In the left passenger seat of my car today, while it was slowly slithering the hot way to my college (my bike has not yet recovered from an accident), I experienced something like an epiphany. It could’ve been because it’s been a while since I sat really still – the whole of the past two weeks has been a frantic rush to set things straight. So I thought about good things and bad things… and a little time later I had a simple but very moving revelation: I know so many interesting people 🙂

People: who make me laugh, angry, sick, think, sad, amused, confused; who have a thread of ze vital life in them so that when they act I’m so amazed; who have funny bones of brontosauric proportions so I LOL so often; so much of the talented crowd: music crazy band-members, sweet devilish wicked vixens, incredible inspiring coders, people who read, and people who are so, so different from me which only makes them more interesting.

I’m not a person who can maintain a close network of thousands of friends. Like I was bored with Friendster after a week – it brought too much organization to a thing I do not pay much close attention to. But I know lots of people, from my school days onward, people in my college, people I met through organizations I’m a part of, online friends who I met in chat-rooms and forums, people I met through my writing, who emailed me about this site, and all the other little projects that I have going around; I know lots of people! Some of these people I can call good friends… I don’t talk to them everyday, I don’t think about them everyday, but meeting them and talking to them is like a new experience every time, I learn so much from what they think.

An epiphany is a revelation. But it’s also a very cozy feeling of comfort, something almost sublime. I’ve known for some time now that I can’t live as a self-contained universe. But today, I’ve also discovered my happiness in knowing people.

AWOL again! And this time I was setting my affairs back in order. Some loose ends which have been far too loose far too long have now been tied up, and in that process I’ve also rediscovered my love of working.

Yeah, you read that right. Working. Not many people know me today as a compulsive 24×7 workaholic. It’s a role that I’ve not suited into for some time now, but it has always been a part of me, lurking underneath. Here’s a short list of how hard I worked since you last saw me: 😉

I watched Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2 again, in order, and Tarantino continues to impress with his gimmicks. Today I also saw another very nice movie: Things I can Tell Just by Looking at Her. It’s a very amazing concoction of scenes and clean editing that makes it a lovely emotional experience.

I also read a lot. A sweet Irish tale that I can’t remember the name of, the Magician: Apprentice and Master novels; a good amount of non-fiction about the Gujarat riots and Hindu nationalism, and I’m currently plugging through Poul Anderson: The Boat of a Million Years and Avatar and I also read Greg Bear’s second in the Darwin series: Darwin’s Children. Too much to talk about when I’m talking about books, it’s too chaotic right now, I’ll probably mention some gems later.

I took a DVD today featuring Linkin Park’s songs and some extra footage. They are a really great band and the DVD also exposed me to my first multi-angle viewing experience, wherein I can change camera views on the fly; it was really cool :-).

I’ve also got to tell you about QVM, a parallel virtual machine that’s our mini-project this term at college. It’s an amazing framework which allows an end-developer to create an application using the processing power of an entire grid of computers in a local network. Stay tuned to Sig9 for more information about that.