October was the busiest month so far and I took the longest blog break this time. If I don’t do something regularly I may end up stop doing it forever, so let me keep this going. I have started some posts during this period, but if I don't finish it off in one hard push, next day I may deem it as silly, pointless, or too negative and abandon it.

Meanwhile I have been discovering some new things to keep myself amused. First is Friends – TV series. I totally love it now. I wouldn’t have believed it if two years ago somebody told me that I will like it. I didn’t like shows where they insert audience laugh every 30 seconds as if they are giving cue for viewers that it is time to laugh. It is now used as a way to de-stress everyday. If you just overlook the fact that most of them are dirty jokes and all everybody does is dating somebody or other, it is very enjoyable. Brilliantly written, each character perfectly fits in and it is just something which totally clicked into a perfect groove. At times enough to make you roll with laugh.

English Premier League: It has everything. Drama, Suspense, Glamour and great actors. These people love the game very much or rather just love to be crazy about it. I used to watch Spanish league on and off because of Real Madrid and their star line-up- Ronaldo, Beckham, Sidane and group. But now, I get a free newspaper and 10 minutes of time in the morning (between stations) to read sports pages and get updated about the scores and game. Also once in a week, in a capsule, Match of the day with magnificent Gary Linekar. I know all the big names now and the fun is just starting. Watching sports gives this special kind of feeling - taking sides subconsciously, feeling the disappointment of loss and joy of a massive win, kinship with fellow fans and something common to discuss with people having nothing in common. When you hear somebody affectionately saying "what a waste of money this boy Rooney is" after he hit his debut hat-trick or at the end of a pointless meeting when somebody says “all that can wait. Now I will just go home, put on my red shirt and watch the game”, it just feels good.

Another of my fixations in recent past is “Serious” reading – it is something which I am not able to shake off after some miserable failures. I have been reading truckloads of Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, Robin Cook, Clive Cussler, Michael Crichton, John Grisham and others during college. There used to be a pay per book library in Trivandrum called Elloor. It charges 10% of book’s price as rental; I guess this is a common practice in many metropolitan private libraries renting English books. So paperback books used to come cheaper and that too old ones have reduced prices, so save up from the college expenses for this. Before that it was Trivandrum Public library which had books with red or green hard cover with thoroughly dusted pages which became familiar to me as the colour of a library “book”. All these fictions (crime, mystery, action, world war, spies, law, a bit of fantasy and sci-fi etc) are without doubt interesting to read – so called thrillers or pulp fiction. But then I read some great ones once in a while like “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and those lightweight philosophical ones like Ayn Rand’s, then I think I was wasting time reading spy stories and it is time to grow up. After getting into job around 5 years ago, I had stopped reading altogether. Lately this serious reading thing started, so recently tried my hand at Umberto Eco, “Forrest Gump” etc but couldn’t even finish which is rare for me – not to finish something even if it is utterly boring. Need to decide which is better - “if you read, it should be for pleasure” or “pulp reading is like junk food”.

I think it is not yet time to make my decision to go back to murder mysteries yet. I am on the lookout for some true pleasures like “To Kill a Mocking Bird”, “Catcher in the Rye” or some lightweight philosophical ones. I haven’t got what is meant exactly by contemporary classics, but it sounds like what I want. So now fishing in Croydon central library which seems to have some good ones.