**sob**

My hard-drive's got bad sectors.. :( 

Just after i posted the last post yesterday, my D drive was not accessible, and a lot of other folders seem to have vanished..!! Seems like I asked for it.. :( 

Backing up as much data as I can retrieve now, my cabinet's at my friend's place.. 

It's tough living without your computer :( 

I hope it becomes alright soon ..

Two Near-Death Experiences... :D

The last week's been super-crazy...!! There were moments where I thought I'd lost everything, and within hours I regained my life..!

It started Sunday morning..
I was up by 12 , showered and was leaving to raid my friend Hardeep's computer.. He got a whole season of the Big Bang Theory and i had been looking for it desperately.!! Picked up my wallet, my portable hard-disk, stuck my cellphone in my back pocket , and stepped out.. Just then, I got a call from nature.. I rushed back in quickly, finished my "business" , and suddenly heard something fall .. oh god.. all of a sudden I felt my pocket light.. and there it was.. my Nokia 6233 .. floating its way down !!!


Panic-striken as I was, I didn't know what to do, and within minutes, ended up doing the grossiest thing ever...(keep guessing)!!!! The next 30 minutes were spent cleansing my phone and myself with Dettol.. had to take a shower again.. placed my cellphone by the windowpane under the sun for it to dry.. and left! On my way, all i could think of was whether I'd be able to recover all my contacts, my images, my important files in the mem card..!! The next da
y, it was working all fine and it actually smells better than usual :D


News like this DOES spread fast though.. People I hadn't spoken to for ages bombarded me with pings as soon as I signed in to Gtalk.. I also got a lot of calls with people asking me how I'd hold it against my face or if anyone would dare to kiss me! My brother changed his status message to "My sister loo-lified her phone" .. his friends were discussing it too!! I'd leave it for all of you to guess what must have happened when I went to college with the same phone a couple of days later ! :D I backed up all my phone data the next day...to save it from future calamities!!


Like all that wasn't enough, my computer too had a near-death experience last night!
I was working on the last few pages of my college newsletter, I hadn't saved my work, and it restarts in the midst of everything.. I got an error message saying "Insufficient system resources to complete the API". I couldn't make out head or tail of it.. Nothing seemed to work!! I thought I had lost all my data-- my final year notes, projects that I had to submit in a couple of days, my photos, my ebooks, movies, music.. My friend Hardeep said it COULD be a hardware issue but still told me to try inserting the XP cd again, my brother told me to insert a Knoppix cd and see if it works.. After a lot of suggestions and tips.. There I was, at 12 in the night, with my cabinet open, tightening all the parts up.. I still kept getting the same error.. I inserted the Knoppix cd, and saw my drives all safe..!!! Later, I inserted the XP cd again, and started a recovery installation.. which hung half-way, and I was forced to go to bed by mom who thought this wasn't all that important and could be done the next morning..!! I kept rolling on my bed.. thinking my C drive must have got formatted.. and that I'd lose all my data in it, and it had dad's documents..!! I just couldn't sleep.. I finally called up Prasad at 1.30 and he googled it up.. Only when he told me nothing was lost and it was just Windows that had been corrupted, I slept like a baby..
My PC's working OK now, except for a few programs that need to be re-installed..!!
I need to backup all my drives.!!


Had I lost all my work, I can't imagine what my life would have been like.. We depend on technology so much that we assume it to be permanent... And before we realise it's not, it might be too late..!

Joyful Noise

Joyful Noise-- that's the name of the Gospel music concert my friends from the Doers had invited me for yesterday.. and I must say, it was an experience of the sorts..!

I had never been to a gospel rock concert before and when I asked a friend what it is all about, he said they're going to be singing hymns..!! I thought it must be like a church mass or something.. until another friend of mine said they're going to be singing these hymns with guitars and drums..!! I imagined a head-banging rock concert just then.. and got all excited!!! But, when I actually got there, it was neither like a choir nor a rock band... it was entirely different!

It was a blend of everything.. there was western classical music, acappellas (that's music without instruments), solo performances, indian classical music.. and much much more.

I was speechless to see 18 yr old Keisha sing a ballad, and she sounded just like Whitney Houston! There was also this guy Daniel with a sight impairment, who played the piano..!!

All of these people were the finalists of the Gospel music contest that's begun sometime back, it's held every saturday in different parishes. It's a great platform for them to display their talents.. and these were the best bunch! Had a really good time there..!

The next time you get to hear LIVE gospel rock..  don't miss it!!!

Salaam Bombay !

Loved this article by Anurag Kashyap, published in the Mumbai Newsline yesterday. It was a good read, I could totally relate to it --

Bombay & dreams both sorely missed

Anurag Kashyap

Mumbai Is it time Mumbai gave way to Bombay? A city that stood for secularism and cosmopolitanism, a city of free thought, a city we loved and now miss. As we step into the New Year, Newsline brings you a series of stories that examine the harkback

The first thing that I want back is the name we knew this city by. Bombay, the good old Bombay I had dreamt of coming to. The name itself had a dreamy quality to it, it sounded like Shanghai to me. Mumbai sounds too much like Beijing, bilkul thanda.

I would also like to bring back to it the old names that we knew the landmarks by. Chhatrapati Shivaji was a great warrior, but does it mean that we call every place by his name? If so, let Balasaheb Thackeray change his name to Shivaji Thackeray, and his party be called Shivaji Sena. Let him rename all his children Shivaji 1, 2 and 3.

Give me back my dance bars, the place that gave us fantasies before we knew them. They were safe for women and men, and had great charm to it.

I’d like back my right to smoke in restaurants. Okay, at least in the Smoking Section of it. They should have banned cigarettes instead, no? But politicians don't have the gumption to do that.

Please also give back my night spots, those bhel puri stalls and keema paavs at Charni Road and tawa pulavs that I could go for late in the nights. They pose no security threats. The double decker buses that all kids delight in, where have they disappeared? I loved rushing up and getting to the front as the city spread out before me.

I never saw the trams, only heard about them. Though the tram tracks did exist till 1993 and then they disappeared. Whatever mystery those tracks provided is gone too. I hope the ones in Sewri still exist, or much of history will be lost.

Oh yes, please can someone save the Irani cafés? The very few that are left should be declared the heritage of the city and it should be declared a crime to buy them out.

In effect, give me back the city I fell in love with. The late-night concerts, the Independence Rock that could go on and the fearlessness with which we lived.

How the world has progressed only for us to become more afraid. And if there is god, please prove it by defeating all these dirty politicians who play up the caste, language and other non-issues to destroy the city’s cosmopolitan spirit.

Till then, this is just a wish-list. And I remain a non-believer

GoodBye 2008 !

2008 has finally come to an end.. and I'm so glad!

It was a year full of break-ups, mistakes that I made.. Relationships changed, people changed, I changed.. Nothing has been easy.. It has been the worst year so far.

And I'm not letting another bad year come my way ..!

Yes, that's my resolution. 

I resolve to make every day of this year special. 

I'll do atleast one thing that makes me happy everyday, irrespective of what happens.

I also chalked out a to-do list for myself..!

Things I have to do :

1. Study hard and get a high score in my university exams... that seems almost impossible now!!

That's it.. no other responsibilities as of now !! :)

Things I want to do in life :

1. Learn swimming 

2. Learn to play a musical instrument, preferably a guitar.. 

3. Learn atleast one new language

4. Learn to cook.. (I still haven't progressed from maggi and tea! :D )

5. Take up a Salsa/Jive dancing class (So I don't have to be a couch potato at parties)

6. Travel to new places

There are a few things I wish for:

1. I wish I could just lie down on the beach one day listening to the waves, or go to a 

mountain-top and sit there all day... with no worries whatsoever :)

2. I wish just one day I could do whatever I wanted to , without anyone or anything imposing 

restrictions on me.. 

3. I wish for this numbness inside me to go away, I want to feel again..

4. I wish I fall in love again, and I want it to be forever. 

Lastly , I wish for all these wishes to come true .. :)

Wish you all a very happy new year .. !!!