Yesterday, as I returned from Orchard after a sumptuous dinner, I happened to take this bus 175. In spite of being a freezer on the move, it is also the most convenient. On the outside, it looked like how it had always been, like its hundred cousins plying all around the city. It is the interiors that took me by total surprise. The inside was totally themed and stylized upon the F1 event. The interiors, grills and windows were a chequered delight in black and white. The floor was plastered in tarmac grey and yellow, much like the racing track. The seats plush in bright red and black, with extra layers of padding, looked welcoming indeed. On one side, directly in front from where I was sitting, stood a huge 40 inch LCD display! The purpose, I reckon, was to show the event live. Obviously, SBS transit didn’t pay for the luxury on board. Neither did I. But who did ? Advertising of course! My eyes wandered to all the nook and cranny of the bus, as I counted the zillion ‘Ideas for life’. Hummm …I exclaimed!but It didn’t stop just there. In what would have otherwise been a seat stood a catalog of cameras. Not brochures people, but actual cameras! There is no better way of bringing the products to the people-I made a mental note. I moved closer to the center of the bus to alight when I saw an array of F1 cockpit seats, bigger than in a F1 car and much like the ones you see in gaming arcades. They were all occupied-and why not!. Too bad, I didn’t carry my camera along.The bus pulled to a halt into the ‘pit lane’, leaving me reminiscent of the Carlsberg Advert of the train, beer, babe and the football game. Humm…so much like it ….but nah! ” No eating or drinking in the buses and trains…blah …blah”!! , Some things don’t change !!! *sigh*

Its strange, funny . I am talking about the time, when I was returning back from work,  on a Sunday , to the cold confines of my room. Bad enough, I worked on a Sunday, Worse, nothing worked. But hey, no more work stuff, my project has ended! Yippie ! as I cut my shackles, there is so much to look forward to. But then, lets come back to the reason for this post, and that too after the earth has seen some seasonal variations and the Ozone hole grew bigger. Its just about how some seemingly simple events knock you awake. It was a Sunday at work, so I was wearing this special shorts that has a piece of metal hanging out from one of the sides. It was funky, and also the reason why I bought it. My guitar was not in the usual place it would be. I had cleaned up the previous day and had moved it slightly closer to the door. So this time when I entered my room, the metal at the end of the fabric, gently brushed along the strings of my guitar . It took me a while to realize what had happened by when, the room was resonating in a sound replete with life . And in the dark stillness and an absolute silence, the sound was resonating though my body. I would have otherwise jolted, but for the familiar sound. I turned on the lights and looked at my guitar. The sound had stopped. The message was clear. My guitar had spoken. “Wake Up”.

Never have I associated myself more close with National Geographic that this one time below. A picture from one of my treks to Java(top) and the pages from the Jan 2008 edition of The National Geographic (bottom) . Truly, a NG moment

Day 1: Singapore – Batam – Jakarta

The flight is delayed and we have no clue how long we would be grounded. The weather is dank and the air is dense with plumes of cigarette smoke! I look through the glass swing door and my eyes catch a 3′ x 3′ “No Smoking” board at the center of the corridor leading to the boarding pavilion. Sampling glances at Abu and Dolly I return back to checking my watch – We were running late by 2hrs. We should have been in Surabaya by now. We were still holed up in Jakarta, waiting ……. neither time flew nor us . We were on our first leg of our Javanese Adventure. We were hungry, tired from lack of sleep and frustrated….. We didn’t come here all the way from Singapore just for this! This is not how it is meant to be. I look back at how the past few hours went by. We had flown in from Batam late in the morning after a short breakfast at the Batam airport. Airports are the first images of a country and this is what I saw

Did you read Dunkin Donuts??!! Being in Singapore for longer than necessary had allowed complacency to settle in and I made a mental note to not end up a stooge. Batam is just about an hour ride by ferry from Singapore. We arrived in Batam the previous night after a seemingly event less ferry ride were time moved slow and the boat, …… slower! We checked into one of the hotels recommended by Lonely Planet. The place was dirt cheap and reasonably comfortable (about 10 SGD/ room). We had to forage for food and myself and Dolly being vegans, didn’t make the hunt easy. Abu’s bhasa skills helped us get some allegedly vegetarian food. We ate quietly shoring up the strange ‘veggies’ on our plate to one side. Curiosity got the better of Dolly, when she ventured to try one of them, the ones she had painstakingly removed to the corner of her plate! and guess what…it turned out to be a Squid!! .We stopped further investigations. With fresh fruits stacked to one corner, Juice seemed like a great idea. I went for Orange and soon found myself sipping on a glass of carrot juice. Well the color did match, but then not the fruit! To be really fair, the juice was fresh and sweet and Apple turned out to be the star performer of the day. Thanks, Xavier and Dolly for generously parting with your Apple juice. We checked back into our rooms soon after and barely managed a five hour sleep before we caught our flight to Jakarta.

Day 2: Jakarta – Surabaya

We return back to where I started, to the Smokey aisles of the airport, Jakarta. The airport had an interesting architecture, typically Javanese and one I can closely relate to certain parts of India. After rows of Airline reservation counters, you come though an array of coffee shops, canteens, Dunkin donuts (this time the real one )), ice cream parlors, massage parlors, KFC, bookstalls (consider yourself extremely lucky and bet on your favorite horse if you find an English magazine) and a lot more. Of them, what I found particularly interesting was a shop called ‘ Roti Boy’ .The smell of fresh Coffee flavored breads filled the air . We took some quick bites, and offered the remaining to the trash can. It came next only to raw sugar in the scale of sweetness. One thing that caught my attention, and still keeps me wondering, is the extreme levels of dispassionate calm that surrounded me in the hall. The departure hall was packed to capacity, stemming from the fact that a lot of flights were delayed. Resigned to believing that we would never be able to fly out and vacillating indecisively between a dash to the train station (and that was way across the city) and waiting till eternity do pass, we waited. The announcements in their mellifluous bhasa tongue, ensured that we stayed ignorant of the world around. We had no clue what was going around and why these people were so composed and unforgivingly patient.It was like telepathic waves of thought flying around in the hall and convincingly bouncing off our heads. I didn’t find a single soul walking up and down , restless and impatient nor a wrangle at the counter, it was all as if ‘they’ all knew and silently laughing at the joke upon us. Wondering if the utopian peace would sustain and embracing the culture shock that stared before me, I was silently hoping that someone would flare up. Someone….please God, let someone flare up, its been a long wait …I need some action !!!. Guess what, like my all other prayers, this one went unanswered as well .Our numerous questions soon found answers, in a friendly Surabayan . The ’strange salt lakes and paddy fields’ that we saw spread across the city shores during our decent, seemed to have fulfilled their destiny or so we thought. The city was FLOODED ! the arterial road connecting the city to the airport was totally jammed, allowing only a trickle of traffic to pass. The airline crew was caught up somewhere is the endless line of frozen traffic and hence the delay! Ah it wasn’t the flight after all ! Very soon after, the intercom crackled to a now familiar tongue, and in a fraction of time that even my Swatch chronograph failed to capture, a swarm of people collected at the gate……….caught unawares, we tailed the line. Dolly, in all her effervescent enthusiasm and congenial disposition, took seats next to the friendly Surabayan guy. In a sequence of events that cannot be attributed to coincidence with magic that only she can weave , and in a frame of time that can only be described as total darkness as I settled into deep sleep, soon after, I found myself sailing through the Surabayan cityscape in the friendly Surabayan’s car .

Time do pass, still, some memories linger. That explains why I would return back to this post after months had rolled on. Listen…… that is the essence of this blog. Read on ……… The rain was incessant but not torrent. The car briefly came to a halt near an array of food stalls by the side of the road. Food. I breathed.

Introducing Pecel !

Widely unfamiliar with what the randomly arranged English alphabets on the menu card described, I left it to the experts to pick a vegan dish.Here, I would joyously thank the Surabayan, for Introducing the King of the Surabayan vegetarian cusine a.k.a Pecel (pe-chel). Served with a bowl of rice and a crispy papad (I add this to the general vocab of the English dictionary with the great Indian migration that started this century, and the  growing spread of the Indian cuisine ! – use it to describe anything made of flour , thin , flat and round, salted and flavored, and fried in a generous amount of oil, like a chip of course). what went into it is a mystery, like a trade secret, but this is what I could taste- ground nuts, asparagus ???, some flavors from the Tom Yam soup, mystery sauce and served with a lot of goodness ! I relished two helpings of the dish.  I was already starting to enjoy the trip. Rightly said, the way to a mans heart is through the stomach. Java was  getting a special place in my heart. For the night, we crashed into one of the backpacker’s places. If I remember correct, It was somewhere close to the Airlangga university in Surabaya. If I am ever to finish the post, I’ll have to cut the details. so here goes the dawn of the third day.

Day 3: Surabaya – Probolingo -Cemero Lavang

Probolinggo, conveniently interposed between Cemero Lavang and Surabaya meant, we had to be wary of the agents operating there. Taking the public transport from Surabaya would mean that you will have to alight in Probolinggo. The bus captains, in nexus with the travel agents, would force you to get off near the agent’s office. Hold Firm. Insist that you would get off only at the bus terminus which is only a few yards away. After a shakey ride in a rickety bus and refreshing to some chewey green sweet dish flavored with coconut scrapings, generously offered by a lady in the bus, we alighted in Probolinggo at an Agent’s doorstep. After listening to his incessant ramblings, and being mesmerised by some stunning pictures of Ijen Sulphur lakes ,  and helplessly watching a couple of travellers being sucked into his trap, we moved on. For the next couple of hours, we had to contend squeezing ourselves into a “Bemo” until we reached Cemero Lavang.

Day 3: Cemero Lavang

Waking up early especially on a Monday morning, is an universal problem next only to the 10 plagues unleashed upon mankind. We invented the Alarm clock and still we invented the ’snooze’ . Ever wondered why? If an alarm clock is to wake you up, why does it have a snooze ? Apparently, the morning inertia is so much a factor that we have such features built into clocks we get these days. Yes, quite nice, quite useful, but often a loophole ! How many times have you snoozed your way back to sleep ?? Read on for a collection of interesting Alarm clocks on the market, you can’t snooze your way out !

1. The Flying Alarm Clock

This one has a propeller that flies off after the Alarm. The Alarm wouldn’t go off until you fetch the propeller and fix it back on. Cool!! but I recommend covering the clock with a cloth

2. Puzzle Alarm Clock

This one has a puzzle that breaks and flies off. You will have to put back the puzzle together for the alarm to go off ! This one is recommended only for the geeks !

3.Coffee pot Alarm Clock

This one is my personal favorite !! There is nothing like waking up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee!

4. Clocky – The clock that runs

This ones is sneaky ! it wakes you up and then runs . You will have to hunt it to turn it off!

Take a rubber band and stretch it,  stretch it until it is so taunt that any further it will snap -  In time limits, that would be 3hrs and 30 minutes, the duration of this movie. I once read somewhere,  “the length of a film is directly related to the endurance of the human bladder”. With due respects to the director ( I quite loved his work in Swades), I wasn’t entirely convinced with the treatment of the subject. Firstly, the story is not a work of imagination, but a part of history which, a good number of us have already been fed with.  Therefore, the focus should be the presentation. Secondly, we all know history is replete with details and to attempt to capture every bit of it is unnecessary and wasteful, in a span of a movie.

Lets talk about the execution. This is an epic of war and love . Recent times have seen a horde of such films and its natural that the mind tries to compare.  Battles that look farcical …. trust me, a bunch of meek clowns running aimlessly at each other ?? Its a war !!, for heavens sake at least show some aggression and a hostile fervor. Costumes were ok but repeated. We have grown to expect some grandeur when it comes to such movies, but believe me, claiming to cast a 1000 dancers is just not it. There is so much that could have been done and Bollywood has the money.

I am a great fan of Aish and when I look at her, I look at her eyes. But sadly though, this time, there is only so much a make up can do to defy age.

Coming to the music, AR Rahman , my demigod . Seriously, his music is not for the casually curious coffee break listener, but it grows onto you.  If you do accept that, you would love his work in the movie and Choreography wasn’t bad either. Hrithik does a good job, and his presence is a huge plus for the female crowd !

CarbonRipples rating : 2.5 Stubs

Back home at six in the morn..a long day it was, with the better part of the night spent on a movie and hanging out with a bunch of friends and coffee @ Mc D. While my Java trip is still under edit, I am thinking of having a section in my blog to talk about movies I watched and the books I read. Would be cool to have an opinion about things and share it with the world for, thats all a blog is for. I am getting no sleep at this odd hr, so here we go, the first one.

1.”There will be blood”

Frankly from the title, I was expecting a lot of blood and gore and even prepared myself mentally for the worse to come, but then, I was pleasantly overjoyed as the movie unfolded. Set in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the film is about oil discovery and the rise of an oil baron. Having said that, its not just about the black gold, but deeply woven into the plot are strong emotions, so dramatically brought to the fore by the extremely talented cast. The unconditional love of a father towards his son, the passion to succeed (at any cost) and religious fervor (The film makes quite a mockery out of evangelists) have been intricately set into the plot and junctures were they come into conflict with each other……Wow! kudos, a job well done. I did find the music a little repetitive though (monotonous with little variety), but baring this,which I am certain you will fail to notice as you immerse into the movie, the film is a must watch!!

CarbonRipples rating : 4 Stubs

This happened a few days back. 3 of my friends and I was scouting though the malls of Singapore, presumably to pick some winter clothing, for a friend leaving for Norway and Germany. Its a funny story how the shopping went …….after 3 hrs , we didn’t buy anything! There was a mini art exhibition on one of the floors of the mall. It was of water colors on paper and the artist was right there, along with a helper woman who would explain the art to the onlookers. Dejected that we didn’t buy anything , we strode aimlessly into the art lanes. One of our dudes, raks , saw a painting and started yelling “mongoose mongoose”.The woman standing there was shocked! and volunteered to explain the art, which was Chinese characters shaped in the form of a rat to signify the year of the rat. True, it did resemble a rat and in no way a mongoose! after a few minutes of art education, our dude wanders to an other painting, only this time he screams “rat rat”! The lady is again stunned – she said – “no no no…its a Man!!”. We cleared the place immediately!

If you don’t know what I am talking about, Classical Gasoline (Gas) , is an instrumental piece written by Mason Williams that went on to become a huge hit. I often immerse myself into the Eric Clapton version (or is it not ?), whenever my troubled soul cries for peace. Its probably one of the greatest instrumental compositions till date and truly a masterpiece. So strong has been its pull that, it still remains the single greatest reason, that I ever wanted to learn to play the guitar! (yes! yes! Stairway to heaven and Hotel California, but let me keep my dreams real ). You can listen to this short stream or check out youtube for numerous links. Do let me know if someone finds a good quality full length version online.