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As a new year begins, one’s tempted to do something different. So one’s decided to start the new year with some anecdotes.

1. Some people collect stamps and some collect footwear. I collect headgear. Or at least I think so, if possessing 12 hats is any indication. My oldest is a (West) McLaren Mercedes team hat that I picked up at a store off Elliots Beach in Chennai before I moved to Ohio in ‘01. My latest acquisition is an official (Vodafone) McLaren Mercedes hat (with Lewis Hamilton’s signature sewn on to it) , this time procured from the Team McLaren store (thanks Yakkow, for making the calls!). Another prized possession is a Nike Team India hat (to go with my Team India practice jersey) that some friend picked up at Macy’s a few months ago.

2. MTR makes this rocking idly mix. Thanks to MTR, I have had idlies for dinner like 3 days in a row now. Every day I find that I have some batter left over (enough for a couple of idlies) and so I add some more the next day thinking that it will be enough for the half a dozen small idlies I eat. And every day I end up with left over batter. I think this is going to continue till I run out of the idly mix. But I am not complaining at all. Mom makes the perfect molaga podi and she has surpassed herself with the batch I have now. She might live in Chennai while I am here, but like I mentioned to someone the other day, “mere paas maa hai, by proxy”!

3. I don’t listen to Tamil soundtracks anymore. Sad, but true. For some reason, Tamil soundtracks seem to be failing to excite me anymore, barring one or two albums here and there from Rahman and sometimes from Yuvan Shankar Raja. I yearn for the Ilayaraja of yore and Yuvan Shankar Raja is at best bearable, unless he is crowing in his off key voice. The beauty of Ilayaraja and his voice was that he knew when to sing and when to stay away from the mic. With Yuvan, either people around him are feeding his ego or he is deaf.

4. I have no such complaints when it comes to Hindi soundtracks. In spite of my less than perfect Hindi, I seem to be listening to more and more Hindi soundtracks and if you were to ask me about my 10 ten songs from ‘07, Hindi tracks would dominate. And based on the number times these songs went on continuous loop on my mp3 player last year, In Dino (Life in a Metro), Aakhri Alvida (Shootout at Lokhandwala) and Dhundla jo sama bandha (Manorama Six Feet Under) will be in the top three definitely.

5. Speaking of Hindi soundtracks, am currently listening to Rahman’s latest - Jodha Akbar. And hearing Sonu Nigam sing In lamhon ke daaman mein, I wonder how history would remember him. Well, personally speaking, I think after his time is done, he would rank up there among the greats. But then, I’m no expert. When I was in high school, for a time I believed that PB Srinivas sang Gunguna Rahe Hain Bhawre. Don’t ask! But in any case, considering the number of Sony Nigam numbers that rank among my personal favorites, he ranks up there in my personal list. And that is enough. Life goes on.

6. A couple of months ago, I got promoted at work. Well, not really. It’s a promotion by name and I still do what I used to do, which is not much. I did get a decent raise and I guess that makes it worth it. But this also means that I will be travelling more often than i did during the first two years that I spent in this job.

7. And the travel started even before I got promoted. In November and December, I spent close to 4 weeks in total out of Jersey in Portland (OR) and in Cleveland (OH) on some difficult client installs. Twelve hour workdays and infrequent meals were the norm so much that after returning back to Jersey, I have totally lost interest in cooking these past two three weeks. I should get back into the same groove back again.

8. Saturday before last, DoZ and I did a movie marathon. Both of our hectic work schedules in the past couple of months had meant that we had missed quite a few serious movies and we decided to catch up. Starting with a show at 10:30 am, we watched 4 movies one after the other. Three of the four movies will definitely get Oscar nods. Johnny Depp’s Sweeny Todd surprised us by being a slasher musical, a new genre maybe. The Diablo Cody screenplay Juno is genuinely funny. And even though Kite Runner was melodramatic, it was not the slowest of the lot. That honor goes to There will be blood. But three out of four movies is a good hit rate anyways and one has only DoZ to thank, for choosing the movies.

9. I have spent the last two years in New Jersey. When I first moved to Jersey, for the first couple of weeks, I stayed with S and his roomies, till I moved into my own apartment (with a roomie). And these are the only new friends I have made here in Jersey in the real world. There have been a few friends I have made via this blog and while I did meet some of these people in real life too, I miss university life and the security blanket of desis that it provided.

10. This is also the first year since ‘01 (when I moved to the US) that I have continued on and stayed in the same apartment at the end of the year. At Athens, the roommates and I had to move for different reasons every year. The first year, the tiring walk up a hill made us move once the lease was up. End of second year, the university decided to the raze the old apartment complex. And I moved at the end of the third. I spent a few months in Illinois and Delware and moved to Jersey in ‘05. I moved into this apartment in November ‘06. This second floor apartment is huge, has a nice balcony facing the road and is generally accessible. The rent’s about the cheapest in the area.

(Amma, this is about the time you stop reading this post. I am going to talk about my neighbors and you better close this browser window. Don’t worry, my neighbors are really nice people.)

12. Speaking of neighbors, a lesbian couple lie below me every night. I mean, my bedroom is right above theirs. And in case you are wondering how I know - when they do it, they are LOUD, both of them. Like they were last night. And to think that soon after I first moved in, I was asked by one of them to turn down the volume on my TV after 10pm since she was a high school teacher. May be they wanted to be heard and my TV was drowning their soundtrack. Amma, in case you are still reading, don’t worry. I don’t speak to them. I don’t even speak to any women. Podhuma?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 1:58 am and is filed under Life, Personal.