of paper making a single wave
powerless, and which the winds will enslave

the war, the planes will always lose
but the one battle won, the peak attained
prompts more to be made, more to be thrown
after all, they unravel a smile from a frown.

two paragraphs of nothing.

so, she looked up. was it just a draft sneaking in through the door, when opened by someone, or a shiver inside her establishing its presence? she wrung her hand and scanned across the cafe. perhaps he had sneaked in along with the cold air? she sighed at her own silliness. did she actually expect to see him! but then, if not, what was she doing there. ever so often, it feels like her mind has a mind of its own. takes her places she shouldn't go, makes her say things she never thought of saying. perhaps, the mind is recursive, eh? a mind inside a mind inside a mind ....

another cold draft. perhaps, she should pull on her jersey, lying on the table? but then, she wouldn't look as flattering as she does now, with her bare-shoulders and all. the pains for the pleasures. if he is indeed coming, why can't he be on time, she muttered. maybe, she should just go? how fruitful would this meeting be anyway? it wouldn't change a thing. hope is quite a camouflaged drug. brought her all the way here without consent and is not letting her leave either. she bent forward and buried her face in her sweater. and realised that she was wearing her spectacles instead of the contact-lenses. "damn!", she screamed silently. her useless nervousness while leaving for the cafe had made her forget about such a vital thing. there is no point of the waiting now, she concluded. with her frightful appearance, it might even be detrimental. so, in a rush, she got up, clutched her sweater and darted towards the exit. she pushed open the door and held it long enough to let in enough wind to alert everyone of her indecision and then left. the door had no respite though. it had barely closed that it was pulled open by him.

[head@mythalez]# clear

blitzing through random things; anticipating, but not holding onto anything in particular; trying to push some away; trying to grasp the important and immediately pertinent ones; pushing things forward; pegged back by unknown but strong forces; vacuuming; getting sucked into fuzziness; sorting through; deleting; archiving; ignoring; restive; silence!

clear sky, streams of sunlight, bright fresh cold air, reboot to reality.