So much for the vacation huh?!?

Summer is really dragging. Tomorrow has nothing to look forward to and since yesterday was as uninteresting as it can get, I am pretty sure today is unlikely to be any thing different. We have stopped renting movies (since the free trial is over) and that leaves us with 3 more hours of time to kill, as if we couldn’t have enough of it. I tried sleeping early and getting up really late, but still between 11 am to 12 pm, in which I only have 4 hours of work, there is 9 hours left. Even though we get free cable in our apartment (thanks to the previous resident), it is really hard to keep watching it. There is no cricket to watch, and most movies are re-runs. Last summer was not like this. I was really occupied since I had to work close to 12 hrs a day. Not that I am complaining. I certainly made some good money out of the deal. The work was not that hard, considering, I did, honestly, about 4 hrs of work everyday and for the rest of 8 hrs, I read story books. I wasn’t a big fan of story books (any book for that matter) before. It all started in fall 2005. I started reading novels only after I came here to the US. I started my first, simply out of curiosity. For some reason everyone in my apartment were all praise for this book by Mario Puzo, and I had no idea what all the fuzz was about. I actually read a few chapters and then threw that book away. But as tough it was to remember all the Italian names in it, the urge to finish the story was huge and so I made a second attempt. After I finished the book I realized, as accepted widely, ‘The Godfather’ was one of the best mob-organized-crime books ever written. My second encounter with a story book was due to the reactions of Christian community reported in a news website despite its worldwide success. The second book was the ‘Da Vinci Code’ by Dan Brown and of course it is hard not to like that one. By the time closed out the other three of his books (to get one of which I had to make an Interlibrary loan from Ohio, about three states away), I was quite happy to have developed a habit, which I never thought I would, reading books regularly. When my first summer here came, they saved me from boredom at work. At the rate of a new book every four days, I was, clearly, doing a lot of reading. I was the Alonso of the reading books grand prix. Thanks to Sheldon, Cook, Green, Grisham and few others, summer pretty much flew by and when fall semester came, it was not that tough to open the books (text books this time, though) as it used to be. But this summer is not even close to those happy times. Even the weather is not same as last year. At 2:30 in the noon it’s a little gloomy outside now, while other days are just sunny and warmer at best (not that I am complaining). But last time, it was horribly hot and unbearably dry, even for someone like me from Chennai, India. Things got a little excited about the new ‘Rajni kanth’ movie, sivaji. The movie had all the right ingredients – The maximum guaranteed superstar in Tamil cinema, Rajni kanth, ace director Shankar, and the one and only A.R Rahman for music. All said and done, the trip to Dallas to watch the movie was not worth it. It was a high budget mediocre film, at best, and to our worries it made life little less excited.
On the brighter side, I did some good things, too. I did not miss any of the Hollywood sequels released this summer. I finished my long standing media project- a video tribute to Sachin Tendulkar, who is the Michael Schumacher of Cricket, the pride of Indian cricket team- and actually got some good responses from its viewers. I started it some 3 years ago, but after a minute or so of video making, I abandoned it. I restarted it last month and not to my surprise, it was pretty interesting. What started as an effort to pass time, culminated in a complete 5 minute Audio-Video tribute to the greatest cricket batsman the country ( and the cricketing world, for that matter) has ever seen. I surprised myself by reading Harry Potter 5 (The story never appealed to me). Since I had seen the HP 1-4 in movie format, I wasn’t expecting much. But in the end, I have to accept what more than 325 million other humans world wide have proclaimed, “Hogwarts rocks, Hermione is cool and Lord Voldemort sucks”. Thanks to the book I’ve not only passed a week in an enjoyable way, but am seriously thinking about taking quidditch lessons, if they are being taught somewhere. I read the 6th part as well, and eagerly waiting for climactic installment.
I still got about a month of summer left. But with some good movies, a nice cricket season, the deathly Hallows and some studying (yeah, really) coming up, I think I’ll cruise past the rest of summer without looking at the watch that very often.
Oh...and in case you are wondering about the video I made, here it is…
The Tendulkar Tribute.

Am I busy when I am 'doing' nothing?

It’s a long weekend for us. It means that we have 3 days holiday. The extra holiday is Monday, although the term long weekend technically includes Friday as well. For the sake of people who actually plan for these holidays ahead, here in US almost all the holidays are fixed on Mondays. That is, even if Memorial Day comes in between Monday and Friday, it will be moved to either of those days, most likely to Monday, so that the fun loving citizens can have three consecutive days off. This helps a lot if you plan to enjoy this long weekend, by traveling somewhere, say, the other side of the coast. You don’t have to worry about being at your work place physically on Monday, while your mind is still set in that wonderful pub you visited on the previous night, but had to leave in a hurry coz you had to start early the next day. With Monday being a holiday, you can arrive back to your house in the afternoon and you’ll have all a whole half-day at your disposal. You can do any thing you want. You can have a sweet-tired-sleep or you can have a great Chinese dinner or you can spend the entire night wondering, of all the jobs you could have picked, why in god’s green earth did you pick the one you never liked.

This long weekend concept comes handy even if you don’t travel to the far coast. You can use this 72 hrs of do-nothing time to finish off various things that you’ve been putting off for a long time. You can clean your apartment, fix the bug problem in your kitchen, mow the lawn, or repair your cycle or your car if you have one. You can catch up on things you missed. Things like checking your account transactions for identity theft, finishing the learn-something-yourself-in-so-many-days book that you started during the previous long weekend, see if you have received all the rebates you had applied previously.

One of the most engaging activities would be to call up the credit card company and get into in a word-war with the lady on the other line. You can be pretty sure that she would never give in to your demand to reduce your APR to the lowest possible, but its fun to get into someone’s nerves, especially with a perfectly faked Chinese accent. Another refreshing activity could be to collect the money your friend owes you. This activity is a test to your HR skills as it is a test for your friend’s money management policy. The trick is to make your friend ‘want’ to give the money. By inference form historical data, the method the guarantees money but requires time. But, hello, it’s a long weekend right. If you have anything in abundance, it is time. The procedure is as follows. You go to your friend’s place, say hello or whatever the opening line is between you two, and then remind him about the money he owes you. Try not to be pushy about it. Then casually get something from the fridge, settle in a couch and watch TV. Engage with him as usual but do not let him enjoy your company and at the same time do not leave his company. The idea is to tire him out of his indignity. 4 out of 5 times this works. Now, not only have you spent your long weekend in a very satisfactory manner, but you have managed to get yourself some money too.

Of all the things that can be done during the glorious time frame of a long weekend, one thing stands as the key thing to do for a bunch of individuals. The activities include, pretty much in the same order, getting up at 11 am, eating breakfast/lunch, watching a movie, having dinner, watching a movie, going to sleep and getting up at 11 am, the cycle broken only by the occasional need to type a blog. It’s a very refreshing activity, better known as ‘being busy in doing nothing’.

God Bless the inventor of the long friggin weekend.