H-E-M-A-N-T.

My flatmate, a Couple of weeks after I moved in :
-Hey Hemant ... Here is a mail for you.
-Let me see. Oh no, its for Ahmed, the other guy. My name is spelt H-E-M-A-N-T.
-Oh, sorry, I couldn't make out from the spelling. I thought both the names are same ??
-(Yeah right !)

At bus ticket counter, while leaving for Sydney :
-Can I have two concession tickets for Sydney in the 8 am bus please.
-Yep, whats your last name?
- Singh; S-I-N-G-H.
-And first name ?
-Its H-E-M-A-N-T.
-Ok, here you go, two tickets.
-Ohh, its written HemanD on the ticket instead of Hemant.
-Ohh, I am sorry. But its ok, they won't give you any problems. They'll just see the last name.
-(Ok, watever.)

At Australian Institute of Sports, while registering for swimming classes :
-Which class do you want to enroll for ?
-Adult beginners.
-Ok, whats your name ?
-Hemant Kumar Singh.
-Okk, Let me just print out your ID card, I'll be back in a moment.
(A couple of minutes later)
-Here's your ID, whenever you come for the class, just swipe it here and proceed.
-Thank you. Ohh.. It should be Hemant instead of Hement. Thats H-E-M-A-N-T.
-Ohh, I m so sorry.I'll be back with new one.
-(Yeah, run along please.)

A few days back, while registering for an internet account :
-What name should I put the account on?
-Hemant Singh. That would be H-E-M-A-N-T S-I-N-G-H.
-Ok, what should I put the username as ?
-Put it as hemant, same as my first name.
-Fine.
-When would it be activated?
-Should not take long.
The next day on phone, talking to technical support:
-Hi, its Hemant here, I had registered with your company yesterday but I am not able to connect to the internet yet. Can you please let me know if the account has been activated yet?
-Ok, tell me your username please.
-That would be hemant. H-E-M-A-N-T.
-Cann't find it on records, sir.
-Ohh, But I had registered yesterday. Can you please check again ? Its H-E-M-A-N-T.
-H-E-M-A-N-D ?
-No, H-E-M-A-N-T, T for Tom.
-Ok, Cann't find it still, sir. Can I put you through to the admin to check with the account.
-Yes, thank you.
(Admin)
-Hi, this is Hemant, I registered with you yesterday, wanted to know if my account has been activated yet.
-Let me check. Yes, it has been activated yesterday itself.
-Oh, But the technical support people say they cannt find the name in their data base.
-Ohhk, let me check.
(A minute later).
-Ohh, I am so sorry, your username has been spelt as h-a-m-a-n-t in our records.
-Duh. (You crazy b**** !!)

The lease holder of my apartment, on a visit yesterday to pick some of her stuff :
-Hey Hemant, there is a parcel for you kept in the kitchen.
-Let me see... Ohh no... thats AHMED, the guy who used to live here few months back..
-Ohh, sorry, couldn't make out from the spelling.
-(Fair enough. Not surprised at all.)


................

For god's sake..!!!!

My name is not even French !!!!

@*%#*^%@#*Australians%&%@#*&@%@$@&%#&

A funny night

For those who're not sure of the title of the last post, I guess I owe an explanation. I wrote the epilogue first because I think that was the most beautiful part. And I wanted to capture it before it slipped away. Also, since we generally tend to read top to bottom(unless we are more obsessed with chronological consistency), this post after being published would anyways precede the epilogue, which sounds about right.

So lets move on to what happened really. Well, for as far as I could remember, I've been mostly sleeping pretty late in the night, without much of a reason. Often, I sleep only when crisis limit based on next day's activities/plans is crossed. For reaching office next day theoretically around 9 am , it could be anything between 2 am to 6 am. What saves me though, is fact that the timings are not really strict and as long as you've not committed any sins, nobody really asks when you come or go. To those who ask me why I don't sleep well at night, I casually answer 'so that I could see more of this world and miss out on less.' Well, many a times, that is, in fact true, but at others, the reasons are not really as involved; or, as I mentioned earlier in the paragraph, they're no reasons at all.

But with all good and honest intentions, I tried to sleep early last night. So that I can have a good start to Monday after a good night's sleep as they say. Early would mean sometime around 10:45 pm.

At 1:00 am, I found my eyes were open. I was still not sure though if I were awake. In due time, I realized that I had been dreaming. About... wait for it ..... lions !!! Lions barging into human territory and taking away kids creating horror all around. But then the camera zooms in and whoaaa!! they're not human kids, they were little cubs. The lions were just kiddin [;)].

Neways, I had a good laugh for myself and moved on with my sincere efforts of sleeping well. But alas, the insomnia had got me yet again. As I lay there, awake, suddenly something struck me. Where is that blue t-shirt of mine which was so expensive and which I liked so much? And I realized I cann't remember seeing or wearing it for a long long time !.. In a matter of seconds, I was ransacking through my cupboards. There aren't many, but sometimes, you wish there were more so that you could just have more places to search. Well, my suspicions were true. The t-shirt was no longer there ! I searched wherever it could be; but didn't find it. Earlier in the day, I had been so happy because I had bought a t-shirt for a mere 5$. Turned out it wasn't that cheap now! Disappointed, I folded all the clothes and put them back again from wherever they were taken off. [Inside track: How dumb can you get ?? What sort of a guy loses a t-shirt?? That too when you're not traveling. AND not sleeping around with women either!! Travel.... ohh I went to Gold Coast. May be I lost it there. Well, I went there about .. two and half months ago. Ok, forget it. I am not losing sleep over a stupid t-shirt. ] . Didn't mean I was going back to sleep though.

I went to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. Now, cann't just sit there drinking tea and do nothing. Some of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. won't hurt. One episode finished. Well, what the heck, just two more to go for this season. Bring 'em on !. Towards the end of the third episode, planning to get some sleep finally, some lines started ringing in my head. Well, yeah, those were a couple of starters, some discontinuous bits and pieces from the poem that I wrote in the previous post. It took me somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes to fill up the missing links. They just, came to me. Don't know, why, sleepless and with no prior intentions, I was still able to get those reasonably in place.

I finally slept at 4:05 am.

In the morning, I got a feeling that I had been drunk all night. But I wasn't !!. It felt ... well .. funny !


....................

PS: That poem has nothing to do with the t-shirt. Or the lions.

(Epilogue: A funny night) .. "Till we meet again .."

I am far, so far,
at this dead and lonesome place.

Its been long, so long,
I've troubles remembering your face.

But dahling, we'll meet,
we'll meet someday for sure.

And say things,
that we've never said before.

It may not matter at all,
May not even be worth a try.
It may hurt a bit,
Could even make us cry.

But atleast we would know,
We'd know what happened... and why.


.........

And may be tomorrow,
You'll be happy
And I'll be happy too ..

But still, I'd be glad
That somwehere back in time,
I met you.

.........

Evolution

- ..And the rest is a history ..

- ..And the rest, as they say, is a history..

- ..And the rest, "as they say", is a history ..


"Philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next"
-Henry Ward Beeche


...............

Scrreeeam for me Sydneyyy !!

Thats what he kept shouting ... And boy.. did we scream !!

A few highlights ..

*The show: to which words won't do justice !

*The crowd: Acer arena's seating capacity:21,000 - Full. Floor- Another 15,000(or more !). Always nice to see people. (Accustomed to India; currently living in a country where sight of a human life is relatively rare).

*A hot mommy sitting a couple of rows in front of me telling her two li'l kids how to rock !

*Having attended most of the rock shows so far from very near to the performing stage, I couldn't help but notice that energy level (of people) does vary inversly proportional to the distance(I = P/(4*pi*r^2 ), remember ?). I did infact, try to trade my silver seating ticket for the floor, but didn't work out. Nevertheless, I think I did well.

*Four beats of drum .... opening riff, Fear of the dark ... and the every one sings along ... Ho-o -o-o o-o-oo Ho-o-o-oo .. a very familiar scene ... only this time, one voice among them was mine. Felt kinda nice.

* The song being played after the show ended and the arena was being vacated. Happened to be Always look on the bright side of life. A few people dancing in the aisles. Good stuff.

Hallowed be thy name !

.................

Hello Sydney !

I recall two places where I have heard this phrase.

First of all, I heard it while watching the video of a concert by The corrs, who were performing in Sydney. I don't remember the date/year of the concert, but I do recall the instance when after playing their first song, Andrea Corr, the lead singer, called out aloud Hello Sydney !! (followed by you all look so great and stuff .. ), . The crowd's reaction was of course, a huge cheer.

Second instance when I heard it was in the movie One fine day (nice movie, actually). In the second half, Elaine Lieberman comes out with the same phrase during a press conference scene, whereas Australia was absolutely nowhere in picture.

Interestingly, the connotation of the phrase at the latter instance seemed to have a weird connection to the connotation of former one. Though I couldn't figure out how and why; and couldn't see a reason as to why they should be related either.

Anyways, I happened to google search for it today to find some clues. And apparently the phrase seems to be extremely popular for some reason. There were a zillion blogs with the same as their title. Also, apparently there is/was a TV series running by that name, but in some other language !

Well, now its not that I am bothered about the stuff I just mentioned. Its just that Iron Maiden is performing in Sydney this weekend. And I am going to attend it. So I guess now its my turn to say ....

Hello Sydney !!.


.....................

Pointers

Sometimes I feel that music has a less often quoted aspect, to which we all are probably familiar, consciously or sub-consciously. I think it acts as a memory aid !. And when I say that, I don't really mean the songs that we use to make as mnemonics to gulp difficult jargons to pass exams. I feel that many of the songs that are very close to my heart often define a certain phase of life for me. Whenever I come across those songs, casually or intentionally, it instantly takes me back in life and reminds me of some wonderful memories associated with it. The songs may not and need not really be about that particular 'phase', but they still remind me of it because of the association. Whether they were being played in background or in a rock show, or just in my thoughts, they become integral part of the scene, like we see in movies. To put it in the language of C++(which I don't know much about), the songs act as pointers to a certain block of data in the memory !.

Whenever I listen to the song Dance with me tonight, it reminds me of the lonely (but interestingly charming) time I spent in Delhi before coming here. I was stuck there for a week due to an exam that I missed and had to reschedule, for reasons I wont get into here. It was a bit of a messed up time, but somehow this beautiful song kept playing in my mind, and proved to be amazingly soothing. Interestingly, throughout that time, I had no real means of listening to music (no ipods/mp3 player or anything), and hence I didn't hear the song even once during the whole period. As i said, there was no real bearing of the song's meaning to that period, but it still reminds me of it.

When I listen to the songs Pale or Bitter sweet symphony I remember the time when I went rafting in my final semester of college. We camped in the night on a river beach, which was secluded from literally all kinds of civilizations. It was a full moon night and we could see the mountain range along side the river beautifully moonlit, with uncountable clusters of stars above. The place was filled with echoes of gushing water. It was an environment so loud and so quiet, at the same time. I sat there on the beach alone for a while, trying to think of a nice song (perhaps, to complete the scene unconsciously !). But I was so spell bound by the serenity of the place that I couldn't think of any for a long time. Then these two struck me. And I almost wished that there was a huge divine surround sound system which would play these for me there and then.

I listen to Stairway to heaven and I am reminded of the final trip we wingies had to Sikkim before dispersing for stepping into so called 'life'. I remember us lying on a boulder on the edge of the river and listening to this song on ipod sharing one earphone each.

I listen to No woman no cry and I remember the placement season ! It was 1 am in the night when I had casually dropped off CC canteen to have a cup of coffee. After having been exhausted from the grueling placement procedures and stuff, I was waiting for another interview at around 2 am. A pleasant scene awaited me when I reached the canteen. There was a group of alumni sitting there having a merry time together during their 35th reunion. Two of them were playing songs on acoustic guitar and the other alumni were gathered around, singing along and having fun. They switched to a new song, and as soon as they sang the first words (No woman no cry), everyone burst into laughter. I stood there for a while, my mind absolutely off from everything else in the world, even the upcoming interview (trivia: I cleared that interview and got the job).

I hear Fix you or High hopes, and I remember of sleepless nights during Antaragni, our cultural festival. I hear Sweet child of mine and I remember head banging at rock shows all night in the auditorium.

I can probably go on listing all night and I wont be able to give an exhaustive list. I may not be the unique one to feel so. And the songs might not be unique pointers as well. But probably more prominent ones, atleast for me. It gives me a queer peace of mind. And I feel happy.

Exercise for readers: Try to think if this happens to you too !

................