Hello Again...

Hi,
This is being blogged from my brand new laptop. I have had a craze for Apple Computers for a long time now and suddenly I am the proud owner of one.
I just bought this macbook. Its looking nice and whatever I have come to know of it delights me. Still there are a few errant issues that I am facing (you know.... how the hell do I install and run software... no google talk... no "My Computer"...no "Start Button"). But these are all normal traumatic events that one faces after having used a PC for a long time.

This is my first post from Singapore. While leaving Bangalore I had promised everyone that I'd keep them all up-to-date with frequent blogging. Looks like that is not happening. Oh well.... best laid plans....

A few things I noticed here:
1. This is an extremely clean city. We Indians who have a healthy disregard for public hygiene are in for a shock because everything here sparkles. You try to change that and you get a fine. Not that I have seen anyone being fined here but even the spectre of paying an amount I would have to toil more than a month to raise sends shivers down my spine and the waste paper bag back into my pocket
2. Metros run, buses are not congested. Their idea of rush-hour crowding does not include the concept of a free body massage by other passengers jostling and pushing into you.
3. Roads and city layout remind me very strongly of what I saw in USA or Canada. I guess they re-used the same designs or probably even the engineers and planners.
4. Food..... sigh!!!! Its all Chinese and the Chinese have a slightly irritating habit of eating absolutely anything irrespective of whether it is alive or dead, has vertebrae or not or has sex or not. They actually pride themselves on being able to eat anything. "I have eaten weirder things than you" is a common boast. One Chinese colleague assured me that he had eaten brains of a "live" monkey with a spoon. I guess that's an entirely new dimension of the phrase "Bheja Khana" in Hindi.

I guess if I really get down to it, I will write a book about the culture shock that I am experiencing but that will have to wait.

Do I miss India? Absolutely! But I do it more because of the people than because of the food or anything like that. So many people who were just an STD call away are further now. I miss Purple Haze, I miss my gang in Bangalore and I miss the prospect of catching a train and landing up home. But beyond all that, I like it in here. The work I am doing is good and interesting. And I have enough money to buy a laptop like this without worrying over-much about what it would do to my yearly budget.

If only the women start paying a bit more attention to this lonely and homesick geek!!!!