These youngsters are amazing

I was recently at the "Thank God It's Over (TGIO)" party which celebrated the end of the month long, frantic wrting contest that is NaNoWriMo.

I realized that I was the oldest bloke there (if you ignore the Municipal Liason, that is) and most of the people were youngsters in their early teens.

A couple of them were just entering their teens. And these two were amazing. One of them wrote a - trust me when I say this - 101000 word novel! You heard me right, a hundred and one THOUSAND word novel. And she did this in two weeks instead of four. Whoa!

The other did not churn out a tome this big, but beat the teen by being the youngest WriMo in Singapore. Coolio.

And here I was, looking old and foolish in the middle of these young people who were having a lot of fun. They obviously knew each other from the write-in's and the meetings, but it was a first time for me.

The only thing that made me feel good about myself is that I managed to get to the Winner spot despite having a full time job and a family that screams for my time. That is a good experience.

No more crouching at Anfield

Peter Crouch finally managed to score.

He did it after spending a collective 24hrs on the football pitch without a single goal...until today, that is. And today, many would say he scored twice.

He definately has one goal and can claim the other as well.
So Liverpool Manager Rafael Benitez' faith in Crouch has been well placed and the rewards were reaped well as Liverpool collected all three points from their home encounter against Wigan. Both teams, before this match, were tied for the fifth place.

With this win, Liverpool will be in sole second position...awaiting the outcome of the ManU and Arsenal games later today.

All said and done, all the Peter Crouch jokes should stop now that he has actually scored.

From Bulimic to Bohemian

Conversations can hop along so fast, it's hard to keep track of what started them and where they will lead.

Take this conversation over lunch yesterday. A few collegues and I had stepped out for lunch and as usual, there was this inane conversation which has some of us holding our respective heads and the rest of us rolling on the floor laughing.

This conversation was shifting tracks so fast, it was difficult to say when the topic of Bulimia (the binge eating disorder) came in. Even while we were marvelling at the topic cropping up during lunch, one of us rhymed it with Bohemia and the topic ran off into a completely different direction.

We finally ended up with a discussion on - you won't believe this - Copyright and Copyright Violation laws. Wonky, huh?

The only reason we didn't have our thought running wilder was the office were we all had to get back and work. Had it been a beer session on a Friday evening, only God knows where it would have gone.

NaNoWriMo Winner!

Yes, you heard me right!

I am now officially a NaNoWriMo Winner! I finally finished my novel just now and according to the NaNoWriMo word counters, my novel word count stands at 51162 words.

Aah, the satisfaction of completing my novel! Of getting the job done.

I have this smug grin on my face for the last one hour.

Oh, the agony...

I played the worst round of golf in my entire life!

I have never played this poorly since, let me think, FOREVER! And the funny thing was, this round I had the lowest putts I have ever taken in a full round. 29 putts.

Problem was getting to the green. If I was anywhere close to the green, I was much better. Even from bunkers (which I surprisingly found myself in a lot of times). My swing was completely off. Sometimes, I was striking the ball really well. Other times, I was hitting the ball all over the place.

Only compensation was that I was comfortable hitting my new R5 driver. I must have hit it consistently to around 280 yards. But after that, I was constantly battling to get to the green.

So, it's back to the range for me. It's an extremely rude wake up call for me. Serves me right for neglecting the game for so long.

Time to get better acquianted with the driving range.

I can smell the finish line

Yep, you heard me right.

My word count stands at 43838, a mere 6162 words away from the golden 50000 word mark. I am slap bang into the climax of my novel and the build up so far has been to my satisfaction. But I haven't read it as a whole novel yet and so don't know how the script has gelled together. I hope it has, but I will know only when it's done, won't I?

I have a few hours of writing tonight before I pick up my friend from the airport. He and his family are landing tonight and staying with us for a day before they leave for India. So my plan is to carry my trusted Ferrari notebook (don't I just love to rub it in?) and write while I wait for their flight to come in.

I should have a few thousand words in by then. Then I will be just a few thousand words away from the end of my first novel. I think it has turned out well so far, but since I have been the only critic (it has been written in extreme secrecy, so no one but me has seen is), I can't really say.

Any of you wanting to criticise my literary skills? I didn't think so.

Less than 13000 to go

Just when you thought I had given up on NaNoWriMo, ha ha... guess what?

I have less than 13000 words to go to hit the magic 50000 word mark. Pretty crazy, huh? And I am smiling cause I know I hit 13000 words with 3 days of crazy writing when I actually started writing on the 6th of this month.

Why did I start so late, you ask? Cause I had my oldest friend visiting me at that time. I had started writing on the 1st like a good WriMo, but then he landed here on the 3rd and there went my writing.

So I started again when he left on the 6th and in the panic attack, blazed through to 15ooo by the time I hit the 12th of the month.

Now I am at 37075 words. A couple of thousand words every day and I will be sitting pretty with more than 50000 words before the end of the month. Just to be sure, I want to be well over the number to make sure I dont fall short of it after all this effort.

That does not mean I will compromise on the quality of my novel. It is going to be my best literary work till date. Come to think of it, it will be my FIRST literary work as well.

What a coincedence, huh?