Snowdrift has been my word of the day. For those of you who live in warmer climates and have never heard of or dealt with one and are probably sniggering at me right now with a smug look on your sun-tanned face — a snowdrift is a mass of snow that’s heaped up by the wind. So what? Well, when you get about 25-28 inches of snow in a weekend coupled with 50 mph winds, the piles of snow against your main door, your car, your front yard, everywhere .. are about 4 feet tall. Enter our friend, Mr Snowplow Operator who takes these 4-foot piles and pushes another truckload of snow on top of it. What one ends up with is quite a Himalayan experience. (No not Bhagyashree’s husband. And if you didn’t get that joke, you need to brush up on your pointless Hindi-movie trivia from the early 90s.)

So the weather inspired the poet in me. Yes, let us assume, for the sake of this post that there IS a poet in me. After all, my last creative outpouring was also about the weather. So here I am, back with another. Can we keep the collective groans in the audience to a minimum please? Thanks to fellow blogger Hob Gadling for added inspiration.

Snow

Snow, snowdrifts, sleet and ice
Driving around is not very nice
Yay! I have all-wheel drive!
Without it I couldn’t survive.

Woke up in the morn’ and — whoa!
Falling all around, soft and slow
On the tree branch, on the black crow
Feels like Christmas again, ho ho ho!

*sigh* I am no poet, I know..

On an unrelated note — the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog has been nominated in four categories in the 2005 Bloggies — Best Non-Weblog Content of a Weblog Site, Best Topical Weblog, Best New Weblog and Weblog of the Year! Started by Peter Griffin, Rohit Gupta and Dina Mehta shortly after the tsunami struck Asia, this blog grew to be a clearinghouse of information amidst the frantic chaos in the aftermath of the tragedy. So please support this wonderful effort and go vote for the SEA-EAT blog at the 2005 Bloggies!

Ever wake up in the morning wondering what it would be like to be somebody else? Or if you did something else for a living? That you could walk into a party and when asked you what you do/what you’ve been upto, rather than the ubiquitous ‘I’m a software engineer‘, ‘I bought a new car‘ type of replies you could instead sip at your martini and go ‘Oh, i’ve been busy working on my new novel these days. It should be out at the end of the month!‘. (the martini was purely for effect.) Well here’s your chance! NaNoWriMo is around the corner!

Nano what you ask? National Novel Writing Month. Sit yourself down at a computer, super-glue yourself to your chair and write. Just write. Don’t think. (Well you could think, but its completely optional.) Write till you reach 50,000 words in 30 days. Do I still hear you going HUH?!? Since the folks at NaNoWriMo say it so much more eloquently than I can, go visit their site for more info!

Here’s some tricks that fellow-writer C A Bridges shares —

I crossed the 50,000-word finish line on November 30 with half an hour to spare, although I’m not proud of how I did it — I decided my main character was suffering from traumatic flashbacks and I copied the entire first chapter over again.

• Never use contractions or acronyms. If space aliens are using their forehead lasers to destroy teams of bikini-clad supermodel scientists, have them explain that ‘laser’ stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation with every shot, right up until the fighter pilots from National Aeronautics & Space Administration blasts them.
• Devise a protagonist with interesting quirks, such as the obsessive habit of reciting Kipling’s “Gunga Din” — 573 words, including annotations — during times of stress. This can really up the old word count, especially if they stutter.
• Ninjas, ninjas, ninjas.
• Famous quotes can jazz up a book. Consider starting each chapter with a relevant Shakespearean play.
• If you write anything at all in November, use it in your book. Anything. Shopping lists, business memos, petitions for constitutional amendments, ransom notes, anything. Copy all of your unwanted e-mail and give it a chapter title.
• Public record government documents can add odd bits of randomness to your plot. Say, for example, bill H. Con. Res. 13, ‘Recognizing the importance of blues music, and for other purposes,’ introduced in this year’s Congress, which provides a fast 425 words and an increased appreciation for what politicians do all day.

So if you find me not blogging in the month of November you know where i’m channeling all my blab! I’ve often said that I plan to write a book one day. (Yeah, I say a lot of things) But the optimist in me says that come 30th November 2004, I will tick that off my to-do list. Here’s hoping for support of my ‘literary endeavours’ from the loyal readers of my nonsense!

Got this in an e-mail forward today. On Googling, discovered that it was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal by a student Fu-zu Jen. Parts of it rang so true! Am guessing every gal has a guy friend who’s done some (if not all) of this for her. So for all the wonderful guys in the world (you know who you are!) — A big heartfelt Thank You!

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what asses guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl’s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.  Read more..

I don’t usually write poetry, and anyone who reads my ‘poems’ (and I use the word loosely) will easily understand why. But after four days of thunderstorms and dark gloomy skies, I was ‘naturally’ inspired. So here goes —

The Rain

Pounding against my window pane
My yard looks like the town drain
Squelchy shoes on the subway train
I lost my umbrella, what a pain.

This poem rhymes, but in vain
In meaningfulness, there is no gain
Further poetry, I should refrain
A sad excuse of a poet, I remain.

Every once in a while, I come across a tidbit on the web that mentions the name Ramesh Mahadevan, and I cannot help but revisit his writings. Who is Ramesh Mahadevan, you ask? Anyone who trolled Indian USENET newsgroups like soc.culture.indian in the 90s would find his name to be a familiar one. His howlarious insights into the confusion of being a ‘desi’ student in the US, brought to us via the fictional Ajay Palvayanteeswaran, a Kerala brahmin from IIT-Madras, have earned their place in cyber-literature. Here’s a list of all of his works.

It’s tough to pick any one of his writings and call it the best. But here’s one for a sample of his humor. This one covers passport troubles, the unstoppable burgeoning of desi-stores and a visit to the dentist.

Migration, Emigration and Transmigration

I was in Amsterdam a couple of months ago and somebody promptly picked my pocket a few hours after my arrival there and took my Indian passport. Panic-stricken, I located a police station — my first tourist sight in Amsterdam and lodged a complaint to a doughnut-eating policeman.

“Where did you lose it?” was his first dumb question.

Darn! How do I know? If I knew it exactly, I would have taken care not to lose it in the first place! I pointed my finger vaguely in the direction of the large window in the office.

“Red light district,” he wrote down.

By the way, the prostitutes in Amsterdam accept even travelers’ checks, I was told. Oops, I am digressing.  Read more..