Carthik Sharma

Dont read this mail, when you are drunk, open it when
you have enough time!

Some many things to write about, for it has been quite
some time since I wrote to you, and I dont know where
to start. Well, I will put them as bullets, in order
they come to my mind…

1. Time: 10:17pm, Listening to Elvis presley, right
now, on real player, by the time I end this mail, I
might change a couple of channels.

2. That brings me to this question, now that you have
an access to the internet, an uninterrupted one, that
is, and since you told me in your journal sometime
back that you have got started on the joys of online
music, Have you tried Spinner? If you havent yet, I
recommend that you should try Spinner 4.0 radio.
Recently Spinner went into a collaboration with
Netscape Radio, and came out with a free radio player
called Radio@Netscape plus, which is even better than
Spinner 4.0, looks wise, that is. I downloaded it just
now, and it has restored my preset radio stations.

Listening to Radio, a good radio station in
particular, has it’s own charms, even more so, in case
of Spinner, where the music is chosen by very good
DJs. You always bump into some good track or the
other. I am, for one, having good time with channels
like, oldies, romantic jazz, romantic classical, metal
etc. I am finding this as an excellent means to
discover new music.

So, much advertisement about Spinner! The end!

3. What is this new thread in your journal about
‘cheating’ and all at UCF? (the one where you
mentioned about your comp specs). I understand that
you are having problems at the college, like worries
about the financial assistance from second year
onwards. But, remember, we had this discussion,
sometime back that what ever happens, now that you
have chosen the path to US, you will not regret later
that you made a wrong decision and that you will give
your best shot, come what may.

So, Just be brave and accept the things as they come
to you, and try to do your best, given the
circumstances.

I know, I am bad at counselling people, but I thought
I would tell you what I had in my mind.

4. Stop smoking!

5. Last time I wrote to you, I told you that my mother
is around, taking care of me. Didnt I tell you? Well,
she left home a few days back, three weeks before, to
be precise. The moment she left I exploded like a
bomb, watched 7 movies in 10 days. I finally saw
Devdas when it came in Sangeet I neither liked it nor
disliked it. Quite strange. Interestingly, I liked the
Dilip Kumar version which I saw two days after in a
Devdas film festival; if you take out the songs, this
one at least made sense to me logically and
characterization wise.

When I saw ‘From Hell’, a gory presentation of
jack-the-ripper tale set in a dark, gloomy, dystopian
world, I thought I have out grown the movies
altogether, but again I found that I was wrong the
very next day when I went to another movie. Movies are
still enchanting me. The other day, I read some
articles by Roger Ebert on chicago-sun times site, and
got so inspired to watch some good movie that I went
to LifeStyle immediately and bought Casablanca and
Seven brides for Seven brothers.

6. Current Status Quo :

Very Complacent - Learn some thing new daily during
office hours, go back home, listen to music while
cooking something, read a few pages and sleep with the
music on. Somedays, replace the regular things in
evening schedule with a dinner outside followed by a
movie.

7. Making plans to move around, in and around Hyd, for
site seeing, something which I always wanted to do.
Now that I am kinda settled, I will/can afford to do
this. I made my mind that I will go some place every 3
months. Temple circuits are, for now, a high priority.

Booked tickets for Aurangabad, the hub for going
to Ajanta and Ellora caves, have to see how it works
out, as of now, busy reading Lonely-planet trying to
figure out the nearby places that are worth visiting.

Company is a major problem when planning for such
trips. Since I couldnt get any one to come along with
me, I thought I would go alone, but then during a
casual conversation with my father, he said he would
be interested in coming along. So, there it is, when
everything fails, my parents do come to my rescue.

Thought of going to Bgl as well,But, since Uddu is not
around, I thought, there is no point in going over
there.

Next in the line - Khatmandu, Thimpu, UCF, more or
less, in that order.

8. Have you worked with a Mac? ( either iMac or ibook
or any apple m/c) Just wanted to know… I heard that
most cyber cafes out there will be having a few macs.
How far is that true?

9. Did I tell you that I had to change my display
adapter? The old one got spoiled, so what I did was, I
went to the market, bought a cheap AGP card that is
available and that would fit in my slot, changed my
cabinet and got every thing fit firmly in and made
this vow that I would not open my cabinet again, no
more fiddling with that stupid old box. Now it has
only two tasks - play music for me and allow me to
play Tomb Raider…

What I really want to say is, even though I went for
the cheapest card that is available, I got the most
powerful one, performance wise. I got 32MB on board
AGP which can play tomb raider at 1024*768 true color,
without a minor glitch. May be this is an indicator of
changing trends.

You might want to read the following editorial
‘Performance no longer king’, for further on this.

http://www.pcquest.com/content/editorscolumn/102060701.asp

10. My social life is becoming almost nill. I rarely
talk to people these days, except to a few that I
normally would.

11. The Elvis program, I was listening to till now,
got finished, now changed to ‘oldies’ channel on
Netscape Radio plus.

12. What new music have you explored of late? or
rather what’s on your play list now?

13. New find : Taufiq Qureshi, a percussionist, came
up with an album called ‘Rhydhun’ some time back,
along with Zakir Hussain. But, it wasnt about Rhydhun
now… The other day, Vasu and I went to Music world
to look for a head phone set and then there was this
violin tune that playing, which was so reminiscent to
L.Shankar that we had to go to the counter and ask who
the player was. The answer was, it was a track from
Taufiq Qureshi’s album under the series - Swar Utsav.
Swar Utsav is an event, generally organised by Music
Today, where is some of the best contemporary artist
come together and play some very good music.

14. One late night, I repented a lot for the dearth of
magazines like Gentlemen for people like us. I still
remember going all the way upto to Satya’s room one
night when I was in college to get a special Gentlemen
issue.

I still remember Siddharth quote, ‘The less number of
readers for Gentlemen is directly an indicator of the
number of people who are really interested in quality
reading and listening’

Oh! Well! Let me not complain any more!

15. Bought a series of books on Krishna, called
Krishnavatara, from Bharatiya vidya bhavan, about 7 of
them, completed reading Mahabharata by R.K.Narayan

Read half way through Bridget Jones Diary,
intermittently feeling guilty about reading someone
else’s diary. I have to say that I didnt like the
book, though it is funny at some places, for its
portrayal of the lead female, as one sex-crazed, and
career conscious woman, as if there is nothing to
life, other than these two.

16. Have you been to an IMAX theater? I heard that
there are plans to build one in Hyd as a tourist
attraction.

17. One sunday morning, Vasu surprised me, by coming
to my room at 9am without informing me.. You know how
difficult it is these days to buy our dear one’s time
for us. Had a good time that day.

18. Increasing concerns : The way I see the end of our
friendship - I foresee this, We might continue mailing
like this for some time, may be, one or two years,
then the mails would decrease, then after some more
time, we will only remember that we were friends once.

If ever I am lucky I might get to meet you some time
later, may be in our mid thirties or so… Have to
see, what the future has in store for both of us, or
at least me.

How much I would have liked, if you were in Hyd, like
me with a job that pays decently and settled with a
decent house, enjoying your time with your girl and
SOME TIME FOR ME on weekends, walking on Abids
pavements looking for old books, chatting and all…
Hmm! No point in getting greedy! Is there?

19. Fears : Responsibilities, If ever I hate one thing
in life, that is responsibility, I hate to be in a
situation where I am accountable to somebody else. Let
me not write more on this, or I will go on complain
about many things.

20. Chat center : Found this new place called Shiva
Reddy sweets on Road Number 3 Banjara Hills, where you
get a good pani puri, and it is not hand mixed. You
will be given everything separately in a plate and you
can have the pleasure of mixing everything your self.

Though it spoils the fun of eating pani puri along
with the dirt out of the hands of the person mixing
it, you get a very clean one. Now, I pay regular
visits to this place.

21. Increasingly thinking about getting more out of
life, suddenly I have this urge to enjoy more, like
one of those Calvin’s thoughts! Considering that
average life span is about 60 years and that I am
already 23 and the later one third will almost be
spent in old age, I have only 17 more years to live.
Take out 10 more years out of that for raising kids
and taking care of wife and all. So, in effect, I have
only 7 more years to live, and I havent kissed a girl
yet!

22. “I wonder… what’s in a book while it’s closed…
Because as soon as I open it, there’s a whole story
with people I dont know yet and all kinds of
adventures and deeds and battles. All those things are
somehow shut up in a book. But it’s already there,
that’s the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it
could be.”

Filed by Carthik at 4:36 pm under Livejournal

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