Of Narcissists and Mice » Personal

Whale, Dolphin, Tourist and Container Ship Watching

John — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:57:33 +0000

I’m sleeping like a baby and my alarm wakes me up at the ungodly hour of four ay em. I wake up, gesture the damn alarm off (I can’t simply click a button because I have a brand spanking new Samsung Corby, which insists that I run my thumb along a bar in a certain way to switch it off. After a couple of tries I succeed), and promptly fall asleep again. After a few minutes, my fear of being beaten to death by hardcore photographers (hobbyists and professionals alike) and adventure travelers asserts itself and I wake up for the second time. The floors move underneath me and my head is spinning; there should be a law against waking up this early, I’m sure it’s a human rights violation or something. I call up the next room to inform them that they have to get ready if we are to leave on time. While on the phone, I also answer “Yes”, to the question “What is the time?”. After I do my thing (showering, brushing teeth, a hundred pushups) in the toilet I go around waking up the other occupant in my room so he can get ready as well. Even with all this, we are still 10 minutes late when a disgustingly chipper sounding caller informs us that they are on the way. At ten minutes past five in the morning, we are on our way to Mirissa for whale and dolphin watching.

In the interests of completely aping movies/books that start at a random place and produce some back story later on, I will now give the back story.

Early on Saturday morning I left for the sandy shores of Unawatuna for a weekend full of sand, whales and other sea creatures – edible or not. It’s not because I was suddenly bit by the travel bug – those who know me know that I only travel from one computer to another – it’s because some people were going and I was kindly invited as well. Since I’m totally awkward among people I don’t know (while at the same time being awesome in other ways) I took along a few of my friends as well. They aren’t linked here because none of them have blogs and we all know that if you don’t have a blog, you don’t really exist online.

Anyway, after a drive with many rest breaks and one sightseeing stop, we arrived at Unawatuna Beach Resort. Owing to having worked my ass off for the past couple of weeks, we splurged and go some really nice rooms. They even had a Jacuzzi in there. I beat my roomy and marked my territory by leaving my ass hair all over the Jacuzzi.

The Jacuzzi, prior to me marking my territory with my ass hair

After chilling at the hotel for a bit, we head out to meet up with the rest of the crowd. I had no idea who our travelling companions were, just vague estimations as to their numbers. Being the nice guests that we are, we headed off towards Galle to get some beer and ice. After that we headed off towards Matara because I was under the impression that the place we were meeting up was past our hotel. Suffice to say, it was not. After heading back toward Galle again we managed to find the lane down which the place was located. After what seemed like an hour long drive (which is truth was only five minutes) we were still lost. This was actually not my fault and was simply a breakdown in communication channels. Due to being in the middle of nowhere, signal strength was varying. And some people do not realize that a ringing phone is a clear indication of someone trying to get in touch with you. Add to the fact that one of the guys actually gave us the name of the owner of the hotel (Bishu’s) and not the name of the hotel itself (Unawatuna Bay Hotel). All in all it ended well due to the road actually turning into a dead end near the hotel.

After saying our hellos to what I thought was a crowd of people (Actually it was only 6), we headed off to the beach to have dinner on the beach. Here we met a million other people (again, actually 20) whose names I’ve forgotten, but their faces stay on. Thanks to the good people of Submarine Diving School and whoever made the decision to go there, we had an incredible dinner right on the beach. I drank, then I ate, then I ate some more. In short, it was bliss. Since we had to wake up in the middle of the night the next day, we decided to make an early exit.

And then we come to the start of this post. After reaching Mirissa and signing what I assume were legal waivers in case we were suffered a watery doom at sea we finally got to eyeball our seaworthy vessel.

The white one with the upper deck (on the other side) is our boat

I won’t give you the details about the voyage because you just have to be there to enjoy it. Once you get out of the dirty harbor, the water is just beautiful. It changes color from a translucent turquoise nearer shore to a deep blue a few dozen miles out. Some people may claim that I was asleep during most of the trip, but I was just resting my eyes. Shown below is one such instance (picture by PP)

Me "resting" my eyes between whale surfacings

The only thing missing was some chilled beer to keep the heat off.

This was before the run really started doin it's thing.

The mid afternoon sun. It actually gives an "old game sprite" look

The crowd was a varied bunch. You had the casual traveler who buys all sorts of medicines to keep the motion sickness away, only to leave the whole lot and the breakfast in the car (That would be primarily be me). You had the hobbyist/adventure traveler lot who were out for the experience (some people just like getting up at four in the bloody morning and be disgustingly awake during the whole time). And finally you have the seasoned pros that are out to get some mind blowing pictures of the environs. Everyone was very chilled and did their thing. My thing was sitting somewhere shady and snoozing between whale sightings. Sleep comes easy enough when you’re boat is gently rocking you from side to side

And the cameras. I’m sure anyone with a camera fetish would have been sporting a hard on if they were on our boat. There were zoom lenses longer than my forearm. You could have added all the zoom lenses together to make a seven foot robot complete with a heat ray. There was some impressive kit in there, probably worth more than the whole boat.

And wonder of wonders, we actually did see whales and dolphins and flying fish and tourists and container ships. After harassing a whale for about an hour and being all paparazzi like(I kid. We actually never got closer than a hundred meters. I’m happy to see that there are guidelines as to approach their space), we hit upon a pod of dolphins frolicking in the sea. Although I was mostly asleep during the voyage, I didn’t miss much as I was incessantly woken up by the cameras on the upper deck going ape shit whenever a denizen of the sea made an appearance.

After about 6 hours out at sea, we finally headed back to shore and went our separate ways.

All in all it was an excellent trip. I had a great time even though there was every chance of a badly navigated Somali pirate ship capturing us out at sea. Even though I have complete confidence that I would be ransomed, it would be unfortunate since we would miss the five pee em checkout at the hotel.

I’d like to give a hearty thank you to everyone involved in organizing it and making it happen without any postponements or changes in plans. Excellent work!

Me in my fedora. You are forgiven for imagining you saw Indiana Jones

EDIT – To all you bitches who keep complaining about the distinct lack of whale pictures, here you go. This is from one of the photographers who was there – http://www.flickr.com/photos/photosofsrilanka/sets/72157623669928110/. Pictures by Dhammika Heenpella / Images of Sri Lanka

It’s ready when it’s ready

John — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 06:25:45 +0000

EDIT : The menu and comments sections are NOT completed.

The more astute of you browsers might have noted the half done look of the site. That’s because it is half done. I haven’t blogged in over 4 months and I thought I might as well get some design work in before I start again.

Ergo, the site is under construction and is immune from criticism. The more foolhardy of you may feel brave enough to browse but do not send me whingey comments about something or other not working or not being readable. Don’t blame me if something falls on you or mice eat your eyes. Shit happens.

If your life is a meaningless husk without my words, go here : http://twitter.com/jomanlk

Danke.

I’ve launched a new blog :]

John — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:59:50 +0000

Yeah so, here it is : RandomCoding.Com I haven’t added any content yet. It’s a development blog so most people might not find it useful. Anyhoo, all comments, criticisms are welcome. Also, does anyone know how long the inactive period … Continue reading →

Woah! First mobile post AND bored out of my mind

John — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:32:49 +0000

After going 3 days without any human contact i’ve finally gone off my rocker. everyone has gone off to India and im stuck here cos i have exams! right now im bored enough to try to write a post from my mobile More gory details later!
P.S. – I haven’t had human contact cos I have to study for the exams next week

A post for the people I never met. Things that I missed

John — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:01:53 +0000

Yesterday I met a friend who had been on my mind for a while. I met the friend while on the bus. It was just a coincidence. And I got to thinking what would have happened if I hadn’t woken up at the unusually (for me) late hour? What would have happened if I had spent a little more time in the shower? What would have happened if it had been a shaving day (I shave every other day)? All these little seemingly inconsequential things came together to make two people meet in the bus.

But that wasn’t what really got my attention.

What about the people I didn’t meet because I woke up earlier or later than my usual time? What about when I gave up on a bus because it was too crowded? What about when I skipped shaving? Did I miss the future Mrs. Pereira because of these events? Did I miss meeting my future business partner? Did I miss meeting the person who would ruin my life (I don’t really miss meeting that person, truth be told)? That is what I was really thinking about? What did we miss in our lives because we took too long to wake up or decided to shave or decided to go back to get our wallet / handbag ?

I know these are stupid questions. None of these things happened so why should it bother us? It bothers me because I’m always in a ‘what if?’ mode. I can’t help it. Hopefully I won’t dwell on these things too much.
This post is dedicated to the people that I missed out on because I took too long to shave. You would have been great. Or maybe not. I’ll never know.

My New Year Non Resolutions – 2 Weeks Late.

John — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:51:46 +0000

I realize that it’s a bit late for New Year resolutions. But these are Non Resolutions. So I think I will be excused for posting them this late.

This is a list of all the things that I will NOT be doing this year. These are New Year resolutions gone bad. Passed over to the dark side. These are the New Year resolutions you would not like to meet in a dark alley. This is what happens when you don’t hug your resolutions.

This document contains a whole cart load of ‘NOT’s. Because of this it may contain confused sentence structures. I’m very sleepy as I write this so I haven’t been able to keep track of all those negatives mixing with each other and becoming positives only to break up in a huff to become all negative again.

Without any further interruptions I give you, My New Year Non Resolutions

I will NOT spend another needless year learning things that I need to know in order to do a job that I am already doing. Which means, come hell or high water I will NOT be a lazy bum and spend my time NOT studying so I can NOT sit for exams to complete my degree.

I will NOT be taking over the world this year. I mean, come on, have you heard of anyone without at least a masters trying to take over the world? It’s always Dr. whosit or Dr. whatshisname. So frankly, without at least the BSc to add to the end of my name I’m hardly capable of taking over the world. I’m NOT competing with the likes of George Bush without being able to spot market trends or NOT being able to give the probability of it raining when a family who goes out to fish toss a coin to decide who gets to use the hammock. (Which is what I’m NOT learning since I am NOT attending lectures for Probability and Statistics – 203)

I will NOT be a poster child for how NOT to manage your money. As of the time of this post, I am Rs. 1600/= and two weeks away from complete and utter financial ruin. I will NOT be a credit card company’s model customer. I will NOT give up getting my hair cut due to destitution.

UPDATE : I have just received payment for leaves NOT taken in 2007. I am NOT staring at a financial meltdown at the moment. I did NOT just make this up. It really didn’t NOT happen.

I will NOT let my shoes melt into the road before I purchase a new pair. I will NOT be the proud owner of one pair of shoes. Instead, I will be the proud owner of two pairs of shoes. I will NOT wait till my socks are thicker than my shoes to purchase a new pair.

I will NOT be the centerfold for ‘How NOT to Behave at Social Gatherings Monthly’. I will NOT freeze whenever someone makes small talk with me for the first time. My social graces will NOT be ridiculed.

I will NOT be a great dancer. I will NOT be caught dead on a dance floor, unless it is to walk across it to reach the bar. I will NOT look like an arthritic hippo doing a jig.

I will NOT have anymore pending birthday / Christmas (Yes, I have pending Christmas gifts L) gifts this year. I will NOT be caught dead with an IOU. I will make my gift giving habits legendary. I will hone my abilities to such a peak that people will talk about my gift giving habits for a long time to come. Following is a conversation that did NOT happen.

The Bob : Did you watch the documentary about 21st century John’s gift giving habits?
A Bob : Oh yes! It was amazing, I wish I had someone like him to buy me gifts. Just thinking about someone like that makes me giddy.
The Bob : Yes, I know what you mean. I’m going to have a lie down.

I will NOT NOT watch Broke Back Mountain. This movie is now in my official “To Watch” list. I will NOT laugh at the thought of straight actors acting gay or gay actors acting straight.

I will NOT make New Year Resolutions.

And that’s it. I give you full permission to print this list out and frame it. Don’t be shy.

The Year in Review. A Narcissistic Almanac. [NOT SPELL CHECKED]

John — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 06:10:53 +0000

The year in review. Narcissist style. I still can’t spell ‘Narcissist’ properly. I always have to get it spell checked. I always put in an extra ‘c’ or an ‘s’. I never realized that my blog name would give me so much trouble. If I had known that earlier I would have used something easier to spell like ‘Life of Bob’ or something like that. Much easier to spell. Ignore the grammatical/spelling errors. This was written in a rush while I was supposed to be a contributing member of society.
This is going to be one long boring post. I recommend that you do not read it. Of course the first thing anyone does when they are told not to read something is to read it. Human nature. This is just a log of things from 2007 so that I can read this on the cusp of 2009 and laugh at myself. I suggest you read just the last part of the post and wish me a Happy New Year. Less painful all around.

Well, it’s the first New Year I’m coming around to after starting my blog. I haven’t posted as much as I like but I suppose it’s doing ok. Haven’t gone into the list of ‘Fantastically Successful Blogs’ yet but there’s always next year I suppose.

Where do I begin? First I’d like to wish everyone have a Healthy Wealthy and Wise 2008. I’m not sure whether that is grammatically correct but I suppose that it will have to do. I chose it because I’m going to review the year in that order. And we begin.

Healthy

This year was a rather unhealthy year for me. I caught the flu twice which was rather unusual since I only get the flu once a year and that’s it as far as sickness goes. But this year I got,

Sore Eyes
Flu
Diarrhea
Diarrhea
Flu
Diarrhea
Diarrhea
Food Poisoning
Diarrhea (During Christmas )

As you can see Diarrhea was the sickness of choice this year. I have no idea how this came about. My stomach was never a delicate affair and could handle anything put into it. Even taking into consideration the unhealthy combos that I put up with. Nothing major at any rate for which I am thankful. For example, I could have been afflicted with Jumping Frenchman of Maine. Let me tell you, the firecrackers would not have been fun.

As a result of being afflicted with Diarrhea I am one of the few people who actually weigh LESS after all the Christmas food. Sad situation. I have also got fully acquainted with our loo. I can navigate it in complete darkness. Even with the mop and brushes and things lying about.

Wealthy

Since my last job, my salary has more than doubled. So has my work but I enjoy it. Of course, With Great Wealth Comes Great expense. Due to this I have been financially destitute for most of the year. Always on the brink of financial collapse. But needless to say I made it through the year with only the equivalent of one month of salary as debt. This is worrying since I don’t even live a life of debauchery. I debauch very little in fact. Mostly during the weekends. I will be adding budgeting and money management to my New Year resolutions.
Still didn’t win a lottery though.

Wise

I completed the final year of my degree. Which would technically make me a degree holder if it wasn’t for the fact that I have a few subjects from the 2nd and 3rd year to complete. I never thought I’d get through the final year so I was dumbstruck when I found out I had gotten through. For the final exam I studied a grand total of 6 hours for each subject for a total of 1 day/s. Did I mention that I did not go to lectures even once? I didn’t even know who was lecturing us. That’s why I was dumbstruck. Sometimes my amazing awesomeness amazes me no end.

Learned about industry standards and such. Trying to put all that into my website. Nothing much to be seen there as yet because it’s a work in process. As usual I’m on the cusp of giddy success.
What else happened during this year? A lot of things actually. This year probably saw the most amount of change for the good I think.

Best of 2007

Discovered My Chemical Romance. Took me awhile to like them and after that they have not left my phone the entire year. Discovered Breaking Benjamin and Arctic monkeys as well. These three bands were the holy trinity in my music list. Yes I realize I lived an empty life before I found these musicians.

Made a bunch of new friends. Most of them from the forum I idle at when I’m supposed to be working. Great bunch of people. No one can call me anti-social now because I did the whole meetup thing and everything. Although I was terrified most of the time.

Fell in love with V for Vendetta. That was the best movie by far for me this year. I don’t think it was released this year but I only got to watch it this year and loved it. Notable mentions movie wise are –

Transformers (This has got to be watched in the theatre! So awesome!)

Hairspray (I sooo wanted to dance for this movie)
Resident Evil (Watched it just last week)
Bourne Ultimatum (This guy is cooler than James Bond)
Blood Diamond (Who thinks that South Africans speak the coolest English?)
Casino Royale (Daniel Craig makes for a much tougher Bond)

I have a pretty basic movie taste. I prefer to just switch off my brain when I watch movies. I love shallow movies with lots of stuff happening.

Started wearing jeans. Heh heh heh.

Started spending loads of time on the Internet as well. At least 10 hours a day on it. This is because of work of course. But now that I see the advantages I’m trying to exorcise my PC of the dialup connection and get ADSL. Dial up is a device of the devil.

I was depressed for a couple of weeks. Complete and utter despair. No joy at all during that time. It was quite the experience.

I found out that I am terrible at first meets. Absolutely horrendous. I just can’t seem to make any conversation. This gets better after the first meet though. But the first meet is always tough.

All in all 2007 was a roller coaster ride. The highs were really high and the lows were really low. I’m hoping that 2008 is going to be better and I think it will be better. All the signs are that next year is going to be the beginning of something really beautiful.

Happy New Year Everyone.

In the Future There Will be Bob. And Assorted Fillers.

John — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 03:29:40 +0000

Another month, another post. Yes, I think I have hit on the perfect post to month ratio. A 1 : 1 ratio leaves me enough free time to carry out my various machinations while also allowing me to write about them. And my machinations are better than all other machinations that other machinators carry out. As I type the word “machinators”, MS Word tells me that ‘machinators’ is not a legal word. And I ask it “What do you know?”, needless to say I do not receive an answer and my colleagues give me a strange look.

Back to the perfect ratio. Sticking to this limit will make sure I put out 12 posts a year. Just enough to keep the demand high enough in the future. Because at one point in time, I will print out all the posts and take this blog offline. The immediate result? A massive hue and cry for ‘John Pereira Originals’! I have included an imaginary conversation that might possibly take place in the future to conclusively prove that what I say will come about.

Bob 1: Hello Bob
Bob 2: Hi Bob.
Bob 1: I got a new original JP piece for my collection, old flower.
Bob 2: Begorrah! Don’t tell me you managed to get your mittens on that extremely rare piece from his Mahagedara period.
Bob 1: You got it right mate! I was walking my kangaroo past this old antiques shop when this framed parchment caught my eye. Turned out to be a genuine copy of a JP printout. Probably only 3 or 4 of that particular piece of writing.
Bob 2: Aye, well you’ll be one lucky son of a camel.
Bob 1: …
Bob 2: ehem. I love what you’ve done with your hair

In case you missed it, the above conversation is yet to happen and proves without doubt that my blog will be a literary treasure for future generations to come. And yes, all people in the future will be named Bob and will have different accents.

Apart from dreaming about the astronomical rise in popularity of my blog I haven’t been upto much. Any student knows that October to December is the busiest time of the year. And if you’re doing your best at trying to fail exams then you have to start not studying by at least July. It’s a hard life but you have to start being a disappointment at some point of your life.

A couple of pretty interesting things did happen during that time though. The first was that I took The Big Step and met up with some people. Meeting people might not seem like a big step, but I had met this bunch online. Specifically, on the now slightly derelict TNL forum. And more recently on the Lame-Duck forum. It was a fun meetup. Two things happened at the meet (aside from all the usual stuff that happens at meetups)

I stopped associating people with their avatars. I also realized that most people are different from their online personas
Bottle of beer exploded in my face when I opened it. Twice. Thankfully no one noticed the incident. It would have been a bit hard to live down.

The second interesting thing was TNL Onstage. One of the forum members, Lakmaal, was a finalist in the solo category. We went to root for him and I had a brilliant time there as well. Except when I was introduced to some new people.

New Person: Hi John ! I’m xxxx!
Me: … (Thinks “Oh SHIT!”)
New Person: (After being put off by the frantic staring on my part, looks around and moves away. Slowly)
Me: …

This happened a couple of times, and I came to the conclusion that it was the loud noise affecting me. If ever you meet me in a noisy public place, just keep walking. This will save you and me a lot of awkwardness.

Apart from those awkward moments I had a great time.

And something else I wanted to talk about was our forum.

Before I go any further I suppose I should give you some history. Take your mind back to those bygone days……. in October.

Read the post by the Queen of the Dark Asylum for details. Some people got kicked out of the TNL forum. People voiced their thoughts and then some more people got kicked. The end result of all this was that about 30 – 40 people suddenly had no forum to call their own so I (also being a member of the TNL forum) set one up. So now we have a home. It’s a fun place, if you want to join just fill in the form and register. I know for a fact that some of you would fit in there really well.

You might be wondering why I have been rambling on for a page and a half about these mundane activities of mine, well the reason is that a little bird told me that if you don’t post on your blog for more than two months you get taken off Kottu. So to forestall my imminent banishment – before I am able to put my “Plan for Literary Domination” into motion – I decided to put up this filler post. Anyone have any concrete information about this? About Kottu banning, not about plans for literary domination.

Await regular transmissions AFTER Christmas at which point I will again be living on 24 hours a day.

P.S. – The title “In the Future There Will be Bob” should be familiar to all you GTA lovers. It’s supposed to be “In the Future There Will be Robots”

The week that was. I am so sued

John — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:14:50 +0000

Yes I know that this title is from Cricinfo. This seemed a much better title than ‘The past two and a half weeks’ or ‘I and the fortnight. A journey through two weeks’. At any rate I’ve chosen the title and I’m sticking with it, come hell or high water or litigation. The past couple of weeks have been an amazing experience, I doubt I have ever been through this many highs or lows in such a short time period. All this happened during exam week of course. Bad things always happen during the worst possible time. Otherwise they wouldn’t be bad things, they would just be ‘rather a nuisance’ or ‘such a bother’ things. It’s a law of the Universe like electromagnetism or gravity. Mid terms went well, which means I showed up at the exam hall and actually submitted a few answers. You can never measure my exam results by an absolute measure; it’s always relative to myself. Exam marks are for other people. I know I’m a hopeless academic.

A couple of days after the mid terms were the dreaded Mid Review Presentation. Contrary to all logic and semantic rules in the English language we were supposed to have completed 90% of our project by this time. It was all good except for one hitch, we had nothing at all to present during our presentation. As team leader, I naturally absolved myself of all blame and put it squarely on the other members. Like all good team leads I delegated the blame equally among the other members with just a hint of bias against our lead programmer. The gentleman in question had been courting a lady friend during the time he was supposed to have built the simulator. True to form a great enterprise devised by Man had been bought crashing down by Woman. Eden, Troy, Superman and our project, all have one thing in common. We were all bought to ground (or in our case, never got off the ground) due to the instructions hardcoded into our systems to dance around the (supposedly) weaker sex. I seem to have drifted off in my narrative, back on track again. Anyway after some late night coding on the part of the developer guy we had just about nothing to show.

After some monumental team leading on my part, in which I moped about prophesying doom and gloom, we consoled ourselves to an extended stay at SLIIT. But, and this is a huge but, we had a guardian angel!! Our supervisor came through for us like a knight in shining armor. I have no idea why he did it at all, but during the question part of the presentation he asked us questions that made our disaster look like the elixir of everlasting life. The rest of the panel had nothing to add when we finished. The presentation was over and we had come through unscathed. Our supervisor had helped us package our mole hill into a mount Olympus look alike. We were so happy we were shouting and high fiving outside the presentation hall!

Even more good things were in the offing. We had to submit our mid review report but since we had not done anything up to that point I had nothing to create the report with. Handover time was approaching fast and I had still not got any information to complete the report with. Then suddenly, surprise surprise, the deadline got extended! Having gotten a second wind I started work on the report but again fell short because I had nothing to work with. Deadline reached. Deadline extended. Again! I finally got the application and in two days created a fifty page technical report with no real information about our project in it at all. And this time we handed it over before the deadline was reached. I have no idea why the lecturer in charge of projects decided to extend the dead line twice; maybe a lot of people were having the same problem, only the lecturer knows. All thanks to my superb leadership skills. Yes, I know I’m brilliant.

During that time, the highs were really high and the lows were really low. I don’t think I‘ve ever been through a period like this. It was really cool! The two earlier posts were also written during this time. I have no recollection of why I complained about Smallville. It seemed important at the time. Apologies to the Smallville fans. I should have complained about Charm. Stupid series that it is.

I also pissed off some of my friends during this time. So if you have been wronged by my snappy responses or general tetchiness, my apologies. The period of ‘trial by fire’ is now over. I will return to my generally fuzzy and lovable self now. Sarcasm extra.

Seven bits of useless information

John — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 06:39:50 +0000

I have been marked. It is a heavy burden, but it is mine alone… Until I pass it on to 7 seven others. If you thought I am suffering from AIDS or some similar STD then let me tell you that the bushy part of the toothbrush goes into your pie hole. Rather, I have been tagged to write seven things about myself. Pissu Perera and Mia are the tagees and I am the tagged. Now you know who to flame in case you are bored to suicidal depression because of reading this post.

If you are a person who gets easily bored I recommend that you do not read this since this is not the usual cutting edge, biting, tasteful, high drama, full of intrigue sort of post that you have come to expect of me. You might suffer the feeling you get when you switch from something bad to something even worse. You have been warned.

What you will find below will shock you to the core. Sexual exploits, criminal activities, anti-social behavior all revealed in a shocking 7 point format that is designed to satisfy even the most gory appetite.

Also I’m sorry but the only blogs I check out regularly are Maddox and Gizmodo (not a blog actually), so if you tagged me and I didn’t reply you know the reason. That was a nice ego booster. Now onto the dirt.

I give out the image of being an egotistic, narcissistic, megalomaniacal, elitist person, but that is just a persona I like to portray. Most of it is just tongue in cheek fun. Of course sometimes people just don’t get it and they create a completely incorrect impression of me which leads to some discomfort. Overall I’m a highly optimistic person with a bit of cynicism mixed in. Sort of like a Transformer in car mode, ‘more than meets the eye’. Thank God the movie came out on time to give me an appropriate tag line.
I don’t wholeheartedly believe in the Bible, or God’s word or the Christian life style or whatever. I argue with people for hours over the existence of God (I really do believe in God) and then turn around and say that I don’t believe the Bible. Some people find it hard to understand this viewpoint so they do what all humans who are intellectually challenged do, open their mouths and look like landed fish. I think this has something to do with going back to our roots in the sea and warding off predators by telling them ‘My mouth is in fact bigger than yours, therefore I suck harder’. A bit science for you there. That’s what I love about myself; I’m a roly poly bundle of misinformation.
I have bad dress sense. I mean real bad like green pants with brown shirt, dark blue slacks with cream shirt, black pants with maroon t-shirt. That’s how bad it is. And my clothes lack that certain pizzazz. A hobo has better clothing than me. I look ok in work clothes but the moment I go casual any semblance I may have to a well dressed person is purely random. You don’t go ‘man, I would like to get into that guy’s pants’ when you see me. I meant girls don’t think that. Not guys. Optimally, guys should see me and think ‘man, I would love to find out where he buys his clothes’. And no, I have never worn a pair of jeans. Ever.
If you think you are obtuse then stay away from me. I have no problem with ‘duh, I can’t understand how the angles in a triangle add up to 180 degrees’ but if you’re a ‘I told you the US would not get stuck in Iraq because Bush said the war is over’ type, what the hell are you doing using up all my air? And keep the hell away from me because, contrary to all evidence, idiocy may be contagious. Please, everyone just try to have an open mind. I know it’s difficult for you to actually use more than a handful of your neurons but you’re giving the rest of us (me) a migraine and possibly premature death by cardiac arrest.
I love programming. Although sometimes I don’t seem to do anything at all, I may suddenly get caught up in a project and I start doing new things. Here are some samples since I started learning PHP (some of them are works in progress so you can’t actually do anything with it). I get a weird thrill from seeing the computer do what I instruct it to do. And for all you domination fans out there, put your whips back in the closet, I was not talking about that sort of thrill. I think most of the satisfaction comes from creating something (probably tying to make up for my lack of artistic talent). And the best part is that a lot of people are actually ready to pay good money for something that I would have done for free.
I have two story arcs continually running inside my head. It’s larger than just idle daydreaming and quite an interesting experience. Whenever I find myself bored or idling -BOOM! – I’m taken into one of the story arcs. One story consists of a Warcraft and LOTR (what else?!) inspired mythical land on the brink of war. Most of the characters are pulled right off of fantasy books that I have read. In this story line there is one primary character that I thought up and several other sub primary characters from things I have read, played or watched. The other story is inspired by Halo, MechWarrior and StarCraft and Excession among other stories. It’s made up of several characters with intertwining stories which come together in one big bang. Both are works in progress, so to speak.
I’m 23. At the writing of this post that is. You may gasp in shock ‘my God! How can you be so young and talented? Not to mention ruggedly handsome?’. Yeah, I know some guys like me get all the luck. Did I tell you I look good in a suit? No? Anyway, my only flaw is that I cannot dance. I am as smooth as a lame hippo with arthritis on the dance floor.

Yeah I lied about the sexual exploits and criminal activities. At least the anti-social behavior was included right? What did you expect? My parents occasionally check it out so this will remain as clean as a whistle.

I suppose there are more than seven things in there about myself. You may be surprised to learn that I do not enjoy writing about myself. I mostly stick to fiction and the skewed vision of reality that I hold dear. It’s so much easier making things up that sound real as opposed to writing about things that are real. That is probably the reason why I did so well in English Literature and not so well in Accounts. Apparently there is a technical term for that in accounts; I think it’s called ‘Cooking the books’.

At any rate you have my ‘seven’. I can’t say I enjoyed writing factual information but the experience has been somewhat satisfactory nevertheless. Any prospective stalkers can go through it and contact me on 1-800-IAMANASS and I will be sure to get back to you. As is the case of all viral activities I now infect seven other people to spread the germ.

And the nominations for ‘Next in line for infection’ are…

Chamara of Apramana fame. You really have to bookmark this blog if you want to learn about designing.

The Goddess of Abundance from The Dark Asylum. Another ‘more than meets the eye’ transformer for sure.

Niroshinie who is always off on a tangent.

Niro of A week in Sri Lanka

chanux

Hak

N of Child of Twenty Five

I would tag Jahufar as well but his blog is down. And he is too pedantic.

P.S. – Yup, you found me out. These are indeed people who commented on my blog.