I’ve been pretty lethargic in the blogging department lately. It might seem as if I have completely abandoned my blogs, which is not the case by the way (well, this is a part-proof!). I felt I must post something today because:
- I just upgraded my WordPress installation to the latest version - I would say good reason as any to post a new entry (to check if things still work as they used to
).
- I haven’t written anything (except e-mails) for over two weeks!
- Life’s not without incidents here in Ghana to have nothing to say here (if I wanted to that is!)
- Oh, this should have come up first when I think of it now - that I had to extend my stay in Ghana by over a month because I realised (in time) that I couldn’t have finished my fieldwork as planned previously! Now I’m going back to the UK in mid-October instead.
Continue reading ‘Up Dates…’
Time: Practically Sunday night, Technically Monday morning - 01:15 hrs (GMT)
Location: Tamale
State of Mind: Unknown
Playing in Background: Andrea Bocelli (Vivere - The Best of Andrea Bocelli)
Reason for Staying Awake: Got 2 hours of good sleep earlier before being woken up by some noise outside the house (party people returning from the club it seems!)
Reason for not being able to go back to sleep: Unknown
Current activity (other than typing): Observing two (very quick) spiders running around the entire length and breadth of the room - worried they might climb on to the bed…worry unfounded so far!
Inspiration for this entry: Mr Witt’s comment on the previous post, which I just saw on my mailbox (checked on mobile phone, yea I know I’m a tech-savvy person! And I can already feel some people thinking “what a “mapain” this fella is!?!” )
Time since last post: 1 month +
Anything special about this Sunday?: None except that today was the day for my anti-malarial, which I took in timely manner with food in the morning! Oh, no side effects for me as far as I can tell. This staying-up-late has nothing to do with medicine I’m sure (well, I hope!).
In Short: I’m alive and doing well!! Continue reading ‘as time goesflies by’
After spending a couple of hours half finishing a couple of drafts, and not being able to complete either, I’ve gone back to my last resort - typing the ghazal while I listened to it, and here it is. At least my blog will show up as “recently updated” in your newsfeed readers. Sorry to disappoint if you were hoping for a long rant (which I’m not sure anyone would). Here is the Ghazal - again by Jagjit from the album Marasim (Gulzar’s lyrics).
वो खत के पुर्जे उडा रहा था
वो खत के पुर्जे उडा रहा था
हवाओं का रूप दिखा रहा था
कुछ और भी हो गया नुमाया
मैं अपना लिखा मिटा रहा था
उसी का इमान बदल गया हे
कभी जो मेरा खुदा रहा था
वो एक दिन एक अजनबी को
मेरी कहानी सुना रहा था
वो उम्र कम कर रहा था मेरी
मैं साल अपने बढा रहा था
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Well, I’m supposed to be finishing up a paper this weekend, but as always in times like this, I seem to find more time to do something else than what I am actually supposed to do. If I let myself, I’ll probably end up posting a few entries (drafts of most are there already, at least in outlines) by the end of the day, BUT I’m not gonna let myself do that. Not until the end of next week. You see, I don’t want to derail my PhD because of weird things I think in shower. So, instead, I’ll put another of my favourite ghazals. I’ve not mentioned this before, but all the ghazals in Devnagari script that I put up here have been typed by myself while listening to them, so any error/typos are my own. I don’t like putting up ghazals in romanised hindi/urdu, which is what you get mostly online. And I don’t have the patience to search those typed in Devnagari, which are far and few between. Anyway, enjoy the ghazal. Again by Jagjit from the album Marasim (Gulzar’s lyrics).
जिन्दगी यूं हुई बसर तन्हा
जिन्दगी यूं हुई बसर तन्हा
काफिला साथ और सफर तन्हा
अपने साये से चौंक जाते हैं
उम्र गुजरी हे इस कदर तन्हा
रात भर बोलते हें सन्नाटें
रात काटे कोई किधर तन्हा
दिन गुजरता नहीं हे लोगों में
रात होती नहीं बसर तन्हा
हमने दरवाजे तक तो देखा था
फिर न जाने गए किधर तन्हा
Well, I’ll get back to work (Ghazal on the background obviously). I don’t think I need to elaborate on the title of this post other than a brief weather report: a grey cloudy day, and a bit chilly too!
…that I have picked up living in England.
1. Never going to bed before Sailing By (and falling asleep while listening to the Shipping forecast!)
I don’t exactly remember when I started listening to Sailing By, but I suspect it must have been from very early days of my life in York (probably while staying late at night trying to complete essays during the first term!). It didn’t take long after I arrived in the UK to become a fan of BBC Radio 4, and my alarm-clock-radio was set to start with Radio 4 at 5:59 in the morning. I lay on bed till the end of the Today programme, and rushed through my morning routine in the next 10 minutes before arriving for class at 9:15! Like most undergraduates, I had a great morning when there was no 9:15 lecture. Of course sometimes lectures started at 8:15, so I would miss the last one hour of the programme on those days. Its not surprising then that Saturday mornings were my favourite, when I stayed in bed till 10 - till 9:00 listening to Today programme, and then listening to John Peel (one of my most favourite presenters)’s Home Truths programme. In the evenings, Radio 4 would be on as soon as I got back to my room - usually to catch 6:00pm news and the comedy or other light-hearted programmes that followed (Just a Minute, Dead Ringers and the like). World Tonight (10:00pm news programme) was another rarely-missed programmes and Book at Bedtime that followed meant that I got to know about books that I had never read, and quite a few I later had to buy because I missed a day’s reading or that I wanted to read myself in full. Well, seeing this list you’re probably wondering why not have BBC Radio 4 on the title and not Sailing By, but even when I didn’t listen to any of the other programmes on some days (because I was out with my friends or somewhere else), I usually got back home in time to catch Sailing By and go to bed Don’t ask me why I listened to Shipping forecast after that though (as I said I usually fell asleep while the forecast was being read) - but I probably learnt a lot about British geography from the forecast too - weird names of places like the Land’s End, Lundy, Fastnet etc., which I would check on the map the next day when I remembered what I had heard the night before.
I must say I missed this (Sailing By) routine when I went to Canada (although in Canada I would go to bed after listening to the Today programme in full on the internet - good thing about being 8 hours behind the British time!). When I got back to York again, my other Radio 4 habits didn’t stay the same (well, sadly John Peel had passed away, and I also couldn’t devote the same amount of time listening to live radio - but having podcasts for most programmes have solved the problem as well!), except one - listening to Sailing By before going to bed! Continue reading ‘weird habits’
copylefT 2008
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