A world where all is free
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
 
Hardwork punctuated with loud sounds
As evident, work has kept me busy.

(One man is speaking on the phone very loudly right across my seat. VERY VERY difficult to focus when someone speaks at 100 dB and at a baud rate of 1000 bits a second. On top of that he bounces about when excited and the few words I manage to hear convinces me that the discussion is not particularly critical to world peace/global warming/world security or anything important)

It has now been almost 4 weeks since I came here. Homesickness is catching up very strongly. Wish to be back home on my bed/sofa with remote in hand/car with music & AC.

I have done very little of note apart from work in these 4 weeks. (Must document the fact that work has been particularly "note-worthy". I have made notes like never before - not even when Nandy Miss would dictate her classic notes during history class when I was in class IX.) I have roamed around a little bit here and there but it has mostly been the circle line or the Picadilly/Central line combo from South Kensington to Liverpool Street.

One of the noteworth aspects has been the shows on TV.

This includes one terrible rerun of a 1970s sitcom called "Married with children" which cannot be watched beyond 5 minutes, a rather boring series directed by and starring Mira Syal based on her novel "Life isn't all ha ha hee hee", strange reality shows "Playing it straight", "the Farm", "Celebrity Love Island", comedy talk shows "FAQ U", modern brit comedy show "The League of Gentlemen" which was particularly gross last night, wierd shows about plastic surgery (there were a couple of them - one was almost exclusively focused on genitalia and one called "brand new you" in which a person goes through a complete makeover - tummy tuck, new teeth, new skin, recoloured hair etc). The one on genitalia caused quite an uproar with the media screaming "its voyeuristic" and was eventually pulled of the screen. ) etc.

However, there have been some remarkable shows as well. This includes the top 100 no.1 hits of all times (that wouldn't be my top 100, but it was fun nevertheless. The top few include Imagine, Bohemian rhapsody, hey jude, dancing queen etc), the top 100 war movies of all time (top few - saving private ryan, platoon, schindlers list), some tongue in cheek humour shows the way only Brits can be (this statement added for effect), and my favourite, a show called "Deep Jungle." To be honest, yesterday was only the 2nd episode of deep jungle and it wasn't really great, but it was good nevertheless and the first episode was simply outstanding. It is hosted by the voice of a man with an amazing scottish accent (or so I think - its a quaint accent nevertheless) and the two episodes have been about things I've not seen before (though I've seen a lot of shows on animals and jungles in my life :)). The ones that stood out were the manakin bird with the most outlandish courting ritual of all (including a moonwalk - it is really mesmerising), the Moth with the 12 inch tongue in Madagascar (predicted by Darwin 150 years ago) and the Brazil Nut tree which towers over the Amazon forest, has a fruit that cannot be broken into by a drill or an axe, and requires a special rodent to break into and scatter the seeds around for germination and stops growing nuts the minute the nearby forest is converted into, say, a farm.

Please check out http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/deepjungle/episode1_bostwick1.html for some more stuff on the manakin bird, and navigate the site for some more interesting stuff.

This weekend will be used more fruitfully - shall meet Raj at the airport at *brrr* 730 am, do some shopping (at last) for family and friends and maybe take a train down to Cambridge as recommended by one person here in the office.

P.S. Other success stories here have been Twinings English Breakfast tea and the cookies at office.

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