The Kiss

I knew I was a gonner the moment I looked into his eyes. Those jet black whirlpools of infinite secrets sucked me in and I lost all sense of time.

He looked intensely into my eyes and pulled me towards him in an embrace. I shuddered at his touch and looked up into his smiling face. Oh God! He had got to be the hottest creature I had ever laid eyes upon.

My heart thundered in my chest as I tried to remember how to breathe. Yeah, in deeply then out, got it. I exhaled slowly as my gaze lowered to his lips. Their lush fullness promising untold pleasures was temptation enough without him making it even more irresistible with a slow tantalizing smile that showed glimpses of his fabulous teeth.

And before I knew it, his face swooped down upon mine and his warm luscious lips captured mine in a deep passionate kiss. I was lost to all humanity. I closed my eyes and gave myself up to that feeling. His lips were warm and soft and...demanding. They coaxed and cajoled and teased. I decided I had died and gone to heaven.

Suddenly I felt a terrible coldness. Alarmed, I opened my eyes and found myself alone in the midst of smouldering fires, dancing dervishes, red skies and skeletons. I looked around in fear as they mocked me through sightless eyes, their cackling the sound of pure evil. Realisation dawned.

I hadn't died and gone to heaven.

I had died and gone to hell.

Bite it!

I was excited. It had poured buckets last night and I knew this morning would be simply amazing. It was. The air smelt fresh and sweet, the temperature was great, the breeze blew tiny little flower-petals around playfully and I smiled to myself. Yesterday's pissy mood had long gone. And the good mood had come back with a vengeance!

We left promptly at 6 and reached Cubbon Park around 6:30. Ten minutes of stretching and warmups later we started our weekly jog. I was thoroughly enjoying myself and keeping a keen eye open for Mr. Super-Hot in case I ran into him again (that's another story for another day folks). I was into my 5th kilometer when suddenly my forehead exploded in pain and I stopped dead in my tracks.

Waitaminit, I am not Harry Potter. Then why is my head hurting?
I didn't run into anything. Then why is my head hurting?
No one else stopped running, its only me. Then why is my head hurting?

While I was trying to figure out what was going on, I brushed my forehead vigorously and pulled out a bee from it. The bee seemed to think that expression "bee in your bonnet" should be taken literally to get with the times.

As I stared appalled at the mess in my hands, it occurred to me that the bee sting definitely proved one thing - I was SWEET!

I grinned wickedly at the now dead bee, wiped my forehead thoroughly and resumed my jog.

Gainfully employed

My true test of patience, apart from tolerating the constant crib-crib-crib of the Blubbering Bimbo was how not to die of boredom in a house full of strangers.

Thankfully, my little friend, the Canon Powershot SD400 was there to keep me company.

I quietly sneaked out the front door and closed it gently behind my back. As I stepped into the pitch black porch, a streak of lightning lit up the sky. I involuntarily cringed and started back towards the comfort of the house but the loud crib-crib-crib arrested my steps. I was damned if I was going back in there now.

I turned around slowly and walked back into the darkness. Another flash, brighter and longer, greeted my tentative steps and I shut my eyes tightly.

I hate to admit it but I am quite chicken when it comes to lightning and thunder. All I can think of is to hide under the bed with my eyes closed, sixteen pillows at my side and Rambo standing guard outside. I peered around the blackness hoping to distract myself from the spectacle in the sky. I looked down at my camera and a slow wicked grin lit up my face.

I knew exactly what I had to do. It would keep me gainfully employed, away from the Blubbering Bimbo and with luck, help me get over my irrational fears.

I played around with the settings and aimed my camera at the spot in the sky where I had seen the maximum flashes and waited with bated breath.

It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. First, the ligthning was not tongues of fire all the time, it was more of an ambient blaze of light in the dark sky. Second, it was very very very cloudy. Third, it was drizzling a wee bit. Fourth, I wasn't fast enough with the clicks. Fifth, the camera was not fast enough either. Sixth, I could hear the baying of two hundred dogs and it sounded quite near...

I shook myself and concentrated on getting good shots, hell, any shots of the lightning. I changed my camera settings five times to see what would be best. I snapped off about a thousand frames relentlessly. About 45 minutes later, they called out that dinner was ready and I went inside.

"You look like the cat who swallowed the canary. Spill it!"

"Take a look at the shots I got" I cried in excitement. I had got about a dozen photos of lightning, but there was one that was mind blowing.

And now, I don't think I will be that afraid of lightning anymore.

A night in a homestay

So far, my weekend trip wasn't turning out to be as exciting as I had hoped. Apart from the fact that I had to put up with a senseless female who only opened her mouth to crib (and trust me, her mouth remained open 24*7), the 6 of us were going to be staying at some sidey homestay.

I am not against homestays, but I am strictly against sharing rooms with blubbering bimbos. But since all others were men, we were conveniently paired and bundled off into one room.

I did my best to fall asleep. But one can hardly concentrate on serene thoughts when the melodious notes of a rumbling snore keep assaulting one's senses. I realised that our blubbering bimbo couldn't keep her mouth shut even when she was asleep.

Disgusted, I buried my head under two pillows and tried to think of the Bahamas but to no avail. The racket she was making was enough to be heard in the next country. I got off the bed, snatched my pillows and blanket and left the room in search of greener pastures.

I stumbled through the dark lobby in search of a place to park myself. I remembered that there was a small room in some corner where extra mattresses were piled up. I blundered around in the dark till I found it and then switched on the light. There were five mattresses. I sighed with relief and satisfaction. Without wasting a minute, I quickly laid out one mattress on the floor, yanked a bedsheet off a divan and spread it across my mattress. I switched off the light and snuggled in to get some sleep.

Alas the sound of the snore kept tormenting me even there. I squirmed around in bed trying really hard to stay calm and get some sleep. I sorely missed my ipod. As I lay there awake, other sounds starting penetrating my consciousness - I counted three dogs barking ferociously, the occassional rumbling of thunder and - what was this - another more horrible sound of snoring!

I sat up.

Yes, it was unmistakable. It was a much louder, more obnoxious sound of male snoring. I shrugged and decided there was no way I was going to be able to get any sleep that night. I tossed around in bed and employed my wide-awake mind to other tasks to keep myself busy.

Soon, I was mentally plotting graphs on amplitude vs time for these two snore-ers and comparing their snoring patterns. Then I added another dimension to this graph and observed the snoring patterns again. I prepared a weekly forecast of snoring patterns assuming certain attributes remained constant and looked at my handiwork with satisfaction. By that time, I felt like the resident authority on snores. I was about to move on to other creative thinking areas when I realised that a third snore had joined in the competition.

I laughed and gave up.

Then I mentally wrote three bestsellers on the hazards of staying together in a homestay and concocted a horror story where the snore turns into a monster and eats everyone staying at the homestay. As my monster was gobbling up the loudest of the snore-ers, I invented another much bigger monster. His job was to gobble up the other monster, I decided with relish. I was quite enjoying my story and adding more embellishments when a rooster cock-a-doodle-d. I reached out for my cellphone and looked at the time.

It was 6 AM. Time for the house to awaken.

"Wow, you look so fresh", I snidely remarked to the blubbering bimbo when she stepped out after a shower, "slept well?"

"Yeah, I slept very well, and how about you?"

"Oh, I had a nice sleep too, thanks".

That's what happens when you go out with a bunch of folks you work with. You gotta grin and bear it!