Earthquake with far reaching consequences...

I'm speeding in a Porsche 911 Turbo through the concrete jungle of Downtown L.A, when a little kid comes right toward my car. I hit the brakes, narrowly miss the kid, and then the car stops, starts moving to and fro, about a dozen times, as if someone's humping someone else in the car. I wake up to find that it's my bed which is moving. My mom asks me "Did you feel that?". It was just a mild tremor, but it scared the shit out of most of the residents of the apartment building I live in. That happened at around 6:30 in the morning, and lasted for around 15 minutes. It wasn't much of an earthquake.

Later, I hear people shouting. I look out from the window of my room on the top floor, and see hundreds of people running out of the street right across my building. I use that street frequently; it leads to the beach. I go down to investigate.

People were running helter-skelter, screaming "The beach has come in! The beach is in!". I didn't comprehend what they meant. I asked a guy, who seemed to be the only one walking, what the commotion was about. He told me that water from the Marina beach had gushed into the city, and reached most homes near the coast. It was probably a side-effect of the tremors in the morning. Nonplussed, I went back home, told my parents, and headed out to the beach.

I was simply shocked at what I saw. The entire shore was swallowed by water flowing in from the sea. People were pulling out corpses every minute. Cars were floating out to sea. An Ambassador was one of them, which is surprising if you've ever ridden in one. It was a horrible sight.

I heard later that the earthquake at Indonesia had sent shocks through the Indian ocean, the result of which was this "tsunami" which hit Chennai. It's supposed to be the largest earthquake in 40 years, measuring an 8.9 on the Richter scale. Further, earthquakes have also hit Australia and Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has declared a state of emergency, with over a million people affected by the tidal waves.

After an hour or so, some of the water went back, and here's a picture I took with a Cell phone:


That's one of the cars I told you about. It had landed on a bench when the water went back. This image made me sign up at deviantART.com. Click on the image to view a bigger version at that site.

About 500 people all over Tamil Nadu are said to be dead, and over 400 fishermen still missing. Sri Lanka claims millions have been affected. These are bad times.

Why is it always blondes and Sardars who are dumb?

Before you ask, no, I'm not a Sardar or a blonde. But I find it increasingly irritating to read a dumb blonde joke or a Sardarji joke. Nearly every SMS I get these days is a joke based on Sardars.

An example :

"Sardarji was filling up an application form for a job. He promptly filled the columns titled NAME, AGE, ADDRESS etc. Then he came to the column Salary Expected: He was not sure as to what to be filled there. After much thought he wrote: Yes"

We have a couple of Sardars in our College and one of them is quite intelligent. Though I admit, I don't know any bright blondes, but that's probably because I know very few blondes.

Forget dumb Sardars. Ever played the game Grand Theft Auto 3? All the Taxi Drivers in the game are Sardars. There aren't so many Sardars in USA who drive taxis, are there? I wonder what they felt when they played the game...

Update: I had a kind of an adventure last Saturday. I've narrated it at my College Life blog, since it's something that happened on my way back from College.

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

Desires of the Heart

I quite clearly remember my mindset last year. Seeing no valid reason for the existence of this universe and influenced by the sagacity of the sages depicted in epics, I concluded that life is unreal; I lost interest in this material world. I was peacefully content, with no wants whatsoever. I never cared for worldly events.

But things aren't the way they were before. At this point of time, I yearn for a lot of things. Here's a brief list, in no particular order.

I want:

1. To get out of my college's hostel.

2. The best 128 MB AGP card money can buy.

3. A reasonably fast broadband internet connection.

4. The best portable pocket-sized MP3 player.

5. A high resolution digital still camera, bluetooth enabled.

6. A Wi-Fi enabled notebook computer for obvious reasons.

7. The best keyboard(music) ever to hit the market.

8. A violin. Any violin.

9. The money to satisfy wants 2-8.

10. To practice euthanasia on myself provided no one will miss me, there's no such thing as an afterlife, and I'm not reborn.

Actually, a lifetime supply of Pepsi and daily necessities, and a computer with a fast, unlimited internet connection, free for life, would suffice.

Anything you want?

I'm beginning to hate the Internet.

Rather, I'm beginning to hate the lack of it wherever I go. You are probably familiar with the fact that I can access the internet only once a week when I go home, if you've been reading my blogs. Even that was ruined, at least for the past 2-3 weeks. I come home for the weekend, eager to blog and check my mail, and my parents tell me that the modem is kaput. Try to connect to the net, and you get "Error 633: The port cannot be found or is busy", or something to that effect. I knew the port couldn't be busy; we had no applications which used the COM1 port. With some tweaks here and there, it started working, but not for long. As soon as the computer was rebooted, the same error message appeared when one tried to connect to the net. Doing the same thing didn't fix the modem this time. So we assumed getting a new one would solve the problem. But, the day being a Sunday, no shops open, no modem. I had to wait for another week.

Next weekend, I come home; we have a new modem, but the same problem. It seems the modem worked fine till the computer was rebooted. Obviously, I began to see a pattern here. But I still couldn't fix it.

The next weekend, i.e., this weekend, I hit the jackpot. I completely understood what the problem was. Now we have two working modems. The fault didn't lie in the modem, it was the OS. Microsoft's OS. Windows XP. Service pack 2. In an attempt to secure the internet connection with a firewall, XP had done something, which was the source of all my misery.

I want wireless internet. But that's not gonna happen, at least not now. For that to happen, there have to be Wi-Fi zones wherever I go, and I have to have a Notebook Computer, with wireless functionality. The only free Wi-Fi zone (as a matter of fact, the ONLY Wi-Fi zone, free or not) in Chennai is at the Railway Station. And I won't be visiting that place too often.

While I'm doing this, there's this guy on the phone boasting about his MP3 collection, but unfortunately he doesn't have an MP3 player, so he wants me to write some on an Audio CD. What do I get in return? I don't know. He keeps saying that he'll gimme his entire collection, but that doesn't seem to be happening. I'll have to think it over.

I'm seriously considering applying for the internet connection at College even though it's extremely unreliable and slow. Even though you can't use Yahoo Messenger. Even though you can't download any music. Even though you can't browse websites which aren't education related. I hate my life. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. At least for now.

Update: 3 weeks worth of updates at College Life. Be there, or be square.