25 Random Things About Me

Friskyphil is a blog I follow, and today I was surprised to see that he had posted "25 Random Things About Me". I learned much about FriskyPhil, such as this:

• He put himself through college by working as a butcher in a small grocery store, then found some employment in a pea cannery, drove a wheat truck, was a Cat-skinner pulling a hillside combine, and finally a combine man and crew boss. He earned a BA in Language/Literature.
  
• He mistook the aurora borealis for the Second Coming while disking in wheat stubble on night shift. He got down off the Caterpillar tractor and prayed for 15 minutes awaiting the Ascension before it dawned that he was witnessing the most elaborate display of the Northern Lights ever seen in Walla Walla, Washington.
  
• FriskyPhil is now a septuagenarian, who with the benefit of previous experience in IBM, produces and maintains websites as a Web-Servant for non-profit organizations on a volunteer basis.
  

Keep going Phil, I am glad to have found you, you are one of the people who make me happy...

But it was only later that I understood why FriskyPhil made that post when I found this report in  NYTimes:

"“It’s really interesting to sit there and try to think of 25 things that you’re willing to tell other people but that they don’t already know about you,” said Ms. Morgan, a health care industry publicist who has kissed 6 1/2 boys (No. 16), is legally blind (No. 19) and didn’t go to school until the fourth grade (No. 7)."

I am not in Facebook, so I did not know this- but apparently "25 Random Things About Me" is the lastest fad there. New York Times reports that nearly five million people have done this!

It also reports that in 2006, bloggers were listing hundred random things about themselves in their blogs, I was not here at that time, it passed me by, but now, following FriskyPhil, here is my 25 random facts about me:

1. I am five feet tall (not really, but somewhere around)

2. I have ten teeth in all (not really, but somewhere around, and it will soon get less)

3. My greatest influences are Ramana Maharshi and J.Krishnamurti (but they haven't changed my life- not yet, still waiting)

4. I am addicted to coffee (no acidity, not yet)

5. I am a self-styled homeopath (but an astrologer warned me that my horoscope predicts I could get holed up in jail, so I don't hand out medicines).

6. During college my favourite author was R.L. Stevenson. I read almost every play of George Bernard Shaw and the novels of Neville Shute.

7. I was one of the four students who passed the paper, "Quantum Mechanics and Vector Algebra"- there were about forty of us in our class. I failed in every other paper of the whole course.

8. My worst cricket moment of disappointment was when India lost to Pakistan in 'the last ball six by Miandad' match. But over time, I find the Azhar incident worse than anything. I can still argue for hours that he should have been allowed to play his hundredth test. Whatever the merits, I still get indignant when I think about the injustice done to him.

9. When I was twenty I got this job. It was a stroke of luck: but for that, today I will be dining on crumbs.

10. I hate it when I have to wait: it was worse when I was young. I would keep looking at the minute hand and it would never move. I think age has dulled my senses- now, I am surprised to find that more time had elapsed than I thought.

11. I get more angry these days than ever before- especially if I try to meditate. I feel some kind of emotional itch inside and explode ridiculously.

12. In high-school, I was a serious, passive kind of student. My friends called me "Buddha", and I was the one to carry reconciliation letters between sworn enemies. Yet, during the last year of high school, I fell out with two of my closest friends- and I could never talk to them again. They tried to be friends, but I did not relent. I regret it now, of course.

13. When Mandal Commission Report was implemented and people immolated themselves, The Hindu put on a high voltage biased coverage, I stopped reading it for a long time.

14. The one question that pops up is, "Which place is this place?". It is a kind of kaon, I think.

15. There was one high moment of spiritual grace. It happened on its own during sleep (not ejaculation or anything, I know the difference). It was a period when I was seriously into J.Krishnamurti and Zen books, I did Ramana's Self-enquiry for the first time while I was trying to sleep, and at three AM it happened. Satori!, I told myself. Now I am less disillusioned about this.

16. My memory was always poor- there were never many memories of past incidents that I could ever recall.

17. The little finger of both my hands are crooked- according to palmistry, I don't have any sense of justice: I think it is right in a way, I find it hard to come to a decisive judgment on any issue.

18. I am most happy when I can lie down undisturbed with four or five books by my side. Such moments have grown scarce.

19. I don't know how to ride a bicycle.

20. I like to walk. When I am stressed, or when I am excited, I prowl around like a caged tiger, okay, a caged cat or something.

If you are a blog author, and you happen to write something of this sort, please give me a link to it- I will come and look in.