Something long overdue.

There is an idea that has been growing inside of me for quite some time. The idea is time. It takes time for the things I can envision in my head, in my heart to reach maturity, to be ready to be released into the world. At any given time, I’m working, sleeping or eating, or doing one of the many things that I am fortunate to love to be doing in my life. All through these things I do, I’m thinking about the idea, slowly moulding it, pruning it, reshaping it so I can clearly understand what it is. It takes effort to bring it to the fore of my mind, to vocalize it, if for me alone.

We have all felt this. When a song comes on that motivates us, and we look around for things to do, only to wonder what it is that we want to do. To do, to progress, to move forward and stride ahead. It hasn’t been clear to me for quite some time. Perhaps the very things I have mentioned have muddled my thinking, in the same way that a road when taken for too long can become invisible. I am writing this because I have finally managed to catch this tiger by the tail, and I am not about to let go. This is an attempt to pull him out into the open, to see him burning bright and catch a final glimpse before I release him to the wilderness of my subconscious.

The idea of moving forward to me, I understand now lies in creating. I wish to create. To give the things that I have considered form, and see them live on their own, take flight, even if in their fledgling moments they fail. 

That is why in the coming months of my life I will endeavour to be a better person. To do things everyday that improve me as one of my creed, to do things that will bring me closer to that ideal I hold. Physically, mentally and personally. In doing so I will devote my time to the creation of two of the ideas closest to my heart while attempting to create more. No more lethargic days spent resting. No more pauses until I complete. I want to see what I can do, because I realise I do not know what that is. I want to see, with my eyes, what I can build to stand by me in progress.

This piece has been the first, but it will not be the last. This is but a vision of what I wish to bring about, and I need it to remind me of this brief moment of lucidity in my world, a world of fleeting fractals of sprouts and ideas. 

I hope it will.

Over and out.

A Happy Day with Books

Recently I visited that section of my house that we've come to think of as the attic. It's was a guest bedroom some years ago, but it's been slowly repurposed into a storage space for things old and forgotten. I ventured into this collection of cobwebs and all manners of wild animals looking for a small bottle of screws my dad kept around for emergencies. It was an emergency, as the screws that held the radiator onto the refrigerator had sheared completely off and I wasn't in the mood for a trip to the hardware store. Don't ask me how.
Four to five hours later I emerged with a collection of old relics, mostly books. I couldn't remember being this happy in a long time, and I'm a pretty happy person..

These were old friends, and it was amazing how new they felt. Some I thought I had lost, and some I had forgotten I ever loved. Among these you can see the first book my dad ever bought me (the one with the smiling old guy), the first book about coding I ever laid my hands on, and the first Malayalam book I read from cover to cover without any help. That last one I'm gonna have to read again cause I have no idea what the story was.
Simply flipping through these pages I can feel the history embedded in them. Most are older than me, some are older than my parents, and a few are older than my country. Some were new when they were bought, some were handed down, and others were bought used. Looking through I find my dad's signature on each one, and as a surprise I find my grandfather's scroll on a cover page that has been long separated from its companions. I look for the book it belongs to, but all I have is this one page.
I realize that this is our legacy, a long lost remnant of those that held the name, along with this house. I fear it may be lost, forgotten with time. I am surprised and a little peeved that my first thought is to digitize them, preserve them at least in spirit. Have I begun to truly embody the technology of my generation? Will I preserve these in binary and let their physical remnants rot? Or are these merely vehicles I see, ephemeral bodies to the eternal ideas that move between them as we change clothes?
I'm not sure. But something inside me knows that I might not feel this happiness had I not held these books once again, felt their paper stained from beverages enjoyed long before I was born, dog-eared by fingers I've never seen, graffitied with ideas and passing thoughts I've never had. Perhaps I needn't despair. I'll make my own history, dog-ear my own books, and make my own legacy. Perhaps I'll preserve what I can to hand down to those that come after me.
If I ever die that is. Because looking at these words that survive so effortlessly, I couldn't feel more immortal. 

Kneecaps, Colleges and Memories.

I just realised that I have a blog I've been neglecting for a while now. I didn't just realize it, it's been nagging me from the back of my mind, like when you forget to put the top back on a drink and leave it on your table.
Far too much has happened to me, and I've felt far too much for me not to pen it, or at least recount it in my head. A lot of it will escape this post, but it helps for me to remember it, spend some time on it, and shelve it somewhere in my growing collection of significant memories.
Memories are important to me. As are pictures. I often find myself poring through pictures, memories, conversations, wishing I was there. Or having an excellent moment and flashing forward to me looking back at it with a smile.
I live in the past and I love it. I love all of it, the good and the bad, and the truly excellent moments I've been lucky to have. If I had a wish, it would be to never stop cherishing life as much as I do right now and have always done.

So, Previously on Olickel:
I got into Yale-NUS! (If you don't know what it is, look it up right now. Seriously, stop reading and google.)
I love it here. There have been good and bad moments, as there will always be in life, but every one of those associated with this college have been good. Although I wonder if it's just me. The end of the gap year had me so fervently anticipating college that I built this unrealistic expectation in my head, and YNC demolishes it only to build it higher.
I dislocated my leg! Again! It wasn't as bad as it sounds though. Seems I've learned enough from my first that after the initial shock of holding your kneecap in your hand, I had the presence of mind to lift it and put it back where it belonged. Yeah. That should teach my body to misbehave.
Honestly though, I can't say I'm not a little sad that I can't play sports for a while. Like badminton. Especially badminton. Although it's made me hit the gym a lot more for my physiotherapy so I should be getting fitter (and hopefully buffer) right about the time my leg gets back in action. (But I'm chocking down an entire packet of Ruffles as I type this so I remind myself not to hold out too much hope)

There is a lot of work that goes along with college. But it's a gradeless semester and I ran out of fucks to give around the end of the first week so it's been fine. In fact, it's been awesome!
A lot more I need to talk about, but it's getting late and that game of Halo isn't gonna play itself. So. Over and out.

Iron Man, and Pacific Rim.

Okay, this is going to be a short entry, owing to the fact that I'm currently one armed. Little mishap while cleaning the open chain on my motorcycle has left my left thumb and adjacent tissue disabled (not permanently, I'm told so that's good), but I felt like writing something, since its been a while. First of all, the thumb thing kinda happened as I was kinda dieseling my chain. Careless old me let my hand get stuck between the gear and the chain, and.. you don't wanna know.

What I wanted to talk about was the whole idea of mechanical suits, something we're all familiar with after watching Iron Man, Pacific Rim, and the like. Why is it that we're so obsessed we building these things even though we have machines that offer pretty much that with the only difference being that they're not humanoid in appearance? I don't know if everyone is, but I am certainly. If I could, I would. I think the whole obsession with it stems from the fact that they're not like a tank or a fighter jet, or even a nuclear version of those. A mech is something you can get in, and rather than using it as a tool or a vehicle, its an extension of yourself. Its almost as if you're suddenly made stronger, faster, more dangerous while remaining irrevocably you.

The only device that comes close today, is a gun. Not a cannon, not a howitzer, but a tiny old pistol. When you hold its, its almost as if you have a hand that fires supersonic projectiles. And that in itself is the only reason I can see for the need for a mech, because anything else would be better. It's not easy to balance or control, it has way too many parts with way too many vital degrees of freedom to be easily disabled, and its not safe enough given that it needs a person directly inside it. As if to prove my point, wouldn't Pacific Rim have been a much shorter story if the jaegers were drones, and the pilots were removed? Given the technology today, we can certainly enable remote access to any part of the planet allowing for remote control of these machines. And I think Iron Man 3, despite it being a giant let-down, demonstrated clearly that tony's suits took out multiple targets in the time it took him to take out a single one, when they were controlled by an AI. 

Well, today's science fiction is often tomorrow's, or (considering the accelerating rate of technological progress these days) tonight's science fact. So someday we might all have flying exoskeletons that look like those from Independence Day, but the reason for their existence will be what I'm sure is our ego, not any operational merits they may have over alternate technologies.

 

Why? I'm bored, man. At least momentarily. Bored and armed with one hand.

Over and Out. 

Touch and Go.

Someone once told me I was a walking bundle of cliches. Not a walking cliche, but a bundle of them, and I realized that I don't resent it, but I loved it. Because it helps me realize that the words I spoke but never quoted, were spoken aloud and alone by a great many people, and at least some of them felt the way I did when I said them. And in that group of people who never found each other, I was never alone. They were the perfect company, for they afforded me solitude without depriving me of company.

But I digress. This post is about the love of my life. She will be here in a month, and I hope she will be everything I wish her to be. That we could go places, places made far away by their isolation, with the wind on us, no questions, no promises. It would be touch and go. I'll tell you more about her when she gets here. And I hope she likes red.

Something Different. Maybe.

It's 2.15 at night, and I'm tired. Not so tired that I'm ready to go to bed, but tired enough that I fantasize about it. It's right there, not ten feet away from me, warm, comfortable with way too many pillows on it, but what could be harder? What could be harder when I've got a hundred thoughts still whirring away to completion on the 19 year old chunk of matter I've on top of my eyes? So here goes another attempt at writing something so I can clear my head.
On a night like ths I'd like nothing more than to sit back with a cold cup of coffee, preferably an entire pot of it on the heater, and listen to old CDs full of Kenny G or Stevie Wonder and just watch these thoughts go by. Just to be conscious for a while of the things I realize I'm unconsciously processing. No help, just to wave at them as they pass me by, one uncompleted string after another. Maybe even put on an old movie that I haven't seen in a while on my computer. That's something about me, I like to just watch movies on my computer. Most of the people I've known go on about home theater systems and kick ass stereos, but I much prefer my SE215s, or any decent set of earphones. To me a stereo is just a wireless way to listen to stuff while I'm working. Or maybe even take those off and listen to my crummy old laptop working away at some background service or daemon I've never known to exist. Listen to the drive heads move in coordinated unison with the elegantly engineered stepper and its unbelievably tiny driver enclosed in green soldermask. To the disturbances I imagine are created as electric pulses whizz by in front of me as fast as they're allowed to, through the tiny traces I see snaking away in front of me. To the multiplex of signals created and destroyed every nanosecond, whizzing by each other like a giant multi-storey ant colony completely unaware of their destiny. Maybe they're self-aware. Maybe if humans could perceive yoctoseconds, they would see these tiny signals making choices they think change the way their lives lead, acting them out, making new ones until they reach their destination and are terminated or re-transmitted in a new form, different yet all so similar to the previous one. In the Hitchhike's Guide to the Galaxy, Earth is revealed to be a giant computer running a program and all life in it as part of that program. I'd like to think that intelligences exist that we never will perceive because they move too fast or too slow relative to our idea of time to allow any kind of communication, or even recognition. They live and die in the time we take to inhale just one molecule in the billions we consume in a second; but are their lives, if they existed, any more different than those we believe to lead?

Cooking with V

Thought I'd do a post on one my cooking endeavors (usually kept secret from people other than my mom, and she only knows by the carbon trails I leave in frying pans), for a change. Something I've been aching to try out was the dish V is seen cooking in V for Vendetta. If you remember, V was seen cooking this bread and egg thing for his semi-girlfriend in the movie: 

Well, I thought I'd give it a try. From some internet research, it turns out that its not that hard to make, all you've got to do is cut a hole in a slice of bread, butter both sides (I had to make do with ghee for this time), brown it, and then drop an egg into the hole.
Where I ran into problems was in turning it over before the bottom was overcooked. This turned out to be a problem because I usually like my eggs sunny side up, and turning it over just hardens the entire yolk, which is less preferable. After many, many eggs and pieces of bread being over-and-under cooked, I solved it by slow-heating the dish and covering the top. They all tasted pretty good, nonetheless. So, here are some of my first attempts (not very good looking, but very edible and VERY tasty):

 And here are some of my final products: 

Overall it was pretty interesting, and I think I've found a new breakfast dish (for when my mom's leves me alone at home).

Apologies.

Sorry I haven't been active for a while, I guess you could call it super-extended jetlag. By way of an apology, I decided to publish all my drafts, just so there'd be something new to read. Although in retrospect I realise new doesn't mean good :)
Live long and prosper.

The Perfect Dream

Lying on my back in a beautiful meadow watching clouds pass the sun. Wake up in my room at noon and realise its just the curtains ruffling.

Its been five months since I wrote those sentences, but the memory remains as fresh as ever, I can still smell the air.

Epigrams

The things you wish for can come true. They will come true. Why shouldn't they? What right do they have to refuse to succeed? You created them, they belong to you.

I mar my dreams lest they forgo your beauty. I mar my dreams, and finding you infinitely more beautiful, believe me foolish in my expectations.