Charged Down

Music in my head: The whirring of a high speed synchronous motor.
Today's weather: Surprisingly, hot.

I am probably going through one of my leanest periods- mental health and happiness-wise. I had read about it in magazines and other blogs, and laughed at it; but I am laughing no more. This is by far the most depressed I have ever been in my life.
My charger had been scarred by ill-use since over a year now. I had three layers of tape over it when I left India. Two weeks ago I was taken by surprise as my computer turned off bang in the middle of a Whose Line Episode. For three days, I managed by contorting the wire to a shape in which the laptop had power. On the fourth day I ran out of shapes. I took out all the tape and tied two random loose wires together and it sputtered to life again. It survived for four days, and then gave up. The loose wires were now two little strands. I tried to keep them in contact with a small wire I nicked from the lab, but to no avail. As a last resort, I brought it to the lab where I soldered a length of wire onto two strands of wire that I had newly salvaged by cutting off the plastic. The light blinked for five seconds, then it was gone. I tried all possible things for another hour, and finally gave up.
In a depressed frenzy that evening, I sucked all the life out of my senile battery with five straight episodes of Whose Line. It was only nine in the evening when it died on me, and I had nothing to do. I walked around outside for an hour, wallowing in self pity.
I came back in and started reading a book. I slept off in half an hour. The book was called 'Sun at midnight', and it was nothing more than a soap opera based in Antarctica. I plummeted into greater depths of depression each day as I continued to follow the story of a pregnant superwoman in Antarctica being hit on by a super hunk and a sensitive sissy.
Then one day, as I was walking down the corridor I noticed a Dell Inspiron in the room next to mine. I knew the guy from all the fake hellos I offered him on our past meetings, and asked him if I could have his charger every night before he went to sleep. He happily obliged and things came back to normal.
But only for four days.
Now he is at home with his charger and I am wallowing in self pity again. I printed out Asimov's 'Foundation' so that I, at least, have something decent to read. I spend more time working. I don't go back to the room for lunch any more. I drink five cups of coffee everyday. I count off days to the weekend.
The weekend is the release. Last weekend was lovely. I went to Disneyland Paris with my friend Duck and his family. To say the least, I felt like a little kid again. I went on all the roller coasters, it was my first 360 degree experience. I even posed for a picture with Captain Jack Sparrow. But the real highlight of the trip was the pukka desi khana that Duck's mum cooked for us. Basmati rice, dal, sabji and achar with some spicy mixture on the side, my tastebuds felt like they died and went to heaven, after 5 weeks of trying to differentiate between cheeses of different flavours and sampling mayonnaise mixed with varying quantities of pepper.
So here I am again, waiting out another day, thinking of that veritable orgasm for my mouth. Tomorrow, I am going to Paris again. I'll spend the night with Duck and Arya, they're in Amiens, an hour from Paris. We'll go to Versaille on the weekend. Frankly, I don't care where we go, as long as we go.
One more weekend to look forward to after this one, and then home sweet home baby!

Soup

Music in my head: Sigur Ros- Von
Today's weather: Sunny

It is not very entertaining to listen to a conversation in Chinese, contrary to what everyone might think. All I can hear is a nasal drone and the occasional really loud syllable. It's disturbing me from my work, which is all set to break a lot of ground. It's sad, really, considering that this is about as far away from China as it possibly gets (I'm in France. In your face.).

Now, lamenting gently about the dearth of Frenchmen in a small French town on the Atlantic Coast, my thoughts meander to a little trip I made to its even more Mongoloid dense centre, the pride of France, Paris. But this is not about the Mongoloids, not even about the Frenchmen. My thoughts go back to a quaint little bistro on a busy corner in the north of Paris. Cafe Foresta, they called it. It served Italian food and drink. And it was run by, wait for it, a thambi anna, forgive the oxymoron.

We did realise a strange familiarity about the waiter's face as soon as we entered. There was the weird French hairdo with lots of gel on, and the puffy French shirt and the pointy French shoes. But there was also the tropical complexion and an expression of what we thought was slight joy at seeing us that led us to believe that he was Indian. Of course, his perfect French belied our inferences, so we had to wait for a sign.

Oh yes, he did give us a sign. He wrote down our order, walked calmly over to the counter and shouted- " Anney, Oru Isabella, Oru Reims, Oru Vegitarienne, sighram!" We could just look at each other and smile. It's a small world.

The old tamil songs started playing and we were transported to a much warmer, more polluted place densely packed with sweaty people, although only the music was a common factor here. In that little instant, we went from Cafe Foresta to Motel Bamboos, and were back with a resounding crash when they brought our pizzas, and were slapped even harder right across the face with a sixteen euro per person cheque.

Sometimes home is the best place on earth.