pondering

 

 would you call it

a wrong move…

if in the larger

scheme of things

it opened some self

realisations?

 

if you love someone, set her free…

The set-her-free-quotes is one of those old emails that is seemed to be kept in the virtual loop. In fact, it came back in my inbox today after a long time.   This is what it says:     

ORIGINAL QUOTE
If you love someone, Set her free…
if she comes back, she’s yours,
If she doesn’t, it was never meant to be….

THE NEW VERSIONS…

Pessimist:
If you love someone, Set her free …
If she ever comes back, she’s yours,
If she doesn’t, as expected, she never was.
Whatever gave you the idea that she would anyway?

Optimist:
If you love someone, Set her free …
Don’t worry, she’ll come back.

Suspicious:
If you love someone, Set her free …
If she ever comes back, ask her why.

Impatient:
If you love someone, Set her free …
If she doesn’t come back within a week forget it.

Patient:
If you love someone, Set her free …
If she doesn’t come back put your life on hold and
sit and wait.

Playful:
If you love someone, Set her free …
If she comes back, and if you love her still,
set her free again, repeat*

The Human Ecologist:
If you love someone, Set her free,
In fact, all living creatures deserve to be free!!

Lawyers:
If you love someone, Set her free,
Clause 1a of Paragraph 13a – 1 in the second
amendment of the Matrimonial Freedom Act clearly states
that…

Bill Gates :
If you love someone, Set her free,
If she comes back, I think we can charge her for
re-installation fees and tell her that she’s also going to get an
upgrade.

Biologist :
If you love someone, Set her free, She’ll evolve.

Statisticians :
If you love someone, Set her free,
If she loves you, the probability of her coming
back is high.
If she doesn’t, your relation was improbable
anyway.

Schwarzenegger’s fans:
If you love someone, Set her free,
SHE’LL BE BACK!

Over possessive person:
If you love someone,
don’t set her free.

Now here are some additions to those:

The FBI agent:
If you love someone, set her free.
Then put bug on her phone and surveillance cameras
in her house.

The Pathetic:
If you love someone, set her free.
Who wants to be stuck with a loser like you anyway?

The Lawyer:
If you love someone, set her free.
Then sue her for emotional distress.

The Psycho:
If you love someone, set her free.
If she doesn’t come back shoot her.

The Creepy Sociopath:
If you love someone, stalk her.

The geeky programmer:
IF
you love someone
THEN
set her free
ENDIF

DO UNTIL she comes back
wait
ENDDO

Well, I forwarded it to the chemist today and got this reply… 

Chemist:

If you love someone, set her free…
If she comes back it means that you both have enough kinetic energy to overcome the barrier on potential energy profile and will turn into products of love. If she doesn’t come back, possibly someone else run into her and the successful collision resulted in the reaction of the type A+B<=> C. Advice: rise the temperature to upsurge your chance for successful collision.

That sounds intense, my bet is that she might come back if only to have that explained.  Now I also wonder what a mechanical engineer and a businessman have to say…

 

Sun-day

I agree that it’s important to give your one hundred percent in love.  BUT while one

southend-on-sea, england.

shouldn’t shortchange love, one also shouldn’t lose sight of the bigger picture (in this case, the inevitable parting).  It’s fantastic to lose yourself when the waves beckon unto your feet and activate your senses for the here and now. But it’s  important to check whether the horizon is visible or clouded.  So what I am saying is this:  try to give your one hundred  percent but make sure that you maintain your equilibrium and that you remain grounded on the reality (e.g., that this love has no horizon).  There should be some balance, the past has taught me.  The poem below is from Pablo Neruda’s book ‘Twenty Love Poems and A Song  of Despair’.

 

The Morning is Full

The morning is full of storm

in the heart of summer.

The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye, the

wind, traveling, waving them in its hands.

The numberless heart of the wind

beating above our loving silence.

Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees

like a language full of wars and songs.

Wind that bears off the dead leaves with a quick raid and

deflects the pulsing arrows of the birds.

Wind that topples her in a wave without spray

and substance without weight, and leaning fires.

Her mass of kisses breaks and sinks,

assailed in the door of the summer’s wind.

 

Conversation with a chemist

It was around 4:00 in the afternoon and we’re cooking our lunch  – okay, to be precise, the chemist was cooking and I just finished eating some slices of tesco sweets enriched with preservatives. Waiting for the lunch, I was suddenly in a mood to throw a sort of  beauty pageant question.

‘If you will have to give me a chemical element, what would it be and why?’

Sushan, another flatmate, who was having his lunch was giving me a face that screams of something like ‘How could you even ask such kind of question? My Gooood!’  

Laughing, I went on. ‘Would it be PB-plumbium (plumbum, I was corrected), K-potassium, Mg-magnesium, Mn-Manganese,  Au-gold,  would you give me the lightest element – hydrogen, or the second lightest – helium?’

Sushan couldn’t help but quip, ‘I can see that you have more knowledge in chemistry than mathematics!’ 

No answer for a while. Then a counter question, ‘How much do you want?’ while mixing the pasta in the oiled and salted boiling water.  

I said that it doesn’t really matter, as long as the reason is given.  Hah, the question seems tricky, besides I don’t know the units of measurements for all elements.  Well, maybe a one year supply of that element then? 

He said, ’Well, I will give you carbon.’  

C – carbon?! Like those you use for making copies? Hmm I don’t really like the answer… 

But he’s not yet finished and asked me whether I want to get rich, to write, or  another choice  that I forgot. 

So get rich maybe so I can write whenever I want? 

He said, ‘Well then I will give you diamond’.  Whoa, I didn’t know that diamond is a carbon.  He adds, ‘and if you want to write, I will give you graphite…’

So there, we were having pasta with egg and tuna and engaged in a conversation on the varieties and uses of carbon. I enjoyed my lunch.

 

Settling in, though it’s been a bit of a drag

a part of warwick campus

posted in facebook last october 2009. 

The plane landed at Heathrow airport at 6:15am, a few minutes ahead than the expected time. I joined the long queue of new students, mostly coming from the Indian sub-continent, at the immigration area. I turned in my documents and was asked to proceed to the nearby health office. I was asked a few questions, including a whispered “Is there any possibility that you’re pregnant?”. Ah the shagging questions. In a few minutes, I am done; I had my chest x-rayed – for free and with plenty of polite sorry’s and thank you’s from the attending staff. Or I thought I was.

I cannot find my other luggage at the Gulf Air Flight 007 luggage area. I checked in two bags in Manila, a pink bag and a black american tourister trolley bag but only the former was in sight. I checked again, avoiding a traffic of empty trolleys. And again. And again. But it was nowhere to be found. I asked an airport staff who helped me look around. He gave up and asked me to check it with Gulf Air’s desk. There was no one there. He asked me to just stay around, but after thirty minutes I got fidgety and did another round of looking up. I asked another airport guy who again looked for it. He asked me to look for the Gulf Air staff. The desk was still deserted. Batches of passengers from Doha and Mumbai arrived to pick their luggages from the busy conveyor, but my luggage was nowhere to be found nor was this Gulf Air staff.

It was already 10:00 am. A staff from the Virgin Atlantic desk told me that one alternative is to go out and check the luggage information from the Gulf Air desk at the arrivals area. I went out and found the desk, also deserted. Where the hell are the Gulf Air staff? A few more enquiries then I found a phone in the corner. I dialled the Gulf Air number, explained the situation to the guy at the other end of the line who replied “Why did you go out if you don’t have your luggage? Stay there and I will come to get you.” He was disgruntled. The passenger cannot go in once the passenger exited.

We went back to the luggage area via “authorised persons only” entrance. We arrived at his desk and he asked me to fill-out a lost luggage form. He said he had to make a note though that I already went out before filing the report. I said that he can further make a note there that I went out per the advice of an airport staff because he, the staff in-charge, were not on his desk for a long time. He said that he was just around, I should’ve waited. Well, whatever. I lost my luggage, I hope he’ll lose his job (ok I didn’t really mean that). He talked to another guy in Spanish and then apologized and assured me that they will deliver my bag to my address the following day once they’ve traced it that same day.

I went to the washroom and found out that my period arrived much earlier than expected. Had a cup of coffee while waiting for the university staff. An Indian student whom I had a brief chat in the immigration queue shared the table. I was still stressed out that I cried to that stranger. He asked me if I want a cup of tea and it just made me laugh. It’s good to talk about some familiar things during strange times, so we talked about his hometown in Kerala.

Warwick (woh’rik) staff arrived in their red t-shirts as promised. All students were convened in a corner. I easily warmed up with a postgraduate student from Delhi who will take up creative writing and an undergraduate student from Thailand who’s into something like supply chain management (it’s a very technical title, I can’t remember everything. sorry.). Just when I settled in one of the three buses, a university staff called out my name. An Indian student was looking for me and he got my luggage. Ah, the jitters of being a new student in a new place – he must have hurriedly picked up his luggage not realizing that it was the wrong one. He’s worried where his luggage is. I remember a grey trolley bag (not an american tourister and without an orange tag and a red cloth) lying around in the conveyor area. That must be his.

The view during the long trip to the campus was breathtaking. England was vibrant with autumn colors,yet so still. It’s been a long haul since my offer letter from the university was lost in Kabul, but all my doubts for this decision to study just had to take a backseat. I slept like I have never slept before. It was drizzling when the bus arrived in the campus.