Odyssey Complete & Truncated!

Yesterday was the popular Odyssey quiz in Madras. My regular team mate and myself went to Madras by Lalbagh for the quiz, where we were joined by another alumnus who lives in Madras.

The train journey as most train journeys of mine go, was eventful. First I went and sat in the row behind that I was supposed to. Lalbagh express does not have nos on the walls of the train so that you can readily identify where your seat is. The nos are behind the seat. Since I had a window seat, I asked this uncle about his no, thinking he may be sitting in mine! He replied rather grumpily, as if I had asked for his daughter's hand in marriage! Anyways correction happened. I did go and sit in the right place. Later I heard the man expound at length on Indian philosophy and Tamil literature. His son was an M.tech.... blah blah blah! He also mentioned that he had about 100,000 books and that his son was not very keen on them. Maybe, I would have asked for his daughter's hand in marriage if he had had one! Our uncle was reciting verses in Sanskrit & Tamil impromptu on various topics.

I began reading The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, which I had bought almost 2 years ago, in Mumbai on the footpath. It is a roaring read. I could barely keep myself from laughing every once in a while. And although my fellow passengers could see I was reading a book, they were still intrigued by my guffawing all through. How can you control yourself when you read a book which starts off with why there is no expression such as As beautiful as an airport, simply because airports are as ugly as they can get? They are full of frustrated people who have missed flights, have been waiting, lost baggage, etc... I have not read the other Dirk Gently work which is the The Holistic Detective Agency, but now shall definitely read that.

And oh, now for the quiz for which I went to Madras! Sorry Affair! We made 18 on 35, which was 4 short of the qualification for the finals. Our grief was shared by him and a few others. And to add to our misery we negated 2 answers of our own, I forgot a repeat and we chose a wrong answer when we had 2 to pick from, for one of the answers! Not a good start to the year. But what the hell! I met another friend of mine from Infosys days after nearly 5 years. I had some splendid filter coffee at Saravanas and then spent some of my evening in the company of a lovely lady. To top it off, I met another old friend from Bangalore and his friends at a restuarant called Karaikudi in Besant Nagar, which was having an off day on service. Not recommended if you are a vegetarian. But then an old friend & a member of the team which were the eventual runners up in the quiz also caught up with us at the station and we had a lovely chat till we discovered that our bloody bogie was at one end of the platform and that end was away from us!

So much for having a nice time!

Among other things, we saw the new Sportstar in tabloid format and it sucks on content, but looks great. Also costs Rs.8. Definitely not worth my money. But the issue I bought had an ad for BSNL broadband which has a file named lillyflash.wmv being downloaded and a family in front of a pc! The above mentioned abominable friend of ours went bonkers after seeing this! So I guess it was worth Rs 8.

Another rendezvous with someone went missing from our schedule as did a chance at seeing the proshow at Saarang!

Another day, another result.

The title is a tribute to 'the complete and unabridged' books that we read when we were young and impressionable!