Shubha’s cousin Kiran, who came to Bangalore this week to meet a girl he had met over the Internet, found that she is everything he had dreamt of, and apparently she thinks the same thing of him, and they have decided to take it one step further – they are getting engaged on Monday, the 16th.

Ever thrown a stone into an ant-hill? The effect you get is roughly equivalent to what happened to the family here – waves of very busy people. This morning, the first wave arrived and settled in at my house. Quite a change for someone who is used to having only his wife, kid, dog and two cats in the house – now we are *only* SIX people more, and this was only the first wave, with more to come. Plus of course all the local branches of the family that drop in to visit the visitors….

Ah well, I guess one will survive, but I have this incredible urge to find the meanest distortion level on my new toy, and practice some Van Halen at around afternoon siesta time, or 3 in the morning. Those 100 Watts RMS in my amplifier must be good for *something*

Yesterday was Friday the 13th, and traditionally I do not leave the house on that day – not even to step on the porch or into the garden. So I spent the day in the basement replying to email and surfing weird corners of the net. Hmmm – can you call roaming the world electronically, on a day when you decide not to step out, cheating?

Last night, AXN showed Part 1 of “Dune” – the second attempt at making a movie based on the book by the same name. The first attempt was a *disaster* and is best forgotten, but this version stayed remarkably close to the original story arc, with only small deviations, and though it was pretty long (this is part 1, am not sure how many parts there are) at 2.5 hours, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am a hardened Dune fan, and it was pleasure seeing a movie that so closely matched the images formed in my mind as I read the book.

My email box continues to throw up responses to my Yahoo rant, many of them from list admins equally stung by Yahoo. Apparently a lot of people have known about the Yahoo issues, but no one has ever commented on the emperor’s new clothes until now. I got a call from a newspaper wanting to interview me on this, but that would turn this into a witch hunt, so I declined (for now).

Originally, I had planned to do some recording this weekend and put up some MP3s, but that seems to be a washout now (seriously high decibel levels when more than two female members of Shubha’s family get together, and right now we have 3 aunts plus assorted cousins all in one place .

So maybe I will just creep off to office and try and get some work done.