my life's great, my life's sad. it's a bit like - the king is dead, long live the king. but not really, if you know what i mean. it's actually that glass half full and half empty type of thing. many things are a bitch - delhi summer for one, two and three. i'm just trying to sleep it off really till the weather gets better and we move to a place with more consistent electricity supply..

remember the great trip that i had post the mad airport experience?? the one with 20mg of zylazine and with lotsa hallucinating? well, just found a photo that sid had taken in the car enroute the airport, just after they had given me a shot when i was returning from madras (ie. my second trip!). here it is..

notice the clenched eyes - that's another mad trip and story for a later date! laters all..

guys and their gadgets... in the basketball court

awright awright! i was beginning to get bored of this blog - so it's been a while. but after the overwhelming response to my latest photos, i'm starting to get the feeling that perhaps it is worthwhile to blog away..

ARRIVA 4 - of gadgets and short basketball games

back in madras, both sid and ro used to have these excercise fits every time they started looking podgier than they normally do. of course - excercise means gear and gadgets first! everything for these two starts with all the paraphanelia and equipment and then some more. later perhaps some sweat can be expended, as they feel guilty for having spent so much that they'd better use it.

so one day, ro had obviously gone to kit himself up with sports equipment and got a box full of stuff and basketball seemed to be the new rage in the neighbourhood. in order to show-off and get some practice before sid got in from work - ro had put up the shiny new hoop in the back yard. then he came out in his dashing new outfit - shorts, t-shirt, sneakers with matching head-band and wrist-band. if it was outfit that mattered, we had michael jordan meets shaq in front of us!

out came the shiny new ball. couple of bounces, first attempt at the hoop and swish it went in - ro, my man was in top form. i had charged in for the rebound already - made contact with the ball as it landed and SWOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH - there was a gush of cool wind coming on my face from the ball! my tooth was firmly planted inside the ball and it hung onto me as i trotted around showing-off my conquest. i felt like tiger woods after a hole-in-one, but somehow ro seemed a bit puzzled about it because he sat down and stopped playing after that. i figure it's not that much fun with a deflated ball - but it can't be THAT bad!

sid didn't seem too enthused about playing when he got back, dunno why these guys go through so much trouble for potting the ball just once?! after that day, that ball became all mine as many other balls that have met with me!

that's me at the 'court', winning the baell (not that basketball) from gina, who looks a bit peeved (as usual!).

beating the heat, part 1

i like swimming in the sea. swimming pools are better as giant water bowls though



nah nah nah, bitte! do not call me pantingos ever again..

dextrous fingers and a hellua trip!

had a relatively lazy week - the delhi heat is so sapping that whats normally a walk in the park for me, transforms into the paris-dakar (read sahara desert) rally. just imagine yourself in a fur coat trotting around in 45-degree heat (and that's in the shade) with the only sweat glands on your paws, and the only real heat-release is through heavy panting.. so i make it a point to let everyone know how hot i am when i return home so that they get the damn airconditioners on! sometimes i wish we (here i speak for the species) had dextrous fingers to do things such as turning on airconditioners (of course), opening doors and drawers (the food one) and other such things.

in the larger scheme of things however, i'm glad that's not the case. humans by nature exploit what they can. if we did have those long ungainly fingers, we'd actually be in a lot of trouble and probably lose our best-friend and symbiotic status. yup, it's as serious as that. if we could carry and open and hold things in our paws, surely the'd expect us to do our fair share of house work and clean up behind ourselves. not only that, the lazy species that they are, it would start innocuously with 'kubes, please go get me some water' to 'dude - open the door - you're closest', when the doorbell rings. that would soon change to full-scale tyrrany - cleaning, making beds, cooking food etc. of course, that would apply to all those submssive ones, not to the king-of-the-world alphas like moi. thing is that it's just going down the absolutely wrong path. soon dags would revolt, form unions, have a strike and all that symbiotic relationship would go down the gutter (come to think of it, i'd make a great union leader).

nah - lets just keep it like it is. humans like to think we're a helpless bunch and they're caring for us - so lets just keep it that way. i for one will just have to continue to train all those around me. to open the doors for me, to 'take me' for a walk, to serve me water and food and to turn on the air conditioner when i pant like an idiot!

enough philosophy - down to some stories.. sid's just packed a big-ass suitcase, seems like he's going away for a while. all this travel reminds me of the second part of that day in october 2002..

ARRIVA 3 - fly kubert, fly! my, what a trip that was..

so, having established boundaries with sid during our morning airport 'incident', we head back home to 2PSM tired and wounded. sid then (apparently) goes up to sims room at some 8 in the morning, and she comes out groggily saying 'bye sher, have a good trip'. then she opened her eyes properly saw what he looked like and he narrates the whole story to sim who was in splits! 'told you so', she said. when tigs (me bro) had gone to madras, the dumb-ass had quite willingly gotten into the cage and again a second time when he was returning. sid figured all dags were like that. sim had warned him that kubes is very different and that he'd need sedation - so that now seemed to be the only way to get me there.

in the afternoon, the crate was back in the boot and we got into the car and were off again. this time a small detour to the vet, where i got a zylazine (20mg, to be precise). that moment changed my life. the smells suddenly had a new meaning to them - not only could i sense that a bitch had recently been over to the vets (25 miutes ago), i could now see what she looked like, smell different parts of her and she was one fit babe! another smell took me to roast barbeque area and i could just smellulise (visualise for dogs) the whole feast laid out ahead. the texture of the pork, the crunch of the bone, the taste of the marrow. it was a whole new world. then, back in the car (i think), a smell from outside transported me to some unfamiliar place where it was very different - open fields, campsites, lots of creatures around (probably some old wolverine memories).

somewhere way way outside, sid had put me in a box and i was moving around somewhere (airport, i imagine) - but i couldn't care less. there were new smells, which meant more memories and i was in heaven. at some point, i felt like i was the intrepid arctic explorer - no smells there, just a lot of snow and cold. somewhere out there, i could hear a loud humming sound, but i was soon back in la-la-land (ed. he was 30,000ft high - literally, and in the cargo-hold, therefore the cold).

sometime later (an hour, a month?) i was back in a car, head in sid's lap, being fed some water. there were new sounds and a very different new smell - it was madras and there was the ocean in front of me! i was feeling sorta normal again, but transported in a great sorta way. it was the start of a new life for me. and this zylazine thing - it gave me a whole new perspective to life, but i wouldn't make a habit of it.. whatta trip though!

why we love flying (NOT)

when sid leaves town, it sorta upsets me. it's not an emotional thing or anything, it's just that i don't get to play baell-against-the-waell and i get bloody restless when i haven't exercised. in a way i'm a bit relieved when he goes outta the house with a suitcase or an overnighter and he doesn't take me with him. it's not that i don't like to drop him to the airport - which self-respecting canine doesn't love car-rides with the customary head out of the window look in rain, painful heat (like now) or bitter cold (delhi gets like that too)?! i ACTUALLY like the ride to the vet as well. why, what's he going to do? stick a needle in my insensitive butt is what he does mostly. plus i get to scare the other dags there, which is a big bonus (alpha that i am). so it's not the car ride clearly, it's just that he might pull that blasted cargo crate outta the back and try and get me inside it that's the problem.

flying for humans is a somewhat troublesome experience for many. but lots of people kinda enjoy it too - it takes them to new places and is the ultimate dream of many - to be 30,000 feet above the earth (who wouldn't want to get away?). for us on the other hand it is bloody traumatic. it wouldn't be if we had a nice reclineable seat and some cute air-hostesses serving us some munchies and drinks while we play with our ball, chew on our bone. however, its not like that.

it's literally being boxed into a cage. and that feels like what it sounds like. 100's of people who'd normally take a crap if i so much as sneezed at them (even if i just am around), come upto to the cage, taunt me a bit, make stupid barking sounds and i can't really take a chunk off their bums, if you know what i mean. frustrating.

Arriva 2 - fly kubert, fly! - the bucking bucking tale.
by popular demand (1 person in my case)

it all started when sid was getting dropped off to the airport that october morning in 2002, and i was saying my last goodbye (that's what i thought), he innocuously pulls out this odd looking half box with wheels underneath and is trying to put me into it in the drop-off area where other normal people were rushing into the airport. naturally, i refused. dad/ brother/ best-friend - whatever he may be of mine, there are some boundaries to such things. anyways, he thought the better of it and i took him on the leash inside the airport. what a sight it was. everyone looking at me like i was an alien, but i could notice the trepidation in the whites of their eyes.

at some point after doing various things, sid starts to dismantle the box into two halves again and soon is trying to get me in. he gave me a biscuit or two and i chomped them quite happily and then the sneaky guy chucks a few into the half box. hah - good try! there was not a chance he was getting me in there like that. he started gently pushing me towards the box and i flatly refused. he then pushed me harder, pulled me by my collar - and all the while i was trying to get across to him that this is not working. i'm not going in and that's it. after many attempts, he finally picked me up and placed me right in that box! of course, i immediately jumped out. that went on for a while till he finally got a volunteer to help him put the other half on top while he pinned me down inside long enough to put some of the fasteners on. or that's what he thought. he had me quite pinned inside, with one hand around my neck holding my collar and the other around my waist. i pushed and kicked, but he had me well pinned and the surdy man was quick to put the cover on top. i knew it was now or never and i pulled every last bit of energy (the runt that i am, i learnt that when i needed to get to the milk, is what they say) and got some traction with my hind legs and i bucked. i bucked and bucked and bucked again (felt like a bull) and kept bucking till sid who lost some grip was left holding me collar while i made a miraculous houdini-like getaway!

i ran off just a little bit away hoping some sense would prevail in him. sweating and swearing, he approached me slowly, but i saw the look in his eyes (not yet fully defeated, that is) and i bolted. in the mean time, what i hadn't noticed is that the airport had got really crowded. there were swarms of people all over, but that didn't really bother me. i ran into the crowds, and lo-and-behold they parted as i approached them, in a moses and the red sea sort of a way. it was a bit more comical than grand though, it was more like the sea was frightened by moses rather than moving away respectfully. in all that chaos, and after lots of chasing and parting of people, i saw
the defeat in sid's eyes and i knew there'd be no more of this. so then in order to let him have his moment (my best buddy after all and all that symbiotic living), i allowed him to come close and
when he lunged after me, i pretended that he'd got me by surprise. so as to not make it look too easy (he was on the floor behind me with my legs in his hand), i dragged him a bit and then relented. both of us were bushed by then. sid was pouring with sweat and had bloody elbows from the last encounter and i was panting like i'd run a marathon. someone mercifully brought the collar and leash so that i could lead him out of the airport finally. from the looks of it, all activity in the airport had stopped, and everyone had their eyeballs firmly planted on me. felt damn good, i have to say - none of these guys here are going to come close to a cage again and make stupid barking sounds at any dog ever again.

next up on arriva - how i did get to madras finally? i was flying (in an awesome way) even before i got anywhere close to the airport.

that's my mad niece, luna, with a tongue that makes her look kinda stupid..

confession about my age..

ok - i'm not really 16 years old like it says on my profile. i'm actually 6 (going on 7, as good indians like to say!). they don't allow anyone less than 13 to have a blog, so i had to bluff it. my birthday is right though - just changed the year from 1999 to 1989.
and what is all this about dog years? i JUST don't understand it. some say multiply our age by 7 and you get the real age, some have more complex formulae. hello! the earth goes around the sun in just over 365 days - that's a year. it's a year for an ant (yes, that ant), for an elephant, for an atom. on earth - that's a year FULL STOP. i'm not getting into the theory of relativity and quantum things here - don't really understand it - lets save the time, space relativity and warpage for another day. in the normal scheme of things - i'm just over 6 earth years. people like to multiply by 7 so that they feel good when we die at 11x7=77 years. face it - only the cool die young, and you're all in the wrong species to be really cool.

another thing - i plan to blog regularly (yeah right, now we know who's the cool one!). but the issue is that as approximately half my life is over including what were definitely some achingly cool years, i plan to grace you all with a story from my past every time. they'll be in no particular order, just what catches my fancy at the time. lets call that part arriva.. (dunno why)

ARRIVA 1
like the time when i went for a walk with ro and vaz. sid was outta town and ro was in another one of his exercise moods. started the walk around boat club as i usually did, with ro on the leash. i was being patient, not pulling/ tugging and sooner than i figured, vaz wanted to be on the leash beacause 'he's being so gentle today'. yeah, right! there's this idiot dog in the house down the road (can always smell when he's there, smells like bat barf) who i just had to get some day. every time i pass his closed gate he barks like an idiot, knowing fully well he'd run a mile if that gate wasn't in the way. so we got closer to his place, and i was being 'gentle' (on the leash with vaz) to get the element of surprise. his ugly muzzle was poking out through the gate and he was barking away at me, as ususal. as i got within striking distance, i lunged for the guy. poor vaz didn't know what came her way. i got that imbecile's muzzle in my death-grip and yanked his neck through the gate. he yelped and pulled, but it's a death-grip, remember? the mutt was in pain, not that it bothered me. in the background i figured that ro was now trying to pull me away. didn't want to get him into any trouble, so after a few more seconds of pleasure, i let go of the mutt - didn't turn till i saw him run all the way back to the house with his tail between his legs.
the ususal drama followed, with ro and vaz shouting at me. i was pleased to bits though and knew that ro was damn proud too! he messaged sid straight off and boy, did everyone sound happy. i was walking on air all the way back home, but when the absolute glee wore off, i drank a ton of water - bat barf doesn't taste as good as it sounds, after all!

of symbiotic relationships and the blasted food baell

the mum says that this'll be one dull blog, what the hell, it probably will be. do i care? this one is really all about me, the one and only kubanosis/ kubert/ kubertos/ kubert-mos/ nosis/ kubaliscious or just kuba/ kubes/ kuboo. they're obviously quite jobless - every day a new name and more confusion (for me). or at least i pretend to be when they're calling me one of the sillier names.
it's all about a "symbiotic" relationship, they say. that's right. i get fed all the time and give one roaring bark after that - protecting the house, that is. works well for me. i sleep all day, so that when it's night time i can sctatch on the door so long that they put the air-conditioner on for me so that i don't complain any more. who's the trained one around here?!
yes, that blasted food baell - it's driving me bloody nuts. they got me this thing which they stuff with goodies the size of my paw and it has an opening the size of an ant's arse (if they have one). i have to wrestle with it for hours before a morsel comes out and they think it's damn cute. cute is what actually comes out of that ant, and not me obsessed about a stupid baell that drives me nuts.
getting a bit bored in the flat now, so it's walk time. i'll just pretend to sniff around and want to take a pee, and see the way they come running to take me for a walk. well trained, indeed!
laters,
the destroyer

come and get it!