Topic: Your addiction in life(AmitL)

Topic: Your addiction in life.

I firmly believe that addiction(of the good type only..grin) is what keeps one going in life. So, let me recount the previous addictions and the current one.

First, back in school days, I had the addictive hobby of making penpals- I made the first two penpals through the IYS(International Youth Service), one from Austria and one from Australia(Believe me, they’re still in touch- will do a post dedicated to them one of these days, since they read my blog occasionally…after asking their permission, of course..grin). ..even met the Austrian one and her husband, three years ago. Then, there were three penpals from Brazil(One is still in constant touch)- Rio De Janeiro, to be precise, then, Trinidad & Tobago, Germany(My whole circle of friends in school fell for this lady when they say her snap..hehe), a whole lot from all over India….no prizes for guessing that my best friends in those days was the postman who would bring letters, photos, small gifts, etc from these lovely people.

Second, there was DXing- that was the hobby of shortwave listening(in the days of only Bore, nee, Doordarshan for TV entertainment and no FM, either). Me and this college friend had a sort of competition between us, on who heard the maximum radio stations from around the world – there was Radio Australia, VOA(Voice Of America), Austria, Deutschewelle, Belgium, even Radio Pakistan…every spare moment, day n night, besides studies, would go in craning the neck and straining the ear, next to the ancient shortwave radio- sending reception reports to these stations, would get us what were called’ QSL cards’- greeting cards of the country, with a confirmation of your report being accurate. The report used to be in the form of a SINPO (Signal, Interference, Noise, P(I forgot what this was) and Overall score, with a brief report on the program to justify to them that we weren’t just kidding. They’d also send pennants, badges, tourist brochures of their countries and we’d dream of the , err, dreamy places.

Then, third began the addiction of reading writing to magazines and papers- LTTE(Letters To The Editor) became my craze, alongwith entering caption contests…collected quite a few useful n useless prizes on the way- like dozens of audio cassettes, pens, a tape recorder, pocket calculators(A novelty back then, when India had not gone global) to name a few. Citadel, Pune(I love that mag) invited me over to Pune to do a stint with them, in a ‘report on the reporters’ kind of article- investigated a murder, had free eats at a restaurant which they reviewed, attended a photo shoot with Rachel Reuben present, etc. (I have that on pdf, if anyone’s interested.:)) I got the nicest compliment from them in their intro to my article- it termed me ‘India’s most prolific letter writer’(Ahem!)…..even got a nice fan following and some are still friends, scattered around the world …but, then, all good things must come to an end(Though, I’ve never allowed this addiction to end), so, I had to mellow down my writing, after I came to Dubai. I still write to ‘Open Space’ (Sunday TOI), Filmfare, and a few others, but, it’s not the way the ‘addiction’ was in those days.

Fourth, after reaching Dubai, the addiction was work, for the first company I was in- first, learning the ropes about the workstyle here, then, dealing with oodles of suppliers for our project requirements…it reached a stage where I stopped taking days off- would go to work even on Fridays, from 11 AM to 4 PM, would eat, sleep, dream work…if I got up late, I’d catch the first bus at 6 AM and be in the office(I had a key)…LOL… on top of that, the Boss once told me, just after I had joined ‘Why do you smile so much? I don’t like people who smile so much- they are not serious about their work’….as they say, ek woh din tha, ek aaj ka din hai(The day I quit that job after 4.5 years)- I never smiled in front of him, in spite of him doing his best to crack jokes to make me laugh…grin grin.(I’d smile internally, but, externally, it would be the same serious face as in my intro post photo..hahaha.)

Fifth, now, of course, the addiction is blogging…the eyes and ears are always open, whether at home, in the restaurant, at work, everywhere, for topics, for humour, for incidents…and, incidentally, this is the first hobby which is still at an all-time high, even after four years. (All the others peaked at four years…perhaps because four is my lucky number?)…I already wrote the next part of this, in my post on how blogging has changed my life..:)

Then, there have been the 'continuing' addictions of good music, being in luv( I see eyes going wide here), tea, losing (n gaining..LOL) weight(Separate topic, deserves a post- have lost 14 kgs, twice), et al.

On the flip side, I have never been tempted by the real addictions- smoking, drinking, drugs.Touchwood.

Cheers, everyone, and have a great weekend.