ThePanda

This entry isn’t big, it isn’t spectacular, however it marks a landmark. It’s my last entry from Delhi, at least for the time being, it marks a change in my profile and it marks the beginning of a journey. There are a lot of people out there whom I have really wanted to talk to and meet over the past few days, but have been unable to do so, mostly because of conflicting schedules, and well I am sorry about that. There are a few people, good friends of mine, who don’t know that I am leaving, ‘coz I have been unable to bring myself to announce my departure in person, and that’s not really because of anything you did, it’s mostly because I have been unable to bring myself around to do this. Either ways good bye, and thanks for all the fish (you need to read H2G2 to get this).

Ze Panda

Technically this article should be entitled “The Days Before Departure”, after all everything I do now, is in one way or the other targeted at departure, but then technically a lot of things should be happening. Well this entry is not entitled “The Days Before Departure”, and you’re gonna have to live with that. This entry is frivolous, and has me ranting about stuff which peeves me, and you’re gonn have to live with that too, so this might be a good time to stop reading.

For one my SuperDrive’s stopped burning stuff, it can read CDs and DVDs just fine, however try burning anything and it fails miserably. Most people I have talked to blame it on dust and other nasties, which entails that I have my SuperDrive replaced, basically access Apple’s warranty for the first time. If this had happened with any of the other computers I have owned over the past years, I’d have been real angry with the computer (yes I do tend to attribute human like qualities to my computers, I spend too much time with them), the drive manufacturer, whoever assembled the computer, and fifty other people who had nothing to do with my drive, but somehow I can’t do it with this computer, I love it too darn much, and I can’t bring myself to blame, it ‘coz blame inevitably brings on thoughts of buying a new computer, and I can’t bring myself to actually like any computer other than this. Darn, Apple and the beautiful machines it manufactures, darn. Anyways I plan to get this repaired at DC or Providence, I know places where I can get this repaired, I however am hoping they have drives in stock, ‘coz I don’t wanna wait for a week or more while they order drives from Cupertino. Argh!!!

Lufthansa, my “carrier” for this trip, has some sort of a confusing ripple going around its offices. Not only do their offices seem to change function every now and then, every person in that office seems to have different views on what is and is not required. For example until a few weeks ago, the city office used to act up, and to avoid the city office, I used to call up the airport office for information, they after all have access to the same databases and the same network as the city office, and the people there happily give you any information that you want. Well not anymore, a few days ago this “voice over the phone” (henceforth VOP) told me that the airport office deals exclusively with Lufthansa freight and baggage services, and that I should call up the city office for “passenger” services (hmm baggage services are not passenger services, weird). When I finally call the city office (greatly delayed because the “talking” Yellow Pages gave me an incorrect number), another VOP very kindly informs me that for the past three years Lufthansa has not required passengers to reconfirm. A few days before then a nicer VOP at the airport office had asked me to call up 72 hours before flight to reconfirm my ticket, as have most other VOPs over the past two months, and suddenly they don’t. Now if this policy has been in existence for the past three years, Lufthansa has done a really bad job of informing most of its employees, if not, well I don’t know what happens if that’s not policy. Must say Lufthansa seems to have really confused most of its ground crew.

Exun, my school’s ever so cool computer club, has gone on some sort of a logo hunting spree, which in itself is good, even though I find no reason why the current logo should be changed. A few days ago someone had this idea of including a mascot in the exun logo, and he came up with a logo which had this chinese dragon on the left, a logo which in my opinion was better suited to a Chinese takeaway than a computer club. Well fortunately my comments appealed to his better senses and he removed that hideous logo. Now some one who thinks he’s got this mascot-logo thing all worked out, did the obvious, he came up with a logo which featured a Giant Panda in the background, because last year’s mascot was umm a panda (that should be obvious, I after all was a judge :P). Now I don’t really mind the panda, it’s cute, and well it provides a lot of additional publicity for me, important since I am not gonna be around for this time’s Exun (argh!!!!!!), but well Exun’s a computer club, not a WWF subsidiary nor a wildlife club, it’s based in India, not in China (where a panda on a logo might make sense) and it has no connection to pandas, umm well except for me. Oh well at least I have the prez’s assurances that they’re not gonna use that as a logo, but darn.

Hmm I can’t really come up with anything to rant and rave about, so let’s look at the nice things that have happened. For one I am mostly done packing, the lil stuff is left, and well the lil stuff is significant, but a major portion of my packing is done. I have finished attending most of my “farewell” parties, though I may have to go for an informal thing with a friend of mine, no adults, and at a fast-food joint, so that’s a lot more fun. I have started up on this book, Baumgartner’s Bombay, and from what I have read till now, it promises to be a nice book, vivid in its description, a reminder about all those lil places tucked away within the huge cities we live in, places where almost everyone and everything has a story to tell, places which some of us (people like me, probably) never see. I have finally installed and run Office 2004, which in my opinion is one of the most significant Office upgrade to come out in quite a while. The upgrade from Office XP to 2003 (Windoze) and Office v.X to Office 2004 (Mac) are almost as significant as the upgrade from Office 6.0 to 95 and then 97, Microsoft has finally done a good job of coming up with useful innovations for its Office line-up. Oh and the Athen’s (A?HNA) olympics have started (I bet most of you already knew that) and while I haven’t watched any of it, I am hoping I get to read this week’s Time magazine before I leave.

Ze Panda
(wondering what that argh was about)

A week and six days to go, and things have obviously heated up, or perhaps cooled down. Things have happened, not exactly at breakneck speeds, but well faster than what has been usual for me these past months. I finally have suitcase, half my things are packed up (maybe a lil crazy), people have been informed, phone numbers collected, and I have attended at least one party which was supposed to be some sort of a send off. Weirdly enough I am torn between wanting to leave immediately and hoping that I can stretch time to do all that needs to be done. There isn’t much that needs to be done though, it’s more of what one of my friend’s described as the “shit-this-is-not-happening” mode. Lotsa things are however happening, and well counting down in hours finally sounds reasonable. Oh and I did manage to contact my roommate, Michael Cohen, and though I really haven’t talked to him much, he seems like a nice guy.

Suitcases
One of my father’s friends in the UK once commented about how all modern cars looked the same. He felt they were all designed by the same computer program, for meeting similar performance criterion and that car companies simply added an extra line or two to make them look “different”. He was seemingly correct, I for one cannot differentiate between a Honda City and a Toyota Corolla, they look pretty much the same. However this particular process of “mass-producing” designs (Henry Ford would have been so proud) seems to apply across the board to most consumer products, well not to Apple products, but then Apple doesn’t make suitcases (the iLuggage, hmm that’d be interesting). Which is why you can get suitcases which are identical to look at, but with different “accessories”, produced by three different companies, with prices differing by as much as a $100. In fact Samsonite makes two models, identical to look at, except the more expensive version ($40 over the cheaper one) has leather trimmings. The handles are identical, the insides are identical, however the more expensive one is an “executive” suitcase with leather trimmings and a measly leather ribbon wound around a suitcase’s exterior costs Samsonite $40. Then you have American Tourister, sales for which are handled by Samsonite India, making the same suitcase, minus one thin layer of foam, and two huge pockets on the separator thing, and that costs $40 less than the cheaper Samsonite. In case you thought this was more of a problem with Samsonite producing multiple products with different comfort levels think again, VIP makes the same thing with cheap handles (really bad, not recommended) and that costs $20 less than the thing made by American Tourister. Delsey is also supposed to be making a similar one, I didn’t get to see that, so I can’t really compare prices, but I know Delsey manufactures one of those. A quick look through one of the many baggage e-stores online has convinced me that the same suitcase is manufactured by almost every other luggage manufacturer, and is available on all six inhabited continents (they didn’t mention Antarctica, so I wouldn’t know if it is available there). Now all of these bags have the same outer construction, are of the same color, are made of the same material, similar thickness, similar size ranges, similar weights, in short the bags are eerily similar, and while mass-produced aren’t supposed to differ by all that much, it would sure be nice to find a few suitcases (outside of the fluorescent ones which Benetton sells) which at least show some form of individuality, a piece of luggage so distinctive that one look at it and you can identify the manufacturer. Oh well I guess mass-produced designs are always gonna be cheaper, and as one of my friends told me some days ago, a suitcase is lil more than a box, what’s the point of designing a better box (I can come up with plenty of good reasons for designing a better looking box, but then luggage companies don’t exactly listen to my reasons). Oh and I bought the American Tourister, I can do without the extras on the Samsonites, in fact not having them helps, but well I am not in favor of compromising on the quality of handles supplied.

Packing
Airlines are weird, they have all sorts of baggage regulations, both weight and size, but neglect to inform you about those, umm well unless you ask. Ticket foils have all sorts of information, things to bring aboard, things to checkin, things to leave behind, notices about reconfirmation, the Warsaw Act as it applies to air travel, and stuff you’d probably know, or would find out when you try to find stuff that you should know. The numbers for airline offices for example, I haven’t seen one ticket which provides that information, and of course information on luggage regulation. So I started off by assuming a 22 kilo limit, and went on to discover that the actual limit was closer to 64 kilos. Oh well it doesn’t really matter, at the end of the day I cannot even meet the 22 kilos, my bag is half empty and my parents are searching for things they can stuff into my bag. Ah well thank God we’re still following the 22 kilo limits, I am going to have to drag whatever I have up to the 3rd floor, or maybe use an elevator, I am hoping elevator.

Printing
One of the nice things about having a departure date in the near future is the ability to get people to do stuff that you’ve been wanting to for a long time, real fast. So I had some fun developing some of the black & white photos we took some time ago. Since our enlarger was pretty much borrowed by a friend of my father’s and since we haven’t used any room as a dark room in the past five years or so, we kindda got my father’s friend (the same guy who borrowed the enlarger) to help us print stuff in his darkroom. Working in a darkroom is always fun, and I am not referring to the obvious ghoulish implications of a darkroom. A darkroom’s more like this chemistry lab, minus the H₂S, the reactions and the practical file, in short it’s pretty nice. Oh and I got a few photos printed, not too many but still n>1.

Farewell Parties
I have been to one party as of now, I am invited to at least one more, and I am not sure I like all these farewell parties. Don’t get me wrong, most of them are good because it’s usually a small group of people, and I know most of them, so conversations are easy and good, and well they’re better than some of the huge dinners I end up attending every now and then. The problem is farewell’s seem too permanent, the last farewell I attended was at school, and it’s taken me more than a year to get over that. Admittedly school was too much a part of my life, and well that was going to be a weird thing, and this year with Brown and all the people I am going to meet there, all the people I have talked to till now, dorm life and everything else that’s coming up, forgetting and not missing a lot of things is gonna be pretty simple, but well farewell parties are somehow too formal, too much of a severance thing.

Oh well all of this is written and I am still a week and six days away from leaving, darn, I so wanna leave.

Ze Panda

I finally have a room assigned, somewher in Emery, which seems to be pretty good, umm well except for being far away from most things useful (they do have this nice dining facility on the lower floor). Ah well it’s good ‘coz it’s got fewer people, and from what I hear it’s more like a suite of rooms, so I share the bathroom with fewer people. Oh well that’s done.

Ze Panda