Seems appropriate for the title, if not for the actual post, which is a (strangely allegorical and philosophical) poem inspired by some time I spent with my friends on a beach. Made sense to me to put this up on NYE.
Rough lines in the sand
Very hastily drawn.
Fill those boxes quickly
For soon they’ll be gone.
The sun’s slowly setting,
So quick, make your mark.
Let’s finish a few more rounds
Before it’s dark.
But also be careful
Of spaces you choose
For sometimes even the best players
Will lose.
But either way,
What matters is that you play
As well as you can
Ere it’s all washed away
So come on, just one more.
The tide’s getting high.
We no longer can see
The sun in the sky
We’ve made all the marks we could
and had our fun,
So let’s say goodbye now;
Our time here is done.
For on we must go...
It's been pretty grand
But we leave it all there
In the sea and the sand.
Over the years, the general level of animosity towards espresso seems to have greatly diminished. It's still very much present, but I don't have these (previously very common) exchanges in cafes any more:
I've really downplayed the average conversation length and waiter's confusion.
And after all that, this is how it was served:
I always drank the milk separately. I mean, you may not want it in your coffee, but if they're giving you milk, you might as well drink it.
Maybe one of the reasons I don't have to deal with all that now is because I don't order coffee at a cafe/restaurant any more. I just buy ground beans and make it at home, as strong as I like. None of that milk, sugar, and whipped cream nonsense.
Why I love Gilmore Girls Reason #2: They really get coffee.
Contrary to what some of my friends may think, there's more than just one reason why I love GG.
They seem to be making something close enough in coffee shops. One of my friends showed me this new coffee that sounds delicious and apparently isn't sold in a large cup because it's so strong. Look!
Now I do know a couple of people who make good strong coffee, but I've come to accept that when most people say "strong", it's usually what I'd categorize as weaker than average.
So when I have coffee made by someone else, it's pretty awkward when they ask me how it is. Sometimes I get away with a cheerful "it's coffee!" and a huge smile (before gulping it down so I don't have to suffer through it too long). But there are some who just have to keep asking.
*People must either think I'm bluffing or not understand how strong decoction can be
Then I watch their eyes grow wider in horror as I keep saying "maybe just a little more" until I stop because I don't want them to have a heart attack. And of course my coffee is still only almost-average strength.
Here's a relatively recent instance when I was particularly frustrated but couldn't say anything because this lady was so sweet:
She then added the decoction with a tiny coffee spoon, so after a few spoons, I had to say
when what I really wanted to say was:
And lastly, here are some words of wisdom from a 7-year-old student of mine: "If you drink coffee, then your brain goes mad". She's not entirely wrong.
Tea is for calm. Coffee is for crazy.
P.S. - Why I love Gilmore Girls: Reason #1, in case you're wondering:
"Really? You seriously thought you could write about Gilmore Girls without mentioning me?"
"I dare you to try again."
Fine, whatever. Milo Ventimiglia is awesome. I've not even watched any of the GG episodes he isn't in. And yes, he's a lot older now and looks different, but he's still hot. In fact, I'm about to go watch him on Ellen's show in a few minutes, so bye!
Sometimes we say things without thinking about them simply because they've been said several times before. Luckily, once in a while, we realize that just because a phrase is used commonly doesn't mean it's true. Here are some examples:
> What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Counter explanation from Modern Family's Manny:
Thanks, Manny! Sorry, Kelly Clarkson. I like that song, but it isn't true most of the time.
> The road to hell is paved with good intentions...
...making it just like the road to heaven, yes?
> Your day will go the way the corners of your mouth turn
Ideally, yes, but we don't live in Utopian conditions. Wait, scratch that. I just realized that this also implies that if, say, you're crying, your day will continue to be crappy. That's mean.
It's much more likely that your day will depend on whether or not you had coffee in the morning.
For example, you can't not be happy (or happier, if you started off sad) on a regular day when you have this:
I've been seeing many similar pictures lately. Dying to get hold of one of these!
> If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be.
Reality check: nothing is really yours. Nothing at all. Think about that.
> Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Rebuttal:
And a great fruit salad at that. Case closed.
> He who laughs last laughs longest
Or maybe it seems that way because he started after everyone else. Literally taken, it's logical enough, but the implied meaning seems off. He who laughs last probably just takes longer to understand the joke. This is one of those sayings that ought to be taken at face value. And speaking of face value...
> Beauty is skin deep.
I could say a lot about this, but Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake say it best:
Seriously, this will never stop being relevant. It's something we ought to think about every day.
> A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.
It should, but I doubt it would. When I was little, mom sometimes spruced up leftover rice with vegetables and things, and a "risotto" or a "kedgeree" definitely tasted a lot better than, say, "leftovers" or even "fried rice".
So maybe a rose by any other name would be just as sweet-smelling. But would it actually smell just as sweet? Probably not.
> Roses are red, violets are blue, etc.
Who made up this silly rhyme? And more importantly, why is it popular across so many generations? Besides, aren't violets called violets because they're violet? Blue-ish, maybe, but not blue.
Hope I've covered all the rose colours.
This is fun. I'm already getting carried away thinking of more stupid sayings I can point out flaws in. Going to dissect a few more very soon.
Of all the things I've ever tried to do, there's probably nothing I'm worse at than playing video games. I'm so bad at it that trying to play something is rather discouraging. It's also annoying to other people if it's a multiplayer game. The one time I played tried to play Halo, all I did was accidentally fall to my death several times before giving up.
However, I've found certain games I don't suck at too much. Right now it's Two Dots which works well for me because I only play until my lives run out (= a few minutes every day) and don't bother playing more than once a day. Also, it's clean, simple, and challenging. My mom saw me playing it once and has since been the closest thing you can be to addicted without actually playing.
So how do I decide whether or not I want to play a video game? Simple, really:
There's no way I can write about video games now without mentioning Pokemon Go. This was my reaction when I heard about it:
I don't blame video games as much as people's lack of self-control for bizarre stuff they do for these games, but this is the most absurd VG-induced accident I've ever read about: "On Thursday two men in San Diego fell off a cliff after they climbed over a fence in an attempt to catch the animated characters." Really, guys?
You know what should become an augmented reality game? Temple Run. While most people complain about the roads in Bangalore, I like to make the most of it by pretending I'm in a game: swerve to avoid people and vehicles, jump over the potholes and loose pavement tiles, duck to avoid hanging wires, and so on. This city is already an obstacle course for pedestrians. Augmented reality Temple Run would work really well here. We'd learn to be careful on the roads while having fun, and we'd lose so much weight. Oh, and it could also be time-bound so we don't use vehicles and contribute to traffic jams to go to places that are within walking distance. And maybe with more people out walking, they'd be forced to fix our pavements.
Well, one can dream. Even if that never happens, I'll still have my obstacle courses and imagination.
There used to be a time when I couldn't tell the difference between tea and coffee. It was many years ago, but still rather inexcusable, especially for someone whose parents make tea everyday. I blame the ignorance partially on the way most places disguise both drinks with a lot of milk and sugar and partially on the fact that I was young and stupid.
I don't have a story about my first cup of coffee; in fact, I don't even remember when and where I began drinking it, but I'm certain it was milk coffee with sugar. Once I was somehow able to tell it apart from tea, it wasn't long before I looked upon it with reverence. I'd grown up drinking milk while the grown-ups drank tea (without milk and sugar, of course) so coffee was quite the novelty.
Coffee became my drink of choice, transmogrifying from sweet and milky to bitter and black. It wasn't long before I'd completely turned my back on tea. However, things change. For a while, coffee was the most fascinating thing in the world. But then something happened - so sneakily that I didn't even realize at first (or maybe I just didn't want to believe it). It may have simply been a period of bad coffee, but my body seemed to be rejecting it, so I turned to tea who was just waiting to step in and save the day(s).
That revelation might have been the effect of all the coffee in my system. I had a friend tell me once that there was "too much blood in your caffeine system". However, I was convinced that my Assamese roots were taking over and punishing me for straying from my natural path, so I decided to make up for lost time.
I found I really enjoyed tea. So much that I didn't even miss coffee for a while. Oh, and all you people hating on green tea must know this: green tea is NOT what you get in those awful tea bags people use because they're trying to lose weight. In fact, I'm not sure those have tea in them at all. I suspect it's tea-scented sawdust. Anyway, it's just tasteless marketing.
Green tea is beautiful, and drinking it is a sublime experience. Try it. Can't guarantee you'll love it, especially if you're a sweet milk tea person, but I can promise it's fragrant and flavourful and not hate-worthy at all.
Most people are firm about their identities as tea drinkers or coffee drinkers, and both sides will try to convince you that their drink is undoubtedly better. If we're talking sweet and milky, I'm Switzerland - neutral because I dislike both. But if it's just a general coffee versus tea debate, I'll most likely side with the minority to balance it out a little.
Truth is, I need both. Strong coffee in the morning, light tea through the rest of the day. If I seem more excited at the mention of coffee, it's only because finding coffee the way I like it seems much easier here than finding good tea.
Coffee is infatuation. Tea is love. Both are wonderful.
When I was little, I used to treat water colours like poster colours. As a result, I never quite appreciated them because they always felt like a weaker substitute for poster colours. But with increased exposure over the years, I know now that they are absolutely splendid if you know how to work with them.
The thing is, it's really hard. Blending colours on paper can be tricky. They dry quickly, so you have to work fast. You need to possess a very strong understanding of light and colour. There's a method to it: light shades first, darker shades later. One at a time. But quickly.
And if you mess something up, there's almost no way you can fix it except to start all over again.
Through the years, I've been struggling to make a half-decent water colour painting, and my latest attempt was a few weeks ago. I walked into the art room in school, and there was this lovely bunch of leaves in a pot in the centre of the room.
Those black smudges are supposed to be sparkly fairy dust. Or just sparkly dust. I mention that because they suddenly seem a little like flies.
It was very exciting, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take another shot at a water colour painting.
But it wasn't to be. I sat there for what seemed like a really long time, trying to find a way to do justice to all the beautiful light on those leaves.
And a few failed attempts later...
So yeah, it's going to be a while before I can produce something reasonably satisfactory in watercolour. Until then, pens and doodles it is. Oh, and oil pastels. I'm really loving those lately.
A few years ago, I'd put up a post about how much I disliked Twitter. For those of you who won't read it, which I'm assuming is most of you, especially now that I'm giving you this shortcut, these were my main reasons for the anti-Twitter rampage:
It was difficult to use and also sort of pointless.
It showed me lots of random posts by people doing mundane stuff.
It didn't allow for adequate expression due to the character limit, which in turn resulted in people tweeting multiple times an hour, which again leads to my previous point.
Every time I replied to someone, it showed up as a new tweet.
After trying it out for a while, I decided it wasn't for me and simply stopped using it.
Then, over these summer holidays, I watched Heroes for the first time (yes, I'm many years behind on lots of TV shows. I only just started watching Buffy recently, after finishing Heroes). I loved the show and wanted to find out where else I could see Milo Ventimiglia and Zachary Quinto. I figured I could also follow them on facebook, but Milo doesn't seem to have a facebook page (although there is a fan page with at least a couple of creepily obsessive fans).
After a few moments of perplexity over what to do next, I remembered this little thing called Twitter, and it turned out that he was on it. So I decided to give the site another chance, and I'm glad I did.
Ventimiglia tweets often enough to keep things interesting but not so much that it gets annoying.
Also, get this: he actually replies! Especially when he's on a flight, apparently. There was this one time he was my entire news feed because he was replying to tweets for about 5 hours straight. Not that any of his followers were complaining, I'm sure. I mean, seriously, replying to so many people instead of taking a nap or something - how very nice of him!
Stephen Amell and Neil Gaiman also use Twitter
We all know Neil Gaiman's got a wonderful way with words. His tweets are funny and entertaining, and since he's Gaiman, even when you see promotional tweets, you're not thinking "Oh god, stop!" Instead, you're probably thanking him for gracing you with information like where you can get signed copies of his books and so on.
Stephen Amell is someone I started following on facebook after watching Arrow, and while I didn't expect him to be exactly like the character he plays, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how funny he is. Recently, I saw that he posts more often on Twitter. One more reason for me to not give up on this site.
The 140 character limit is actually rather fun
Of all the annoying traits Twitter possesses, this one was initially at the top of my list. However, with all the precis writing in school and flash fiction in college, I decided I was more than capable of turning it into a sort of challenge.
Oh wait, to Barney, the challenge would have been to use more than 140 characters. Hmm, I really didn't think that one through. Ah, whatever. Those pictures are staying right there.
This reminds me of how funny NPH's first few tweets were. Before he understood the character limit, sentences would just stop abruptly, often mid-word, if I remember right. I'd like to put up screenshots, but there's no way I'm scrolling to the very beginning of his page (especially with my aggravatingly slow internet).
Coming back to what I was saying before the NPH distraction, I swore to always use exactly 140 characters to make the most of every post. Even if I really didn't need to. I discovered it was fun and not so hard to do. Also, when I'd done it the first few times, no one seemed to care, and for a while I'd slipped into using fewer characters than I could (gasp!)
But then I reminded myself that no one really cares what you do on twitter most of the time unless you're famous, and that there was one person who cared about sticking it to the character limit: me.
I've learnt that a 140 character tweet is called a twoosh. And that's the last time I'm using that word because it sounds incredibly stupid. Way stupider than "tweet".
Quick scrolling
Since there's a character limit, even though people tweet often, posts are really short. This means you can quickly scroll down without wasting time on uninteresting things. I don't follow too many people, so a few seconds of scrolling shows me the entire day's new tweets.
#Hashtags
Some hashtags are pretty crazy, and it's a lot of fun to see the different wacky things people have to say about them. #foodafilm and #dressamovie were a couple I really liked. Okay, they were the only ones I bothered to look at, but the point is, they were fun.
That being said, some people really need to stop using hashtags with every other word. Unless it's in a parody like the one with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake:
#funnyvideo #LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
So, those are all the reasons why, although my problems with Twitter haven't disappeared and are still quite valid, I've reversed my general opinion of the site. I rather like it now.
Also, did I mention that Milo Ventimiglia uses Twitter and replies to lots of messages?
Fear rules us all. It
controls our lives. Sometimes it's in big, significant ways but more
often, it's in the little routines and habits we've internalized to a
point where we don't even realize how scared we are. Fear of being
caught for doing something, fear of the consequences of not doing something, fears based
on variables you can control... and those you can't.
People may say it's all
in the mind, but it can also take on tangible forms. (I mean actual
things, not the messed up stuff you see in horror movies). And what's
the scariest and most omnipotent of them all?
If you're thinking
spiders, you're wrong (unless you have arachnophobia, in which case I
totally empathize because I'm on a similar track).
The ones that can't fly
are not terrifying to me any more. Over the years, I've learnt to
suck it up and smack the damn hellspawn with a shoe. But if they can fly, that's a completely different story. It's a horrifying nightmare
straight out of hell. Nay, more like pure hell itself. Here's a comparison to show just how bad it is:
Just like some people
don't cry when they're sad because they think it makes them look
weak, I try to be as brave as possible when faced by a flying
cockroach. I may not scream (too loudly) when I see one. This is mostly because I'm worried that people will call me a baby. And that
I'll then hit them for teasing me about a very real fear (but not
before they've killed the cockroach for me, obviously).
P.S. I may or may not
believe everything in the Bible, but I totally blame Noah for this.
Watched The Jungle Book a couple of days ago and have been in fangirl mode ever since. Here's a TJB-inspired picture I made. Hopefully there'll be more soon.
Also, Happy Earth Day!
UPDATE: It's been a month since I said I'd draw some more pictures, so here are a few I made today.
I'd had a very specific image of Kaa in my head for a long time. Unfortunately, when I tried to transfer that onto paper, it looked nothing like what I'd imagined.
I tried making a picture on my computer too (thank you, Clipart leaves and trees) but to my greatest dismay, both my attempts have ended up looking like they were drawn by 10 year olds. In fact, 10 year old me has made nicer pictures. But I absolutely deserve points for trying.
Shere Khan. And the whole fire thing, you know.
And a brighter picture of the first one I drew.
I also wanted to draw Baloo and Bagheera, but after what happened with Kaa, I don't really feel like it right now. I might try some other time, though.
