Very eventful days.
For starters, I cut my nails.
I also wore a bandage on my foot, removed the bandage on my foot, wore the bandage back on my foot and removed it.
The philosophical effect that this had on me ( since every small friggin’ little thing appears to have a philosophical effect on me, this should not be left behind ) is that I learnt how to wrap a bandage around my leg.

Ah. Now I feel good. The bandage feels good. The leg, however, doesn’t feel too good.
Anyway, the bandage is on the last leg of its journey. Hahaha.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard dhi blog.
Outside temperature is 28 degrees centigrade.
Inside temperature is well…please inhale the steam since we can’t condense it to water…..is a 120 degrees centigrade.

Hey, would inhalation of steam via your mouth satisfy your thirst? After all, its got the same stuff as water. Or is it always necessary to drink water in its liquid form?

Solidifying this question, does ice satisfy thirst?

I don’t know about steam but I do know about ice.
Ice definitely satisfies thirst. However, the ice must be soaked in vodka and little bit of orange juice.
Nice ice.

Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you had a nice flight.
Thank you for flying dhi blog.

The mind takes these flights every now and then.

(Sing the following lines in the tune of Manic Monday)
Just another draining Sunday.
Wish it was Monday.

There are times when you want to reach out to somebody and communicate silence. Pass on silence.
Passing on silence gives you a very contented feeling of having accomplished a job and being done with it.

I finished reading the Life of Pi. Its a nice book. A heady mocktail of adventure, thrill, religion and a royal Bengal tiger.
Guys, read this book. Its good. At times its very positive, very bright. At times, its dark and black. Not sure whether it deserved the Man Booker though.

Bought some more books from Blossoms on Saturday evening. I got Crime and Punishment!! Dostoyevsky at his best.
I also got Arthur Miller’s best play, The Death of a Salesman. I tried to figure out if I could stage this play, but the settings are too elaborate. And I would require a lot of actors.
Anyway, I would like to stage it. Dustin Hoffman has played the role of the salesman in one of its stagings. That guy is good. Watch him in The Rainman to know what acting is all about.

I went for the playback theatre performance today. To watch a very special group perform. I was a member of the audience and soaked in every moment of the performance. It was nice. It was nostalgic. It was beautiful. It was something that I had missed.
I also watched the Gladiator on Friday night. A movie strictly for the “action purists”.
The weekend is coming to an end.
Phew! It was tiring to say the least.

There are so many things left unblogged:
Kiddo arriving in town.
The guitar place.
The puja items.
Man.
Quest for a new gym.
Strand.
Chung’s.
Sunday early morning madness in the head.
Sunday early morning mega madness in the head.
Friend talking to me over phone.
Telepathy.
Six years of trying to understand.
The impact.
The sleep.
The silent noise.
The partial awakening.
Dinner.
The plaster on the foot.
Sleep.

Phew!

The Buddha continues to smile.
The Lion finally figured out how to smile.

The Lion had a wonderful time in Shanghai, one of the most modern cities in China.

The Lion touched down on Shanghai early in the evening on the 16th of November.
The Lion shall stop calling himself the Lion now.

Carrying only baggage and no expectations, I breezed through the Shanghai traffic in 1.5 hours to finally reach my hotel, J W Marriott at Tomorrow’s Square.
Tomorrow’s Square – quite an interesting name for a place.
Quite prophetic too, since tomorrow I was going to be squared at the event that I was here to attend.
Took a walk on Nanjing Road (E) which is a very long road indeed.
Met a Japanese shop owner who helped us out by providing us with international calling cards. I didn’t understand Mandarin, and he didn’t understand English.
We got along really well owing to the fact that very little other than necessary was “spoken”. Sign language is a wonderful means of communication. It prevents a million misunderstandings which come free with any vocal language.

After making my first friend in China, I headed back to the hotel for an evening with CNN. (America touches every shore in the world. Doesn’t matter whether that shore really wants America or not).
The next day was going to be tiring since we had a lot of presentations to be done.
The next day was indeed tiring for the same reason as stated above.
The next day also brought with it a wonderful boat cruise on the Huang Pu river.

The Huang Pu river cuts across the centre of Shanghai. The banks of this river hold magnificent and imposing buildings, with their own dazzling neon lights.
The cruise started at around 6 in the evening.
I stood on the deck of the boat, the wind blowing into my face. The announcement over the speakers stated that the temperature was 12 degree centigrade. I believed that.
By now, two glasses of champagne had somehow made their way into my stomach.
I wanted to just walk back inside but could hardly keep a leg steady.
Anyway, went back, stumbled on the stairs (thankfully didn’t fall).
Got back and whoa, another glass of champagne had found its destination within me!
I also had some good company on the deck, so by the time the cruise came to a halt, I had downed around ten glasses of champagne.
I finally felt extremely agile and steady.

About the cruise, well, there were casinos, karaoke bars, dance floors and one live band playing scintillating jazz music.
Everything looked nice, trim and elegant. Everything looked funny too, thanks to the spirit within me (The alcoholic spirit that is).

Reached my hotel at 12 in the night. Felt good all night since I slept as soon as I touched bed.

The next day we set out on our own, moving around with a lot of sign language and an equal amount of smiles.
Visited a few Buddhist temples, witnessed their ways of worshipping which are very much similar to the Hindu ways of worshipping.
God rocks.

Also went around the huge shopping malls of China. You get everything in China. By everything, I mean every little thing.
Right from pirated DVDs (for as low as Rs. 30 each) to clothing by Gucci, Versace and the likes. I also saw dried lizards being sold in bunches at one of the weird supermarkets.
Crabs tied with ribbons around them and stored in the refrigerators were another attraction added for free in our own short sight-seeing trip.

The Oriental Pearl TV Tower in Shanghai is the highest tower in Asia. (I don’t know what happened to the Petronas towers in Malaysia! I thought they were the tallest).
Anyway, I tended to believe whatever the Chinese people said at that time. So, off we went climbing to the top of this tower (using an elevator of course).
The view from the top of this tower was supposed to be breathtaking. For some strange reason, I didn’t find it anything like that. I mean, looking at an entire city from some top spot should give you a kick? I don’t think so.
So, took the elevator back again to the bottom of this tower. That too wasn’t breathtaking.

I forgot to mention, I purchased a lot of DVDs. I am sorry to have betrayed the movie industry. Big deal. The industry isn’t doing all that good anyway, so why support it?
I got Memento! That movie rocks.

We also made our way through the underground rail network of Shanghai. This was one of our tougher challenges cos it took us ages to figure out how the routes are connected by this rail network.
We finally made it to People’s Square – a commercial hub of Shanghai. There was a theatre festival going on at the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Pity that all the plays were in Chinese.
After having sprained my leg at one of the Buddhist temples, I walked around with a limp all over Shanghai. Commuting via taxis used to be my intermediate pain killer.
Also had food at an Indian restaurant out there. I vowed that I would never eat tandoori roti in my life again.
Burger King rocks. So does their Chicken Whopper and Fries.
After these two days of whirlwind sight-seeing, we finally took our flight back to Singapore.

The air journeys were the most boring parts of my entire trip.
In Singapore, I took a 2 hour Singapore tour organised by Singapore Airlines. We went to Sentosa Island, checked out that place and got back.

From there, it was back to good old Bangalore. When I was in Shanghai, specifically at the J W Marriott, I didn’t feel like getting back to India. But then, at the end of the second day, I had got bored of that place.
Landed in Bangalore on the 20th and it took about 300 years for my baggage to arrive. My bag arrived last. I was the only one standing there with an empty trolley in hand and a lot of anticipation in mind.
I was so glad to see my bag coming out last on the conveyor belt that I almost picked it and kissed it. Glad since it was holding my DVDs.

Then I headed towards the customs. I prayed to every available and listening god to ensure that I don’t get marked as a DVD smuggler. Thankfully there was one god who probably was available and listened.
Returned home and crashed out by 2:00 am.

The Lion has returned to his den.

Take one story, viewed from two different angles.

Take a rainy Sunday morning in July, in the late 1920s, when Eddie (a little kid) and his friends are tossing a baseball Eddie got for his birthday nearly a year ago.
Take a moment when that ball flies over Eddie’s head and out into the street. Eddie, wearing tawny pans and a wool cap, chases after it, and runs in front of an automobile, a Ford Model A.
The car screeches, veers and just misses him. Eddie shivers, exhales, gets the ball and races back to his friends. The game soon ends and the children run to the arcade to play the Erie Digger machine, with its claw-like mechanism that picks up small toys.

Now take that same story from a different angle.
A man is behind the wheel of a Ford Model A, which he has borrowed from a friend to practise his driving. The road is wet from the morning rain.
Suddenly, a baseball bounces across the street, and a boy comes racing after it. The driver slams on the brakes and yanks the wheel.
The car skids, the tires screech.
The man somehow regains control, and the Model A rolls on. The child has disappeared in the rearview mirror, but the man’s body is still affected, thinking of how close he came to tragedy.
The jolt of adrenaline has forced his heart to pump furiously and this heart is not a strong one and the pumping leaves him drained. The man feels dizzy and his head drops momentarily.
His automobile nearly collides with another. The second driver honks, the man veers again, spinning the wheel, pushing on the break pedal.
He skids along an avenue then turns down an alley. His vehicle rolls until it collides with the rear of a parked truck.
There is a small crashing noise. The headlights shatter. The impact smacks the man into the steering wheel.
His forehead bleeds. He steps from the Model A, sees the damage, then collapses onto the wet pavement. His arm throbs. His chest hurts.
It is Sunday morning. The alley is empty. He remains there, unnoticed, slumped against the side of the car. The blood from his coronary arteries no longer flows to his heart.
An hour passes. A policeman finds him. A medical examiner pronounces him dead.
The cause of death is listed as “heart attack”. There are no known relatives.

Take one story, viewed from different angles. It is the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily, at an arcade, with the little boy in tawny pants dropping pennies into the Erie Digger machine, and the other ends badly, in a city morgue.

Courtesy: the five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom

I suppose at every moment we are either Eddie or the man behind the wheel of a Ford Model A.
We never really know whom we impact, how we impact, by whom we get impacted, how much we get impacted.

As always, life rocks.

Well, in case you really want to know how our Sandur trip was, you could get a brief glimpse of it,
Chilli has uploaded his photos at this album
There a million other snaps on their way.