Tag: New York

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Day 143: I can’t breathe (The return of the Separation Anxiety)

I can’t breathe because I have too much to do. I can’t sleep ‘coz the world won’t wait. Okay, that last line is from an Oasis song, but I really can’t sleep. I have only 2 days left and I have to fit half a room full of stuff into two bags and then sleep enough to not fall sick and then go to office and then go to dinner at my friends place in fucking queens and then do some last minute shopping and then sleep again and then go to office again and then get drunk again and say a decent goodbye to this city and wake up in time to catch my flight the next day. You see, I’m going to mess something up. I’m going to forget something. It’s inevitable. I just had a glass of brandy with warm water to put me t sleep. Luckily that always does the trick.

Good night.

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Day 140

I’m coming home next week. Six days and a few hours from now I’ll be stepping off that plane. I’ve been kinda down lately and so for the past two days I’ve been doing what the Americans do when they’re down. No, not drinking, shopping. I shopped so much that I don’t know if they’ll let me take my bags on the plane without a hassle. I have nothing more to do in New York City, I’ve done as much as I could. Besides, all the friends I made here have moved on. There’s too many people in New York who’re just passing through. I’ve realised that a lot of people my age move around a lot. There’s not that many of us that can name one city as home. I don’t really have anyone left to say goodbye to here anymore. I still need to say one last goodbye to the city, but it’s too soon for that. I love this city. That’s a bold thing to say because I’ve been here only 5 months. I’m sure that this place isn’t like anywhere else in the world. It’s the center of the world in many ways. If you’re anything like me, you will love this city too. I’m actually surprised at how infrequently I’ve been lonely here even though I knew nobody here when I came and I’ve been here a whole five months.

This place doesn’t seem new anymore, I’m used to the sights and sounds now. I don’t know if I can explain this to you well enough but for my first few months here, everything seemed strange. The cars, the buildings, the trees, the highways, the weather… They were all such a stark contrast to what I’ve been used to seeing. Now, I can imagine driving on the right side of the road just as well as I can imagine driving on the left. When we rented a car and went for a road trip two months ago I turned onto the wrong side of the road thrice. I haven’t forgotten Bombay at all though. I can close my eyes and imagine it in just as much detail as I ever could.

I still have some shopping and a lot of packing and planning to do. I’ll be busy most of this week. Time will fly. I’ll spend 5 days in office not doing much and killing time and pretending like I’m doing work because I’ve gotten really good at that over the years. I’ll be back before you know it. That doesn’t say much, because obviously, I will be there before you know it. If you knew I was there before I was there then you’d be wrong. I’ll be there soon. Sunday evening. And then on Monday if I’m not completely dead after not having gotten enough sleep on the flight I plan to drive around the city just to see if anythings changed. You should come with me, if you’re interested in driving around the western suburbs. If you can drive me around then that’s even better. And then on Tuesday, I’ll go to office and tell them I’m leaving as soon as they’ll let me. Honestly, I’m not just saying that, I really will. And then a month later, I’ll have to get down to doing all those things I’ve been saying I need to do when I quit my job. I don’t know if I’ll get the time but at least I’ll try. Things never work out so well. I’m already twenty-three now and I don’t really know where the past few years went. I always thought I’d be doing something fun by the time I’m this old.

I don’t know about this year. Two thousand and eleven. I don’t like the way it sounds and the feeling it leaves in my mouth when I say it. Two thousand and ten was supposed to be right and look what happened to it. I’m not complaining at all about having been in New York for five months of it, but that everything else wasn’t as good as it should have been. Which again doesn’t mean it was bad. In any case, lets hope I’m wrong about two thousand and eleven. I’ll see you soon.

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Day 134: The Blizzard

There was a huge blizzard across most of the north-east of the USA yesterday. There’s still a foot or two of snow covering everything. It snowed like hell (or just the opposite if hell’s supposed to be hot) all night. I had a good excuse to not got to office today and to slide on my ass on the hill in the park near my house. My excuse for not going to office was that the trains were not operating up to the station closest to my house. The trains run underground until just about half a kilometer from this station after which they run above ground. My super dedicated roommate went to work and walked about half an hour in the snow to get to the next station. I stayed at home and checked the status of the trains and chatted with friends and uploaded pictures on facebook. Around noon they cleared enough snow to extend the train service till the station closest to my house but it made no sense going to office then. I later found out (on twitter) about this community snowball fight at Madison Square Park , which is just a little further than my office and gobbled up my lunch and gathered my camera and a package that I had to drop in the post office for a friend and headed off to brave the snow. I don’t want to make a point in this blog post today, I don’t see a point in making a point. You can infer whatever you want.

Because of all the mess the snow had made, I got there only around 3:20 (the snowball fight was supposed to be at 2:30) and got there in time to see everyone queued up at the shake shack for hot chocolate. In the end, it didn’t matter because the whole city looked real pretty covered in snow and I could roam around and enter whichever cafe I felt like for hot chocolate. I’d attach pictures but I’m too lazy to do it right now because it’s dinner time and I just had a very strong glass of home made long island ice tea.

I enjoy days with blizzards and snow storms and torrential rainfall and floods and other such things more than other days. I’m sure people die and people use the opportunity to break in and steal and people get hurt and people are miserable and countries and corporations lose millions in productivity and repair but I’m happier. I’ll also go out in the flood or the blizzard and risk my health and camera just to watch and take pictures and be a part of it. I don’t know why, but I feel a little sorry for you if you just sit in the comfort of your home waiting for it to pass and everything to return back to normal. It feels a bit like I wait through the normal days waiting for the next natural calamity.

P.S. I’m coming back in 12 days!

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Day 114: The cold

edit: I wrote this post about a week ago but I never made it public it because I didn’t like it and it seemed incomplete. I’m posting it now because I have to either make it public or delete it otherwise it’ll just get forgotten about and lose its relevance and be as good as deleted.

Dear Bombay,

It’s been a while since I wrote anything, but since I’m way over my annual average of four posts this year this is nothing to worry about. I decided in advance that I won’t use the word “bored” in the blog post at all. If you’ve been listening to me for long enough you’ll know that I use this word too much and it’s too mild a word for what I feel at the moment. To begin with, I will tell you about the cold. It snowed yesterday and New York City looks very pretty when it snows. Snow is quite awesome. The only problem with snow is that it requires the temperature to be below zero. The cold isn’t anything more than inconvenient and I guess after spending a winter or two here you’d get used to it, but it’s pretty damn inconvenient. When I first step outside with my sweatshirt and jacket and gloves and skull cap on, it doesn’t seem so bad. Then in the next 5-15 seconds, depending on how windy it is, my clothes lose most of the heat they’re holding and I realise it’s cold. Then for the next minute or two my body tries to maintain it’s temperature even on non-vital parts and I realise that it’s fucking cold. About half way through this my eyes will water a little, again if it’s windy enough. After that, my body gives up on heating non vital parts, which are mostly on my face because every other part of me is covered up. After about 5 minutes more I won’t really feel cold anymore but my nose might run a little. After that, I’ll start slurring in my speech just like as if I was drunk because most of my face is numb. After that, it’s all the same as long as I’m on my feet. I can’t imagine what would happen if I sat down for long enough outside. It’s not really considered an option.

So you see, the cold’s an inconvenience. It makes going outside uninviting. And staying indoors for too long, I’ve already told you how that’s not good for me at all. You know how if you don’t do any physical activity for long enough you feel fat and lazy? Well, my mind feels fat and lazy right now. New York gets only around 9 hours of daylight this time of the year and I pretty much spend all of those 9 hours rotting in office. As a consequence, my mind feels fat, lazy and rotten. So much so that it might just burst out of my head.

Update: I’m kinda used to the cold now but the thing about New York is that right from the end of September it gets 5 degrees Celsius colder every two weeks or so, which is just about as long as it takes me to get used to how cold it is. But it’s 0 degrees today and I just went down for a smoke and I felt like I was wearing too much clothing. My mind doesn’t feel as rotten anymore because I spent all day playing around with the major, minor pentatonic and blues scales on the guitar. I’ve had a guitar lying around for 6 years now but I didn’t know any scale other than the minor pentatonic before this week.

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Day 90: Thirteen-twenty-firsts

Dear Bombay,

You’re probably wondering what thirteen-twenty-firsts means. Yes, it means that I’m done with thirteen of twenty-one parts of my stay in New York. Now you’re probably wondering why it’s thirteen-twenty-firsts when it should be thirteen-twelfths. My stay here’s been extended. I was supposed to be back last week, but as you can see, I’m not. My flight back is now booked for the 8th of January, and that brings up the total time that I’ll stay here to 21 weeks. 147 days. To tell you the truth I’m starting to get bored again. Now that it’s sunk in that I’m not coming back anymore, there’s no separation anxiety, there’s no rush to do all those things that I wanted to do before I leave here and I find that I’m doing the same things week after week. Things like bar-hopping till 4am and 1 liter glasses of beer have lost their novelty. To add to all this, it’s getting cold. The cold isn’t really a problem once I’ve got out of the house, it just makes it harder to actually get out. And the sun sets by 4:30. Winters here can be depressing. I see now how people miss the sun and why they write songs about how sunshine on their shoulders makes them happy. You get too much sun Bombay, you can only imagine. I haven’t been out in the sun for more than half an hour at a stretch for over a week now. I also see now why they have so many holidays in the winter and put so much effort into being cheerful. You need the people to be warm and bright when the city’s dark and cold.

I’ve got myself into a routine again. I’ve been here long enough to know where I can satiate my food cravings in which parts of town and where I can go for a walk and where I can go drink on a Friday night. The problem with this is that I’ll go to the same few places for lunch and the same few places for cheesecake and the same few places to chill. Enter boredom. All this while I was living like I had only three months here and I had to fit in as much as I could in those three months and now suddenly I have two months more and I don’t know what to do with that time. I plan a lot, I usually have plans and back up plans and back ups for the back up plans. So, naturally I had planned on how to keep myself busy for three months. New York’s still a big big city and I haven’t even seen half of all that I’d be interested in seeing but I’m to lazy to find these things because I can always just do what I’ve been doing so far. You see, I’m good at finding certain things like where you’ll get the best live music and who’s playing where in New York City or where you’ll get the cheapest beer and the largest glass of beer or where you’ll find the best cheesecake but I’m not good at finding good theater shows and museums and art exhibitions and sales. I would still love to go to these things, I just won’t end up finding them. And I don’t have the privilege of having friends who can find these things and drag me there. So I’m going to ask you to do me a favour. By you I mean everyone reading this. I haven’t ever asked you for anything but now I’m asking each one of you to find me at least one thing that I should do or go see in New York because most of you will find something that I won’t. And I, will go do whatever you ask me to do and then tell you about it. Just don’t tell me to do something obvious like going to the top of the Empire State Building or something. Also try not to give me stuff that’ll cost more than $20.

Now I’m gonna go sleep because I really haven’t slept much. Goodnight.

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Day 72: Wallflowers and Ordinary Superheroes

I have much to tell you today. I have two main things to tell you about, so I’ll do it the fun way and tell you both at the same time. You can kill a lot of time on trains by observing people and trying to guess their stories or invent stories for them. This is the best you can do in a train if you don’t have something to read. You can’t do this when traveling in buses because you can’t observe people that much. You can look around as much as you want in a train and if you directly look at people only once in a while they’ll never even make eye contact with you. Some stories seem the same. Here in New York there’s usually the couple traveling back home after a long day if it’s between 7-9pm. Sometimes they’re bringing home groceries, sometimes they have a kid, sometimes she’s pregnant and they’re bringing back a giant bag of diapers. In the morning most faces are blank, most are falling asleep. I think I can tell pretty well who’s already had their coffee, who hasn’t and who doesn’t need coffee. There’s sometimes the one casually dressed person or the one who gets off at Christopher street (Christopher street is an evening place, it doesn’t really have any offices) and I imagine that they’re doing something interesting for a living. Maybe he works at a record store, or runs a restaurant. Once in a while I’ll find somebody really interesting, like the guy carrying a keyboard it’s bag and composing music on his Mac I saw one night. I saw someone like that today.

I’ve never really come across things like this in Bombay. We Indians are an introverted bunch. We’re comfortable being wallflowers. Not all of us of course. But it’s an easy observation to make about us in general. I’m not saying this is the only reason I don’t see things like this in Bombay but it certainly is one of them. People won’t make music or paint or draw or write in public places. I’ve seen a few people draw or write in coffee shops a few times, but not as often as here. We don’t even join in conversations on the train if we don’t know the people having them. I probably don’t speak for all of us but I can speak for myself. I can hardly write in public, I’m too conscious of anyone looking over my shoulder. It bothers me even when I’m reading if anyone else is close enough to read what I’m reading. When I was younger it would bother me if people could see the title of the book I was reading. It bothers me if someone can read my twitter feed while I read it on the train and I lock my iPod as soon as I’m done selecting a song so that no one can see what song I’m listening to. None of these anxieties have any good justification. At the most it might make a good two minute conversation if a stranger liked the song I was listening to or the book I was reading or was curious about what I was writing. A two minute conversation with a stranger is always fun and these things are very unlikely to happen in Bombay anyway because as I said, we won’t talk to strangers.

When coming back on the subway today, while listening to Death Cab For Cutie I was looking around the train compartment as you’d expect. What caught my eye was a girl (woman?) drawing a comic book. This was a thick hard covered book about the size of your average comic book. She drew just with a black pen. What’s really something worth mentioning is, she did this when standing. Imagine trying to draw on a local train in Bombay. It’s harder to draw on a subway train in New York because the tracks aren’t as straight and the trains turn a lot more often. I can hardly even write in legible handwriting in moving vehicles. Getting both hands free long enough to plug my earphones into my iPod and put them in my ears is sometimes a challenge on this subway, but she drew, while standing and not falling. Watching her, I wished that I had a talent like that. Not just being able to draw a comic book while standing in a moving train, but also caring enough about the comic book to do it in whatever free time she got, struggling against the movement of the train and not being bothered by anyone looking at what she’s drawing.

For me, it’s not just about being invisible, it’s about being able to control what you see. I can tell you all of this here not only because hardly anyone ever reads this, but mostly because I can take my time and tell you exactly as much as I want to tell you. If there was even a little thing I didn’t want to tell you, it would never make it here, no matter how brilliant a blog post it might have made. If I had to tell you one thing that I learnt here, I’d say it’s that you have to stop being a wallflower at some point. It’s easier and probably more fun to not be invisible all the time, but what’s much more important is that it can just get in the way a lot of the time. If it’s being in a moving train surrounded by people that’s stopping you from working on your comic book then that’s a problem. You should get over it someday.

While we’re talking about comic books, lets look what superheroes have most in common, it’s that they can all do something that no one else can, they seem to have a firm distinction of right and wrong, and there’s usually multiple people who want things to be as the superhero would perceive to be wrong. But you see, the super-villains fulfill these three requirements as well. it’s you who decides who’s who and most of the time it’s really hard to tell. The superhero inspires people, the villain gives them fear.

From when I was really little, I always believed that the world would end someday in my lifetime. That an apocalypse of sorts would come. And I’d be ready when this happened because I was the only one who really believed this was going to happen. I’d be the superhero then, because I’d been preparing for it since my childhood. I’m not sure what made it happen but as I grew up I gradually began to believe that I’m not that special, and that the world won’t really end. Take the world apart and if we all had to start from scratch, it still sounds like a good idea to some part of me. I just don’t think it’s happening anymore.

The world isn’t ending and there aren’t any of us who can fly or catch bullets or open wormholes in space or travel in time, but this doesn’t mean that we’re all the same. There are still some of us who do what they think they really should, and find time to do them in a world that tries to steer them away. There are still some of us who struggle against the fruitlessness of their efforts and people who degrade their efforts. There are still some of us who can do things like drawing comic books while standing in a moving train and inspire people by just doing it.

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Day 70: Pre-Muse (Five-sixth)

This is it. Every moment up until now, every event, every action, every reaction, every thought and even every thing-that-never-happened has lead up to this. It has all brought me here now. After this, nothing may matter anymore. In about 4 hours from now, over a period of 3 hours, the world will change in a way you may never understand. Nothing will ever be the same. And you may never have known if i hadn’t told you. Are you ready? I don’t think I am.

*hyperventilates*

*breathes*

*sips coffee*

This is it, if I haven’t told you already. The gates for my Muse concert open less than 2 hours from now. Muse will be preceded by a band named Metric. I feel bad for them. I would feel bad for anyone opening for Muse. Because everything they do will be forgotten once Muse takes the stage.

I pray for all of you. I pray that you get to see a band whose every song you know the lyrics of. I hope you do. But today, this is not about you, this is about Muse.

*gulps down remaining coffee*

Absolution is coming.

Declare this an emergency
Come on and spread a sense of urgency
And pull us through
And pull us through

And this is the end, the end
This is the end
Of the World

And it’s time we saw a miracle
Come on it’s time for something biblical
To pull us through
And pull us through

And this is the end, the end
This is the end
Of the World

Proclaim eternal victory
Come on and change the course of history
And pull us through
And pull us through

And this is the end, the end
This is the end
Of the world

-Apocalypse Please, Muse

 

I must go now. You see, I’m too anxious to sit at home. I’ve also had too much coffee. This shall be the last official communication before it all changed. This shall be the last you’ll read about my world pre-Muse.

Goodbye.

\m/

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Day 65: Separation Anxiety

It’s true, the thought of leaving here is making me anxious. I keep running through a list of everything I need to do before I leave here over and over again in my head. Maybe putting this list down will help with some closure. So here are things that I HAVE to do before leaving here:-

  • See American Idiot on Broadway (If this doesn’t happen by next weekend, I’ll go alone)
  • See Muse live. (I already have a ticket for that this Sunday, but I’m a little worried it might be fake. Logically, I’m quite sure it’s not but you know, I’m anxious so I’m going to go to the ticketmaster retailer tomorrow and ask them to check. Then I’ll know.)
  • Go to The Bitter End at least once more and sit through all the bands that play there. Twice preferably.
  • Buy things for people
    • Mineral ice from a pharmacy
    • A lamb of god t-shirt and a couple of posters from one of the stores on Bleeker St.
    • A zippo
    • A few I<3 NY t-shirts.
    • Chocolates and candy (I could make another sub-list here, but lets not)
    • Random items from the Guitar Store for “the band”
    • Books from the Barns & Noble
    • Any other random things I might come across
    • Alcohol
    • Phones
  • Have the Plain New York Cheesecake again. Twice preferably. *salivates*
  • Go to Times Square again, preferably with a tripod and take one brilliant picture of it.
  • Take pictures of EVERYTHING.
  • Go to Union Square Park and sit there and write. Because it’s a beautiful place to write.
  • Go for the Beatles tribute brunch that happens every Saturday.
  • Reach home after 4am. Twice preferably.
  • Go to the top of the Empire State Building
  • See the Statue of Liberty
  • Talk to a random girl at a bar again. Twice preferably.
  • Have lunch at the Chelsea High-line. And take photos of it.
  • Eat sushi.

That’s all I can think of for now. You see, it’s a huge list. I have only 18 days to do it all in.

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Day 59: ~Two-thirds

Time flies, and we’re only here for the blink of an eye. This Monday it suddenly felt like I have too little time left in New York. I have less than 4 weeks left here now. And though I’m already prepared to go back in that much time, a part of me wants to stay here a little longer. It would upset me if I have to stay here longer at this point though. I’ve already planned going back and I don’t like it when things don’t go according to plan because then I have to make new plans.

I could live here, someday. I don’t think there’s many places I could say that about. The only reason I won’t be able to live here is because I can’t leave my entire life behind and start over. Starting over sounds like an exciting idea but it’ll be harder than it seems. If I could take some of the important things and some people with me, then that would be a different story.

I don’t really have much to say today. I’m sleep deprived. My clothes have been lying in the dryer for days, there’s more stuff on the floor of my room than on the table and everything’s a mess. And I couldn’t care less to clear it up because in just a little while I’ll have to pack it all up into suitcases.

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Day 46: Being Sick

Being sick is useless when you have nobody to look after you. I can confess, I like falling sick sometimes. I’m sure a lot of us with a routine life and a comfortable home and someone to look after them do. It’s a break from your routine life then. You sit at home all day, watch feel good movies through the afternoon, sleep a lot, wear pajamas and get fed simple food. And every once in a while, someone asks you how you’re feeling and if they can do anything for you. That’s when being sick is worth it. But when you’re far far away from home, when you don’t know anybody well enough to have them take care of you, (Now don’t get me wrong here, I have friends here. It’s just that I’ve known them for about a month and I’m not really that sick. I had a bad headache all of yesterday and a headache and a fever on Tuesday but I’m mostly fine today and I didn’t go to a doctor or anything), and when you don’t know what doctor to go to or even how the medical system works in the country you’re in and you have anybody to take you to the doctor, it’s not worth it.

If I was in Bombay, I’d have gotten an appointment yesterday and then walked down to the other side of the 1st Cross Lane in Lokhandwala Complex and paid my family doctor a visit. Because that would have made me feel a lot better. Here, I didn’t know the first thing about where to look for a doctor. My boss told me that I can either try to get an appointment with a local doctor, which could be 4-5 days later, or I could go to an ER where they’d make me sit for 4-5 hours before I’d get anything done and that I have medical insurance for up to $10,000 with a deductable of $100 (I’m not sure what that means.) And I swear, next to me mom and my best friend back in Bombay, he did the most to make me feel better.

If you remember that one old Vicks Vaporub commercials, where they claim that the touch therapy helps, they’re damn right. It’s much better when you don’t have to rub the Vicks on yourself. If you’re ever going to go live far away from home, take this piece of advice. Write down exactly what you’re going to do and where you’re going to go and who you’re going to call if you fall sick there and stick it on your fridge or something. Because here’s the thing about living in a whole new place. You don’t know how to go about doing almost anything. You don’t know what to buy at the supermarket, which cereal, which brand of milk, which brand of eggs, you don’t know how the weather’s going to change, when to carry a sweatshirt, when to carry an umbrella (here in New York, the weather’s unpredictable as fuck. It can be 30°C one day and 23°C the next. When it rains, most of the time it gets warmer. 25°C can feel colder that 22°C even when it’s sunny because it’s THAT windy), you don’t know which bus or train to take to go somewhere, you don’t know where to go to chill on a Friday night, you don’t know if you can be in the middle of nowhere at 11pm and try to find your way home, you don’t know how long the days are and when the sun rises and when it sets. You can’t even tell what time of the day it is by looking at the sun because it never passes even close to overhead.

All of this not knowing and exploring and trying new things and even most of the getting fucked over by doing the wrong thing is fun and exciting most of the time. It’s always fun and exciting in the start. Change is always fun and exciting in the start. That’s what the honeymoon period is all about, remember? But there’s this thought at the back of my head which formed only a while after I got here, and for another while it was easy to suppress by doing more fun exciting things. This thought was a want for the comfort of old routines to fall back on, the comfort of home. But being stuck in this house for the past two days (I haven’t been going to work since I’m sick) doesn’t allow me to suppress that thought anymore. I’ve already counted the number of weeks I have until I come back. I didn’t count days because the days are too many, and the number of weeks sounds really small knowing how fast weeks fly when I work 5 days a week and then go out in the city on the weekends.

Oh, Bombay, I miss you so much and I want to come back. I don’t want it to be this way though. I don’t want to want to come back. I want to enjoy the little time I have left here. I want to finish what I came here to do before I go back. (I’m not sure what I came here to do but it doesn’t feel like it’s done) I still haven’t seen American Idiot on Broadway, I still haven’t driven a car here, I still haven’t been to the Rockefeller Center or the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. Yes, I’ve never been one for doing these touristy things, but I still want to do all these things once. The whole time I’ve been here, I have only seen the face of a friend I knew from before I came here once. And that was for 3 days, and that was almost 4 weeks ago. You’ll never know how this feels until it happens to you, because I can’t explain how something as trivial as not seeing the face of a friend or a parent or a sibling for long enough can make a difference. I’ve been smiling at most of the Indians I’ve passed on the street today. I’ve felt like starting conversation with some of the uncles and aunties, the same uncles and aunties that I’d been avoiding when I just got here. I was watching a video of Tough on Tobacco play at Cafe Goa, and I swear I got goosebumps. Because it’s Cafe Goa! It’s Bandra! It’s Bombay.

I honestly thought I wouldn’t get homesick. I thought I wouldn’t be here long enough. I thought new York was so much like Bombay that I’d feel right at home. I guess all of this is amplified by my being sick, but it’s true, I’m homesick. I don’t want to need to think so much before doing simple things, I want to be able to know exactly where to go for everything and get it done in 5 minutes. I don’t want to keep having to plan things to keep me from getting bored and homesick and depressed. I don’t want to have a list of 5 one-month-old-friends, all of whom I have to call when I want to do something fun. I want to have friends who will call me for fun things to do when I don’t have the energy to find them and I want friends who’s places I can just go and sit at and do nothing and still be entertained. I want to have a damn car that I can drive around sometimes if I’m too tired to take public transport or if I just feel like driving around. But here’s where I’ve ended up. I’ve been living on a high so far, and being sick and stuck at home pulled me right down. I don’t know much about drugs, but the high can never last forever, can it? It’s always followed by a low. The higher the high, the more obvious the difference is. I’ve been sleeping less than 8 hours and partying all night on weekends and going out whenever I could. Don’t get me wrong, I can do all of this, I’m twenty-three. The consequences are rare. I would do this in Bombay sometimes. Well, I guess that’s about all I have to say. And here’s another piece of advice. Don’t sit at home all day for more than one day. It’s incredibly depressing. You may not understand why but you will see it happen. Get out at least for a few hours, take a walk or ride a bicycle or go jogging or sit on a bench somewhere or ride a bus or train to nowhere and back, do whatever does it for you. but if you’re nearing 48 hours, get out of your house or you risk depression.