digest this

Heard at the dinner table yesterday...

dad: research has shown that chewing the food thoroughly reduces obesity... blah blah blah

son: no wonder buffaloes look like slim beauty queens

mom: hahaha

baby in the hood

A purchase of four samosas and one choc drink later...

Baby walks tentatively, eyes on the ground. Her mom is holding her hand and smiling proudly. As i approach her, on my way to zeus knows where, the kid looks up to check me out. I smile. She smiles. She trips. "Woops"...

just eat it

In a perfect world, plastic bags would rot like banana peels. Seems like utopia's closer than we thought. A teenager from waterloo did just that by discovering a bunch of plastic munching bacteria.

wrong again

Raise your hands if you don't have a mobile on you. What? You all have two each? Must be for each of your ears then. Multitasking and all that...

But what i really want you to raise your hands for is if you are using a lousy mobile phone operator. Since coming to bangalore, i have had the chance to try out several of them.

In the beginning, i was young and naive. So i opted for vodafone (then known as hutch). More as if i was dragged into it since a relative of mine was using the service and he had me sign up for the same. The experience was nice. Orange clad pretty people providing good service at the hutch centers. What more could one stare at... i mean, ask for? After the initial honeymoon period, i noticed that the range used to go out whenever i entered places with roofs over my head. I had to acquire ancient kungfu stances so that the range icon on my mobile would show even a dot. Somehow, i thought that this problem was normal and that mobiles where still lagging behind wired phones. Like i said, i was young then.

After growing up overnight, i changed the service to bsnl. Now, bsnl is one of the oldest operators around and i thought it would have not have any problem providing coverage since it has had enough time to be everywhere. What i didn't expect was finding out that the local bsnl relationship center was filled with grumpy people with no knowledge of any office manners whatsoever. And to add injury to insult, i got my first expensive phone bill. Yikes!

After a few months of this, i sheepishly got back to hutch and bore along with it during its transition into vodafone (vada phone anyone?). And that's when it happened. I was looking to get myself broadband and airtel came knocking at my door as soon as they laid a line near my place. Great service and great technology. Hmmm... this honeymoon didn't show any signs of ending, i thought to myself after trying it for around two months. So i ditched vodafone for the second time. Well, technically i threw away hutch first and then vodafone later but don't let me get you snagged in the details. Quickly, got myself an airtel number and so far, the ride has been great. I miss making my weird kungfu stances though. Or at least my friends do...

NEXT

Runaway bride.
She was scared to say goodbye.
So she changed her number,
and conveniently "forgot" to inform her lover.

And i said "NEXT!!!"

The End of the Rainbow

I realized something. I knew it before but i REALLY get it now after (and currently) going through with it. And that is: when you are trying to learn/do/get something, things or people stand in the way. Now, we can stand here and argue forever why it happens so. One reason might be that people like you as you are and don't want you to change. Or that obstacles, like mountains, are there just because they are there. But in the end, they are just there to make you sure whether you want something real bad or not. If you don't, you will fall by the wayside. But if you want it real bad, why give a damn about the things that stand in the way of you and the end of the rainbow?

The Shuffled Music Interview

Lemonade had this nice tag up. You put your mp3 player on random shuffle mode, ask a question and let the player answer by what song it plays next. And since there's nothing more lazier than getting your mp3 player to give your interview, i am game:

"If someone says 'Is this okay?', you say?"
Escape - Enrique Iglesias
Run boy, run!!! Run from the stupid questions.

"What would best describe your personality?"
Skater Boy - Avril Lavigne
Couldn't have said it better.

"What do you like in a guy/girl?"
Easier to Run - Linkin Park
What???

"How do you feel today?"
Numb - Linkin Park
(Snaps awake from mind numbing experience)

"What is your life's purpose?"
A Different Beat - Boyzone
I came. I saw. I went into the toilet.

"What is your motto?"
I Never Loved You Anyways - The Corrs
Must be just lust then.

"What do your friends think of you?"
Aicha - Outlandish
My friends think that am more outlandish than aicha-ish though

"What do you think of your parents?"
Desert Rose - Sting
Something to do with the fact that these folks raised me up in the friggin desert called Sharjah?

"What do you think about very often?"
Only When I Sleep - The Corrs
Hah! Thats right people. I only think when i sleep which is a good thing since i sleep 70% of the day

"What is 2+2?"
Dance Inside - The All-American Rejects
Man, maths makes me go K.R.A.Z.Z.Y... The only thing i aced while i graduated 12th grade too.

"What do you think of your best friend?"
Complicated - Avril Lavigne
Yeah, the fact that i left old tom back in Dubai. We need to do some serious thinking on solving this distance thingy, buddy

"What do you think of the person you like?"
Bring Me to Life - Evanesence
Yeah baby, yeah!

"What is your life story?"
It Ends Tonight - The All-American Rejects
It ends tonight when i go to sleep.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Sexy, Naughty, Bitchy - Tata Young
Er... I think my mp3 player confused me with some of the girls I am dating now ;)

"What do you think when you see the person you like?"
From the Inside - Linkin Park
Something happens inside... love is in the air... hormones are raging in the.... ahem!

"What do your parents think of you?"
Paint It Black - Vanessa Carlton edition
You're looking at the black sheep of the family, my friend.

"What will you dance to at your wedding?"
Tears in heaven - Eric Clapton
Hmmm. A sign from heaven telling me not to get married?

"What will they play at your funeral?"
All Rise - Blue
You heard it people. All Rise cause Dead Rejoy's passing through.

"What is your hobby/interest?"
Fearless - Bryan Adams
I dunno but my friends seem to think that i have too strong a stomach for walking right through speeding traffic and the even more dangerous recklessness of striding up to a beautiful girl and getting it on.

"What is your biggest secret?"
Every Other Time - LFO
Too many secrets every other time

"What do you think of your friends?"
In the End Remix - Linkin Park
That's where i will be dudes/duddettes to make up for all the times when i was supposed to be there in the beginnings and the middles :P

"What should you post this as?"
Crash and Burn - Savage Garden
Burn iPod! Crash and Burn in hell!!! Heh.

Questions over already? I was just starting to have fun. Oh crap. (Switches of the music and goes to do some thinking aka sleeping)
PS: if you like this tag, run with it people

Of Men and Their Mice

While walking to the bus stop today, humming to meri kahani playing on my ipod-lookalike, i came across a guy peeing next to the wall. Since four years of exposure to this event have made me feel numb to anything remotely related to waste management on the streets, it would have resulted in yours truly walking by with out a second glance except that there was a kid perched on his shoulders and looking down at his father's act of manhood. Since i was trying to maintain my distance from this odd scene, i imagined the conversation that would have gone on between peeing dad and peeping son:

son: What are you doing, dad?
dad: the same thing you do early in the morning, son.
s: aren't u supposed to do it in the toilet?
d: but son, this is the great indian freedom similar to our right to vote, free speech and to hide our tax rupees from the collector.
s: but wouldn't the wall start to smell?
d: see son, this is also a symbolic gesture. We want to advertise to society that we are really men and we can do it standing up.
s: (takes out mobile phone, activates video cam and starts recording the "water gate" scandal)
d: what u doing son?
s: i just want to advertise this to the world on youtube.com, dad
d: (dad disappears faster than rajnikanth could flick the cigarette to his mouth)

Debugging and The Art of Saving Your Ass

This reminded me of a similar experience while in college. I had written a program for one of my advanced programming practical exam and it worked but i couldn't figure out for the life of me why it always printed "Segmentation fault" (SF) at the end. When the professor came to check whether the program was working (and hence assign the marks), i calmly ran the program. The program was executing and spitting out various results and the professor was nodding his head all along (like a seasoned rap star) until the SF came out. He stopped his head-nodding and slowly lifted his finger (thankfully not his middle one) and asked me "Rejoy, why don't you explain to me how you got this error". So i looked at him, gave my best devilish grin and said "Actually, i typed in:

printf("Segmentation fault\n");

at the end of the program." (Meaning that i deliberately made the program print SF). The guy actually roared with laughter and clapped me on the shoulder. I think i will save this answer for one of my job interviews ;-)

Twinkle twinkle little star

Him: ... and you see that star over there?
Her: Oh! It looks beautiful.
Him: Thats the pole star. Its a lot like you. You have given a new direction to my life.... (utter gibberish follows followed by a repeat of the geeky but romantic "star connecting" routine from the movie "A Beautiful Mind")
Her: How romantic darling! Thank you for this wonderful evening gazing at Google Sky. tc... byee
Him: laterz

he logs off... she logs off...

Happy International Women's Day

Its just a matter of time when you get to hear what people make of you and your ways. Its like chinese whispers but somehow these "whispers" reach you intact. So a few days back, I learn that some of my colleagues had some funny views on me talking to girls. Yeah, I am crazy you know since women come from another galaxy and its not normal for a guy (read Indian guy) to be able to strike up a conversation with women. Here's what I heard:

1. Guys green with jealousy: Of course, this was not explicitly said but it was obvious in the way they gave each other those significant looks when I walked by.
2. One guy comes up to me and throws me the "you only talk with girls" line: And I slowly look him up and down and ask myself "Is he trying to tell me that he has boobies too?"
3. My girl friends (not girlfriends) giving me the "hey Rejoy, go talk to them" dialogue when a young thing in skirt passes by: Hey! I don't have the time to chase every friggin model who sashays down the catwalk. Besides, I go by quality unlike the quantity of boyfriends in your mobile contact list :-P
4. That I was gay: Ha! And this from the guys who spend all their life hanging out only with other guys. Enough said.

my december

Well... i don't think i will start this post for apologizing for not updating my stuff over here. Heck! It would be like being sorry for not having eaten strawberry ice-cream when i was swimming in thick-drippin-chocolate-ice-cream all this while (PS: strawberry's not my flavor of the "any month of the year"). But then my gentle readers want to know what's up in my life(or at least i will pretend that you do want to know. Think positive and all, you know?). So here's a small list of what i can remember so far:

1. Grooving with my colleagues: There comes a time when you realize that you are spending half your life in the cubicle. When you are filled with that over-flowing knowledge, you do one of two things: (a) you gripe, complain and make a total mess of your face with that god-damned frown. (b) Or you make the most of it. As in, you drink gallons of office water, tea, etc. You get to know everyone in the office (such that even security personnel breaks into a warm smile when they see you). Extra points if you can walk up to the opposite/preferred sex and strike a conversation. Extra, extra points if you can stay cool and make them laugh. You work so hard that you earn two years of experience with every one you spend in your firm. Hmmm... am getting carried away here and i better stop before you guys start seeing a workaholic giving a million excuses for not having a life ;).

2. Christmas with family: Nothing beats having Dad and Mom come over and spend christmas with you. And its extra fun when the Mom in question is a whiz in the kitchen. She even made those superb chaat in between cooking up a stormy meat buffet. And not to mention the great choir singing at the local church celebrations. I am sure the lead singing lady had broken a few hearts along the way ;)

3. Free therapy courtesy of little sis: When you have to act like a man and keep all those stuff inside you, having a little sis who understands is one big life-saver. So i poured all my sob stories to this lady who is training to be a psychologist. Hey girl! You might be able to put all this stuff in your resume anyways. Am your number one cush-tomer, right? Loads of money comin up when i get some in my pocket, k? And watching "Om Shanti Om" wasn't bad either. I didn't expect you to enjoy it more than me. (sniff sniff). Where the Fish is my hanky when i need it. I better stop before i get overly nostalgic.

4. Falling in love (or somethin close to it): Somethin like this had already drained me out while i was in college. Now getting up every day is a chore cause i see this awful question on the wall every time i open my eyes: "When will i see her again?"

With that i bade a bitter-sweet farewell to 2007. Wishing you guys a wacky 2008. Letsssss. PPPPParty!!!

A Dreamy Slashfest

Last night i had this weird dream. I saw myself, in the first-person-shooter-game-style, walking around and all of a sudden i pop these adamantum claws from my hands a la wolverine. I gaze at it, startled at first, but i grin when i see some bad-guy-type of fella running towards me and i tell him "Time to get slashed into itsy bitsy ribbons, bub". Well... i wished i had said something like that anyways, the way heros are supposed to do and all. Anyways, after the carnage scene is over, i hang around looking for more stuff to try my new claws on but am suddenely confronted by my clone smoking one of those cigars. Contrary to cinematic expectations, he's not here to challenge me to a me vs me fight, psychological or otherwise. He just stands there, in the third person, and smokes the damn cigar while looking at me with one of those "Bet you don't have the guts to smoke despite all that tough guy posturing", and i wake up all of a sudden, sweaty faced and panting hard.

And then this still sleep-fuzzed brain gets into analysis overdrive. Number one. Explaining away the claws is easy. Almost everybody wants to be in logan's heavy canadian branded, probably made in china, boots so thats a piece of cake. Number Two. But since i am one of them non-smokers it looks like, even in its house-keeping and filing-away process, my brain couldn't make my dream of being my fav x-man even virtually true along with the fact that i am supposed to be blowing smoke if that has to happen. So it, divides me into two to keep me happy while at the same time getting me to wake up cause you know, the memory spring cleaning is over for the day (or night) dude and you better rise and shine, sonny. It was only later that i remembered that since wolverine has this high regenerative ability that it didn't matter whether he smoked or not since his lungs would repair itself into that of a new born baby's faster than you can say "adamantum balls". So, if you managed to put him into one of those huge hospital scanners, which seem to be used for almost every other diagnosis whether in the movies or in real life, and you made him smoke his cigars while zooming into his lungs area, you would see his lungs turning black and then his mutation kicking in and turning it bright healthy red (yellow? white? somebody with the necessary medical knowledge, help me here).

So, in the parallel universe where our mutants are having fun and getting a piece of each other, you can imagine the disclaimer on the cigarette ads: "Smoking is a major cause of... blah blah... except if you are born packaged with the quick healing chromosome. So to all you unlucky ones, gnya gnya :P"

With that split resolved, i go back to sleep and get ready to enjoy the rest of the dream, blazing cigars, a stronger than steel, six bladed beast, smelling blood in the cold night sky and running towards his prey composed of gun totting army men from the Weapon X program. AWOOOO!!!

The Look and The Way

When you go places, you notice this one thing. If you are a girl (and you don't need to be overly hot for this to happen in India), you get a lot of stares when you are walking the streets. If you are a guy, you catch other people (or yourself) doing the same. I do it too but i have perfected the art of subtle observation to perfection and would like a lot more guys to go about it the same way. When most guys give "the look" its more like as if they were panting with some sort of animal lust and wear a gaze so intense to put even super-man, with his X-ray vision, to shame. So here's the solution. When a girl passes by, look coolly at her (eyes NOT popping out) and then look away after a few seconds. If you really need a second "helping", go for it but keep it to few seconds at a time and not as if you will die there staring at her forever. And if she sees you looking, give a gentle smile (showing 32 salivating dracula like dripping fangs doesn't count). That way, she knows you are admiring her and not about to do some unmentionables at that exact moment. Try it out... she might actually smile back.

By the way, this sort of stuff used to piss me off until i realized that i should be grateful that at least men were not staring at me THAT way :)

City City, Bang Bang And Boom Boom

Diwali's here and the competition is up. The race is on to see who's the best city in terms of most decibels produced with (deep) respect to crackers exploding, drunkeness (minds imploding) and general nuisance. To prepare for this situation, i had readied my mind to acquire that state of perpetual numbness to irritating, asynchronous sounds. To be frank, i really had not much of a choice in the matter (refering to the Noise Lessons here). My gentle, regular readers have already read my post on the many advantages of living literally under construction so i will not bore you with the same details but will only link it here. And here again in order to give you double the chance in case you decide to close your eyes and click randomly on the screen and let fate decide on whether you should read the dusty, web-covered post. But i digress, for the nth time, so lets get back to more digressing later on. Ahem! Yes, yes... regarding my sound therapy, here's the list:

- Dogs barking in the neighborhood at random. And damned Pomenarians barking 3 and a 1/2 times the normal output of the yellowish-brown color fits all standard sized street dog.
- People yelling (AAAY!) to talk to someone regardless of whether both of them are standing a quarter of a kilometer apart or are ear to ear.
- Homo sapiens yelling louder when they are using their cellphones.
- Guys trying to be macho and reving up their bikes for five minutes. Wroom wroom. Extra points to global warming here.
- Traffic and the ready "Horn Ok Please" attitude.
- Near my home, a regular BOOM goes off in the background every fifteen minutes or so. Don't know what made me decide it was a canon sounding the time. Furthur research, which was simply passing the area courtesy of public transport, yielded the fact that the place was some kind of stone mine with loads of dynamite necessary to make smaller morsels for the lorries to transport.
- And the list would be incomplete without the in-your-ear music, broadcasted non-stop whether its your neighbor's tv, his/her recently acquired car or ancient sound system, marriage function, funeral or simply, for the heck of it, radio volume on max.

Advantages of the treatment:

- Could stand the noise generated on double diwali (both south-indian and north-indian).
- When someone on the road lights a cracker, didn't even need to mentally brace for the explosion.
- All related music and lights suddenely acquired background (and hence unimportant, taken for granted) status.
- Of course, my trusty headphones did share in the burden too (both therapy and reality wise). Its all about teamwork, you know :)

So here's wishing you a Happy Diwali, my friend!

PS: Inspite of all the irritations, the huge sky fireworks were awesome!!!

Under Construction

Currently i am staying in this rented apartment right in the middle of a small village in bangalore. In the morning, it looks all breezy and peaceful. But, come nighttime and thats when the creeps come crawling out and infesting the seedy local bar and shooting out unmentionables around the area and emptying their stomachs in public for extra effect. Its been two years here and am itching to move on. Add to that the fact that my landlord suddenly decides to add a few more floors to his building in which i am meek tenant, and i am close to selling my kidney to get me some money to fund my driving away into the sunset dream. Here are a few of the side effects of living in/near an under-construction sign post:

1. You pick up a book to de-stress or get some learning done and the laborer decides to do some hammering done, at exactly the same moment. So its like, bang bang bang and am trying hard to not pick a chainsaw and run screaming on to the roof from where the culprit is bugging me.

2. A few days later, i acquire the knack of relegating the background noise outta the way of my concentration and i get comfy with the routine. When evening sets and the workers go home, it suddenly dawns on me that i can't get any reading done in the silence. Oh crap... now have to re-learn doing stuff in the quiet.

3. The landlord hires this painter who thinks that he's Karnataka's answer to sonu nigam. The guy's clearly in love with his voice so he starts belting out recent kannada hits to the nuisance of good old me. After waiting for a while and praying that he gets his tongue twisted into a knot or somethin, i decided to do something 'bout it and so i step out and tell the guy in hindi: "Ghana acha hai magar hum idhar padtha hai... tho volume please kum karo..." (The singin is nice but am studying here so please lower the volume buddy). The guy says "okay okay" and after a few seconds of peaceful quiet, he starts singing louder. Hmmm... he must have thought that i liked his singing so much that i asked him to increase the volume. Oh well! Atleast one of us is happy, i thought to myself and muttered a few magic words to mute out the extra noise.

4. Mud slides falling on you when you are all showered, dressed and stepping out to go for work. (Cough cough!). Hey dude... am hyper-allergic to dust, man!

Some one get me outta here!!!

Gone To The Dogs... Singular In This Case And What A Singular Case This Is!

So i get up one Sunday morning. The birds are chirping, the buffalos are mooing and all is right with the world (cue for a random soothing beethoven concerto). I take a warm shower while singing the latest and greatest from himesh buddy's hits (and hence driving away all single and multiple celled organisms in the radius of half a kilometer. Forunately yours truly is not inhabiting a very prosperous community and so there's no danger of breaking wine glasses here). I hum the same tune in low key while dressing up so as not to drive away my parents who are waiting for me in the next room so that we could go to church together. And then it happens... i step out to get my shoes and notice that (horror of horrors...) that there's only my left shoe is there in front of me. I quickly put on my sherlock holmes hat and start searching around the vicinity for the missing object and if possible the guilty culprit. Nopes... no sign of former-latter and i am about to explode into some choice unreadables... and thats when dad walks up to me and hands me the previously-lost-but-now-found shoe minus some bits of leather round the leg input part. What have we here? I zoom to the part where the bits of the shoe are missing and it looks like some random stray dog had adopted the thing to be its play toy of the day (or night, in this case). Out of all the shoes spread like tantalizing mines between the gate and the door, the creature had the sense of mind to swoop on the most expensive one on which i had shelled out more than 1.5k. And it lasted more than 2 years too and... then i burst out laughing when i realize that the brand of the shoe was "red tape" of all things. Yeah right! If anything had to go to the dogs, then that would be one of the tops in the list. With that out of the way, i rub my hands and wiggle my toes while thinking up what my next pair of shoes should be (no laces and plain black will do, i guess). With a smirk on my face, i put on a pair of "back ups" (you know, the ones one wears when one feels like giving one's feet a suicide mission). Ah well... what's life without a few pains in the you-know-where. Provides good blog fodder though (as my good-old-blogger friends already know and what our bad-new-newbies will find out very soon ;).

The Mallu From The Middle East

The prerequisite to understanding this post is to read hem's "paean to the city of sharjah"... man! i wish i had more friends with whom i could get nostalgic over that city... here's some more comparisons w.r.t. my... er our sharjah:

First steps: check!

Fell in love in: check!
It was a one-way love: uncheck!

Malayali-run cafe's: check! and how come u r skinny while i grew to weigh the equivalent of a teenage elephant?

Exile in school: CHECK! damn desert ;)

Fire, quakes and explosions: nopes... must be just u then, hems

Alcohol: nopes again... i had to wait to get to bangalore to get the relevant experience

Mobile street: that reminds me of the street across the roundabout facing mega mall...

Censorship: grrrr!

Academic learning: yup... big check! and dad needed a big cheque too :)

Bachelors and underpaid laborers: sick and thats why we ran out of living near rolla square, i guess

Safety: this was an excellent feature... i loved it!

Platonic hugs: i was too huge to try it out there... hmmm... was this why mom and dad wanted me to remain horizonatally challenged?

Piercings: nopes

First job: does an internship count?

Accidents: one and only one and it just scratched the paint job on my car... the opposing party had to let us go since they couldnt find a dent on theirs

Vows: check! hell, i broke a lot of vows...

Languages: learnt hindi everytime i hanged around those urdu cab drivers... wish i had paid more attention to those arabic classes though

Tea and AC: hehe... i totally get this one

Photographs: egad! i dont ever wanna let anyone see my childhood photos... i look SOOO geeky

Running away: when i left, i never looked back but i keep returning to you... after all, it was you who made me the mallu-from-the-middle-east...

Meet The Parents

My parents do come down to Bangalore now and then to see how their only-begotten-son is doing. During one of their first visits, i had just lost a couple of kilos and was looking like a refugee camper (65 kgs was too little i would admit to myself later), which left pop and mom devasted. Since then, they used to always enquire about my eating habits and mom used to try pumping me up to my former shape every time they visit me. In a way that was a good thing cause i now know how much i should weigh in order to not have relatives jumping on my head to terrorize me on my weight loss and to not look like i am going to disappear into thin air ;). So, i made a vow to remain in the 75 to 80 category and told them about it which, thank the Light, reduced their fussing. So, when they came down here this time, they were relieved to see that i was not making any empty promises. Ofcourse, that didn't stop mom from commenting how tired my face looked to which i retorted that body-parts don't shrink randomly but do so altogether. Seems like my mouth's not gonna go small any time soon :P.

And then there are the lighter moments when we get together. Here's a few which this time and that made me roar with laughter:

1. We were travelling in those big red luxury volve public buses here and Pappa accidently lifted his leg to rest it on the opposite seat which was facing him. I tapped his foot lightly and said "Pappa, we are not at home". Mummy was trying hard to control her laughter and Pappa was starting to turn a shade of beetroot red :).

2. We were visiting our relatives (mom's sis's family to be exact) and my little cousin was playing hard-to-eat-the-lunch. So mom performed one of those "crow eats the food" trick to get Deol to gulp the food down. Here's how its done and am sure it might come in handy if you have been trying to get your own kids to eat their greens:

mom (hand outstretched with rice rolled into a small ball and eyes-closed): "Better eat the food or the crow might eat it"

Deol swoops and eats it

mom (after waiting a few moments for deol to make his getaway opens her eyes and exclaims): "uhoh! Seems like the crow has gotten the food!"
By now, the "victim" has gotten the gist of the game and he/she plays the part of the "crow" according to mom's script :).

3. And then there was the time when Deol literally climbs up on my back to try all sort of his spiderman inspired stunts. During one such dare-devilry, he notices that i have this small spot at the back of my head where i am starting to go bald. So he announces the same in this very matter of fact voice and tries to close the gap by (and this is the only way i can say it without making it sound weird) tugging at my hair in a particular direction :)

Ah! Family... its all worth it in the end...

Goodbye Robert And Thanks For All The Books!

The unfortunate and untimely demise of Robert Jordan, author of the acclaimed and/or much criticized Wheel of Time fantasy series (depending on which side of the fence you are sitting on) on September 16, 2007...... man! i can't get past the damn formality so here goes the casual one: We will miss you Robert and just hope that whoever finishes book 12 will make it worth the read... and since you were kind enough to think of us, your readers, before you went away, by making sure someone got to know how you wanted The Book to end, we would like to proclaim you a Swell Dude and bless you in your own words:

"The Light illumine your soul, and may you shelter in the Creator's hand untill you are born again"

... and when you are born again, do write your next series "in a more linear approach" just like you regretted not doing ;)

God bless!

RJ's blog:
http://www.dragonmount.com/RobertJordan/

Slashdot's tribute to the man
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/09/17/0243230.shtml