Update: Have you heard the saying "It only takes a match to light a forest fire"?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071031/ts_nm/california_wildfires_dc

Apparently a pre-teen kid playing with matches has confessed to starting this terrible Californian wildfire.

So here's the score:

• Affected area: 38,000 acres.
• Buildings destroyed: 2300.
• Deaths: 12. Injured: 78.
• Cause: a couple of matches.
• Perpetrator: a pre-teen kid.

A couple of days ago, Californian governor Arnie Shivaji made a public Terminator statement: "Whoever has started this, whoever you are, you should be running. You should be scared, shivering in your pants, because we're right behind you. We're going to hunt you down. You should turn yourself in." [Run and turn yourself in. To us. With us right behind you... Forgive me for being just a tad confused.]

Poor pre-teen kid. The Terminator's got it out for him.

"The boy was sent home after confessing, and the District Attorney's office will consider whether to press charges."

"It takes only a match to light a forest fire." A powerful life lesson, and that's some powerful way to learn that lesson, for the poor kid. You can trust him to fear the consequences of little actions from now, and he would probably not make the big self-destroying mistakes that we tend to make during our adolescent and young-adult years.

In some sense, I envy him.

Out of the Frying Pan into the Forest Fire

I always seem to be where the excitement is. Danger follows me around so much, I fear it is making me scarily sexy. Har har, yeah right. But I was, in fact, fleeing from Hyderabad, which had become quite a frying pan with explosions in the city, bomb threats at every other public place, and tons of RDX and terrorists being smuggled in. Every bearded man was being looked on with such suspicion, I had to shave every day.

My dad calls me up, even as I'm waiting for the boarding call at the airport.

"There are forest fires in California."
"Oh."
"Is that in the region where your cousins are?"
"California is a big state. Cousins live near the Big City, so I don't think so."
"What about where you are going?" (Good thing we got my cousins out of the way)
"S'far as I've seen, Irvine [that's in Orange County] is pretty dry. No vegetation except for tall palms lining the road. Would be quite a feat if someone could actually start a forest fire there!"

No kidding. Turns out that feats were happening in Orange County.

12 dead. 1800 "homes" (wrong choice of word?) destroyed. Thousands sitting in stadia as firefighters try their best to contain the flames.

Unfortunately, it is kinda difficult to bear harsh realities on the typical Californian mediaman. (The closest a "typical" Californian mediaman comes to Reality is on a Reality Show, go figure). 15 minutes to landing, and our pilot, not a mediaman but probably aspiring, and obviously delighted at bringing us in to the Land of Entertainment, dons the mantle of tour guide.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you look out the windows on your left, you will be able to catch a glimpse of the forest fires burning all along the ridge."

A hundred eager faces strain to get a glimpse, and mutter curses at those blessed with window seats on the left. (I was one of those blessed 1/6th of the passengers, and hence one of those cursed at.) Heck, the fires were HUGE. Gasps go up.

"One of the attractions of California, attracting people from all over the world at this time of the year. Also among our many attractions are landslides, earthquakes, hurricanes, not to mention security threats from Islamic fundamentalists, and of course the glamorous and (gl/d)itzy Hollywood.

"There is so much smoke in the air, visibility is really bad. We might have serious trouble landing.

"We've just hit some turbulence. Please fasten your seatbelts, and DO NOT visit the washrooms even if you feel like going really badly...

"Good lord. What was that?! No, nothing.

"Do not panic.

"Welcome to Orange County. Thank you for flying with Continental Airlines. We hope you had a pleasant flight. Today we will not be handing out the customary feedback forms."

Driving to office the next morning, it is clear that there is smoke in the air, and the smell of a gigantic barbecue. Apparently you can see a fire from the office where I would be working.

I turn on the news at night. All the channels have decided to be characteristically creative, and every one of them has named the story "California Burning". Title Patent Issues? I am startled to see a familiar landscape: "This is Jane Doe, reporting from Irvine, California..."

That wasn't the only deja vu I was to experience. Strangely, and very sadly, I was surprised to hear of stuff I though happens only in India:

• Remember I used the word "feat"? Well, we can expect them now and then from nature, but get this - some of these "feats" were in fact manmade. Arsonist on the loose. Setting fire at random. ("My fire's bigger than yours. Maniacal laughter".) Sheesh. Unbelievable. Human behavior is difficult to fathom sometimes.
• Rescue didn't arrive on time as expected. They didn't even arrive within the period normally designated as "after time". They arrived abominably late. The reason being (get this) - all the equipment (copters, pipes, extinguisher) is ready, but where in the blazes (pun intended) are the guys to man them? Those guys turn up a day later, when the damage is too far gone. Unbelievable, again.

Yeah. What DO you make of this?

After much head-shaking and -scratching, the News Channels finally decided what to make of it. I kid you not, these quotes are real.

"... And with all the property that has been damaged and lives lost, it appears that the biggest losses are the memories. Memories that cannot be retrieved. Here is Jane Doe, comforting her sister..."

(camera cut to a sobbing sister of Ms. Doe) "It's gone, all gone. All my photo albums. My wedding pictures..." (Which husband?) "The dolls I used to play with when I was little. Family heirlooms. All gone".

"...Celebrities have been forced to evacuate their million dollar houses on Malibu Beach. Pictures of them will follow on our Celeb Spotting segment.... But let's hope that none of these stars have lost anything of value....

"Land prices in Malibu Beach and the Los Angeles area are expected to fall to affordable rates..."

"Your traditional gas masks are not fully efficient in keeping out all toxic substances. Without a better mask, you are in danger of dying, and there is evidence for this. We have designed a new gas mask that will solve these issues and render you safe. Unfortunately, these are extremely rare and very expensive, so rush in your pre-orders NOW and you will receive your discounted masks in 2-3 weeks."

There are times when I think I've figured out what it means to "live the American Dream". No intention to generalize, just making a point.

My First Day

It starts.

My first job. With an MBA under my belt and holding my size-32 trousers up, I’ve done with education for the rest of my life. Or have I?

I’ve got a job. In a company that is very simply called Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. This being so easy for the lay person to pronounce and spell and remember, I felt obliged to make things a little complicated by introducing it to parents and loved ones as The Delight of the Touchy Tomatoes. Dumb. But it worked, so there.

New job. New city. New beard. New floaters. Some new shirts and trousers. New underwear. Am raring to go.

Induction happens everywhere. I’ve been through a pretty extensive one at my internship company, so I expected the day of lectures that we were treated to. But Consulting companies believe in efficiency and Six Sigma and all that jazz, and in the fact that we don’t learn anything from these lectures anyway while it is still their duty to perform ’em, so we got a week’s worth of talk-talk-talk crammed into a single day. Mission accomplished. We remember less than we even knew when we started out. Did I say done with education?

But us grown-up, pseud MBA’s had the distinct privilege of being inducted with the little people – the grown-down, unpseud just-graduated B-Com-mers from all over Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Thirdarabad (aka Cyberabad aka HiTec City aka Madhpur). They have been hired in droves for the largest (I think) practice of this company, Tax. And oh, these little people. They were taking notes too, even when the roll call was in progress. Go figure. Giggly, excited, jumping-up-and-down, miss-miss-he’s-pinching-my-bottom, i-know-the-answer-so-I’m-raising-both-hands-to-prove-it-na-na-na-na-na. Yes, you got it – they TAXED us. And that obvious joke is brought to you courtesy a thinking-out-of-the-box Strategy & Operations consultant who we shall call Sumit.

Man, the annoyance. We sat their sagely shaking our heads in understated disapproval, raising a concerned eyebrow, tapping our foot ever-so-lightly, asserting that we were never like this at their age, oh no.

Here’s a truth for you: If the MBA education adds anything to you, I think it adds the ability to act like other MBA’s. We wear the stiff white collar in two forms – as a halo above our heads and as a stick up our expensive butts.

Anyway, when the schedule for the following days was announced, the good news was that the Tax people would be leaving us to cause some expense for the Taj hotels, leaving us MBA’s to profit from their absence.

There was only one thing the MBA’s wanted to know, and that we learned at the end of the day: how much money do we get in hand after tax (oh, that darned word again!) deductions? The answer, in the words of the company: “Even after 7 years of work, we don’t know.” I think “A LOT” would have to suffice as a suitable answer.

Here’s yet another truth for you: I’m a consultant, and that makes it my job to talk too much but still say nothing and still earn everything.

Yorop Yodellings - Episode 4: Well, I'll Be Amsterdammed!

The 29th of October. My first step outside of Belgium, now that I had my residence permit. And it appears that my eyes were yet to be opened. I mean really opened.

If my tales of the Beer and Luhv of Belgium made you wonder about the general sanity of this little European country, well, you ain't heard nothin' yet.

I think one word is enough to explain myself: Amsterdam. Well, there you go. Need I say more? Most of you know what I'm talking about. This blog is dedicated to those innocent few who maybe still scratch their heads in ignorance.

Amsterdam is the real deal. In matters related to the afore-mentioned sanity issues. The best known fact about Amsterdam is that they've got laws to solve all of the troubles in the world today. This whole struggle between good and evil, you know.

Some very smart Dutch people figured out that in an international port capital like Amsterdam, there is even going to be representation from cultures you've probably never heard of, to keep everyone happy, it doesn't make sense to lay down laws against doing things that are perfectly legal in their individual home cultures.

See, this whole good-vs-evil problem can be solved if you go to the heart of the problem - the definition of what is good and what is evil. Our smart Dutchmen then took the next logical step and reasoned that if you define everything as being good, voila! You've got no more evil in the world! Or in Amsterdam, at least, but that's good for a start.

What a great idea. Tackle the problem at the root, we say.

You've got to admit that this master-strategy does wonders for statistics. Crime rates are brought down drastically because everything's legal anyway. Makes Amsterdam one safe place to live in, a heaven of morality. There's no need to smuggle, just bring it all right in, we won't stop you. You won't be robbed, just borrowed from. Your husband is never a cheater. Just a free-thinker who goes shopping a lot.

Quentin Tarantino had this nice little section in Pulp Fiction where he told us all about it. The man should be shot for making the information public. (Who am I to protest, I'm doing the same thing here). Anyway, here's an excerpt from the first scene between John Travolta as Vincent and Samuel L. Jackson as Jules:

J: Okay so, tell me again about the hash bars.
V: Okey what do you want to know?
J: Well, hash is legal over there, right?
V: Yeah,It's legal but it ain't hundred percent legal, I mean, you just can't walk into a restaurant, roll a joint and start puffin' away. They want you to smoke in your home or certain designated places.
J: And those are the hash bars?
V: Yeah, It breaks down like this, ok, it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it, And if you're the proprietor of a hash bar, it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry it, but...but that dosen't matter, 'cause, get a load of this; all right, If you get stopped by a cop in Amsterdam, it's illegal for them to search you. I mean that's a right the cops in Amsterdam don't have.
J: Oh, man, I'm goin', that's all there is to it. I'm f***in' goin'.
V: I know, baby, you'd dig it the most.. But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
J: What?
V: It's the little differences. A lotta the same s*** we got here, they got there, but there they're a little different.
J: Example ?
V: Alright, when you .... into a movie theatre in Amsterdam, you can buy beer. And I don't mean in a paper cup either. They give you a glass of beer.....

Well. That sums it up, don't it?

Take a walk from Amsterdam Centraal Stazione (that's Central Station, of coure, but these Dutch are at it again, hmph) to the city center. There are two roads that you can choose from. Be like the poet and choose the road less traveled, and you'd be avoiding the one that takes you through the Red-Light District. Like me. I prudently (note the choice of word; I didn't say "prudishly") walked the Green Light area instead. Not like there wasn't "stuff" here as well.

I'll be Amsterdammed, yeah. Drug traffickers accost you at every corner. The average person (not the junkie) lights up in the open. Sex shops are to be found dotting every commercial area.

What is a Sex Shop, by the way? They don't sell sex, no. That's meant for the red-light area. But they deal in all the accessories. Like a cosmetic store, you see. Accessories to either complement or substitute for the real thing. More likely the latter, and yeah, that does sound like a cosmetic store. It's strange, but you'll spot even the most respectable-looking of people going in. Even nanogenarians. A thriving and respected trade here, I suppose.

And even better, there are Sex Museums. Goodness knows what they have stocked in there apart from the Illustrated Kamasutra in the Post-Modern Queen's English Version, Edition VI.

Obviously, then, one of the funniest sights you will see in this City is that of a Policeman. Any policeman. A Policeman in Amsterdam?! That's an oxymoron. What are they getting paid for? Really, what DO they do? I saw a conglomeration of them in the City Center making random friendly conversation with the most arbitrary strangers. I've been trying to think of what it is that they consider their duty...

• to make sure prostitutes get paid and drug traffickers carry good lighters to help you sample
• to prevent those lovely smart blue Police uniforms from going to waste
• to improve statistics again, and this time the statistics of employment
• to demonstrate to tourists that Amsterdam locals do more than stand in windows with only their undergarments on
• to make friends with the general public and convince them to be nice and behave themselves
• to make friends with the general public and convince them that even prostitutes need to be paid
• to make friends with the general public and convince them that even policemen need to be paid

This list is open to revision. Feel free to contribute.

Don't let this description get to you overmuch. I've heard friends warning friends not to go to this beautiful city, calling it a Sin City. I've raised my right eyebrow in surprise when I've heard guys talk in hushed tones about when they plan to visit the city, in voices that they hope wouldn't carry to the girls. I disagree with this.

Amsterdam is in fact a beautiful city that has a delectable mix of the old and the new, especially visible in the mix of the architecture. Walk through the Jordaan area, and you'd stop speaking from the sheer beauty of the atmosphere. Amsterdam is not nearly half as bad as it is made to sound. The problem lies with the tourists. They make a beeline for the Red-Light area, and then go to other prospective tourists to talk about it. Hence the reputation.

The truth is, I believe one can actually live in this city without getting into all this. Red Light Areas are meant to be avoided, not explored. If you really want to cheat on your wife, you can do it just as easily - if not more - in New York. It might be easier to find drugs here, but that doesn't mean that drug use is any less in New York too. And you can stop yourself from going into a Sex-Shop the same way you would stop yourself from entering a gay bar or a sleazy theater. The morality is not in the city, it is in the individual. No individual is a better person for not coming into contact with temptation at all.

But ach, I get too serious again.

Funny things are a way of life in Amsterdam. Still, I was fortunate to witness an incident that is funny even by Amsterdammed standards. Let me narrate to you this delectable tale, me lovelies. Sit back.

One of the items on my long day-agenda was the Amstelkring, a nice little church that had the misfortune of being buried in the Yellow-Light Area. Which basically means on the border of the Red-Light area, only you proceed with caution and peek through your fingers so that you see no evil lurking in the corner windows. Oh sorry, I forgot - there IS no evil in this city anyway, by definition.

What would a church be doing on the border of the Red-Light District anyway? Oh I forgot. I suppose prostitutes have a lot to confess. Not for helping men cheat on their wives, no. That's not a sin in the Amsterdam Bible. More for issues like working even on the Sabbath or not covering their heads or taking the name of God in vain or drinking too much Communion wine.

Whatever the reason. It was a very cosy church, with art adorning the quiet comfortability. Very enjoyable for its meditative atmosphere and it's much lower intake of tourists as compared to most other churches in Europe.

So far, so good. No mishaps, little evil seen. It was on walking back from the church, though, that the funny incident occurred.

A woman crosses me in a bustle, running into one of the narrow alleys that define the Red Light Area. She is clearly flustered, and you can sense the tension of a British volcano about to break through the air. Now I am in view of the entrance of the alley. I see her start to pound on one door. People have stopped their walk. Are staring. At one, this woman in a Red Light Alley; and two, this source of pounding breaking through the guilty hush that generally surrounds the place.

Not two seconds have passed before she yanks out a man from the room. They seem to know each other. Well, that's obvious from the torrent of yells that proceed from the mouth of the woman. Everyone's stopped now. Prostitutes are poking their heads out of doors every where. Several fresh new faces are entering the alley. And through the Brit accent that dominates those yells, we realize what's going on. Get this.

She had spotted her boyfriend (or husband? that's infinitely worse) going into a brothel. Well, beat that. That's not something you find happening everyday, even in Amsterdam. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Anyhow, a priceless moment. The screaming and yelling goes on and on, you can hear it from blocks away. Amused looks on the faces of every bystander or passerby, but the woman apparently isn't finding it amusing. Interspersed with the choicest of British slang, she screams bloody murder in the following words:

"I hate you! How could you do this to me? I SAW you going in there with THAT WOMAN. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. God, how I hate you. I want to kill you! I want to cut your head off! I want to shoot you! I want to punch your face in until it's purple and all your teeth fall out! I want to chop you up into little pieces and throw you into the canal! I want to squash your guts and feed it to the vultures!"

And other such British niceties. I kid thee not. And these lovely evidences of the stiff British upper lip are punctuated with the poor guy being beaten over the head with a rather heavy hand-bag, being kicked in the groin with a very pointy boot... Ouch. I almost feel sorry for him, simply because he couldn't do what we males usually do when confronted by an angry girl - make up the cleverest darnedest excuse for what we were doing on the night of April the 11th, and get the women to believe us. The best excuse that this sorry sucker could come up with was:

"I went in there to find you".

Gosh, that's hilarious. Did he think he was trying to solve the problem? If he goes into a brothel to find his girlfriend, it's not very complimentary to the girlfriend, don't you think? In one way, that's the archtypical male compliment. But I don't wonder that he earned a few more thwacks across the bonce for that piece of smartness.

I didn't hang around to see the end. I don't imagine they lived happily ever after. But I did hang around for a bit, wishing to goodness that there was some way to get this on my camera. But like other priceless moments, this too could not be captured for posterity on tape. For all you know, she might have spotted me with the camera, taken it from me, cut it into little pieces and thrown it into the canal to be fed to the vultures. Along with me. I ended up videoing the canal instead, hoping to catch snatches of her tirade at least on audio, even as I made the following commentary into my camera:

"Amsterdam IS a hilarious place. The fine irony. Policemen can't catch you, but girlfriends can."

Women. You can run from them, but you can't hide. Sooner or later, they're going to hunt you down. And you better have a good excuse.

Yorop Yodellings - Episode 3: Travel Update

Good day, me lovelies. I'm back from a bit of gallavanting, trying to get my life and thoughts (in that order) into some order.

Before I get into my ravings and rantings, I think it's a good idea to maybe list out for me lovelies the kind of itinerary that I've been keeping. Update for you, ego-boost for me. Like the king who sits in his counting house counting all his monies while blackbirds are picking peoples' eyes out. Never mind.

19th Sep: Leave Bangalore, arrive in Leuven. Speechless Moment #1.
20th Sep: Day 1 of Orientation at K. U. Leuven.
25th Sep: Day 5 of Orientation. Gosh. They just went on and on. I think I'm right and properly oriented now. Next step: figure out what 'orientation' means.
26th Sep: Classes begin.

1st Oct: Trip to the coastal Belgian town of Oostende with Nikhil and Nandita. Day at the beach and the loooong jetty.
5th Oct: International Party at the American College. Pretended to make ravishing Indian curries that were actually bought readymade from a nice Indian supermart, but don't tell anyone.

8th Oct: Trip to Brussels, capital of Belgium, with Nikhil, Nandita, Marie (Belgium), Guillaume (France), Paula (Romania), Thomas (Canada) and Ching (?) (China) - all fellow-American-Collegers. Saw the Grand Place (pronounced Graw Plaas, and meaning "Large Square" and not the rather dumb English transliteration of that name), the Chocolate House, the Mannekin Pis (the little boy whose pee and wee-wee are all carved in stone; interesting story, remind me to tell you sometime), and several large cathedrals.

11th Oct: Attended stand-up comedy by Nigel Williams and Thomas Smith at Leuven with Marie (Belgium).

13th Oct: Trip with Nandita, Nikhil and Rachit to the Ardennes - Namur, with its great citadel and beautiful riverside. Darn fellows had all shops closed at 6, so couldn't do much even walking around.
14th Oct: From Namur to Dinant, again with an imposing citadel with a lot of history. Trip to Han/ Rochefort postponed for lack of time, so sat for hours at a riverside Cafe and did our Belgian duty (see Yodelling 1: "A Reason to Be").

21st Oct: Travel alone to the quaint and beautiful Belgian tourist medieval town of Bruges - canals, the Grote Begijnhof, the Lady and Child church, windmills and the awesome 1000-step Belfry - and the student town Gent - canals and the Gravensteen castle.

22nd Oct: Travel to the amazing underground caves of Han-Sur-Lesse. Bump into Nikhil, Nandita and Marie on their way to the same place by the same train, so spend the day with them. Stalactites, stalagmites, the marriage of the two that they don't have a very memorable name for, and a good barge ride out of the caves. Good fun at the speleogame too (a 3D kiddie video tour of the caves, with game and all, good 10-year old fun!).

23rd Oct: Belgian Residence permit turns up. Now able to travel outside of Belgium.
24th - 25th Oct: 24-hour run at K. U. Leuven. Event of the year. Department Apolloon wins. My department (Erasmus) comes second. There's a funny story, remind me to tell you this one.
27th Oct: Eurail pass turns up from India. Economical travel outside of Belgium now possible.

29th Oct: Travel alone to Amsterdam - canal tour, the Amstelkring, and a great city walk. Sin City here on earth, and some funny stories to boot (It would be a waste if I didnt have stories for THIS city!). Coming shortly in a succeeding post, to be found on newsstands near you.

31st Oct: Leave on the long Rome trip with Nikhil and Nandita. Arrive in Paris late evening. Stay with Dugar & Co. Watch the worst movie ever - Jaane Mann. Strongly recommended. I hope you suffer as I did.
1st Nov: Visit the NotreDame in Paris before catching the train to Rome. Italian trains are great belly-dancers. It pays to be a fat Italian, so that you don't get thrown from side to side in those narrow corridors.

2nd Nov: Arrival in Rome. Go to the Vatican and see St. Peter's Basilica (big Speechless Moment #2), along with Sonia, Abhishek and Aseem. Spend the evening walking to the Pantheon, the Fontane de Trevi, the Piazza Venezia and other great places.
3rd Nov: In the Vatican again. Climb to the top of the St. Peter's Basilica cupola. Spend the evening at several other terrific places in Rome, including the Repubblica and the Spanish Steps.
4th Nov: Time for the Vatican museums (after waiting in a queue 2 km long for 2 hours, no kidding), and the astounding Sistine Chapel (Speechless Moment #3). See the Roman Forum, Colosseum, Arco de Constantino, Circo Massimo, etc, in a hurry in the evening before leaving for Florence, the home of the Renaissance and Leonardo da Vinci.

5th Nov: No room in Florence, so spent the night in McDonald's, buying toothpicks at regular intervals to avoid being thrown out. Original plan was to spend a day at Florence, then move to Venice, then me to Vienna. But we ended up parting ways; the couple left for Greece, I left for Nice (rhymes, yay!) after seeing a bit of Florence - the Ponte Vecchio, Piazza San Lorenzo, the Duomo Square, etc. Day train along the awesome Italian and French Riviera - the train followed the coastline, making for a good joy-ride. Change at Genoa. Evening on the beach of Nice (Speechless Moment #4). Night with Mojo, Tanay & Co.

6th Nov: Morning all over Nice, including the historical center, the beach and the Chateau overlooking it. Afternoon and evening at Monte Carlo (Monaco), with its casinos, the Garibaldi Forum, the Prince's Palace, the Cathedral, the Exotique Gardens, Ferraris, Jaguars and Lamborghinis in droves all over the place, the race-track views, and a great coastline.

7th Nov: Train back from Nice to Brussels.
8th Nov: Attend Jalamar (terrific, soulful Mexican folk singer) concert with Ania (Poland).
9th Nov: Party II at the American College.

Yeah. That's it so far. So to the burning question: how exactly are we able to do all this traveling? Don't we have a course going on?

Course? What course?

Ok. Here's the deal with Exchange. One class per subject per week. Classes on Wednesday and Thursday, occasionally on Monday. But generally a long weekend. That's longer than the week. That's good fun: travel around - broadening perspectives - and study whenever on a break from traveling. All cheap for cheap students.

Yeah. Boring life, I know.

But that's exaggeration, of course. On a more serious note, I am not kidding when I say that this is not merely some great holiday, no. An experience like this has so much to teach, it's invaluable. And coming at the best time in my life for me to be able to learn something from it. And the travel is the greatest contributor to that. There's very little I can say to describe the effect it has been having on my perspectives, my ways of thinking.

That's about as much serious talk as you're going to get out of me. Raving and ranting, to thee I now return with a vengeance.

Yorop Yodellings - Episode 2: Luhv-en City of Luhv

Been a long time since my last post. Many apologies. Had to recover my lower jaw from the abyss whence it had fallen. And that's taken a few weeks. Let me explain.

Ever asked a kid what he thought Heaven would be like? Well I'm too old to recall the harps-and-haloes wishes of the really young and ignorant kid, but I do suspect that the average adolescent dreams of a Heaven with some significant female element in it.

Awake, young men! Spread the news, oh ye gents! Come to Luhv-en, Belgium. Discover the land of milk and an abundance of people you'd like to call 'honey'.

What is it with this place, anyway? The answer does not lie, like some believe, in the idea that white women are more beautiful than those who look like they're covered in hot chocolate. The very idea is ridiculous, especially if you put it that way.

It simply stems out of a population imbalance here. You should see this place to believe it. A population that is 60% female and 40% male. Now THAT's something.

I am a student of business. I know what this means. It all boils down to supply and demand, you see. Fundamental principle: lower supply, higher demand (barring the odd exception). So now you have, for a change, a lower supply of the male chromosome. You recognize the implications?? Gosh wowie. You should see the demand shoot up. It's all reverse psychology, I tell you. Imagine a land where the men no longer do the chasing. Now ya know what I've bin a-talkin' 'bout?

It's a strange land, no less. Well, in Europe, there are couples and there are couples. And then some. But see a couple going at it, and inevitably, yes, it's the man being the prize to be sought after, the man who sits (or stands, or what-have-you) like a helpless toy as the woman has her fill of him. They're all over the place. The girl making a dessert out of the boy's face. The girl pinching the boy's back-pocket. Or what's behind it. Do I disgust thee? Well, at least I kid thee not.

Well, the value of men shoots up. And it takes someone from outside - like me, from a country like India - to see the difference, and tell them what a beautiful place Europe is.

But there are side-effects. Unfortunately. More women than men - well, you must have guessed already, the results of this. Not a one-to-one relationship between men and women. And since this is not Mormon territory, obviously there are bound to be some women, well, out of the loop. And these bachelorettes do good to society by trying to even the balance, finding luhv in each others arms. Yeah. They're flooding out of the market.

Chain reaction happening. Watch out for the next step. The young boys grow up, seeing this happen, seeing their potential girlfriends being snatched away into a world of delusion. And, unable to cope with the trauma, they seek luhv in each other's arms too. Golly. What a pickle. That's proliferating the imbalance, I say! But it's too far gone now to help.

I seen it, you know. The funniest sight. A bearded man in a flowing satin wedding gown, complete with veil and all, and the front kinda sagging from something missing. Where is the camera when you need it the most. Dang.

A progressive land, this. Ranked #6 in the UN Human Development Index, #1 in human satisfaction. #2 in the order of countries to make gay marriages legal. A warped, twisted land, this.

But a lot of it has to do with the nature of Europe. The best of Europe was born out of the Renaissance, a period that I had the misfortune of studying. Every person in that era who made any significant contribution to the arts, architecture, science, politics or even road-sweeping, turned out to be: (a) gay; (b) promiscuous, having several children that no one or everyone knew about; (c) all of the above. It was a period when all 6 popes who presided over that time fell into those categories a, b or c, and one very righteous pope even published his writings of erotic novels. Now how cool is that?

A gay and happy land, to be sure.

Romance hangs in the air, it sucks people into it, witting and unwitting. The romantic poets didn't insist hard enough that it was Romanticism, not Romance that they were writing about. Or maybe it was the Romans, making sure their name lived on even after the Evil Empire fell.

Most times the romance is sweet. It's nice to see men and women, young and old, holding hands and dotting every walkway. I've sat in tea shops and smiled indulgently at nanogenarian couples holding hands across the table and gaze at each other with the love-light still thick in their eyes.

Sometimes, though, in combination with a few pegs of the good old you-know-what, and under the cover of night, a couple might be found making love in the city square. Pornographic magazines stand all along the windows of main roads. Sex plays on TV at night, with special shows advertising one-night-stands if you call into special telephone numbers....

From a different angle - sometimes, also, one tends to wish the romance wasn't so infectious, when people from cultures alien to such behavior get sucked in and act in ways they wouldn't if the setting were otherwise. Extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people here. With results that can surprise even the European, which is saying a lot. Hm. No more on those lines.

Never mind that rant. The truth is, it's easy to be luhv-in it here. Luhv in 536 brands, easy to soak in like the beer that's flowing in every canal. The only difference is that soaking in every brand of beer is advised. The advice does not extend to luhv.

Yorop Yodellings - Episode 1: A Reason to Be

Well, here I am. In a curious little town in a curious little European country. Leuven, Belgium. At the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Which is basically the Catholic University of Leuven, but the brilliance of the Dutch lies in their ability to spell and pronounce English differently.

I claim I am here to study. To broaden my horizons. To be an ambassador of the Indian culture in an ignorant foreign land. Yeah.

Just a day into my stay over here, and they let me know of the real reason that I am here. It all boils down to the brain of the Belgians. Yeah. A brain with a historical background. You gotta hear this.

When I walked into the lecture hall where our benevolent professor was professing, his lecture had progressed into the some medieval period where Belgium was known for its cloth-making skills, and the City Hall of Leuven was some form of cloth factory. And then, for some reason that I didnt quite grasp because I was trying to find a seat, Belgium ran into a resource crunch.

This is where the promised brain oozes its way into the picture.

The Belgians realized that they did not have resources to make cloth, so they started making lace, which is essentially a tenth of cloth masquerading as the real deal. For some other reason that I again didn't quite grasp because I was trying to figure out how to bring up the foldable table in front of my seat and make my seat a recliner at the same time, the resource crunch crunched the Belgians out of the lace business as well.

So what did the Belgians do? They put their fascinating brains to work, and went to the kidney of the problem. What resource do we have in abundance that costs us nothing? Hm. Um. You know. Dunno. Of course, there is water...rain water... (this is a land where it rains 360/365 days of the year, but they still don't have water in the toilets, but we'll come to that in a later yodel.)

But what would you do with water? Well, throw 536 permutations and combinations of herbs into it, and voila! Presto! Or-whatever-else-is-the-word-the-Dutch-use-in-a-similar-context! You have 536 brands of Belgian beer. But who do we get to sample those beers and die for the noble cause of our country's economy?

Well, the university-town of Leuven is bound to have many eager takers. The powers that be did the math and figured they didn't want too many Belgian nationals tottering around the place while trying to bolster the economy. So thus began the international Student Exchange Programme at Leuven. I am here, they say, to sample all 536 brands of beer, and if I am lucky enough not to develop any unpleasant side-effects, I am likely to spread some positive word-of-mouth in the country where I come from to attract more suckers for the next year. Beer-suckers.

Of course, most exchange students spend a year here. That means 1.4685 beers per day. I, however, am here for 98 days. That would translate into 5.4694 beers in a day. Since I would be travelling a lot out of Leuven and Belgium, I suppose I might be here only for 2/3rds of that time, which would be 66 days. Subtract 12 Sundays from that for religious protest reasons and we have 54 days. Now we try to do the math again. With some rounding off, we land at the nice figure of 10 flavors of beer in a day.

Hm. Yeah. Now I know why I'm here. These Belgians do have brains. Kill two birds with one red-painted brick: get 1000 exchange students a year to each buy 536 mugs/ bottles/ whatchamacallits of beer, boost the economy of this little teensy weensy district trying to pull of a "country" act, and simultaneously drag down the economies of the countries visiting them because the representatives will be too reelin' away to contribute anything besides hics and hocs to their own countries thenceforth. And all that jazz.

Of course, Belgium is the home of Antwerp, the wonderful little hamlet where William Tyndale brought out the first printed copy of the Bible. Belgium proudly claims: "In the beginning was he Word, and the Word was with God, and with the Printers" [ sic]. And lo, Tyndale did publish the Bible in translations. His own translations. You see, the folks here insist that everything does indeed come back to beer in these parts (such as the first building of the Leuven University - the College of Languages Three - it now exists as a pub, to be found in some part of this town that I am yet to visit). Which explains why, apart from phrases such as "salt of the earth" and other such phrases that have lived on, the most famous phrase of all that Tyndale gifted to the Englyshe language was:

"Eat, drink and be merry".

Leuven, the guinea pigs have arrived. Do your worst.

To blog or not to blog... is that a question?

I've been starting a blog for as long as I can remember. Whenever something momentous had happened. Or was about to happen. Or optimistically hoping that something momentous might actually happen because God saw that I was starting a blog. Then there were times when I was starting a blog because I was thinking stuff. I'm hoping that does not count as momentous.

I remember that I was starting a blog when I joined my MBA course so that people outside would know of the life I lead. Unfortunately, I'm not sure even I know what kind of life that is, so I am still starting that blog.

I remember that I was starting a blog when I began my engineering course. I was sure that studying in a local Bangalore college where it was all play and no work would throw up interesting stories. Unfortunately, as long as the stories were interesting, they had me so tied up in them that I forgot to write, and when I thought of writing, the stories had ceased to be interesting. I am still starting that blog.

I remember that I was starting a blog when blogs were invented. Unfortunately, the fact that I didn't invent the blogs myself was a turn-off. Hate jumping on bandwagons, you see. I am still starting that blog, waiting for the bandwagon to derail so that I can be sitting pretty on my tricycle, feeling very happy about myself.

Spot the trend as yet? We can go further back than that, but I don't think it's necessary. I think I know it now - I was made to start a blog. With that realization in place, we have established a motive. The next thing is to establish a scene for the crime. Yup. It's my first trip out of India, and right now I am sitting comfortable in a cosy lil room in Leuven, Belgium. Thinking. Which makes it a healthy mix of momentous and unmomentous. Which is good, because life runs on healthy mixes. A scenario identified. A weapon? Ha. The keyboard, in alliance with the mighty Internet, is more powerful than the mightiest sword or gun or knife or rope or candlestick or leadpipe or what have you. So there we go.

So I was made to start a blog. So I have started a blog. So it's done, there's nothing more for me to live for. I will return to this scene of the crime every day with this weapon and relive the moment with my incessant type type type type type type type type...

May future generations read on and weep.