In The Company of Friends

Pop the cork, a champagne glass
Raise to the future, drink to the past
Thank the Lord for the friends he cast
In the play he wrote for you.

This comes from a song called Sweet Mistakes that is featured in the movie Shallow Hal. I really liked these words. But more than that, I liked the thought behind them. What would I do without my friends? The people I fall back on when I am feeling low, the people I go out to celebrate with when I am feeling happy, the people who give life its flavour, its meaning. The people who complete me.

We all need friends. From time to time I have phases when I think I don't, but these phases pass and I realize how sadly mistaken I was. My memories of my school days, my college days, and even the time I've spent working, do not relate to the Physics or the Boolean Algebra or the Numerical Analysis they taught, or the code I tried to write. They all revolve around the friends I made in that phase of my life. Around the good times I spent with them. The times when I needed a shoulder to cry on and it was granted. Or I needed a listening ear and I found it. Maybe a bit of cheering up when I was feeling low. Or a demand for a treat when I had achieved something, which actually reinforces the feeling of achievement. (This is for the St. Stephen's gang: for some reason the treat that happened when I scored a 42 in Aggy's Jan test resounds in my mind here. Somehow, after any number of achievements and any number of treats, that achievement and that treat still holds a very special place in my heart.) And of course, the limitless leg pulling. Knowing that I can joke about anything under the sun and the other person won't mind. That they can also poke any amount of fun at me without running the risk of me taking things to heart. But the most important part is knowing that there is someone out there who really cares. Cares with all their heart. With a feeling that does not depend on the miles that separate us, or on how frequently we are able to talk. There are a number of friends with whom my relationship has stood the test of time and distance. Those are the friends I swear by. Whom I would pick over everything else in the world. We all need a familiar set of people that we can go back to whenever we need them. Because we all need a sense of belonging. Knowing that there is someone out there who understands us completely. And who knows that the most precious gifts can come from empty hands, and that they have given us those gifts.

Forgive and Forget

"To err is human; to forgive, divine."

Very well said. Forgiveness is a wonderful thing. Not so much for the one who is being forgiven as for the one who forgives. When you hold a grudge against someone, without realising it, you give that person the power to control some part of your life. Because every time you think about all the stuff that makes you feel angry, you do something or the other that is counter productive to your well being. It's like there are chains in your heart, tying you down, preventing you from feeling all the happiness that you can feel, preventing you from enjoying everything around you that you can enjoy. It prevents you from spreading your wings and flying as high as you can.

There was this article that I read a long time back. It expressed this interesting idea where the author said that, if someone takes something from you and doesn't return it, you should give that thing to that person as a Christmas present and free yourself from holding a grudge. It doesn't matter if you hated that person to begin with and would never give them a Christmas present under ordinary circumstances. You can still give them such a present, which is, really, a huge gift that you are giving yourself. The author of this article was talking about tangible gifts, but I think it would be a great thing to do for intangible objects as well. When someone takes away a part of your heart, of your soul, give it to that person as a gift. When someone takes up a lot of your time and later on, you feel that it was time well wasted, give them that time as a present. Hanging on to the regret that comes because of the wasted time drains you emotionally. Clutching the hard feelings that arise when a friend betrays your trust prevents you from trusting another friend fully. So let go, and once you do, remember not to let the negative vibes enter your mind again. I found the following quote interesting. It's a little specific, but the message it carries can be generalized:

"Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast."

Changes...

Dr Seuss said, “Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” Easier said than done, I'd say. In a fleeting moment life can sometimes change so dramatically... before you know it, you're in a whole new world. Changes are often for the better, I like to think. But sometimes things appear to be changing for the worse and you can't really see how they will make life better. The road appears to be all downhill and you can't see the point at which it will start moving uphill again. You do not know the scenic beauty that awaits you after you go uphill and look around from the top of the mountain. You perhaps do not have the motivation that it takes to keep going. But you know what? If you try hard enough, you can always see the silver lining in the grey clouds. It's always there. We just tend to look past it. There's always something good in the moment, in the present, right here, right now. I, for one, generally tend to look away from the good things about the present and instead waste my time moping about the past or worrying about the future. I mean, today there's something good going on in my life, but I'm worried about what it is leading to. And when it doesn't lead where I wanted it to, I regret the fact that it ever happened. At neither point in time did I actually acknowledge that, well, life is good. And when I think about it, life was actually good at both points of time. When I was worried about where things are leading, I failed to realize that things are going really well and I'm having fun. And when I was no longer having fun and things were no longer the way they should have been, they obviously had to come to an end. To make way for better things. But then, living in the moment is an art. It needs to be learnt. And I am still an amateur at it. Until I see the aforementioned "better things", how do I believe that they exist? There's a really nice thought that I once read or heard somewhere… don’t remember when or where or the exact words, but here’s the thought: Life is something of a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes you can’t see where each piece will fit or maybe you can’t even see all the pieces, but you have to remember that one day all the pieces will come together and form a beautiful picture.

A Broken Ankle and a Broken Heart

What is the word that is the exact opposite of hypochondriac? That is just what I am. No matter what happens, I refuse to believe that I am ill, or that I need medication. I think my intake of medicine is restricted to perhaps two or three tablets in a year. For close to twenty five years, I never considered myself sick enough to visit a doctor. Until the time I broke my ankle. I thought I had twisted it on the stairs. I thought it was a just a little sprain and it would heal itself, as do all my other ailments. You know, like when other people are down with fever, they take paracetamol. I take a bath and feel instantly cured. I'm not too sure of what people do when they sprain their ankle. But I try to keep walking as much as I can, because I know that if I give it too much rest it will hurt like anything when I try to move it again. So that's what I did. I tried to get up from my desk and walk around a bit every half an hour or so. And I did not leave my gym routine until a dear friend of mine gave me a sound scolding for jogging on the treadmill with a hurt ankle. And did I mention that I went rafting that weekend?

This story does not end here. I'd been longing to buy myself a car for quite some time then. I'd booked it, and I was supposed to pick it up immediately after returning from that trip. That I did. Thankfully my Dad was there to drive it home. Because my left ankle was in no state to handle a clutch. The noteworthy point here is that this was five days after I tripped on the stairs and it still did not occur to me that this could be more than a sprain and I needed to go to one of those scary places called a hospital. Only while going home from work the next day I felt some real pain (who knows what I'd been feeling so far...) in that ankle. Still not enough to warrant a visit to a doctor. Took the next day off, got some rest, and was up and about the day after that as usual. One week of enduring that discomfort, and another sound scolding from my friend was what it took to take me to the hospital. If I'd known that the orthopaedic would turn out to be that cute, and that witty, and that interesting, I'd certainly have gone sooner.

So anyway, I had a X-ray done. I showed it to the cute doctor. He very gently broke the news that I had a hairline fracture and would need a below-knee walking cast for four weeks. He showed me the little crack in the X-ray. He then very deftly and quickly wrapped up the poor, tormented ankle in a synthetic plaster and left it to set. After it set, I was no longer in pain, and only then did I realise what an insane amount of pain I'd been in all week. I was prescribed three days of complete bed rest, with the ankle propped up on a cushion. That was the toughest part for me because I am basically pretty restless and fidgety.

After the cast and the painkillers, the ankle was no longer in agony. I just had to be careful not to get the cast wet from inside. This was a bit of a problem, since I have an obsessive need to take a bath twice a day throughout the year, especially in the summer, and this happened in rather hot weather. But basically, I was able to do stuff normally. So the other two visits to the hospital were intended for me to see the cute doctor again and listen to his wit and humour. The day I went to have the cast removed, I asked if he had any more words of advice for me. He told me, "Stay away from doctors. Except when you get married and have a baby." But how do you stay away from a doctor who is so incredibly attractive? Well, as it turns out, I haven't seen him or any other doctor in the year that has passed since then. Although I have been trying to find an opportunity to take someone else with broken bones to him, I have had no success there.

Some six months or so after this episode, there was a write-up in HT City about cute doctors in Delhi. It talked about three such doctors. This one was also there. Apparently he is married and has two kids. He certainly did not seem to be old enough for that, but hey, what do I know?

All jokes apart, I sincerely hope I do not have to visit a doctor ever again for as long as I live, except the time, like this doctor said, I get married and have a baby. There was a lot of pain in my heart because of the car that I bought and which I could not drive for two whole months because the left ankle did not have enough strength in it, even after the cast was cut open. During this time my brother drove it around a little and reduced the front bumper to smithereens. (Okay, so we all know I'm exaggerating. But it was reduced to a state where it needed to be replaced. I never actually saw it in that state, actually.) There was a lot of restlessness because of the workout routine which was interrupted. There was a lot of discomfort because of the cast itself. And a ton of boredom from the fact that I wasn't able to go out anywhere, because I couldn't move about too much. So I was reduced to seeing only the friends who were sweet enough to visit me at home. I'm not sure if I've learnt my lesson, or if there was actually a lesson to be learnt here. Would it have been better if I'd gone to the hospital sooner? I don't know. But it would probably have been a lot worse if I'd gone later. Who knows? I guess we'll never know unless I try out something like that...

An Expression of Love

This is a song from the soundtrack from My Best Friend's Wedding. It's a song I've always loved. It expresses the pain someone feels when they love someone with all their heart, but are unable to express that love. And the other person remains blissfully unaware of those feelings, taking them to be nothing more than an expression of friendship. As they say in the movie, "If you love someone you say it, you say it right then, out loud. Otherwise the moment just... passes you by..."

You give your hand to me
And then you say hello
And I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don't know me

No you don't know the one
Who dreams of you at night
And longs to kiss your lips
Longs to hold you tight
Oh I am just a friend
That's all I've ever been
Cause you don't know me

I never knew the art of making love
Now my heart aches with love for you
Afraid and shy I let my chance go by
The chance that you might love me too

You give your hand to me
And then you say goodbye
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
Oh you will never know
The one who loves you so
Well you don't know me

You give your hand to me
And then you say goodbye
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
Oh you will never know
The one who loves you so
Cause you don't know me
Oh no you don't know me
Oohh... you don't know me


Sometimes in life we are too stubborn or too stupid or too scared to admit, even to our own selves, that we love someone dearly. Life is not too generous with dealing out second chances. Often one little window is all you have. And you have to be brave enough to grab that opportunity with open arms, or live with that tinge of regret, not knowing how beautiful things could have been.

My Experiments in Mathematics

For those of you who do not know, I am a Mathematics graduate. That's what I did before enrolling for the MCA degree that made me a software developer. Mathematics is something that always intrigued me, something that I felt a passion for, in spite of the fact that one of my Professors thought otherwise. Fermat's Last Theorem, Russel's Paradox, Group Theory... it's a wonderfully weird and completely abstract yet totally real world out there. There is Mathematics everywhere... it forms the base for a lot of what goes on in Physics, in Computer Science, in Finance... so it's very closely related to our daily lives. And yet it's so abstract to the core. Let's think about where it all begins. Numbers. Is there anything around you that you can pick up and say "This is a number."? No. Because it's a concept that exists only in our minds. You can relate natural numbers and rational numbers to the quantities in which a certain commodity is available in a certain place, but, it's still three apples, or two-thirds of a pie, or twelve bottles of paint, not three, or two-thirds, or twelve. And what happens to negative numbers, or real numbers, or complex numbers? And yet, theories that explain everyday, real life phenomena, like gravity and demand vs supply need these numbers.

There's also a point of contention on whether Mathematics is an Art or a Science. Alfred Nobel did not think it was a Science, because you could not conduct practical experiments in Mathematics, like you could in Physics or Medicine. He also did not think it could benefit humanity. The University of Delhi, from where I graduated, offers both a B.Sc. and a B.A. degree in this subject, depending on the subsidiary subjects you choose to study alongside. Oxford and Cambridge stick with B.A. degrees. I think it's a bit of both. That's part of the beauty of the subject. It brings the worlds of Art and Science together. You need a scientific mind to understand Physics, and an artistic mind to understand literature. But you need a blend of both these outlooks to understand Mathematics in the true sense.

An interesting anecdote that comes to my mind here. I once appeared for an interview for a scholarship to finance higher studies in Mathematics. It was a diverse interview panel. There was one person from a Physics background, one from fashion design, one from Economics... There was an American on that panel who did not have any background in the subject. He asked me to explain Group Theory to him, beginning from the very beginning. I started out with sets, then functions, operations, then commutativity and associativity, and after a good ten minutes I hoped I hadn't let my Professor of Group Theory down. She was one of the best Profs and one of the best human beings in the Mathematics Department back in College. But as it turned out, my interviewer told me, "I feel like Alice Through the Looking Glass." That was the third and last scholarship interview I had at hand. And I walked out of there, being unable to familiarize Lewis Caroll's fans with Mathematics. Interestingly enough, Lewis Caroll himself was a distinguished Mathematician but his talent at delighting children with his word play overshadowed all his other talents.

I always found the more abstract realms of Analysis and Algebra more interesting than the less abstract, applied areas such as Numerical Analysis. Because that's what pure Mathematics is. Abstract. An infinite space where you can spend hours on end looking for solutions to problems or looking for new problems to solve. A space where a restless mind in Brownian motion finds its due.

Ek Awaaz Dil Ki...

Koi dil mein samaa jaata hai is qadar
ke door ho ke bhi zindagi ka hissa ban jaata hai
Koi khwaab dikha jaata hai is tarah
ke jaagti aankhon mein bhi chamak jagaa jaata hai
Koi humse kuch kahe ya na kahe
unka khayaal humein sangeet suna jaata hai

Family - The Ties That Bind... And Gag!

Due apologies to Erma Bombeck for the outright plagiarism of this title, but it's an absolutely wonderful title that I've loved ever since I first read an extract from this book, close to fifteen years ago.


This post is not about Erma or her book. It is about the whole idea of a family - the immediate family, and the extended family. It is about the people I love and hate at the same time, the people I can't live with, and I can't live without either. These are the people we've known for the longest time (true for most of us, I guess) and hence often tend to take for granted. I, for one, tend to take everything my mom does around the house for granted. And everything that my brother doesn't do. And everything that I do or do not do, for that matter. But everyone in the house has a fixed behavioral pattern that everyone else knows and is used to, and which helps maintain an atmosphere of predictability which we are comfortable with, even if it involves hurling rude remarks at each other. I always know that my mom and bro will make snide remarks at certain outfits of mine each time I put them on. Sometimes I feel that my mom thinks of what comment to throw in my face as she waits for me to come home in the evening so that she can belt it out the instant she opens the door for me. But I also know that she puts a lot more thought into thinking what to make for dinner that everybody in the family likes. In our house, that's a Herculean task. And then there was the time I got my bro two kurtas for his birthday. They were the kind that certain other guys I know would declare annoyingly bright coloured and refuse to even look at. But I knew this guy would like them. When I returned from that shopping trip, he wasn't home. My excitement was a little dampened by that fact. I went to take a bath. He returned in the meantime. And he was excitedly waiting for me to come out of the bath so he could say "many thanks!". In his own peculiar way, he makes me feel valued.

And then there is the extended family. The people I see only at the occasional family gathering, a wedding, or perhaps a significant birthday or anniversary. A gathering where everybody's all dressed up, and talking in Punjabi or Haryanvi, depending on which side of the family we're talking about, where there are a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles and grand aunts and grand uncles, some of whom I am pretty close to, and some of whom I have to make an effort to remember. These are the people who make me see the bigger picture, who make me realize how old I've grown, and how young I still am. But most importantly, they make me see where I belong. And everyone needs a sense of belonging. The secure, comfortable feeling of knowing that there are some people who've always been around and who will continue to be around for a pretty long time to come.

Whether I love them or hate them, these are the only people I can always count on to be there for me.

My Trysts With Cricket

I have never been able to understand why people like cricket so much. Sure, it's a matter of personal taste and my taste and this sport are as alike as chalk and cheese. I've never been able to sit through more than seven or eight overs at a stretch. Only thrice in my lifetime have I tried to watch a match on TV.

The first time was 8th June 1999. The World Cup's Super Six match between India and Pakistan. We were on a school trip to Dharamshala and everyone was obviously quite enthused about this match, given the teams involved. We'd all gathered in the lobby of the little inn where we were staying and everybody was way more excited about this than about going out to trek or singing and dancing around a bonfire or anything else that the trip was originally intended for. So I thought I'd sit around and try to figure out what it was all about. I made a miserably unsuccessful attempt at figuring that out.

Fast forward to the next World Cup. 23rd March 2003. A bunch of my friends and I were writing the entrance exam for Delhi University's MCA course that day. Our exam centres were scattered across the University's North Campus, which is also the place where we'd all done our undergraduate studies together. We'd decided to meet up in our College after the exam. We went to the Junior Common Room to find all the resident Junior Members of College (That's the terminology in our College. There are no "students" and "teachers". There are Junior Members and Senior Members. And there's no "hostel", there's a residence.) gathered over there with their faces painted in the Tricolour. I got a really nice feeling being there, in the moment. We stuck around for five overs or so and then we lost hope with India's performance in that match. Then even the cricket enthusiasts among us found it a better option to go to the College's little coffee counter to sit and chat.

The only time I actually watched a match at my own place with just my Dad watching it with me was the ICC Twenty20 World Cup Final. I watched the last seven or eight overs of that one. During the last few balls I actually felt involved for the first time. And I felt the excitement when the last ball was bowled, not knowing whether it had enough swing to result in a six, or, as it happened, it would be caught. But that excitement was apparently not enough motivation for me to try sitting through another match.

And then there was IPL. I'm not sure if my team outing to Ferozshah Kotla on 22nd May 2008 actually counts as my fourth attempt to watch a game of cricket or not, but it was an interesting experience. A completely unseasonal torrential downpour drenching us but not in the least dampening our spirits. A ground that seemed reasonably dry until the staff tried to remove the covers after the rain stopped, and, in the process, transferred the puddles from the plastic on to the ground. So there was no match. But there was a lot of fun. There was a lot of screaming at the top of our lungs, for no real reason except that it was fun. There was cold rainwater accompanied by a chilly breeze. There was good company. That was what I went there for. I never wanted to watch the match and the forces of Nature also did not want me to watch cricket. They just wanted me to have a good time, as I did.

Persistence and Appreciation

I am a slightly strange kind of creature. I have been on a very serious weight loss regimen for over a year now and have never weighed myself in this time span. But that's what other people find strange. What I find strange is, I never knew that I had enough motivation and persistence within me to start a strict diet and exercise plan and stick with it for so long without any external pressure or urgent need. I always thought I needed a danda on my head in order to do something like this. But well, guess what? Nothing compares with the feeling that I get every time I am able to fit into a pair of jeans one size smaller than the last one. With the compliments I get from people who see me after a significant period of time. And, I suspect, as do some other people, that all this has given my self confidence a significant boost. I always thought, at some level, I was dependent on chocolate for making me feel good when all else in life seemed to be moving downhill. It's been great knowing that I am better off without cocoa. But the icing on the cake came only when my mom finally acknowledged that I had actually managed to shed quite some weight. I guess everyone has their own need to feel appreciated, and this need is satisfied differently for different people. But all of us do have a strong need to be appreciated. It is as basic a need as food or water. That feel good factor is absolutely essential for a healthy, happy life.

Feeling a little poetic today...

Maloom hota ki dil mein yun samaa jaaoge
to hum dil ke darwaaze band rakhte
Maloom hota ki khwaabon mein aaoge
to hum raaton ko itna bhi na sote
Jo humein hoti khabar ki aisa ehsaas jagaa jaooge
to hum jazbaat se apna taarruff hi na karte

The Idiosyncrasies of Romance

Love is an elusive little butterfly. It comes and rests softly on your shoulder when you are looking the other way. But as long as you run after it with a butterfly net, it flies farther and farther away from you. It's the fistful of sand that you cannot clutch too tightly, or it will escape. But you know, there are times when people experience a moment of realization when they figure out that all they'd always been looking for was always there, right beside them. Have you seen My Best Friend's Wedding? I've seen that movie any number of times. It's about a woman who's loved her best friend for nine years and suddenly realizes it when he announces that he's getting married. To someone else.

But think about it. Who better to fall in love with and marry than your best friend? Someone who's seen you through all your ups and downs, seen you in sickness and in health, and always stood by you? Although not too many of us girls are lucky enough to have a friend like that who's also single and straight. But those who are, it's worth thinking about. You know you are compatible, you know you can spend hours together doing almost anything or precisely nothing. Actually there's a basic human tendency of not thinking about people from that perspective once they're in your friend zone. And even if you do, you know what we are all afraid of? It's difficult enough to find a friend like that in the first place. Why would someone in her right mind want to risk losing that friendship if things do not work out at the next level? A bunch of people do advocate that you can still be friends even if they don't, but it's not that easy really.

As always, I'm not sure if I have a point here. I'm just bantering on about some things that occurred to me for no apparent reason, hoping that someone might comment on it and give me some more food for thought.

Shopaholics Anonymous

I've never been able to understand why shopping gives me a high. This is true for almost all the women I know. Blowing away our hard-earned money leaves us with a feeling that's almost intoxicating for most of us. I mean, there is science behind the way dark chocolate makes us feel, and the way beer makes men feel, but what really is the deal with going out and buying yourself clothes when you already have an overcrowded wardrobe full of so much stuff that you actually tend to forget about some of the stuff you own? Or in my case, finding at least two sets of accessories to go with every outfit, or even finding a pair of earrings that doesn't go with anything that I have, and then finding something to wear them with!!! Looking for and trying on clothes that make us look good is more appealing to our aesthetic sense (and some other senses as well, I suspect) than going for a tour to, say, the Mughal Gardens. I've never been there, by the way. Never found enough motivation to do that. It's also a better way of spending time with friends than going out to eat, because you save on some extra calories :P. It's also more effective at bringing me out of a bad mood than the most sinful, chocolatey dessert. I'm a huge chocoholic too, by the way.

And it's not necessarily true only for women. After hearing Rahul Bose's tips on getting over a breakup in Pyaar Ke Side Effects, and after a recent shopping trip and related discussions with an old friend of mine, I've started thinking that it's also true for at least some men.

I know I am not going anywhere with this. I said it was going to be random. Just looking out to see if someone out there has a logical explanation on why it is so much fun and so uplifting to go out, lighten your wallet, and find stuff for a wardrobe that has no more room in it anyway. Maybe I need a larger wardrobe. On my next shopping trip I should probably head for a furniture store.

Of Murphy and his minions

Everyone has heard of Murphy and his laws. There was an article I read quite some time back about some guy who theorized that these laws are formed out of the basic human tendency to retain memory of unpleasant events longer than that of pleasant events. He actually took the trouble to prove that a slice of buttered toast does not, in fact, have any greater or lesser probability of landing buttered side down than it does of landing the other way. In his laboratory experiment it was conclusively shown that the toast has an equal probability of landing either way.

I don't know what you gathered from all this. Maybe you are thinking how completely wilful and free this guy must have been to go ahead and conduct such an unprofitable experiment. But what I gathered from this was that we are rapidly turning into a pessimistic and cynical species. And I guess this does reflect some pessimism on my part, doesn't it?

But seriously, we all think about the stuff that goes wrong in our lives, but how often do we remember to be thankful for and to appreciate everything that goes right? Do you even notice if there are birds chirping away gleefully outside your window early in the morning? But if some of their dropping falls on your favourite shirt, you'd certainly crib about the damn birds outside your house. Don't we all need to learn to appreciate the little things in life, the good things, the stuff that makes us happy, if only we take the time to appreciate it? There are probably a hundred things in my life that are not going the way I want them to. But then, there are a thousand things that are. I have a great family, a devoted mother, a whole bunch of amazing friends, a terrific job... but I tend to focus on the ways in which my brother irritates me, the disagreements with my mom, and the fact that most of my closest friends are dispersed in cities far away from here. But I think that I've taken a step in the right direction by coming to terms with this realization. And we all need to take a few steps in that direction on a regular basis. It's one of the grand essentials of a healthy, happy life.

Returning to my dreams

I am one of those people who do not go after their dreams. Not one, not two, I gave up three interesting, heartfelt dreams to end up as a software developer. One of those dreams was about a career in creative writing. There was a time when I actually believed I had a reasonable amount of talent in that area. And it was an activity that gave me a lot of happiness and satisfaction. I don't really want to recall why I gave up that dream. And it's not that I'm miserable about giving it up. I am actually quite happy with my current profession. And nobody can actually say if I would have been happier or less happy with a career in journalism or something. But that is something that I do wonder about sometimes. But there is one thing I know for sure. When I put my messed up thoughts in words and torture people by making them read those words, it makes me immensely happy. Giving words to something I feel strongly about, or something that I am confused about, or something that I am unhappy about, always makes me feel good. And everyone needs something that makes them feel good. Hence this blog. Let's see how often I add to this, but I'll try to do it as often as I can.

And by the way, I know that certain colleagues of mine who crib about the colour of my media player will also make snide remarks about this colour scheme, but I like it, and it makes me feel nice, so it will remain this way!