Alchemist - 2

It all started on a dark and gloomy night when my mother was serving her customers in

her tavern, the usual rounds of shredded horse meat and warmed teflonian beer. In walked a tall
gangolian warlord, looking weary from the latest crusade wars.

This warlord went by the name of Dreadgranger.

I remember my mother telling me as I grew older, that for some strange reason,
she was strangely attracted to the warlord, and this attraction was tinged with awe and respect along with a bit of sexual stirring.

Lord Dreadgranger was one of the most cunning and vicious warlord, who had made his

bones in the First Rebellion. The killer and the most dreaded young warrior.

It was on this night that I was referring to, when my mother was with the warlord in the

night, and eighteen months latter, I was born. It was also the last time my mother saw my father. The very next day to my birth, my father disappeared forever. Over the years my mother kept getting news about my father from the traveling minstrels , and she recorded all the adventures of my father so that she could share this with me when I grow up.

The genetic material of my father was so strong that even as a child I was a soldier. My skills in tracking and hunting were renowned. I could feel the killing lust flow in me even then.

I was considered to be one of the most vicious of the hunters known to the Bragalians. This reputation I had got when I was 3 years old.

At around this time I came across a strange monk , Crepovani. He was a silent one, real quite. For some strange reason when one night in the tavern, he took me to his table and started communicating with me silently. This was the my first feel of telepathic powers of the Creambic mystics.

My blood froze and my heart stood still for a moment when I felt the monk's powers, but at the same time I strangely understood that he was restraining himself , and displaying just a fraction of his magic.

After this strange encounter, the monk left. And a few weeks later he just turned up at the tavern
and I followed him. I was initiated into the arcane art of Creambic mystics. The next few years after I followed
Crepovani, was an intense learning experience. He took me on all his travels, and each minute of my life was a involved with learning. The arcane art of Creambic martial arts. Which involved the mind as much as the body. I had become invincible by the age of four.

I was initiated into a test of strength in the Creambic way, I fought the then champion of the Creambic clan and I beat him in a short time. The Creambic elders silently applauded my skills in their telepathic way, and they spoke among themselves and observed that I would one day be the most dreaded warrior ......

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Alchemist

it was a few years ago while i was still a bumbling youngster, in the prime of my life, more spirit than sense, that i came across a bamboo hut during a walk through the forest.

on my first glance, i disregard the place as a potential night shelter for myself. the structure looked too flimsy to offer any protection from what i was expecting latter on that night. the dark clouds looked foreboding.

while i was walking away , I heard a sound which chilled my blood. made me quickly glance behind me. I giggled when I realized that it was just a strange man laughing crazy, it was a crackling rising laugh, it sounded out worldly. It was only latter that he told me that I was the first human he had seen in a number of years, strange.

i wondered what was wrong with him. He started talking to me. At least I think he was trying to talk to me. But all I heard was strange rumbling sounds coming out of the man.

i decided to stay there that night and see what this was all about.

after a few day I slowly began to understand the words the man was talking, was surprised to realize this was a language I had spoke from the time of my birth. He started telling me his story and what a strange story it was.

what I am putting down today, on the papyrus is just part of this man’s strange story.

“I do not remember the name my biological parents had given me” he told me. “as far as my memory goes I remember being called the Alchemist” . I shuddered when I heard this. For this was a name which I have heard brave men whisper in dread.

this dread was not the dread mere mortal feel. This was a supernatural dread. A dread which is allied with the night terrors.

he continued “I was given the name Alchemist by my master, when I was less than a year old, for he had sensed and seem what my future holds for me”

“from then on, all that my master talked to me was on how to awaken the strange power which were innately part of my life. These were magical moments of my life, the joy of learning the secrets of controlling my telekinetic and clairvoyance powers”

“I became really good with the sword and I had gone beyond what the best of the martial arts students knew, why I had gone beyond what the masters knew of martial arts, and all this before I was 5”.

(to be continued)

Google Answers for free or indications of my growing paranoia

looks like the "government" has finally lifted the ban on blogger.com. ah no need to use various 3rd party tools to access the blogs.

BUT.....the last few days have been spent exploring a few options of anonymous access on the net. now that's a thought for a long term implementation.

what were the guys thinking?? when they decided to block blogspot.com blogs? but allowing access to blogger.com to update blogs?

from a few of the news reports i did check out, i believe the directive was a few certain blog urls were to be blocked, but i believe the ISP's in their wisdom decided that it was easier to block the whole thingamajig, the reason given was that they did not have tools to block specific urls. hoik.

was this a situation to simulate a electronic network attack and to test the emergency reponse procedures of the government? where they able to handle the situation? i wonder what reports are being written up about this event.

now all "they" have to do is sit down, go through all the blogs where the smart bloggers would be crowing away as to how they beat the "ban". and then next time around all "they" needs to do is block what these smart blogger did.

i am sure something else will be available the next time around.

this seems to a good method of test marketing or it looks like someone decided to use the free version of the google answers. create a situation and wait for bloggers to come up with feedback and other inputs and solutions! the power of collective wisdom and the tendency of humans to share and be happy sure is such a powerful tool for research.

for those 2 or 3 readers of my blog...did jesus really live in india?

guess, what i thought was funny in feb 2005 ,is no longer funny (blog,search and get paranoid)

heaven aint in andromeda, it has just moved into your building. (get the connection in the feb2005 article)

picasaweb

here is my experiment with the picasa web just got to upload a few pics. for the first time have uploaded a few pics of myself.

here it is
..

mumbai wet again

last few days the monsoon has broken .. and as usual flooding being reported all around. the road leading out of the housing complex i stay in, is kind of flooded. i took about 90 minutes to cover a distance of about 1 km. had to u-turn from my normal road as it was fully flooded.

and on the other road which i finally took, the water was reaching upto the bottom of the car(could hear the gentle lapping sounds of the water) since i was not doing much travelling, i used my mobile to get a few quick snaps while stuck in the "river".

generally things seems to be looking "normal" as normal can be in mumbai during the rains. no reports of scary stuff like last time..



the rest of the pics can be checkout here.

rude mumbai

mumbai has been branded rudest city in the world.
"
Mumbai Judged Rudest City In World
Mumbai is the rudest city in the world, where
door-holding, paper-picking and thanking a retail
customer is not part of the culture.

Reader's Digest magazine sent reporters to the principal
cities of each of the 35 countries where it is published
to conduct a survey of local politeness. Three tests
were employed: dropping papers in a busy street to see
if anyone would help; checking how often shop assistants
said "thank you"; and counting how often someone held a
door open.
etc..
"
i am not a native born mumbaite, i have been living here for the last 6 years. i was surprised to see this take on mumbai.

mumbai is loud and a tough place to live. but rude?

the first day i landed into mumbai, and i was shifting from the hotel to my rented house.(this was somewhere in july 2000) there was some "hard rain" and most of the streets were flooded. the taxi which naina and i were travelling in came to halt at a place where the road had was covered with about 2 and half feet of water(this was in the vertical direction!)

the taxi driver was so concerened, trying to figure out a way to get us to our new home. then we started wading through this water. as is a habit with most of us we were trying to walk on the sides of the road, the native mumbaites, came to our help asked us to walk in the middle of the road, because there would be lots of potholes, and other manmade opening on the sides of the road.

and post the last mumbai floods(july 2005), all kind of stories were published which showed the kind, helpful nature of mumbai people.

of course i do get yelled at,at the stop signs if i take more than 2 seconds to move the car after the light turns green.

the below is a kind of joke ... but is it? i am sure that mumbaikars will have a wry smile when they read it, but i am sure no one is going to be rude about this... (check the below note on being a mumbaite got this from this link)

25 Sure signs that you're a Mumbaite.

1. You say “town” and expect everyone to know that this means south of Churchgate.

2. You’re suspicious of strangers who are actually nice to you.

3. You have never been to the Gateway of India.

4. You don’t hear sirens anymore.

5. Hookers, beggars and the homeless are invisible.

6. The trains make sense.

7. Your door has more than three locks.

8. The most frequently used part of your car is the horn.

9. You consider eye contact an act of overt aggression.

10. You call an 8’ x 10’ clustered room a Hall.

11. You consider beyond Andheri as “Upstate”.

12. You think Chowpatty & Juhu beaches as “nature.”

13. You’re paying Rs 10,000 for a 1 room flat, the size of a walk-in closet and you think it’s a “steal.”

14. You’ve been to New Bombay twice and got hopelessly lost both times.

15. You spend more time each month travelling than you spend at home.

16. You haven’t heard the sound of true absolute silence since 1977, and when you did, it terrified you.

17. You take fashion seriously.

18. Being truly alone makes you nervous.

19. You have 14 different menus of Free Home Deliveries next to your telephone.

20. Going to “town” is considered a “road trip.”

21. You take a taxi to get to your health club to exercise.

22. Your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes.

23. Rs 500 worth of groceries fit in one paper bag.

24. You have a minimum of five “worst cab rides ever” stories.

25. You’ve mentally blocked out all thoughts of the city’s air quality and what it’s doing to your lungs.