The Frenchman: Part II

Of course my first impulse when I heard him say, ‘My girlfriend is so pretty’, I wanted to sprout wings and fly to the moon. I'm sure only a minute or two went by, but it sure as hell felt like I remained mute for the length of conversation.

It turns out that the days following our first date were full of extraordinary moments of honesty and letting people in and fear and facing your emotions and telling other people what you really think. None of these things has ever been my forte. But it has been wonderful.

To detail the actual feelings would be too heavy for even the most devoted readers, and, besides, they're more or less contained in the narrative of this blog. So I'll sum up: significant, marvelous, affectionate, all mixed up together.

I'm excited and nervous and terrified and full of hope and doubt. I wish there were a way on the computer to dot the "i"s in "likes" with hearts.

And with that, you're all current. So far, this story has no ending.

It's just to be continued.

The Frenchman: Part I

There is a reason posting has been irregular of late.

I don't quite know how to say this. It has certainly come as a shock to me. I considered trying to ease into the news, but all my efforts in that course proved useless. So I'm just going to give it to you straight, as it were. I met someone!

About two weeks back I was forced to make it to my company’s annual party, with every intention of leaving the venue before noon.
I realize that the words "I cannot stay another minute at this party," "I hate it here," make no sense to my bunch of colleagues who I hang out with. And yet they're absolutely smart, every one of them.
Since my plan of bailing out of event was by no means secure, I settled down in despair, most importantly not recovering the mind that I had obviously lost.

The one small mercy in that day’s event was that I got my eyes settled on a rather amusing foreigner, (a Frenchman) who I thought had entered the wrong party, which meant that I was sitting down and belting out comments every 5 minutes. The problem was that he was working for the same company I was, just out of a different building. Hence, I hadn’t seen him before. And he also happened to have a friend who was a part of my audience. Yeah, after I got to know that piece of news, five minutes of silence and embarrassment seemed like an eternity.

I met him a few minutes later as he smiled and shook my hand. I stuttered about how nice it was to meet him that I wanted to put my eyes out with a carving fork.

The days following our meeting he has asked my friends about me and then finally picked up the phone and asked me out on a date. It would have been a little braver of me if I answered him by not pitching my voice higher.

Baby steps, Eve. Baby steps.

Stay tuned, in any case, for my next post of Drink Poison, Drink Poison, Explode with Joy.

I'll be the one drinking poison.

There are days when it’s hard to comprehend the impressive talent that was The Cure. I’m not sure the world will ever see another front man that literally owns the audience in the way that Robert Smith could. I’m not even sure it’s possible anymore. All that aside this is a fairly awesome track of The Cure titled ‘Lovesong’.

To the Frenchman

The past week was so exhausting. Overworked. And dragged myself around the office this morning. Needed tea. And writing.
The worst thing about the past week was pulling a 14 hour day at our company’s annual showcase on Thursday, and then realizing that I needed to be at work the next day all bright and early.

The best thing about last week – I had many seemingly successful interactions with human males. Haha. That rocked. Also, my best friends, Tony and Runa got engaged. It was simple, beautiful, private and sweet. That's about the most perfect engagement I have heard about in a long time. “Congratulations to you both. I am so glad you have found each other.”
Marriage scares me to the point of an anxiety attack. But when my best friends finally decided to take the plunge it made me well up. Tear, sniff.

Runa and I decided to spend some time together over Friday at this swanky new restaurant on our side of the city and then I bought myself a few books for this month - Milan Kundera's ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’, that I have read in college but I felt like owning a copy of this book. Kundera’s writing is fantastic, as always. Stieg Larsson's ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ is one of my latest buys. I picked it up for the most part because the book seems to be all over the place - everyone is talking about it, everyone is reading it and everyone is commending it. If everyone jumped into a well, I wouldn't follow them but I'm more interested about books than I am plunging to my death. I also own a Batman comic by Bob Kane now. I love graphic novels so I couldn't resist this. Would I recommend reading it? It's Batman - you bet.

The music this week – Santana’s and India Arie’s ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ is excellent. Thanks to Ajay for the recommendation. It is, lush shoegazing blues-rock at its insanely, very good best. I've owned the original Beatles version and always loved it. But I suddenly realized just how genius this one by Santana is. It’s totally different than I expected and I’m duly impressed. It, no doubt, is worth repeat listens.

Keep listening to good music.

I might sound like I love going to the gym but the idea of going after a blissful vacation is not pretty. For the last few years I’ve been getting by on a recipe of being blessed with a great body type and being a continual activity machine. Except now my life isn’t really providing me with the high intensity cardio like it used to, at least not in enough periods to cancel out my love of meat, chocolates and any other fat-related foodstuff.

So I’ve resumed my sessions at the gym after two weeks which got my almost-rusting muscles moving again and I’ve got back some of my missing energy. Of course, the dilemma only arrives when my work-out routine becomes boring and the pain, post-workout.
I was ready and anticipating feeling like I had the flu after the first couple of workouts. Oh my god, I really expected less.

My thighs, MY THIGHS! I discovered that this evening after the second workout. I was halfway to sitting on the toilet when my legs failed; I landed on the seat wrong, and nearly ripped my shorts trying to save myself.

It definitely felt like I had the flu, if that meant the sickest you’ve ever felt and then someone beats you up one side and down the other with a baseball bat and steals your cough syrup.

I’m hoping after day three I feel a tiny bit better, like the way you feel with a hangover. I still can’t walk without saying ‘Ow’ a couple of hundred times, but I’m determined to do the entire run-up to Christmas and then take a break. And if by some miracle the exercises work as I imagined and my arms start to look like this one below, I’m hoping someone will tell me I still look pretty and buy me a dozen donuts.

Photo By Rokovor Vihienuo 

Mr. Big is easily my favorite band that I cannot seem to describe to others. Or for that matter get other people to listen to. They’re a band out of the land of California and lead singer Eric Martin sings in one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. If the angels from on high sang in American then this is what the leading vocals would sound like. This release was part of their fourth studio album labeled ‘Hey Man’ containing this track called "Dancin' Right into the Flame".

For those of you who just found my blog take a minute to peruse other posts here at EC. I hope you enjoyed yourself this past month, November is sure to bring something amazing to everyone.

On Gangtok

Rescheduling travel plans has its good side and bad side, as most choices made after a couple of Jim Beam shots. Originally, this was planned as a trip to Sikkim, with a short beginning holiday to Darjeeling. Then, life happened. An opportunity presented itself to us when there were warnings of landslides in Sikkim and I decided to stay longer in Darjeeling. But changes to a plan are much more than a pleasant phone call to different hotels in Gangtok, asking for a vacant room. It is truly a pain, but I am of the certainty that it is well worth it.

After something like four hours of periodically interrupted sleep in one of Darjeeling’s most accessible modes of transportation – the taxi, I reached the hotel in Gangtok. It was the front desk, informing me that they would arrange for all necessary papers and permits for my travel to the beautiful Changu Lake and the Nathula Pass (the trading post between India and China). May God bless them, for pretending to give me time to get back to them and being so nice about it. The hotel belonged to a friend’s friend so they quoted about 1200/- per night (from the usual 2,500). I took it. The room was lovely and the view spectacular. It could have been a lot worse, the rooms could have been unavailable or the new rate (season time) could have been astronomical. The hotel was situated 2 minutes away from M.G Road and is highly rated as one of the best in Gangtok.

The city’s dining options are similarly impressive. Allen’s Kitchen, as I would find out later, is one of the popular restaurants in Gangtok. The food was some of the best I’d had all trip.

From there, I took off to drive around Gangtok, to see my friend’s school, the Tsuklakhang Palace and Monastery, various view-points and then back into the city to get ready for the evening out. If ever there was an almost instant way to fall madly in love with Gangtok, it is to walk it, sans map, just losing yourself in the area.

The nightlife in Gangtok is exactly what we needed to fall for the city. Little Italy was easy to like at first sight with its bohemian interiors and crowd.

And when they say the restaurants close early in Gangtok, it just means they won’t have tables available after that time.

From there, I went to Café Live and Loud to discover a new brand of fabulous. With flashing lights and a crowded bar, which we were told is the most popular club in the city, was packed with friendly people, all drinking, all singing along to a number of familiar songs performed by the band Route 66. You should know that by familiar I’m talking specifically about the following songs: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, Layla and finally, and perhaps most importantly, Wild World, dedicated to yours truly.

And to end my trip in Gangtok, I went to a club called Orange, which was quite far from the city. This place was underground and filled up fast, and by filled up, I mean there was not a single inch of floor on which to stand and with only two bartenders the wait time between drinks became significant. It was around the time that we decided to dance that the DJ announced the last song was playing. Pfffft! But I will be back. Absolutely.

I had fun, unabashed fun. It was one of those trips I will be saying to my friends, “Remember when we were in Gangtok and…” for quite some time.

For those of you who frequent these pages you’ll notice something odd about this post. I literally never post videos, ever. But this performance by the band Route 66 was awesome enough and the recording is interesting enough that I thought today I would make an exception. The song is ‘Layla’. So how could I refuse to post this video? It’s shot with my phone camera in Café Live n Loud in Gangtok (Sikkim) …it turned out pretty okay I think.