Saturday, June 25, 2011

Today a dear friend of mine got a small design I created inked on his shoulder! And it made me so very happy :) He had told me that he was thinking getting a tattoo a while ago. He wanted a Trishula (three-spear) and had asked me to design one. Now he is a guy with a strong mind and a gentle heart. So I tried a few concepts like the third eye in the middle spear of the Trishula, a Trishula like a flower bud, and a Trishula with its spears on fire etc. There was one where I had an Om and the Trishula as the Chandra bindu (moon and dot) of the Om. And I also had one where the Trishula was made of the special characters we use in coding, this one was my favorite because he is one of the best C++ programmers I have come across :) He seemed to like the Om one and the one with code characters and we had to decide on one. So I ended up combining the two designs and he seemed to like the final one and he said he would get it done sometime soon. But today when he said he actually got it done, I was so thrilled. Many thanks to him! I realized how wonderful it feels to know that a friend chose to have my creation permanently inked.

Thursday, June 02, 2011

I never thought

in the wildest of my dreams that I would be in a lineup outside an NHL team store, on a weekday, waiting in rain for the store to open, in an attempt to buy the team jersey.

But there I was, in front of the Vancouver Canucks team store today at around 9:45am. The store was to open at 10:00am and I had a meeting at 11:00am. I finished one of the meetings at 9:00am and started from office, grabbed a quick breakfast on the way and reached the store to see a line-up with people with umbrellas! I stood there, waiting for the store to open and hoping to find a jersey of size "small" for Vinay. It's anyway very hard to find that size but we were told there would be new stock coming in today and hence the hope. The guy in front of me told me that the store would open at 12:00 today and I asked him if it was true in a such a shocking/dramatic tone that he apologized immediately and said he was only joking. The store then opened and I found out that there were no small jerseys available after all. The new ones that came in were already sold out as they first make them available to the ticket holders in the stadium during the game (which happened yesterday). Sigh. So I had no choice but to return disappointed, thinking how else I could source a jersey before the next game etc.
That's when it hit me, I had never thought that I would one day be following NHL or Hockey like this. I still don't do it as religiously as Vinay does but the facts that I have watched almost all the games in the playoffs, have not missed any crucial ones and have celebrated the goals like a happy fan were enough to wonder how I caught this hockey madness. Here goes the rationalization 1. Vinay is such a sports freak, that it's almost impossible to stay away from them. 2. Hockey is celebrated in Canada or at least in Vancouver; the city, people, media are all so much into it, it's only fair to get into it and fly a Canucks flag from your car. 3. It's fast! that's a great reason for me to start falling in love with it :)