I love You Too, Ma!

“Can’t you at least pretend to be a nice girl,” lashed my mother. I was deeply hurt, I was almost pouting. I’d taken it upon myself that very moment that I’ll make her regret saying it. What was nice afterall? A four-letter word with absolute no impact. I knew better four-letter words that have made people wince and look hopeful (depending on that persons then state-of-mind).

“So, mommy, what exactly do you mean by ‘nice’? Lets see what nice means. Holy cow, there are so many different interpretations to it. Why don’t you sit down with me and tell me exactly what degree of nice you want me to practice?”

My mother is too naïve, and I am glad she doesn’t’ realise it. She’d just started digging her own grave.

1. Pleasing and agreeable in nature: to 90% of the jerks you introduce me to?
2. Having a pleasant or attractive appearance: Mommy, you should know better than this. How am I to work on this?
3. Exhibiting courtesy and politeness: Ahem, Ahem…I believe the definitions of these words are subject to change…so…Mommy?? Mom…hellooo…where did she go?
4. Of good character and reputation: Gee…does anybody have the balls to tell you that I don’t have a good character and repustation??? :D
5. Overdelicate or fastidious: Lady make up your mind, you want me to be fussy or not??? Just this morning when I said I wanted skimmed milk you asked me to be not so fussy and think abut the kids in some god-forsaken place.
6. Showing or requiring great precision or sensitive discernment: I am sensitive, you know that, don’t’ ya? I didn’t jump with glee (in spite of the fact that my true intentions were something else) when I told our 3-year-old neighbour about her dead parakeet??? I couldn’t really help the glint in my eyes…you do remember the five times that it caught hold of my doll’s hair and chewed on it like it was some lifeless piece of toy. Hmpphh!
7. Done with delicacy and skill: Er…was I Ma???

For some reason, my mother has unofficially stopped associating herself with me. I wonder why?

Whimsical fairy...

He called her a whimsical fairy. “To live with you, the person needs to be a lot, lot patient baby,” Sam used to say. Sam was nothing like a friend philosopher guide to her. At the same time, he was all of it and much more than that. Somebody she could swear at for no fault of his. He never yelled back at her…at least, he didn’t yell back at her for the way she sweared at him. Most often than not, he was the first person she thought of every time something good or bad happened. The only person she completely trusted. Not that she used to walk around doubting the so-called well-wisher's advice…. just that she knew Sam would never let her down. After all he was there for her whenever she needed him the most.

That morning when she saw an anonymous number flashing on her mobile, she grinned since she knew it was him. She wondered how he knew that she had a bad dream early that morning and was restless through out. But then, that was Sam. She didn’t wait for him to greet her…just went on and on about how big the monster was and how she kept on tossing and turning. He didn’t respond. That was so not like her Sam she thought. “Sam…you bugger, you weren’t even listening, were you?” screamed Nina as ever. That eerie silence still followed. She wanted to believe that it was just one of his many pranks but then why did that little voice in her head say that something was wrong? “Nina, I’m Sam’s room-mate. He met with an accident last night and... early this morning….”

A zillion questions zoomed through her whimsical head. Whimsical? She thought to herself if she was ever as whimsical in front of anybody beyond Sam. He took all her tantrums, all her whims and fancies, treated her like a 4-year-old regressing back to being a toddler. He spoiled her rotten. She had to measure her words before popping it in front of him, for he could sense the slightest amount of sadness.

Just that morning when she told him about her paper IV results, he’d grinned and said, “keep getting low marks…you make me proud baby…!” She actually wanted to make him proud.

She wanted to cry out to him, tell him that she’d lost her best friend in some freaky accident. She wanted to tell him that she is going to miss him bad. She wanted to plonk herself on the floor and flap her legs and hands like a 3-year-old screaming at the top of her voice for she just lost her favourite toy, the toy that made her laugh.

She knew she could no longer be a whimsical fairy. All she could manage was a meek, “when are they getting him down to India?”

Deflated Expectations

She couldn’t get any bluer. She wanted to believe that it is just one of those days when nothing seems to be going right…nothing seems to be moving at all.
She did get these constant bouts of feeling worthless. On such occasions she would turn to her friends just hoping for a listening ear. Again, she was quite aware of the fact that she’s been taking up whining almost like a pastime thing to do. Only difference was, she knew that wasn’t the case.

The fact that she made no difference to anybody’s life bothered her. The fact that her walking into the sea one fine morning would probably call for a couple of days of mourning, that too amongst a select few. Even this thought was dreadful for her, for she was never too sure if they would mourn out of genuine hurt or because it is the done thing in the society. She couldn’t really blame them for their dependence on the social norms for even she went all ‘tch tch’ whenever she heard about some stranger who is remotely related to her friend’s sister’s brother-in-law. “Poor thing, so young he was…, “she would sigh. She too did belong to the society after all. And being a hypocrite was also a done thing.
Coming back to our suffering-heroines story…she was just running away from expectations.

What she didn’t realise was it was not her problem that people had high expectations of her. All she could see, magnified under the microscopic gaze of all her relatives, was that she was just letting them down.
What she didn’t realise was it was to her moral-social responsibility to please one and all.

Her issue was, she could not please any one.
Now, if I was to give her a pep talk I would give her the stock –“it is all about pleasing yourself, hun”. I have a good mind not to do that to her though. I knew her. For her, a few people mattered, and she couldn’t even please them. There! That was the end of the story.

She decided to walk out. Walk out of everybody’s life. Though not walk into the sea. She was scared of the waves, of height and of lizards. She was also beginning to get scared of people. Even when she held her cousins baby-girl, she thought she saw disappointment in that baby’s eyes. “Hold me properly you over-grown imbecile. You are giving me a pain in the neck, “ the 28-day-old seemed to say.

...and it drilled on!

I wish I did not whine so much in life. Has it happened to you that you went on and on just because the other person was not rolling his/her eyes and after a while it just hit you that probably they were dying to do so and the only possible thing that stopped them from doing the same was their civility? Did I just see you wince? Ah… I know how it feels. The feeling of imposing yourself on the other person without realizing because you were busy playing the suffering hero is not new for me.
I just realized it today (like I did a million other times a zillion other days) that since whining doesn’t really give me a solution/way out from the issue in hand, I might as well not whine. And how exactly do I vent my frustration? I’d read somewhere that it doesn’t really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist’s chair or let your hands lie on your lap. The drill drills on. I don’t know if it really is applicable here but somewhere I do see a point in this line. What fat help would getting frustrated be? Except premature balding, I don’t really see a big difference in anything.So why don’t I just let my hands lie loose on my lap as ……(shudder)….the drill drills on.

A lil' something to make you grin on the bluest of days...

http://uffen.org/calvin/index.htm

Shades of blue

One of those days when everything seems to be just falling down in front of my eyes. All the dreams going down the drain. All the plans going haywire. All the faith just crumbling.

They say this is what life is made up of…ups and downs, highs and lows. So profound! Like I didn’t know that. Why do people throw such extremely deep and ponderous sentences when all you need is a listening ear and not an eternally talking mouth?

I thought listening was the easiest thing to do on earth. If you don’t want to take the pains of actually listening, you can even get away with pretending that you are listening. Just need to get a tight-lipped, knitted eye browed, look on your face and now and then give away the oriental nod just to be on the safer side. That way the other person would interpret the nod to suit his convenience.

The maze, they called her mind...

She hated complex sentences because they were the most difficult to dissect during her grammar lessons in her graduation days. Yet, if she was to be defined in one word, it would be ‘complex’. Not only did it sound cool but also that was a fact as loud as Rohit Bal's gay status.She said she is not all that perfect. He said, let me decide that. She wanted to say, “…so that you just walk away later when you discover this face of mine…the one where I throw temper tantrums and PMS is not even an excuse, when I just give you a silent treatment for no ‘obvious’ reason, when in spite of being known for my ‘I-Care-Two-Hoots’ attitude, suddenly I decide to create an issue out of some comment you made on the way I talk???”Will you walk away when you see the monster in me raise the ugly head?Will you be the calm, reassuring you always, inspite of my grumpiness?Will you read my silence over a fight as the ‘don’t talk to me’ or will you see through the façade of a strong, pig-headed girl on her way to maturity, the only difference being, she’ll never be matured enough?Will you fume at the die-hard realist in me, you being optimism-personified?Will this phase of being mad about me, be just that – a phase?I don’t know what’s the right way of saying things, dressing-up, walking or talking. I, by some miracle of His Highness ( I meant, God, the superior highness, not you), managed to survive so long without really coming in anybody’s way. I wanted to live a life of invisibility. Being non-existent (anti-thesis at its peak) for others seemed to be my focus in life. At a time when girls were at their girly best, I was trying to fit in as the anti-fit, not because it was cool, but because that way I’ll not be expected to be perfect.I wonder if you know what you’ve invited upon yourself.I just don’t have the nerves to wonder aloud.You said I am surrounded by all negative energy. Then how come it attracted such a positive character? Take back your words. I just live in the real world...and if it happens to be a little negative, then so be it.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

She was on her way to a concert that afternoon. Lying was not her passion, but she did a good job of it, especially when the person to be cheated was her mother. Again, she did not get any high lying to her mother, just that nobody else was more important to her, to whom she would have to justify what she did. Attending a concert needs to be justified? Well, when you are living away from your family, all by yourself, and the one weekend you get, you are ideally expected to spend it with the family. The expectation is not ideal by the way, it’s the action, that is.
So, where were we? Right, so there I was waiting for a bus, hoping that I don’t get late for the concert, and he calls up. Let me give you a backgrounder on him and my reactions every time I see his name on my cell phone. For now, let him exist without a name. We’ve known each other since the past year and a half. Initial few mails were mostly a verbal spat with each other, somewhere down the line, we decided to chuck the pretence… actually, I don’t know about him, but I did. Was I pretending? In a way I was. It’s one of the issues I have in life…if I feel like I might get along well with someone of the opposite sex, I try to not get along well. An earnest try, it usually is. This time I just decided to take the risk. What was I risking? Nothing much…just the smug life of a ‘still-too-young-and-hence-not-panicky-singleton’. No second thoughts about cutting my hair short or not wearing the right combination of tee and skirt. Matters as silly as going out on a long, long, long drive with an almost absolute stranger, just because you had blind faith in him, became a matter to be pondered about twice.
And he walked in, somehow I felt different. Not different as in, over the moon, but different as in somewhere everything I said was not dissected and bisected into zillion tiny pieces. I was not analysed. If I was rude, I was rude. Period. There was no confrontation. Another really great bit was, I was not taken too seriously…something that will royally break-up relationships and marriages. I, however, was sick of being taken too seriously. Let’s just saw it was a pleasant bolt from the blue.
That’s him.
That sundeay afternoon, he called up.
Me: Hey…(wide smile)
Him: Hi…( a super straight expression)
Me: …Sooo…
Him: Ummm…where are you?
Me: Bus stand.
Him: Bus stand…? Why?
Me: oh ..just this concert…
Him: (cutting me short): so are you free…can we talk?
Me: umm…ya..temme…
Him: I don’t want any interruptions…don’t say my friend just came and stuff…else I’ll call you later.
Me: NOOOOOOO…temme…what is it, something important?
Him: No no…just something …
Me: Oh k…. (Waiting.)
Him: Umm…just wanted to say that I love you.
Me: huh?
Him: I love you
Me: Er...HUH?
Him: I love you

Well, let’s just say that, it wasn’t one of the most romantic of proposals I had imagined for myself, and boy, did I have an imagination! What happened after that is not exactly the stuff with which chick-lits are made of. Mostly because both of us aren’t really chick lit fans. But whatever happened has surely taken us off guard. I’ll talk for myself and it was a shocker of sorts, especially because I never expected anything so simple and straight (he refuses to accept this and I let him believe that he is the most complex guy…no arguments, no fights) a guy to get enamoured by complexity and confusion redefined. So someone said that opposites attract, but this is almost the good and the ugly coming together and no dhishoom dhishoom expected. We are of course not considering the family (just thought of it, we can be ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’) and the shower of their love here... shudder!
On second thoughts, i need not have started with the concert. Too late!

Troddenly yours!

You know at times people say that they completely flipped for something about a person. It could be his/her smile. It could be his/her eyes. I did too. Flip. FLIP, rather. Every single day I saw her, I flipped. Those dainty, little pedicured...er, manicured.... umm...whatever... 'taken care of' feet. I never could muster enough courage to start a conversation. It's not like she completely ignored me...it's just that I felt she looked at me or rather acknowledged my presence more out of compulsion than by choice.
Compulsion? You mean you put a gun to her head?
No, no, please don't get me wrong. I just happened to be there...let's call it fate.
As ever, she walked towards me, gave me a long thought upon look, took a deep breath, walked her fingers through the short cropped hair,looked at the skirt she was wearing, then looked at me…almost as if waiting for an approval from me. Sigh! Coming back to our lady in the skirt, she looked intently at me, looked away at my counterpart, I missed a couple of million heartbeats, look at me, please look at me, I’ve been lying here since the last time you wore the skirt…I’m the right shade of beige that goes with your white skirt, aahhhh…finally. I wish she wore the same white skirt everyday, at least I wouldn’t have to lie, desperately waiting for her to pick me from the shoe rack.

Co-authoring a book on south Indian mothers

...seems like a good idea. For all you know, it might end up as a best seller, in the leagues of Bridget Jones’, the only difference means, the Bridget Jones's of the world admit to be cranky old sorry singletons, but our dear old south Indian mother’s refuse to admit that they can ever be wrong, melodramatic, narrow-minded, lovable, freaks. A love-hate relationship where you are not allowed to admit that you hate them for the many things they love doing.
To themselves and to us.

What do we make of people who claim to be so complex and intriguing and, and ...umm...what’s that word...enigmatic... yes...enigmatic, that they are beyond all comprehension? Why are people so obsessed with being mysterious? What are the great shakes about being incomprehensible? Makes you look important? So what’s the big goddamned deal in being important? Eventually, everything boils down to three meals per day, one and a half, if you are working for a newspaper. People taking themselves seriously pains me.
I’m one of them, but I’m sure Osama can rationalise his deeds. I rest my case.

My account of ‘the lesser evil’

An egotist. A misnomer to humility. Double-entendre personified with a perverted sense of humour, humour neverthesless. That’s what he is made of. That’s not all, but thats the chunk of the substance he is made of.
One ought to be a masochist to like his company. A good friend nevertheless.
The first time i bumped into him, was in the cyber world, with quite a few hundred kilometres cushioning the verbal lashings exchanged. If the first impression was to be the best impression, I wouldn’t have known enough about him to write what i am writing right now. Alliteration is my favourite figure of speech and I am known for going on tangents.
After the initial rigourously annoying period of “ASL please” and “how the @#$% does ASL matter?” we got onto talking.
A Talk: chit-chat, discussion, conversation, dialogue, dsicourse, says Oxford Thesaurus.
So we chatted about my love for books, his love for flying, my strong dislike for giggly girls, his dislike for the girls who have a strong dislike for giggly girls and much more. The difference was so obvious that we couldnt help agreeing on the fact that we differed so much.
Quite unfathomable, very judgemental, almost believes that it is his social, moral responsibility to pass a judgement on even a speck of dust. Again, it is better to be around severely prejudiced and opinionated ‘god’s gift to mankind’ than to be around mindless, opinionless imbeciles. I always believed in choosing from the lesser evil.
His focus in life seems to vex me unconditionally.
Got an eye for the pleasant things in life.
Easy to be around with.
Pain to have as an opponent.
A chivalrous gentleman on his way to uncouth behaviour.
I am a masochist.

About me, the lesser of the lesser evils...

Reminds me of the essays we were made to write as kids- my family, my favourite game blah blah and some more of blah. Cannot do that...not to save my life. I hate and love the unpredictability of life to almost the same extent. I hate and love the baggage that friends come along with. I hate and love the way my heart beats and the way my BP fluctuates evrytime I think that 'this is the one'. It's all about the ambiguity of situations...situations that make up life.

Colours, books, Chris Isaak, December rains, snow, laughter, solitude ( a big word, eh!), friends, babies, kaajal, grilled cheese chutney sandwich makes me exist beyond the very essential roti, kapda and makaan.

...just before she sat down to write!

He asked her to write about him. She rolled her eyes, “there’s nothing exceptional about you that will make me waste Camel ink”. She liked arguing. She couldn’t take the lifelessness of a conversation where everyone agrees to everything.
Coming back to the point, he insisted that our female protagonist try penning down her thoughts. Random thoughts, being penned down gains some non-randomness. No, actually he asked her to write a book. In an unassuming manner she refused as if, he expected her to write one then and there and had she said yes, she would have had to start of right away. Anyways, she refused. He persisted. Now, modestly she said, "I cannot write well", knowing exactly what would follow. "No Nina, you have that spunk in you to write a brutally honest book...that spunk that many lack", he said. How she wished she had that spunk, that spunk that would make her tell her editor that he is the most imbecile, spineless man walking on Earth, or her very married cousin that throwing up after two months of marriage is not something that would make her ‘jealous of her lucky cousin’. Anyways, she was trying to avoid the topic of writing a book...or even just writing.
It’s not the first time that she found myself in such a gluey situation. She wanted to gloat in the feeling that people actually believe she could write and write well too. But as ever, she couldn’t kid herself. She knew it was just sheer chance that made me say things I did. There was nothing intellectual or even remotely rational about half the things I said. Mostly it’s the ego playing games, making her say things that she wouldn’t under normal circumstances. And then, of course she managed to stumble on people who found some wicked pleasure in ticking her off.
Her friends said they wanted to be apart of the foreword, her brother wanted half of the royalty she would get and he...he wanted to write the foreword...and also publish the book ( Guess, he knew there would be no takers anyways). She was waiting for someone who would take up the responsibility of writing the book as well. She wouldn’t really mind lending her name to it the way she’d, to the plentiful quotes written by a journo–friend who didn’t want to make-up fictitious people for the fictitious quotes she made-up. Finally, he managed to convince her to write a short story, if not an epic, a novella, if not a novel.

She sat down to write...

As for the people who actually expected to read some intellectually stimulating piece of dramatic prose, didn’t she always say that she was not a good writer?!

The unsaid…

There are people who take down a rejection well and then there are people who pretend that they've taken it well. Here is a excerpt taken from the diary of a girl who is still peretending...

-What role do u play? Rather…what role do I want u to play? As in, don't get me wrong. I don't want u to play any role…nope…but what exactly are you to me? As in…umm…I can't even frame it right…where do you stand. What are you to me…(yikes…it sounds too filmy and melodramatic, but that's precisely how I feel. That's precisely what I am thinking this second and since quite sometime).
Ok…now let me break this down and expose my thinking to you…hoping that you would understand my "could-be" madness.
Would you be the "forever friend" or the "father figure" or the "concerned other" or "the tricky player"? Which direction is this going? The odds in your favour are low when my mind is set in reality. It is when I'm riding on a high, feeling altogether silly because of you, that I have to beware of my own thinking abilities; never do they seem sensible in that state. That doesn't mean that you are to be blamed…its me who needs to have that thing called "mind control" or some such important sounding , deep word with profound meaning.
There have been times when I've felt as though I was swaying towards your direction, but for reasons unknown to me…or so I thought.
It was my misunderstanding to think that you would not be any different, so I let our association flourish at its leisure. If I had known that your intentions were not to leave me by the wayside, I probably would've ran away from you for fear of potential relationship entanglements. And then it happened. It actually happened….and I didn't know who was to be blamed. Actually I do know who is to be blamed…its solely you….you , you and only yuu. If it wasn't for the way you spoke that made me feel this different and for all the times you made me laugh wen I was on the verge of coming on the front page of the local daily the next day, and also for all the times that you made me feel normal and not some woman going on and on with her insane, inane mumblings…not that many made me feel so..but then I never spoke so much…I managed to cut them all off right in the beginning…so there was never even a reason for me to start off…you know.
And then you happened…and I didn't want it to happen…this was precisley the sort of thing that scared me to my bones…more than the creepy–crawlies and more than heights ...this is what scared me…!
That day, that ill-fated Sunday (come to think of it, the Sunday wasn't ill fated) when i said those dreaded words, you replied, "You know right it would never happen!?" followed by a- "will you be alright?" The first thing that came to my mind was "Why wouldn't it happen?" … but the first thing I uttered was , "Right...I know it won't! And I am absolutely alright…". That was one time I lied through my teeth (apart from the many other times…you thought only you lie according to your convenience?). It affected me so much that it wasn't funny. I tried saying it to myself that it's alright…but it wasn't. I told you, I wasn't…told you...let's not speak now...it's not helping me. No contact of any way at all. You said, "ok!"… there was no dispute from your end…that again disturbed and also made me stand up on what I said …it just made me more sure of my decision. Alas, I prefered being unsure …atleast that way I had a reason to talk to you...
I was just too happy that I was talking to you again…that I pretended to not think about 'it' at all. I thought it never happened. I ran away from it, or so I thought. It just got in deeper and deeper…just deep enough to resurface with a crash, a boom and a bang! And this time when it did, I played my cards safe…or so I thought. I didn't tell you at all. …nothing at all… till I could come up with a reason or solution or whatever…mother of all jokes, there is no solution. What bothered me more was, I didn't know the " why not?" yet. All I had to do was say, "Dude, too much this is! You said what you had to but I do not know the reason and I, the Queen of Nowhere land deserves to know it…"
But ..but ..but…then I thought….what if the reason is just too silly? What can be silly ….that ur name is A nd mine B? Or that I like pink and you don't? Or that I want to be a sparrow in my next life and you think that's a rot idea? Or that you play pool better than I do? Or that 'I think!' and you do more than just that? It goes on…the silly-list (You know better than I do that it is not a goddamn silly list). That would kill me. And ...and …and..what if the reason is ..something 'not-silly' …and what can that be…I can't think of any…probably because I am just at the 'I think !' level.
"So B , you utterly insane , blabbermouth , with a big foot in a bigger mouth could you just tell me what's the point of this perversely gargantuan piece of literary diarrhea?" I don't know, A. You know me better than I seem to know myself…so tell me what was the point of this whole exercise…you can skip the part of telling me about it…you can just …I don't know…
These things make me wonder wat part of the universe decided to bring us together and for what purpose it would serve…!
And now I don't know if I should mail you this…should I ..? I feel like sending it…though would it spoil whatever we have right now? Or should I just avoid it, just to avoid the pain (big word, I know…) or should I just be 'me' and do everything impulsively and then regret and bang my head and tear my hair and then act cranky and not take calls or talk to people? Do I need all this? Did I ever need what I got myself into?
Nope. So …here it comes..!! ta da….!!! -

She sat down to write...

Looked around for a while wondering if she needs to find a muse, the way all-famous artists had. Did you notice, she wanted to be addressed as an artist, not a writer. She never wanted to limit herself in those six letters. She was ambitious.
She thought it over: having a muse would restrict her flow of thoughts. On second thoughts it would just give her a direction to move in. Anyway, she said to herself, it’s now or never. At least she had the guts to realise that she is a ‘nobody’ and would, for all she knows, remain so. Unless of course she gets married to a guy who sees through her plainness and sees the depth in her eyes and the potential of a path breaking /record breaking/ mind numbing awareness of the human psyche. Who will push her to get the best of her outside, for the world to realise what a gem it was that they were tossing around….
Aaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhh!!!
No complex, never ending sentences Nina! Did she forget why her ex-boss yelled at her for her roundabout way of saying things? Didn’t her best friend often cut her short into saying things blandly, “I don’t need to know the exact shade of green lady, just tell me its green and I’ll get it!” Didn’t she?
Before I take you into the labyrinth of her mind I must tell you how she would like to be perceived as. She wants to be looked upon, as someone who knows her mind, when all she knows is she is not sure about the minutest thing under the sun.
She had not a fair clue of where she as going. All she knew was, she wanted to go places. Guess that’s what intimidated the opposite sex off her…the fact that she KNEW…she KNEW that she didn’t know things. She didn’t fear her lack of intelligence. If nothing, she had guts…and she knew! Some thought she was plain arrogant, some thought she was too ambitious, some thought she lived in a state of perpetual utopia, and some thought she was being juvenile. And she, what did she do? She ignored it all.
An acquaintance, that’s what he was. And one fine morning he calls her up and amidst a casual conversation tells her to write a small, which our lady later realised was quite a relative term, piece of literary gibberish. And this is what she wrote.

not exactly my first blog

This is not exactly my first blog, so wondering if I should actually come up with a la 'I-are-writing-and-I-are-excited-about-my-first-blog'.
Yes, I've made blogs before and quite conveniently have managed to forget the password. It's quite an easy task, come to think of it, forgetting, that is. And yes, I write in long winding, complex-sentence-meets-compound-sentence, style. Sue me!What makes me blog...I cannot put a finger to it. Maybe it's just his/her/its innate need to be known...or just follow the herd...or just ...umm...kill time. Not that my firm pays me fort that...but it's anytime better than playing 'swat the fly'. Also, I promise no to make a zillion people read my blog and comment. Nope (here the zillion people who were ‘made to’ read this are to pretend that they are here out of sheer confidence in my occasional bouts of verbal diarrhoea). La la la la la...