Pure Magic

I am beginning to believe in ghosts. I swear to God I left my cell phone in the kitchen last night. Some how it ended up under my bed. The only possibility is the presence of ghosts in my room. I think the worst place to forget it is under the car seat when it’s on mute. These things happen to us when we need them the most. I think remotes, cell phones, keys, and wallets are the ones we tend to misplace a lot. It's strange that no one has yet invented an instrument that has the ability to find any item that we misplace, considering that all of us have this problem. You know, like a metal detector that works for every thing.

Anyway, it's been exactly a month since I came here. I am beginning to enjoy this place more. I stopped whining about the weather. Most of the days it's drizzling and cold when I go to work. So when it’s anything over 50 degrees, I consider it extremely pleasant. It was 70 today and I felt like taking my shirt off and going for a jog. I think the worst thing about this city is the planning of the roads. The traffic gets stuck all the time and people drive so slow. I find myself racing past Corvettes and Porsches in my Civic; so you can imagine. But the FM channels are really good, so being in the car is not all that bad. Almost every 10mins, you can listen to "Far away" or "Lips of an angel" on one of the channels.

My roommate/owner is a musician who composes for small productions. He gave me a guitar to use for myself and even taught me how to use it. I tried playing it but it was clear to me that its not as easy as all those desi actors make it look. On Tuesday, I finally went to the tennis club as a guest of a colleague. There were a couple of desi kids there, one 13 and the other 9. They came with their father who was playing with my colleague. So I ended up playing with these kids. We played best of 3 points in cycles. The 13 year old beat me 2 out of 3 times and his brother won 1 out of 3 times. They were unbelievable. The younger kid even dived for a point and I was frozen on the other side admiring it! To dive on a tennis court and win a point is like one of my dreams. It's one of the most instinctive things in sports. I have very weird dreams - dunking a basketball is another one. Some how, I think I have a better chance of becoming a millionaire than doing that. Anyway, after watching these kids, I started blaming my grandfather. Why my grandfather you ask? Well, if he was rich like these kids’ grandfather, I would have learnt tennis when I was 8 and not when I am 28! If you saw a very popular Telugu movie joke, you would understand this even better. I am just joking of course, but there are some that seriously blame their parents for what they weren’t able to do growing up. They just seem to forget that it’s never too late. They should look at my friend Jyothi, who still aspires to be a tennis pro.

Anyway, having decided guitar is not for me, I decided to try out some thing else. So I went to a salsa class last night. Salsa was ok but after that was Bachata which was very embarrassing. After the end of every move, you have to pop your waist up sideways! Now, please don’t imagine me doing it. I don’t understand why they do that. It’s great when a girl does it but guys doing it is some thing else. I will try out a few other varieties of dance classes before deciding on one style.

I hung out with friends from work this weekend. We all went out to eat and then watched a movie, "The Prestige". The movie is pure "MAGIC". It's made by Christopher Nolan, the same guy who made "Memento". Though this is not half as complex as Memento, it’s still good. I think I watched Memento two times straight and then spent the entire night researching web sites convincing myself that my interpretation of the movie was correct. I still wonder how some one could have so much imagination to come up with a script like that. Anyway, I have to go now and use all my imagination to watch TV. So adios.