Rust.In.Peace

When you've loved someone for so long...and so hard....i don't think its possible to ever totally forget....



my beloved SCG9949G.......

stained with the red that runs in my blood....and fuelled by my spirit I infused in her.....


my countenance resplendant in her every glow....

Baby beautiful.....

R.I.P

Career and Cocktail Night……

Career and Cocktail Night……

Quite a night……specialists from various field to sell their individual specialities…. a free flow of cocktails…..throughout the night…..and a formal dress code which meant most of the guys were in suits and the girls got their cocktail dresses out….all of which just paved the way for a fantastic atmosphere….



Nesh looked great in his suit…..with that tinge of retro he seems to infuse into anything he wears…..haha…purple shirt with the collar spread wide open…chest hair bared….woo hoo…!!....haha…
As expected I wasn’t about to parade in a suit….ended up in a jumper, hat and scarf combo…..bohemian to the max…..but well….tis me…



Aaah…the lankan consortium…..meet archana…our local, lankan friend….she’s nice…but she does scare me at times…….as amma would say…”Fierce ah! our girls these days….”…..yes ma….fierce indeed…
as for that animal in the foreground of the picture.......i have no comment



And ze swimmers……my fellow crackpot morons who joined me in the previously mentioned midnight, suicide swim on phillip island…..lisa, peter and barbara….



The 2 bottles of wine that were nicked…sneaked out under the cover of the bulging suits of sunit and nesh….blame it on their alcohol-driven impulse…..


And this…..is to be taken…with a very large swallow of salt…….for…

It is NOT what it looks like….haha….

Ok now that the disclaimer is out….carry on to the photo…



Haha…that’s eliza….one of the coolest people I’ve met….also one of the drunkest, smartest and most colourful…..her dad’s a rally driver, she first got drunk at 3 when one of her dad’s friends thought it would be funny to get her high and hasn’t looked back since, she’s been through a boy-friend ( now ex…) with cancer…….oh and niron…the past 3 parties I’ve been to with her there, she’s kissed a girl….

Oh and this photo is my clothestand impersonation while she draped herself on me in her pole dance pose……hmm….dodgy….

eyesore....

ooh shit...

i just had a look at my blog...and there's a major eyesore smack in the middle....


ME!

goddamn.....that hair....soooo bad......so very baaaad.....

ouch..

follicular state of affairs

I actually have hair......



yes indeedy folks....its been a while since this phenomenon of follicular growth occurred to me but...now i have hair.....


AND I HATE IT!!....

so fortunately this will be the last you will be seeing of it....for today i'm off to snip it off....

this post is more for my long suffering grandma....who has always been in throes of desperation over how all her grandsons either don't have hair or refuse to grow their hair.....

well having come here and having baulked at the price of haircuts in this damn place...(15 bucks!!!).....i figured now would be the perfect time to grow my hair...so i did.....and it looks...disgusting....i've had to actually gel it back...and i feel so sleazy....gosh.....ugh...

so ammamma...i'm sorry...but the al pacino look has to go....i promise i won't go G.I. but...well....short aiight....

Vanilla and chocolate chip.....

My hall-ies....Roberts Hall-ies.....



Pick the odd one out in this picture....hmmm???

The path i preach...

And in sydney i found a restaurant whose owner i was dying to meet...a man after my own heart he must have been...

so subtle...yet so aptly put.....and in so many ways the path i preach in life...

check it...


OM........


p.s.....read the fine print aii...or you might miss it

The sky and the sea

Just some shots i took outdoors......


Among the boulders along the coast of sydney.......


The fore-mentioned coast churning up a froth on the rocks...quite a scary sight when you're leaning over a cliff to take a shot...

Caroline Tendulkar....

Meet Caroline.....




clayton's latest cricketing sensation and when in full cricket gear...

the best penguin impersonation this side of the equator....

Mumba Australiana

I got my first taste of the Mumba Festival that is held on the banks of the Yarra River every year...a delightful festival of fun, food, frolic and of course.....


FIREWORKS!!


it took me 34 shots before i was satisfied but i finally found a stark enough shot of the night sky being ripped to shreds by these arrows of light in every shade of the spectrum....spectacular....

oh and meet what i call the IKS ( International Kurry Society )....well basically the whole lot of us who descended upon poor south yarra...


From left:......aaah forget it....too many people...

The lake

Another photo taken that night we met the Pot-ter

anyway we were stoning by the lake when he wandered along...so here's the lake....by night



its dirty, full of muck, occasionally gives off a scent of compost and even the ducks are obese.....a relative mess..........
.......by day...

but by night.......its a beauty...

Of curry puffs, chilli padi and a Hairless "Pot"-ter

oh and let me continue with some of the bunch i end up spending a lot of time with....



Centre row from left: Caroline, Anu, Nandini and......

....Jereme ( ex-chinese, now naturalised indian. jereme reminds me of one of my grandma's puffs: popiah skin on the outside but all curry on the inside...and he's a fantastic bloke)

In the back row: Nava and Pravin (the pukka chetti boy with a new-age goatee)

And crouching in the front is baby divya

and here are some of the missing people from the usual group...


thats melissa and indhu ( the resident chilli padi...small but potent...rather like my dear friend asha...and asha,you are missed )...
oh and some other random person who seems to have wandered in....

oh and talking about random people....tis another photo taken that day but with this freakshow who wandered in on us with what looked suspiciously like a joint in hand...I've taken to calling him Hairless "Pot"-ter....for obvious reasons...


He claimed to be president of the student union of one of the monash campuses and he had come to clayton campus for a students union meeting....at 11 pm at night??!!

and he also said he was doing a PhD in med/law.....


yeah right!

Show and Tell

Time to meet some people around here....

Starting with my fantastic class....



potpourri of cultures, races and nationalities....malaysians, singaporeans, indians, pakistanis, sri lankans, egyptians, botswanans.....oh and 1 aussie

just look at all those colours...haha

THE Photo.....

tis The Photo.....




I've gotten rather adept at handling my camera and I've found a new passion in taking interesting pictures but this is by far.....the best i've ever taken....



its even more impressive on a larger scale....its a fantastic desktop photo...

haha...i'm so proud of it

The island of Oz

Feels strange to think of Australia as just an island.....but well...it is.....a mother big one at that...but still just an island....

interesting how words conjure up such mental images in us.....an island probably conjures up images of a small sand patch with a coconut tree floating out at sea,.....

or at the very least....singapore...not much bigger though...

and then you realise.....australia's an island too.....

and its HUGE!!!

there are no short distances here...nothing is "nearby" the way it is in singapore....everything is super-sized comparitively......

guess singapore is rather dimunitive after all....you never realise it i don't think...things like this..... until you encounter life in a place like this...where its all so different....

The BA17 trio....

My travelling companions on BA17....that well-fated vessel of the air that brought us to this island.....


Carol, Dinesh and I.....

p.s....I have just knocked the back of my head on the backrest of the chair carol is leaning on in my hurry to get back into the picture, having set the timer on....

that would explain the pained expression on my face trying to force a smile...

that would also explain the huge grin on nesh's face...trying to force a look of sympathy...and failing...

Monash is one big bouncy castle

First impressions of monash uni......



this is the med fac at monash uni.....this is what our lessons are like....

Note to Parents: this is what you are paying $34k a year for.....

Note to Melb. Uni. people: this is what you guys are missing out.....HAH!!

Note to Abi: this is why you should get out of cedar pronto and come join me here...

Note to self: this is why you should not attempt to perform backflips with wild reckless abandon and come within half a hair on your neck of presenting the new first years with their first cadaver for examination...

FYI.....people in the picture...from left...

Peter...the great peter morris...the walking freakshow, super gymnast and the man who inticed me to join him, barbara and lisa for a midnight swim during our med camp on phillip island.......twas 12 digrees and yes i plead insanity...

the rest be random people you will meet later in this blog....

Kumar and Kumar go to the city

For us country boys from Clayton, the city was a huge and frightening place....

Full of magical and stupid things.....cars that had to keep to the left lane to turn right.....kuchi-kurra toyotas that sounded like ferraris.......and tram stops in the centre of a busy road.....

strange things...puzzling things.....


as you can see...we're both very puzzled.....

and here....our home away from home....our refuge among the chaos.....nishy's place...and thats the scarecrow they have outside.........


oh no...thats nish......oopsy daisy....

Two brave travellers

One small step for nesh...one small shuffle for me.....

that was what got us onto the train and our first brush with the autralian public transport system....on our first foray into the city....



With just the shirts on our backs ( and a plentiful supply in our bags conveniently hidden from the picture), and the far promise of a string of shadowy acquaintances at our destination ( i ended up sleeping in nish's place for some 4 nights) we set on our brave voyage....leaving the lazy ease of suburban (read: kampong) clayton for the frightening prospects of melbourne city.....




Twas fun damnit!!!

Culinary matters

Moving on to that all important factor which pervades all aspects of my existence........

FOOD!!!....haha....


tis our first meal on aussie soil.....that proverbial first bread on this new land to which we set forth to find our fortune.....
brave adventurers we may not have been but we were certainly hungry and a simple bacon and toast went a long way to satisfying us.....


Carol plays the all important display model in this ad for our first "proper" meal....dinner that first night sought at pinewood...a clump of shops just a short, freezing 20 min walk away....
In any case...that was it....a monster meat lovers special...the mother of all pizzas....thin crust, half a cow's daily milk produce worth of cheese,half of cow's daily meal worth of selected oily veggies and well.....half a damn cow..... and oh boy was it good....great start for the ozzie food industry as far as first impressions go....
little was I know to at that point that that would be and still is, one of the few meals i have actually purchased since I got here.....

I'm proud.....self-sufficence rules....

Departure Lounge Snaps

Firstly....

some pics taken at the airport.....

considering the army that converged in changi that day I doubt I've caught everyone but here are a few snippets....


The family.....pity amma had to fall in the shadow.....


aaah....a generally Rafflesian collection here aii.......


and of course....the mandatory ego shot.........

Welcome....

Heya......

tis shall remain mostly a photo blog i presume....a platform to share a visual peek of me life down under....

so scroll on down....

Prash

p.s....any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely co-incidental