Google for the word ‘perseverance’ and chances are you are likely to come up with one and only one result and that result would probably have my name all over it! Not GhajiniMohammed, not KamalHaasan, not George Bush, just good ‘ol me. I’m afraid I’m too chicken to check it out myself, but I’ll be dashed if it wasn’t me. What makes me so cocky about this? What tremendous feat have I accomplished to feel so sure?
I’ve completed 100 pages of a book. That’s what. You see, one of the ways I thought I’d kick-start my brain is this blog, the other was to become the voracious reader that I was, to become a ‘literary couch potato’ if there was such a term. I put the latter half of my two-pronged plan into action well before the end of 2008 by going to Waterstone’s at CanaryWharf and buying half a dozen books. I’m happy to report I’m down to the last of those books and its here that I have reason to celebrate.
You see, the last book I allude to is Executive Orders by Tom Clancy. The book only weights 2 tons, is 1,300 pages long, and is filled with text that is 9-point Times New Roman, in single line spacing. That’s not the point. I’ve gotten along fine with pillow-books with tiny print before – most of my textbooks in CA were fatter and 10 times as boring. What I can’t get along with is Characters. In the 100 pages I’ve managed to get through, there were 76 characters with no less than 10 sub-plots and seamless transition between plots. I’m all for seamless transitions, but not when the plots are not apparently and immediately related to each other. One moment the President of the United States is talking to his security advisor and next line is the President of Iran talking to his! Only an eagle eye can spot the switch in the story half way across the world!
Here, I also wish to put on record that I suck at names. So, for the first 50-60 pages, each time I come across a name that doesn’t ring a bell, I would dutifully flip back and see if the character has been introduced earlier in the book before saying hello to him/her for the first time. This diligence resulted in me taking approx. 3 weeks to finish the first 50-60 pages and I’m none the wiser as to whom is who. Add to this, the hero of this book is a bloke called Jack Middlename Ryan and Mr. Clancy uses any of the 3 names randomly to refer to the hero, a fact that I only realised around page 75, thereby ruining my understanding that there are 3 heroes in this book.
As if all this were not enough to throw one off track, the author deftly starts bowling googlies in the name of conversations. Consider this – the scene is a bunch of people sitting around a table and whining – for the sake of simplicity (see, I think about simplicity – TC doesn’t) let’s name them A, B and C. How would any author describe the scene?
“A, B and C were sitting around a table. A said to B, “I think this is blah, blah, blahdiblah”, then turned to C and asked him, “What do you think C?””
Not TC. This is how the same scene would look like in his book: “A and B were in the room sitting around the table. “ I think this is blah, blah, blahdiblah”, “What do you think C?”” Caught you running back to the top of the line to see where C appeared didn’t I? Now try doing this every alternate page and just for fun, substitute “A” with a name like “Domingo Chaves”, “B” with “Rusedsky Pavlovsky” and “C” with “Godknows Whattonamethis Character” and use either first name or second name at random and you begin to scratch the surface of what I’m going through here.
In Mr Clancy’s defence, he is a very good author and I am probably one of his slowest, dumbest readers, but hey, a guy’s gotta cater to all tastes if he’s writing pulp fiction.
Using my astute powers of reading minds, I know one of the wise readers of this blog are going to ask me, “If it’s so darn tough to read the book, why on Earth are you reading it?” My reply is this: when a dog chases a car, it really believes it’s onto something big and when it catches the car, its going to be good and so it chases and chases real hard. I’m doing the same. I believe that if and when I do understand the plot, it’s going to be interesting…
PS: another benefit of reading the book is this – try reading a book that is 6 inches thick on the tube and see how intelligent you look, it’s all about appearances! (wink, wink)
My morning routine is just what it is, routine, getting up with a great deal of difficulty and around 7 ‘snoozes’ of the alarm, followed by daily duties part 1, a hot cuppa coffee with the newspaper, daily duties part 2, breakfast and running out of the house, late as usual.
The first 1.5 hours of this morning were no different and I found bursting into the train, huffing and puffing in a way that would shame Mr. Wolf, for I had done a manic 200 metre, 2 storey (3 storeys to them Americans) dash to catch the train, carrying my considerable bulk and around 15 kg of equipment and book (more on the book in the next post), breaking several land speed records in between.
I found a place to sit and tried to calm my breath, which incidentally, had no intentions of doing as I begged it to do. Textbook stuff so far. Then things changed. The man sitting opposite my seat was an elderly person of the English variety i.e., suit, tie, polished black shoes, newspaper in hand with the obligatory spectacles. Little did I realise, that barely 10 minutes later, this man would make my day…
With breath finally under control, heartbeat slowing down from humming bird speed to human-like speed, I was able to take in the finer details of other occupants of the train. I feel obligated to explain matters a bit here. Sizing up occupants of the tube is a national pastime here. You can’t find it in culture books; you won’t hear anyone talk about it. All it involves is a surreptitious peak through the corner of one’s eye while appearing to read a newspaper. Everyone does that and no eye contact is made whatsoever.
So here I am, sitting down, ‘reading’ (wink, wink) my book and looking around when I notice this person’s wrist. A shiny, golden object catches my attention and immediately looks familiar. Deeper analyses confirm my suspicions and I’m getting jubilant by the minute. Yes, his watch is the same as mine. I can see most people reaching this part of the post and wondering what is wrong with me and why am I getting so excited about finding another person wearing the same watch as me. Can skeptics please allow me to explain?
The watch was visually identical to mine, same cut bezel, golden dial, magnified date, silver metal strap with a golden strip in between. The only difference is that his was a Rolex and mine is a Paolo Gucci (in Mr. P. Gucci’s defence I don’t think he is in anyway related to the fashion designer Gucci. They just share a surname much like you would get a zillion people with surnames like Kumar, Rao, Reddy etc.). That discovery had me thinking – did the cheapskates at Rolex copy Mr. Gucci or was it vice versa or was it merely a case of great minds thinking alike? It’s probably vice versa, but whatever!
The fact that actually made my day was this. This poor loser had probably shelled out £10,000 for that watch while the good Mr Gucci decided to supply mine for £30. So is my watch a cheap knock-off or is his an overpriced rip-off? Let me know in the comments. Before you jump at the opportunity of knock-off bashing and beat me black and blue, consider this. If PG can sell a watch for £30 while still making a profit, what is the justification for Rolex selling it at £10,000? Quality wise, on a scale of 1 to 10, if we blindly give Rolex a 10, my PG would surely come in at 5 (reliability and looks), so is the fit, finish and goodwill of the Rolex for the remaining 5 points worth £9,970?
If the Rolex loses 1 second in a 1000 years (that’s 1 minute in 60,000 years), how are you going to find out of that claim is true? Not in your life, or your children’s or theirs or theirs…with the PG, it probably loses a minute every 2 years and all that’s required then is to pluck the crown out, increase the time by a minute and push the crown back in. Process done in 10 seconds. No sir, I am not paying £9,970 to save 10 seconds for the 601st generation of my family. I’m sure humans wouldn’t even exist then, let alone that watch.
Finally, I urge you not to dismiss me as a bloke who supports the piracy industry; I assure you I am not. I am merely a person close to the heart of well meaning people who gifted me the Paolo Gucci watch. So then, should the title of this post be “How I saved £10,000” because I haven’t paid for the watch in the first place?
"I am awaiting confirmation of a B wave low in order to go long and ride wave C higher to 1.50 +. “The count that I am working with now treats the rally from 1.35 to 1.4990 as wave A of a flat (flats have subwaves 3-3-5).” Wave B is in 3 waves and waves a and c of B are roughly equal (a common occurrence). Exceeding 1.3954 would be the first sign that a low is in place. Until then, there is the possibility of price testing 1.35."
I have a confession to make. I am a bean counter, a bean counter of the boring variety. Wait a minute, that's NOT my confession, I'm still getting to it! A bean counter who is worth his beans would, theoretically speaking, understand what's written in the preceding paragraph. I don't. Its all gobbledegook to me. This gives me the same vague confusion that comes from reading free horoscope predictions.
Take this gem for instance:
"Longer term, if the USDCAD is breaking higher in an impulse as a terminal thrust from a triangle (that had been underway since October), then price needs to remain above 1.2348."
Any normal, red blooded male would think this is an excerpt from a romantic novel in which the story is at that critical stage when the hero, USD and the heroine, CAD are going to do things which only dirty little or highly romantic minds(depending on which side of the coin you're looking at)can come up with. But no, this is a long term forecast for the US Dollar and Canadian Dollar!
Do you know what's at the root of my problems? Mozilla Firefox, version 3.1 to be precise. The blasted browser is awesome at all times except when it has the little "subscribe to feed" link with each web page. While researching some stuff about foreign exchange rates, I came across this site which gives forex forecasts and promptly hit subscribe, only to feel inadequate with every passing day.
Woe is me....
Note: All text in italics are part of an actual forex forecast taken from the website wwwdotdailyfxdotcom and is copy righted to them. Feel free to check it out and join me in my inadequacy buhahaha....
I suppose its fair to assume that all readers of this blog are familiar with my grand entry into my role as a "grahasthan" or married bloke.
With the said entry, I also decided to do two more things:
start blogging
advertise decision 1 to near and dear and basically anyone who cared to listen.
Big mistake. I admit I am guilty of shouting from roof tops that one should be consistent in what one does and that the mark of an active blog is the number of posts made in it each week. I know, I know, I am stupid.
I was in fact so cocky about my new found(again) love for writing that I even taunted a fellow blogger and incidentally, my sister, so much about not being an "active" blogger etc., that she joined forces with my wife and decided to rub it in just a wee bit. The result: a noise not different from the one emitted by that annoying character in the Simpsons movie - Nelson who goes ha-ha, ha-ha much to Bart Simpson's "predicament".
What had happened, in reality, is that I had hit a terrible case of writer's block. I hate to admit that this was no ordinary block, considering it partnered with a certain Mr. V Lazy to make matters worse.
Ergo, this post is to clarify to skeptics amongst us that by no means are my first few posts a flash in the pan. I will belt out new posts every so often, stay tuned.*
Boy do I sound like a politician or what!!! I'm proud of myself.
The small print
* in order to avoid any further doubt, I hereby clarify that by use of the term "every so often" and "being regular", what I really mean is a sum total in the region of 25 posts a year.
what this small print is effectively trying to convey is that no further ha-ha's will be entertained until re-evaluation of the performance of this blog on 9 March 2010.
