2011: Best year since I became an adult !

(recommended sonic ambience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x23l6BGu3w )

When this Robot turned 18 (called "adult" in India) it started pursuing its educational degree studies.
Most of it all did not compute.
It caused multiple malfunctions and machine complexes which the Robot had to weather.
But Hey! The Universal engineer has designed this one to be robust and regenerating.

2009-2010 was a big step in my intended direction in terms of pursuing a career of choice.
However, after the toil - the good finally started showing. After having lived as a student wishing to experience the wider world outside of my small University campus in England; and a long empty wait beyond which extended well into 2011 the Force has showered upon me more than just that.

While I was a student, I did not have a part-time job as I was slow and lagging and had to put in hard work.
Thus I kept myself as minimal as possible and did not spend more than on my daily meals, one bass guitar and practice amplifier off a pawnshop and one concert which I did to save myself from unthinkable side-effects of a troubled mind. But that was all 2010.
 While the course was finished my explorations were mostly of local culture in two nearby towns which were the only "civilizations" within reach......apart from that I would look at the clear country sky (on few days when nature forgot how its 'supposed to' treat "England".), spend time fantasizing about aircraft concepts and watch cartoons of superheroes from my childhood. I re-learnt that the only way to combat emptiness and negativity was by injecting positivity. This sometimes worked by distracting the mind by taking it into a state of conscious illusion which was always rooted in sober and healthy thoughts, Meditation and SLEEP - on focused positive thoughts. It was during this phase that I discovered my taste for Anime - Subbed Only!
While I was a fan of a few Japanese cartoon series such as Ninja Robots, Force 5 etc. as a child - they all spoke "American English" and were repackaged to be sold as American.........so my 'conversion' to the actual thing (Japanese) was only justly done by two American superhero cartoon series which were re-packaged to be Japanese. And somehow, I found that to be "psycho/Saikou"!
While some years ago I found that I had disliked Naruto after watching a couple of one offs on ANIMAX - my opinion changed poles in April 2011 and I now think that the episodes which resulted in my original opinion may have been caused by filler episodes which were results of Mr. Kishimoto's being subject to writer's block. I have since also become an avid fan of manga and have since started following Bleach, Cowboy Bebop and several others. I was back at India at this point in time.

So while I was still in the "phase" but after having returned to England, I was happy to inject more positivity in myself by attending an an airshow of "LEGEN-DARY" proportions called "Flying legends" at RAF Duxford - which I did at a 'student rate' despite having surrendered my ID-card months before! After all, I still had a little bit left to scroonge back from what I had saved up working as a research assistant in 2010.
While it was orgasmic to see roaring pistons of yesteryear simulate dogfights like a (WorldWar) dream - the first cross off my bucket list was the visit to the Aeronautical museums at RAF Duxford - which my teachers at University had always highly recommended.
So that was a real drivel of a day when I saw beautiful birds (GILFs heehee) of all sizes and specs such as a Flying Fortress, a Blackbird and a Vulcan from up close on the military side; I saw retired beauties such as the Trident, Comet and the Concorde while P-51s, Spitfires and Hurricanes seemed to be begging to come out from retirement from the thunderous roars outside.

And one day when the light shone through, I got offered a job at Bristol on site of one of the biggest manufacturers of civilian aircraft in the world. I now work in an area of my interest in an organization which I had only dreamt of when I was younger. I am still paddling in an effort to learn this trade well. While my mentors have been kind so far and my boss is encouraging in my struggle towards being able to work independently. For the first time in my life, I have been feeling truly happy about my job as it is in line with the heart. Also, I have my own desk in a cubicle, my own name-board, a computer and a phone allocated to me and a feeling of professional respect.

I had to move into a house inhabited by other working professionals. Along with the room which I am now (still) living at, I had inherited a bicycle belonging to the previous occupant....which I have written about in a previous blog. And thus I now happily use the bicycle as my main mode of transportation - as apparently does my boss where I work currently.
While the bicycle which came with my room was an old one with several worn out parts, I have obtained a brand new bicycle thanks to the encouragement provided to cyclists in this part of the country by the government by running 'cyclescheme'.

I have started Karate all over again, from the scratch - well over a decade after I quit.

After having lived at home while I was at India where mom would put up with my whims and at a hostel room which was decently catered in terms of food, cleaning and other basics - my move to this new rented/shared accomodation at Bristol has since been teaching me to get along with people who are different than myself. Yes we're all Indians here. But for the very few who have had the honour (?) of knowing me, I have always seen myself as an observer from a different world wherever I have been and my sense of logic has seldom concurred with YOU lot. Yet, I am now happy to admit that I have been able to find a way to adjust with and acceptably live with other people. Although I have always been a fan of food and cooking, in the past I would only do the occasional one off 'recipe' dish when the flair arose. While the resultant food had a 'reasonable' taste - the collateral damage used to be a mess of a kitchen 100% of time.......one which I used to be lazy and shy to clean. I now cook atleast thrice in a week. During week/work days - each member of the house cooks for everybody on a rota basis. Domestic rules mandate the re-stacking of all previously washed utensils when a member cooks, washing of ones own utensils when done and leaving the kitchen and every place in the house as one would expect to find it.
It was only logical for me to see the importance of symbiosis here. Thanks to a housemate, I can now confidently make Chappatis and cook proper Indian food - which is still a rising learning curve for me. I live in a self-sustained and habitable home because of the enforcement of set domestic rules by my 'everyday' housemates. Sincerely, hats off to them - I respect them for who they are, while still preferring my daily dose of Anime alone in my room over dinner over a Bollywood movie which they may watch on TV at the time in the living room each day. A key to getting along when you're afraid you may not lies in the 'Tobi (shippuden) approach'. ;-)

Bristol is a little city with a real long heritage unlike the places where I had previously lived in England.
It is comfortably paced yet industrially active. It is almost the Aerospace capital of the UK yet is quite low on pollution and pleasant to breathe in. When I first came here it was the start of Autumn and I was mortally scared when I learnt that Bristol had the most wasps in the southern part of England. However, I was surprised to find that the wasps and bees kept to their own plants rather than buzzing around unreasonably even on the sunniest and warmest day that I have seen here. Even the coldest day this winter (my first here) has not been intolerable so far. Infact I have only recently cycled 15 miles on a Frosty night with wind-chill leading well into negatives to a nearby town in order to watch a brass band wearing only moderate clothing for the temperature range. The sky is dreamy.......THEY must be landing too somewhere nearby.......
The people here are generally nice and polite while the culture is cosmopolitan and welcoming. I would go to City Centre on a week-end without a specific plan with the smallest excuse to buy a certain everyday item as an excuse to sip a cold coffee by the harbourside and observe boats dock and leave, stand and watch street musicians play their instruments beautifully or walk into the museum to learn a little more about the world which I live in. I have been walking into musical instrument shops to try loads of cool gear to my taste.
Having always had an affinity for proper italian food over others for some reason, I would occasionally get a take-away from a little family-run italian food place......quite different when I was at India as my pockets were too light for them there - due to proper italian food being perceived as a novelty there.
There are well laid cycle paths all over and people generally tend to respect traffic rules well. I have now learnt to do so too. After all, I hadn't been on the road by myself in this country before I'd moved here.
I am finally living in a city which I perfectly love for the first time in my life. I heart this city.

I cycled 30 miles to and back from Bath................a significant town of Roman heritage near here.
This is the first ever that I have cycled such a distance between a city and a major town. And guess what? It happened in 2011.

As J.D. Anderson has noted, in order to design an aircraft - one must have sufficient flying experience to know well how an 'aircraft concept' will behave given an intended lift. In agreement with him I wished to learn to fly both unpowered and powered. Taking advantage of an advert put up by a colleague in a kitchen in my then office, I went gliding for the first time in my life. An addictive experience unlike any other that I have known. Also, the glider at my club is Aerotow launched i.e. an aircraft to which the glider is tied by a rope would tow the glider into the air and let it go when the glider has obtained enough lift to sustain itself. This too was quite an experience that no small set of words and people of limited vocabulary such as myself could describe. I could only make the following statement to those who think drugs are awesome: Try the real thing you losers !

My music is what has been with me through good times and bad times. Through the bad and hard ones I can remember clinging on to life by the skin o' my teeth ......and music had a significant role in holding my mouth in place for it. While I met my favourite songwriter in 2008 and was moved to tears, 2011 was a year of a few "Epic" bands for me which I have wanted to watch since a few years..........most of which I didnt have to travel much for. Some of my "Gods" who I've witnessed are Judas Priest, Slash w/i Miles Kennedy (with a whole 'Appetite' section), Thin Lizzy (Scott Gorham, Brian Downey, Darren Wharton), Queensryche, Mr.Big (near 3 hour KILLER set), Opeth (Heritage tour) and others Pain of salvation, Discharge, Yob, Kongh, Tesseract etc......while I did miss my heart favourite "Gods" such as Blackmore's Night, Yes, Zappa plays Zappa (Dweezil playing Frank) and Napalm death who played within manageable reach due to scheduling conflicts. This was still only a dream to live in a good city where the big musical acts would.

While we're still at music; I quit devoting a reasonable time to the guitar after 2006. After then, a guitar has mostly only served as my frustration removal mechanism. Not one song had I learnt properly since then till I went to University in this country when I had briefly picked up the bass and done a couple of shows.
I had kept the guitar down in favour of building what might let me pick up the craft again and develop that aspect of me.........as I am no natural born talent and have been teaching myself (mostly) to shred since the age of 19. In 2011, I was part of a doom metal band while I was at India. I was part of making of an original composition with a band for the first time and I was even part of the original recording of a demo version of a song. All this while I was rustier than ever at playing guitar. Never before had I done this with a band - as I seldom got along with other people's ideas while they rarely liked mine. My only original contribution to the final recording of this song is one riff.............yet I am proud it as it is a first. And should the band perform this song live, my riff will still be a part of it.
Also, 2011 has been kind enough to gift me a "Good" guitar of my dreams (after years of wishing and searching for her), a decent practice valve amplifier and my first pair of analog sweetboxes..........a taste which has been developing in me since 3 years. I have been playing with the goal of getting good since.

As I like observing wild animals and used to watch national geographic a bit, years ago when I still watched tele - I became a member of the Bristol zoo so that I could go visit there and make friends with the fellows there at any time. A good option I thought for one such as myself who tends to get bored of interacting with human beings quite easily.

I got rid of my fear walking rope bridges and tight ropes by doing the Zooropia adventure at the Bristol Zoo.

While 2011 saw me travel alone to a few places within England (London, Derby, Birmingham, Leicester, Bath) with the spirit of Captain Kirk's motto a heart; the first among places which I have always wanted to go visit in the United Kingdom outside of England has been Scotland. I therefore decided to go back-packing to the all alone and have adventure in the frost and snow over the Christmas break. Although it never snowed over Christmas, thanks to global warming and the wind quelled a lot of my excitement - it didnt manage to do enough.......not nearly.
A culturally rich nation of many a folklore. Although my stay was very brief and not fulfilling my desire to ski, I went on a tour of the highlands to Loch Ness. I have always fancied sighting the monster - popularly called "Nessie". I went on a boat with a sonar and well, I am happy that there is a section of the scientific community tha actually believes Nessie to be true...............a correct source will tell you there are 18 of them! The highlands apart are beautiful and I passed castles and villages hearing stories of personalities such as William Wallace and Rob Roy all out of the mouth of a Scotsman. I passed by several locations where Monty Python and the Holy grail was shot and several locations of the Harry Potter movies.
I stayed at Edinburgh and went to the castle and drank proper highland Scotch Whiskey from a distillery that I had passed ony the day before. I went on a Ghost tour with a television personality called 'David the Ghost'. I was also briefly at Glasgow, where I saw different street musicians play tunes, ate sushi complete with 'a hot one', and observed the relatively 'emotionless' attitude of a big city which one wont get at Bristol. Infact, surprisingly - Edinburgh I felt has a soul despite being quite a big place.............despite the fact that 3/4ths of it has been built on a graveyard that is ;-) So this one is again only a partially fulfilled wish. But, hey - for a place like Scotland......atleast its a start !

As for the last day fo the year, I returned to Bristol by late afternoon and watched a kick arse Sex Pistols tribute band called The Sex Pistols Experience............was nice moshing after a long time, moshing with real punks...to Anarchy in the UK.

                                           ^^^Hogwarts Express needs to ride this bridge ^^^

                                             ^^Thats tribute Johnny Rotten, what do you think?^^

However, not all had been awesome in the year. The first seven months of 2011 were quite very trying and difficult. The dementors were all over. But that is what taught me to use my 'patronus'.

I wish that my 2012 is therefore much much more awesome and I wish you the same too.
Hope you have an awesome 2012 at the least.........and if you ever come to doubt it, hold out your wand and scream, "EXPECCTO - PATRONUMMM !!!! "
(and dont forget to make your bucketlists......and if you're feeling stuck, then its time to grow them even more ;-) )

Friday the 21st (Bicycle series part 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUGuEy2cMGQ (recommended sonic ambience)

So it was a Friday afternoon and one which came with excitement as most of my (un-planned) weekends. Excitement as in an infantile rush to go home with the prospect of being able to watch cartoons, lie around under the covers, drink juice and play.......ok it was a bit different for me on this particular weekend: I wanted to pick myself a brand new bicycle taking advantage of the company's 'cycle scheme'  - for which this selection window is due to expire on the 31st of October 2011. Thus a bit of a pressurized feeling to a lazy me.
So as decided, (against the generally falling average temperatures at this time of the year) I decided to cycle it up to the City Centre: where at I remember having seen a few cycle shops during the bus journeys into there. And so I found myself pedalling away into the A38 motorway (after a brief failed stop to buy milk) unsure of whether I was taking the best route into city. Yes, I still use a neanderthal phone with no GPS or Googlemaps. But its got music. So I played Summer Song to receive some comforting warmth out of Satch's decades old, recorded guitar work - and warmth came : with comforting familiarity when I came upon the junction with the turn into Muller road - near The Wellington (pub). Then I thought I probably should have video-ed this from the start.
                     While holding up my poor resolution phone camera with my right hand (video mode on), I did small scale 'ups', 'downs', 'overs' and 'arounds' as demanded by the local topography of each inch of passing land and the random patterns of pedestrians paths which however continued to stick to the pavement (and cycle path); resembling worker ants carrying foodgrains back to the storage chambers in their ant-hills in a formation. The air was cold yet refreshing. The further I pedalled, the lesser I felt the adversity of wind-chill.
I came to observe that the fall in temperature as a result of the initial effect of the wind-chill prompted my legs to pedal faster as an involuntary corrective action. The exertion as a result brought about internal heat generation......and thus the homoeostatic adaptation (is that what it is called?). Such a marvel of Engineering the human body is.
 - Athiests!!! - I hope that my logic encourages you to atleast believe in Aliens ! (if you already don't) -

Since its been days now since I'd written the portion above, I shall skip straight to the point that I was in the city centre now - at Stokes Croft in 30 minutes  from the when i took off from the roundabout at Filton - Yes, slow I was if you know the road that I'm talking about. But hey, dreamy moments with deep breaths of appreciation (of everything in sight) are only an explorer's privilege.
I was a few buildings further down the road to 'The Croft' - the legendary pub which has also served as music venue to many-a-well-known underground metal band and local rock bands. The shop which was visible to me from my side of the road provoked a reflex attempt to tuen and crosss over to the other side but my mind was changed by the sight of a fast Toyota Celica which whizzed past to my right hand side with a sudden horn. It would have been a near miss if I were a couple of feet to my right. So I just decided to stick to the rules and went on to the pavement and pressed the button (signal) and waited for the man to go green - pulling hard at my excitement which wanted to madly leap over the zebra crossing.
And I pulled into the shop with my bicycle, to hopefully test ride the bicycle which had been set up for me since my visit to here on the weekend before. As I was talking to the store manager/owner of the shop about leaving my bicycle at the shop while taking theie 'could-be-mine' hopeful out for a spin - I thought to myself, "What again are we looking for in a bicycle for us?".

Zoning out:
My current bicycle has a heavy frame and fat mountain-bike tyres. The tyres are mountain bike sized (600ish mm half-way across). It has 7 speeds that are driven by 3 speeds (driving gears) i.e. 21 speed options by derailleur gears and old school pad (V) brakes. Gripping on the handlebar is parallel to the prime line of the handlebar with not too far an offset and such that the gripping action is perpendicular to the frame of the bicycle.

The the fork trail angle is forward and not one that I would particularly want to comment on. And the frame itself is all steel alloy construction (including handlebars and fork).
Then what again could possibly have been affecting the bike's performance to me (i.e. the 'Killjoy factor') ?
Oh yeah, it had worn-out parts. It was still riding very well for what it was !!!
Answer - I want something which will be more suited to aid me in getting over my complex....developed when I watch other people 'whizz' past me while I fail to keep up when I want to. Which in turn gave rise to the feeling that the the bike's frame was perhaps a bit small for my limb lengths to obtain my wished-for mechanical efficiency - i.e. energy was out getting wasted and getting redundant as muscle strain. The load transfers were less than optimal - leading to wastage of applied forces which returned to my body as reactions at the various joints. (psssssst Real Answer - I want to take advantage of the 'cycle scheme'. ;) )
"Obvious solution": Get a bike with a suitably larger frame which may allow more accurate usage of bodily and external moment-arms i.e. in pedalling, has a fair gear system which yields reasonable options of gear ratios atleast as the current bike and is notably lighter in weight. Also, bigger tires = greater distance covered per pedal. Thus, a greater force per pedal but lesser number of over-all pedals. The force transferred is manageable by appropriate gear application. Shock absorbers result in trading a part of the work done by application of pedal force with a smoother feeling ride. The arms and the arse are the only counting reaction-return load-paths to the body in this case. (I was not looking for a planetary gear-box as I believe that it would decrease the fun obtainable from the simplicity of a bicycle. Even derailleurs I first thought were"hi-tech" having grown up riding gearless bicycles designed with one 'pot-shot' optimal gear-ratio depending upon the cycle's intent. One trick ponies - which made you work hard if you wanted to do more with them.) Straight forward. But still NOT that much. I will not take you through the gores of numbers and specs as you probably are only reading this either because of your interest in reading, my life or out of your own joblessness. If you however are interested in surgical details - I am sorry, but you cannot have my brain. Google is ready to play your friend.

Coming back:
So I went into the cycleshop.
A Land Rover c 1.9 had been set up for me by the guy at the shop as a result of my visit to there on the week before.

Excited as I was to see this slick and light looking push-machine, I couldnt hold myself back from picking it up one handed - shopping bag style. And know what? My trips to Sainsburys have given me "mendokusai-Ne" experiences when it came to carrying stuff. But this bike I couldve gladly carried home in a bus if only it were the size of a shopping bag. (Yes the shop did have folding bicycles but I am not even looking at them. I have no use for them.) So it really was light. So I put my bike in a corner and pushed the Land Rover out of the store in order to do a spin on a 'circuit' suggested to me by the shopkeeper based upon my needs, as I may have highlighted in a paragraph above.

So I would like to observe that the gearing on this bicycle is much the same as the one on my current "Claud Butler" one. The design model of the unit is different, although it is also made by Shimano. (Every derailleur gear unit that I have seen around here so far is a Shimano.) The wheels were slimmer, closer to a race-bike yet with studs. The were also of a noticeably greater radius (700 mm?). Every other spec looked like it fell into place. Ha, except for the bell. Not like I was expecting a bike to come with a bell. But this design was a one spring armature with no real 'mechanism' inside. Its too simplistic and lame. Also it hurt the thumb when I tried getting it to ring reasonably loud. You'd be better off tying a plate with a 'knocker' to the bike than trust this bell. So these were first observations. I had not yet forced the pedal.
.......And so I did! While I was feeling light and 'efficient' in terms of initial pedal power; my spontaneous thing to do was to apply the brakes - HARD like I had gotten used to with the 'Claud' -till I got them tightened on this same day. So, sensitive as they were set up - the sudden stop caused a good jolt. So I tried the other one. Pretty responsive. I obviously didnt see the point of disc brakes yet. And as I progressed on with the circuit, I came upon the - quite a steep - climb which was partially uneven ground too. As predicted, the bike nailed it quite well and I could tell by the level of ease as compared with the Claud - which would perhaps have left me half knackered.  So while I hit a patch of level ground after the climb, which was the far portion of the circuit, I decided that I would let go of an arm on the handlebar. The bike started wobbling. So yes - I generally do tend to scratch a lot - sometimes let an arm go and play air guitar too - old 'bad' habit that I am Not unhappy about! But it wobbled like nobodys business. Almost like it would even if a bird flapped by - NO - it felt like it would wobble if a Butterfly farted on it! It was that light......while I was still realizing that my bike was already on its way down when I again spontaneously hit the front brake, which now nearly caused me to 'fly away' over the handlebar. Quite dangerous to manage in a traffic-fitted scenario. But the gears were really efficient. So I returned the bike to the store and mounted my own ride home. And whilst lost in thought, I realised that I had unconsciously let go of both arms from the handlebar. Thus I came to realise how stable the Claud felt whilst I was riding it.

Famished, I stopped at Vince's - the pizza take-away: with first hand feel of one more trait which I would prefer that a bicycle possess in order to be considered by me for ownership. (Yes I got bored of overly emoting this so I decided to get to the point and stop. Sadistic pleasure will be miiine, ha !!! )