My neighborhood

Banjara Hills is a nice place to live in if you're going to live in Hyderabad. I've lived here the whole of the almost-two-years I've been here and I'm not complaining. The park is nearby, the shopping centres are not far, I have all my favorite eating places close by...

And oh yeah, I share streets with the likes of Mohammed Ali :-)

It's also got its little oddities. It's supposed to be a posh area where the affluent and hip and cool Hyderabadi lives. But India is India and I'm reminded of that every time I go out for a walk. You find places like this very fancy furniture store along the street -

And then you walk on and just a couple of minutes from the fancy store, you find dumps like these -

And this..??! Well go figure what a broken toilet is doing sitting around outside people's mansion-like residences :D

The apartment I live in is by no means mansion-like, but I was still a little surprised when I was new here and I went walking checking out my new neighborhood and I found a little slum just a few minutes walk away.

And one thing I still find funny is going walking in the mornings/evenings and seeing dhoti-clad, brown-legged servants walking pedigree dogs of all kinds, the dogs themselves looking regal, furs sleek and shiny. They'd look so off-matched, dogs and walkers. Owners probably sleeping in their 4 poster beds, or sitting in their high-backed chairs reading the news, or eating breakfast in bed, or probably fat-clogged arteries just won't let them. Anyway, I think it's a pity because when it's 'work' you start hating it. Many of these dog-walkers obviously do. I've seen so many of them carrying sticks and hitting the dogs. But I blame the owners more. No one's going to love and care for your dog the way you do. If you have one, you should be ready to take care of it. Owning a dog is not just about having money and buying a blue-blooded dog just to show off, as an asset to your house, to complete your status symbol, to sophisticatedly complete the 'affluent picture' while your friends show up for your tea parties.

But anyway, people can do what they want with their money. But they should know that their servants beat those things they do with some of that money. And that's just sad.

But we don't own pedigree dogs and we only have a visiting maid so we don't have to wonder if our servants are ill-treating our dogs. We walk and see all these sad sights and go home and forget about it and ill-treat the guitar and the camera and sing 'Hot Cross Buns'.
....but since these are inanimate, non-living, inorganic objects, I'm guessing that's better than abusing poor little innocent dogs.

Free

:D I give up! Back to this. For now. Until I find one that I really like, or learn how to create one myself. Free. From searching for templates. Incidentally, just plain free as well.

I work, or sit and pretend to work. When I pretend to work, these are what comes out -

My Birthday Wish List

[Before anything else - I know I've thoroughly messed up my template. I fancy myself an html expert, so reverted back to the classic template, then realised I'm not all that hot with html either. But far better than xml anyway. Will fix it. Will change it. Will do whatever needs to be done. As soon as the weekend is over. It'll have to survive the weekend this way.]

Moving on to less complicated subjects, I turn a year older today. I don't much like the thought of that, but it means I've survived another year. It's so good to be alive and I'd happily be alive and grow old than to die and stop aging.

I have been asked by a friend to make a wish list for my birthday. So I said "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings, cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels, doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles, wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings...."

But she said no, no, NO! Only married women/old maids like such stuffs. 'Matronly' she said. 'Hot, single, young women should only have men on their minds!' she said :-)

Therefore, this wish list is to be only of men. All the men I'd like to see/have for a night/hold for a while/smell for a day/kiss for a minute - for whatever. Men that make me weak in the knees, the ones I lust after, the types that make me glad I'm a woman, the types that make my heart skip a beat, or the types one would like to just gaze at in silent adoration.

I don't know what she's planning to do with the list, but I'm guessing she's gonna place her hand on it and pray over it so that she finds someone like someone from my list, for me as well as for her. So anyway, I'm in a wish-making mood, so here goes -

1. Casey. You're my first choice for a birthday present. And not just for the stubbles! :-)

2. Thor - Son of Odin, sexy Norse God with the hammer. My earliest memory of ever finding someone 'sexy' was me staring at a Marvel comics book page of him. I don't know what's with the hammer, mythology-wise, but damn, it's a hot tool. Especially in his hands.
3. Stellan Skarsgård as the sexy Saxon in King Arthur. He also played the priest in Exorcist: The Beginning. I thought he made a hot priest there as well. I also saw him on Ronin and Good Will Hunting. I don't know if you know him but I loved King Arthur because of him. The hair, the beard, the costume, the leather and the weapons. Everything works. The only thing that is unattractive about him is him being married. Bleh!4. Michael Ballack. I watch the matches where he's playing just to drool. I love his arms, and I love this tee, you can see his nipples :P
Judging from the last three men on the list, I think it's shamefully obvious that I have a weakness for men belonging to the old Germanic tribe - the brave warrior types, almost-barbaric fighter types, the types bound for Valhalla. But what woman in her sane mind wouldn't be? They're men. Men. With a capital M.

5. Breaking rules and straying from my topic of men, I will insert one small material thing here. I want the Bose iPod Sounddock.
Not cheap but not very expensive either - $269 (roughly 11, 023 INR) & up on the net. Bangalore's Bose store has it for Rs 17888/- (..if I remember correctly). So cheaper on the net.

6. Samurai Jack. This may seem a bit silly, him being a cartoon character and all, but the way I like him is not the way a girl likes cartoons.
7. Snake Eyes. My favorite GI Joe of all time. If there's one person I wouldn't mind having a wild night with without ever seeing his face, it's him.
That's it. Can't think of anyone else right now.

I don't think this is what she had in mind, but I can't help it. You want the men who make me feel naughty, these are them. I got some nice pressies, but nothing from my list so far. I'm waiting. Okay, you don't like seeing me on my own. So from this list of 6 men, getting me one wouldn't be that hard would it? :)

How about this then?

I really like this one! My first template choice sucked, it seems :-) I know flowery stuffs are so not me, but this one is so pretty.

I don't really like the way the header is so small and kind of lost in the foliage, I think it ought to be bigger and more prominent. I hate the archives' font color. And the layout's fonts and colors button is frozen, apparently doesn't work with this template... Also, the whole page looks kind of messy - like an overgrown garden. But I still think its prettiness outweighs the mess.

I manipulated the fonts a little by manually changing the xml codes. I don't know anything about xml codes, and everything I do with the codes, I just do it on an intuition-risk-hunch-gut feeling basis, so every time I try to do anything of a 'grander scale,' I end up screwing up the whole page.

If anyone can tell me how to change the header area and font colors, I'd be very grateful and will think of sticking with this at least until I find the next new pretty skin. I want to align the header to the left, post in the center and all the links on the left. I've experimented, float, align, blah blah and all I get is a huge mess. But what bothers me most if the header. I can put a picture up on the header. Maybe that'd help a little but I don't think the header's the right place for a picture....or maybe it'd look better than the self-effacing little header it is now...or maybe...

Somebody help!!

Should I keep this new template?

Testing to see if the layout thing is really better. So far I don't see anything so great about it. I do admit that this new template is cleaner and more organized, maybe because I got rid of a lot of clutter. What do you think? Should I go back to the old one or stick with this?

Got back from Bangalore this morning - red-eyed, muscles sore and sleepy as hell.

I'm kind of disappointed with the Aerosmith experience. Turned up at the ground at 2 PM, and yes, we were the earliest. Waited and waited. We were not allowed to carry cameras inside. We were not allowed to carry water or any other form of liquid inside. Stood in the sun and the stench of human sweat and dust and grime for over 6 long hours. The guys only appeared on stage after 8 PM. Stayed on stage for barely 2 hours. I was unhappy about not having my camera. I was distressed about not having a drop of water to drink. I was disgusted with having to have sweaty skin contact with smelly people.

As can be seen from the picture here, phone cams don't suffice. With the jostling crowd and the bright stage lights, none of the pictures came out right. The guy in this picture's Joe Perry, Steve's sitting on the other chair. It's a bad picture but at least it looks 'artistically bad' :P And you can tell I was on the very first row pressed against the barricades!

Bangalore was also kind of funny this time, it reminded me of Delhi. We did a lot of driving around looking for a place to eat and drink late in the night. It was frustrating but kind of funny after a while to see cops standing outside every place we went to.

I also saw an auto crash and a fist fight, and yeah la dee dah, no cops in sight! No bars, pubs, restaurants but at least some action to be watched on the streets if you're game. So they were talking about pubs and bars extending their opening hours and we were envious but I don't see how any part of it was better than here. Seemed to me like they close earlier they they do here.
But I'm guessing the passionate Bangaloreans will beg to differ.