Rufus Does Rufus: Rufus Wainwright at the Royal Opera House

Flashback

They say, before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. I know this to be untrue. No, I’m not blogging from the beyond, but - years ago - I had a near-death experience.

Or, rather, a near-broken leg experience.

The doctor said that had the car been driving any faster, I may or may not have broken a bone or, at the very least, a finger nail.

At the moment of impact, a life did flash before my eyes. But it wasn’t mine. It was series 1 to 3 of Dawson’s Creek.

"I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over."

Last week, I found myself on the roadside again, but this time it wasn’t a near-death experience, but the start of something new. I was down on one knee, asking my girlfriend Brook to marry me.

In that moment, our life together flashed before my eyes. The night we met at a house party in Archway, our trip to India, moving in together, getting a cat, losing a cat, the night we fought and I threw my dinner in the compost (I had my reasons), that morning, when we had tea and toast in bed.

What happens now until the next flashback us up to us to fill with happy memories.

She said, yes, by the way! I’ll keep you updated on this blog.

My Love Affair with Computers

You could say that I was never properly introduced to computers. At school we shared one between three and the other boys seemed to know them much better, negotiating them as they would girls at the school disco. As such, I hung back, dreading my turn. We'd bump teeth, I thought, step on each others toes.


It wasn't until my dad brought one home unannounced from God-knows-where (probably the same place he got my mountain bike or the VCR) that we got know one another. The Amstrad PC-1640 sat on the dining room table, eating actual floppy disks; sometimes it took two to get going and you had to pull a latch down over its mouth so it didn't spit them out.

My dad had no idea how to use it, but somehow it fell for my lines and showed me a rudimentary Paint programme and eventually a Bruce Lee video game, which I amazingly accepted as playable.



A year or so later, my uncle handed down his old Windows 3.1 laptop. And while I was initially impressed with its mobility, the feeling soon evaporated when he explained the battery and the power cable were both faulty. It still worked, mind you, but only when you kept your foot on its power cable.

So while I couldn't take it into school, I could swap its not-so-floppy disks with my friends. I traded a 'perfectly playable' Bruce Lee video game for some pixelated photos of Gillian Anderson, which loaded on my laptop's greyscale screen, one line at a time, coming into focus to reveal a frowning FBI agent in a trouser suit.

My network grew with the advent of a new PC - the Advent 'Astute', which ran Windows 95, CD-ROMs, like the Encarta Encyclopaedia, and the revelatory Internet. It was with this that my love of computers grew. I couldn't get enough. I ripped demo CDs from magazine covers, I clogged up the phone-line and ran up the bill. "You hang up," I said to the Internet. "No, it replied. "You hang up!". And I made what was probably the wisest investment of my life: a box of old .Net magazines from a car boot sale for just a pound. At the back of each issue was a section on how to code your own website. Now, 12 years on, I'm making a living doing just that.

We were never properly introduced, but computers, the Internet and that box of old magazines changed my life.

Movember Mo' Problems

Today is the last day of Movember, an annual month-long moustache-growing charity event to raise funds and awareness for men's health issues.

Now, I may not be the best ambassador for men's health: having fallen through the cracks of the NHS, I've not been to the doctor in over two years and I don't know if this growth is normal, but - hey! - I signed up anyway, and have spent the month growing a moustache in the name of charidee.

But it nearly didn't happen. Movember rules state 'Mo Bros' must start the month clean shaven, which I did, using the only shaving paraphernalia I could find in the flat - a bottle of Herbal Essence and Brooky Wook's lady shave.

I'd kept a full-beard for over two years, had thrown out my own shaver and was a little bit worried about what I would find underneath the facial hair. Would there be spots, I wondered. Or a tan line?

There were neither, thank God, but as I chipped away at two years of beard and the little bits of biscuit I found in there I started to think back to the first time I shaved.

While I'm keeping one now for charity, it's not technically the first time I've had a moustache. Like so many Asian boys it came early - I was perhaps 10 - and like so many Asian mothers mine was reluctant for me to shave it off and enter puberty.

I did the summer before starting "big school", but it kept coming back, each time thicker and faster. It meant that I left one institution looking like Frida Kahlo and entered another looking like an Ofsted inspector with a 3.30pm shadow. Teachers clutched their lesson plans nervously as I walked the halls. I was an 11-year-old man-child, ravaged by puberty, bones flung in all directions; I was stretched to six feet, sinewy muscle just covering the expanse of my growth; my voice an imperceptible pitch, miming its way through three years of school choir - a music teacher unable to harmonise my low growl with the soprano of my classmates.

I must have imagined that the feeling of awkwardness would pass as I grew into my body and became a man but, in truth, I don't think it ever has. I'm just as awkward now with my moustache, as I was at 11 years old without one.

"Oh, this is not a look I'm nurturing, by the way," I said in an effort to explain away my moustache to a conference delegate last week, gesticulating awkwardly at my own face. "I'm doing it for charity."

"You're doing Movember too?" Another delegate asked, joining us, and pointing at his own moustache.

"Oh," the first said, laughing so hard her name badge popped off. "I thought you meant your glasses!"

***

One man dies every hour of prostate cancer in the UK - more than 35,000 will be diagnosed this year! It's the most common kind of cancer here.

Movember is now in its third year and, to date, has achieved some pretty amazing results, working alongside The Prostate Cancer Charity. You can find out more at: http://uk.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs.

And look back over my progress at: http://uk.movember.com/mospace/248626 and - please! - it's not too late to make a donation.

I may be losing my moustache tomorrow, but I'm keeping these glasses forever.

The Swami's Visit

Quite often, what we mistake for our earliest memories are in fact our fathers' first camcorder outings. So I won't claim this as my own, but I do remember seeing, at least, a home video of a man known to my family as simply... the Swami.

The Swami, which is an honorific title, is a holy man who tours the world, staying for a few days at a time in Hindu homes. Since the South Asian Diaspora is amongst the furthest flung, the Swami is a very well travelled man.

In the home video he is shown praying in the flat above my parents' corner shop in Newport, Shropshire. Not his most glamourous gig, I imagine, but for us - my two sisters and I - he was an exotic visitor in our otherwise suburban lives.

In what is a particularly uncomfortable scene for me the Swami reaches down from his seat on the sofa to where we children are sat, at his feet, and strokes my head, like I were the cat to his Bond villain. Instead of purring, I stifle a laugh for what felt like an hour, but what the video reveals to have been only a few minutes.

For us, it was the highlight of the Swami's visit. We recounted the story to each other (though we were all there), each time its telling more exaggerated. "It was like I was his bowling ball!" I'd say, not realising how creepy that sounded.

***

When he returned, years later, we were in our teens and had moved house. As he climbed our driveway, I noticed a pair of Nike Air Jordans peeking out from underneath his orange robes. He looked up at the new house, much bigger than the last, a symbol of my parents' success, and declared it bad luck.

"Its shape," he said. "Is like the open mouth of a roaring lion."

I came out to help him with his bags, paused and looked up at the house as if it were a Magic Eye illusion. Maybe the lion would appear if I moved up close, fixed my eyes and stepped slowly back, I thought. But, however I looked at it, it was a new build, detached house with a separate garage joined by a granny annexe extension.

Once inside, he found our house more to his liking. Furniture draped in tarpaulin, at his request, so that when he sat he wouldn't come into contact with the seat. Water too, on his arrival, was poured into his mouth so that the glass didn't touch his lips. He plugged in his mobile phone to charge (it was the first I'd ever seen) and announced his final request - that he stay in my bedroom. As the youngest, he said, my room would be untouched by carnal desires. Good luck with that, buddy, I thought.

That evening, as we gathered in the lounge for a prayer session, we resumed our original positions: children (and mere mortals) to the floor, Swami perched on the covered sofa. This time, when he reached down to stroke my head, he found himself tangled in sticky spikes.

"Any questions?" he asked when we were done. "Anything you like."

It was quiet. I guess we thought if we asked any questions we'd only have to sit there, stifling laughter, for even longer. But it was awkward, so I raised my hand and scanned the room, looking for inspiration, my eyes landing on a painting of the avatar Krishna, in typical pose, playing a flute and dancing with women. Topless women, I'll add.

"Mr Swami?" I said.

"Swami," he corrected me.

"Swami, why's the Lord Krishna always surrounded by women?" I asked. I was fifteen, bear in mind, and if I could just have his secret...

"Sandeep," he said. "You mustn't ask questions of your religion. OK?"

OK. So his question, as to whether we had any questions, was a rhetorical question?

I was glad when he left. And as I helped him with his bags I thought that for a Swami, "free from all the senses", he sure had a lot of shit with him. Checking for his mobile phone, a dance I'd soon learn myself, he was on his way, off to chide more children and put them off the religion their parents so wanted them to embrace.

***

I was reminded of all of this when I went home for Diwali last weekend. It was a similar scene: the family gathered in the lounge for a prayer session on the Saturday evening, except we all sat on the floor this time. And perhaps because this made me feel like we were on the same level, I interrupted the prayer to ask why we didn't say it in English.

"I mean, no-one understands this," I said. I hadn't wanted to start a revolution, but the debate my question had sparked was turning into one.

"Can't you be a Hindu without speaking Hindi?" my sister asked.

"Yeah, why's the religion and the language so tied up?"

You can see that our line of questioning had matured since the Swami's visit, but even still it was upsetting mum. She finished the prayer, put away her books and went to the kitchen.

The next day, as I was packing to return to London, I came across a magazine in my old room. Though the Swami wasn't with us this Diwali he'd found his way onto the cover of Hinduism Today, which had pronounced him, "Hindu of the Year". I wondered how he'd earned the title. Fluent in Hindi? Unquestioning? Looking at the cover, he had a lot of bindis. Maybe that helped. I took a photo of the magazine and put away my camera. I'd been teaching myself photography and Diwali this year had turned into an ethnographic study.

In the car on the way to the railway station I apologised to my mum for upsetting her the night before.

"That's okay, son," she said. "It just upset me, I suppose, that you're willing to teach yourself photography, but you seem uninterested in your own religion."

It didn't feel like my religion, I wanted to say. And the fact that I asked questions meant that I was interested.

But I didn't say anything. I didn't want an argument before I left, and I didn't really want a revolution. I'd had a great weekend, and I knew that when I got home and processed the photos I'd have the evidence in my hands. You just can't say that about religion.

"Mum," I said, as I got out of the car. "Why is Krishna always surrounded by topless women?"

My mum wound-up the car window and started the engine. I guess you can't say that either.

Naked Wii Fit

I was squeezing into an old pair of trousers when I first realised that I'd gained weight. In fact, it was the third pair I'd tried to squeeze into that day. I thought they too had 'shrunk in the wash,' along with my shirts, my jacket and my... watch.

Adjusting its strap, I thought to myself that it was time to lose some weight. The hips don't lie, as they say, and neither do the scales. As I stood on them, the needle swung wildly to the right and I watched as my toes slowly disappeared beneath the girth of my belly.

What was next to vanish? I shuddered (and wobbled a little bit) at the thought. And how did I let myself go?

I've been working from home for about four years. And while there are advantages, like not having to commute, it does completely negate the need to exercise. When I was living in Shrewsbury, at least, I'd walk to meetings. Then I moved to London, where I lived in Kilburn, where you had to move quickly or else get mugged. But now that I'm in Hackney with Brooky Wook I don't even have to travel to see her. She comes home after work to find me sprawled on the sofa, deep in a bag of crisps, like an actual coach potato.

But standing on the scales, as I was, eating crisps, I realised that if I couldn't change my diet I was going to have to do some exercise. And while I might not be tightening my belt, I am tightening the purse strings, so I worked out that buying a Wii Fit was cheaper than buying a good pair of running shoes. Not only that, but it would overcome any awkwardness I'd feel at running with the Olympic hopefuls in Victoria Park. Plus, if there's anything that's going to get me into exercise it's technology, right?

So now, when Brooky Wook comes home, she finds me off the couch, out of that crisp packet and onto the Balance Board, swinging my hips around an imaginary hula-hoop, punching the shit out of thin air or hitting the negligible slopes of our front room. I don't know if she's any less disturbed.

But, while I might look more 'bunny boiler' than 'gym bunny', I am actually losing weight! 4 lbs, to be precise. And I've got Brooky Wook involved too. The healthy competition has me determined to reach my ideal weight even quicker. Unfortunately that competition has already closed. The Wii Fit tells Brooker that according to her BMI if she gets any thinner she'll be dangerously underweight. So, soon I'll have the added challenge of trying to lose the pounds while my girlfriend tries to gain them.

Stepping off the Balance Board tonight however it looks like I've beaten her at her own game, having gained the 4 lbs that I had just yesterday lost. It makes me wonder how heavy my clothes are! Maybe tomorrow, when she comes home, she'll find me naked atop the Board, lunging at the TV - not necessarily fitter, but having lost weight, all the same. And at least I won't need to buy new trousers.

• Wii Fit

Talking-point pen

I spend most of my time at my computer. And now that I have push email on my phone, it's like I'm carrying around a baby monitor, constantly listening out for the gurgling of an inbox or the wailing of an unread RSS reader.

So it felt very strange indeed to shut down my computer, as I did last week, and sit at a desktop not cluttered with icons and folders but with pens and pencils and actual paper. I thought I'd revisit an old pastime by drawing a relatively new one - my guitar. I'd taken it up when I last eschewed technology, albeit not through choice, when our Internet connection went down at University. (I taught myself how to play 'I Can't Live (If Living Is Without You)' whilst waiting to be reconnected.)

And - do you know what? - it was pretty good! So I signed myself up for a life drawing drop-in session in Islington. "To draw," as I kept telling people. "Not to model!" Like anyone thought that was the case. But it wasn't until I got there that I realised how strange it was - not to be in a room with naked strangers (if anything, it was probably the best way to wean me off the Internet), but to be in a room with strangers altogether...

I work from home and for myself; I rarely have meetings with people I haven't Googled; and I've been with my girlfriend long enough to know all of her friends and for her to know all of mine. And yet there I was, in a room full of strangers, two of them completely undressed, not knowing a single soul.

For the most part it didn't matter. We sat there, scribbling away, trying not to look directly at the penis, as if it were the sun peeking out from a solar eclipse. Occasionally someone would hold up a pencil as if they were trying to block it out completely. But it was quiet and everyone got on with it.

But then the tutor called for a break. 'Oh no!' I thought. 'Chit-chat'. Thinking I could bypass the whole ordeal, I skipped out to the bathroom and stayed as long as I could without appearing to have an actual medical problem. But by the time I got back the students had paired up exactly. There must have been an odd number of attendees - and I was that odd number.
The tutor announced that we had ten minutes left of our break.
'How long is this break?!' I thought. I tried to fill it by alternately looking at my own sketches, which made me feel conceited; by looking at other people's, which made me feel nosy; or by looking at the models, who were now draped in sarongs, sipping coffee. That made me feel more like a pervert than when they were naked. And so I realised that I had no choice but to make conversation.

"That's an interesting pen," I heard one student remark to another. It was my way in, I thought. I'd mention the pen.
"Yeah, you squeeze it to control the flow of ink," replied the other. They were both student age of the conventional sense. Student students.
"That's an interesting pen!" I interjected. It was only when they turned to face me that I realised how close we were all sitting. We nearly bumped noses. There was no way I couldn't have overheard their conversation.
"Yeah," she went on, looking bemused. "You, er, squeeze it."
"Okay, that's time!" shouted the tutor, signalling the end of the break. I wasn't sure whether I was relieved that the agony of breaktime was over or disappointed that I hadn't moved beyond pen chat to redeem myself as a conversational virtuoso. I didn't get another chance. In fact, "that's an interesting pen," was the only thing I said all night. And - do you know what? - it wasn't even an interesting pen. It was a ball-point.

Luddite to lady

I've been using Twitter for about three years now and have never, in that time, been approached by anyone urging me to 'tweet'. In fact, I think the only conversations I've had on the topic have been with sceptics, urging me to stop. So, where this fear comes from - that one day soon 'Tweeps' all over the world will rise up and force us to open accounts and update them with the oft and ill quoted "I'm having a sandwich" line - is something of a mystery to me.

And, I think, there are two ways of dealing with mysteries; that is, dealing with that which we don't understand. You can, like the great mystery solvers - Holmes, Marple, Fletcher, Creek - attempt to unravel them. Or you can fear them, run and hide. Or really go for it - galvanise your fear into a pitchfork and torch-waving angry mob. Well, I don't much like crowds, so I'm going up the Jonathan Creek route with this one. And I'm taking a paddle.

I spent the early part of this weekend politely batting comments from a techno-sceptic on a number of topics, from records versus MP3s to e-book readers versus paperbacks. And I'll discuss them here, even though I don't think they're really versus debates.

But I think there's a word for the kind of person with whom I was debating and that's a prosophobe - someone who is afraid of progress. You could say that she was a luddite, a term that has come to mean an opponent of technological progress. It comes from the social movement of 19th century workmen, who destroyed laboursaving machinery and stood against the Industrial Revolution. But since the debate ended with her gently pulling out her iPod nano and not by flinging it across the floor in protest, I don't think that would be quite fair.

To be fair would be to say that even the luddites would find it difficult to stick to their principles in the 21st century. My prosophobic friend mourned the death of vinyl, but pulled an iPod out of her bag; she derided the Twittersphere in a Facebook status update; and I imagine she wants to take London off the Google Map over this Street View controversy.

As a luddite might realise, that's a lot to smash up. But a cure for what scares you, as a prosophobe, is to realise not that the new replaces the old but that it lives alongside it. Take, for example, the e-book reader versus the paperback debate.
"It's just ridiculous," she said. "What will people put on their shelves?"
"Well, books." I said. "You can have both."

Books are, as Stephen Fry reminds us, themselves a technology and one that many called, at their advent, the work of the devil. "They only went and taught people how to make e-book readers, didn't they?" I said.

As Fry puts it, "You don't throw away your books when you buy a computer. You keep both. The beauty of living in the present day is you don't abandon the past. The past co-exists."

And the future is forged by the curious, not by the fearful. The greatest mystery solvers weren't Holmes, Marple, Fletcher or even Creek. They were Darwin, Edison, Curie, Obama. And, if they were around today, I reckon, they'd be on Twitter. Obama is.

And, I shouldn't say this in the same breath, so am I! Follow me at: twitter.com/sansharma

Knowing meme, knowing you

Quick question, pop quiz fans: What do I have in common with Rick Astley, Snakes on a Plane and a golf club-wielding fat kid? No, it's not that we'd be terrible company on a long-haul flight (I may look like a terrorist in all my hirsuteness, but I couldn't hijack a second bag of peanuts).

The answer is, we're all subjects of Internet memes - a sort of web 2.0 inside joke, a catchphrase or concept that's spread quickly from person to person via the Internet.

The movie, Snakes on a Plane, inspired a raft of parodies, songs and fan fiction; YouTube made a reluctant star of the 'Star Wars kid' (now, sadly, under psychiatric care "for an indefinite amount of time"); and the recent surprise (though not undeserving) recipient of this year's Best Act Ever MTV award, Rick Astley, was the subject of a phenomenon called Rickrolling, whereby web surfers were tricked into watching the 1987 music video, "Never Gonna Give You Up".

Similarly, users of the social networking website, Facebook, might be mildly irritated to click the status updates of their friends, which are beginning to lead to my website. Mine changed last week to "San Sharma is sansharma.com"; it was followed by similar URL-toting updates from my girlfriend and now two of her colleagues. In the nicest way possible (and in a way that won't alarm my girlfriend), I'm viral! And my web statistics are beginning to show. Facebook is the top referrer, followed by Google, where one visitor found me with the query "massage parlours shropshire" (I'm on page 8 of the results, which says more about said visitor's appetite than it does my website).

Let's hope I don't befall the same fate as other Internet memettes (though I'd rather a Best Act Ever award than a lifetime of psychiatric care). On that note, I'll leave you with my favourite of the memes, viewed an estimated 1 billion times - ladies and gentlemen, the Star Wars Kid.

"It's a small world..."

Welcome, if it works, to version 2.0 of my website. To quote Barack Obama (quoting Sam Cooke), it's been a long time coming, but tonight, change has come to sansharma.com.

And it very nearly didn't.

I've switched domain registrants and web hosts so many times over the last few years that I found myself in an infinite loop, unable to remember usernames, passwords or even the companies with whom I'd parted cash. Once I did, I began working behind-the-scenes, tinkering with code and little bits of script, which had all the appeal and terror of stepping off a Disneyland ride and seeing how all the Animatronics work. Now that it's done, I hope you'll find that version 2.0 has more to offer, including the full archive of my blog (and new posts!), my portfolio, including my books, and a growing audio and video page.

I've pulled the lever, I'm hopping back on my carriage and I hope you'll join me for the ride. Don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feed and add me up on Twitter. And drop me a line, by visiting my contact page.

Lots of love,

Tales from the crypt

For a self-proclaimed (and obsessed) geek, it came as something of a blow when those vanguards of vanity, Google, announced that I'd reached my peak in 2004. If 'Googling' yourself is considered an ego stroke, then analysing your name via new service, Google Insights, is like checking into a Thai massage parlour. Except, in my case, without the 'happy ending'. The service reported that I was most popular in the United States, followed by India and then the UK. (It seems I'd failed to make an impression on Canada.) It also generated a graph of 'Interest over time' that sloped steadily downwards from 2004 when I was first started blogging, to the present day, as I write to you now, following a four month hiatus.

So, why the silent treatment?

Well, since I last wrote, back in April, I seem to have found myself in love's death-grip. I was already struggling to update the blog when I met Brooky Wook and then embarked on a relationship completely at odds with the legacy of this website: healthy, functional, romantic. For what is essentially a catalogue of my dating failures, is being lucky in love the final nail in what was already the dusty coffin of my personal blog?

Don't worry, dear readers, there's room for one more in this coffin made for two. I won't be cracking open its lid anytime soon and clambering six feet up to a spring meadow of bunny rabbits and love hearts. Being in a relationship brings with it a whole new set of social faux pas, one of which I'm reminded this week, as Brooky Wook prepares to meet my family for the first time.

I was in a similar position last weekend, having been invited to her grandad's 87th birthday lunch in Canterbury. Her dad picked us up from the train station and drove us to the Wook household, where I nervously approached the front door, opened quite suddenly by a man waving what appeared to be a walking stick in the air. This did not calm my nerves. Instead, they rattled with the bag of gifts that Brooky Wook and I had bought her grandad. I pushed them towards the man's free hand like I was popping a flower in the nose of a gun. I smiled, wished him a Happy Birthday and watched as both stick and face dropped.

"It's not my birthday," he said. "I'm [Brooky Wook's] uncle."
"Ah," I said, taking a closer look at the man I'd mistaken for an 87 year old grandfather - tall, fortysomething, with only a hint of grey in his full head of hair. "I know that! ...But it was your birthday recently, right?"
"Yes. In January."
"Well," I said, easing the gifts back from his hand. "Happy... belated birthday!"

I stepped inside and saw Grandfather Wook, behind thick, bottle-top glasses, being helped from his rocking chair by two grandchildren and a walking stick more traditional than that held in his son's hand. Uncle Wook, I learned, had just returned from Kenya, and the stick was a cattle herding staff, used by the Maasai tribe. I imagine he'd thought of using it for a different purpose that day.

But as I left with Brooky-Wook I realised that I hadn't buried social faux pas when I found love. It may be a many splendored thing, lift us up where we belong, be all that we need, but it doesn't free us from the awkwardness that has been the legacy of this blog since 2004. If anything, it makes it worse.

Old clothes, new gags at 'Dude Patrol'

I didn't have an excuse. But believe me, I wracked my brains. I wanted nothing less than to go to an interactive comedy night, an hour and a half away in Stoke Newington. But I'm dating again and have fallen into a routine of taking turns to "host". 'Captain Dude and the Dude Patrol', at Ryan's Bar on the Stoke Newington High Street, fell on her day ('her' henceforth referred to as 'my Brooky Wook').

Accepting Brooky Wook's invitation, I thought, might make my turn - inviting her to my ex-girlfriend's house for dinner - a little easier (on me, I imagine, not so much on her). So I said, 'yes,' and rode that Overground, somewhat reluctantly, to the scary, north-east corner of zone 2.

Call me an old curmudgeon, but the idea of painting, of making things, dressing up in old, jumble-sale clothes and competing for prizes, all of which was promised by its Facebook event description, made me want to stay home, wash my hair, catch up on my junk mail correspondence - anything to avoid the kind of interaction with strangers that sounded about as fun as being mugged.

I saw a guy at a comedy night, right here in West Hampstead, whose entire set consisted of a conversation with an audience member, about as engaging as being collared by a high street charity collector. By the end of it, he looked about ready to hand over his Direct Debit details, just so that he could go on with his life.

"The comedy's not amazing," Brooky Wook said, as we took our seats. "But the atmosphere's great." The atmosphere was pretty tense, from where I was sitting. I was terrified of being picked by the compère, Tom Bell, whose sprightly androgyny reminded me of a theme park animal trainer, who once plucked me from a crowd of otherwise happy holiday makers to perform with what wasn't the real Lassie but what looked good enough to pass.

I was 10 years old, and arrived with my family just before show time, managing to squeeze onto the front row of the 'Animal Actors on Location' attraction at Universal Studios Florida. I was aware that because of my proximity to the stage and the ease with which I could get there and back with minimum interruption to the crowd, I had the highest chance of being picked by the animal trainer. I was as terrified of him as I was of the dog, so I did my best to catch neither pair of eyes. But I guess they both smelled my fear and, before I knew it, I was on the stage, shaking Lassie's paw to my obvious embarrassment. (Why can't dogs smell that?)

But here, in the basement of Ryan's Bar, the front row was the only row. I took it with a big swig of my drink and finally relaxed into my seat. If Universal Studios wasn't such a 'dry' theme park, I might have had a better experience. But last night, at 'Captain Dude and the Dude Patrol', I had a surprisingly good time.

Bell made for an excellent compère, as comfortable on stage as he was in the massive "sleeping bag-come-coat" he picked out for himself from the jumble-sale. His comedy partner, Ed Weeks, was late, but no less funny. His punishment from Bell was the accusation of racism, eliciting a chorus of boos from the crowd, triggered by a hand signal designed by Bell in Weeks' absence.

Pippa Evans put in a good turn, acting alongside Bell in episode two of 'Plaice Invaders', the completely improvised soap opera set in a fish & chip shop in space. All of this, set to a soundtrack of the worst charity shop vinyl Bell could find and all the laughter we, in our crowd of 15, could muster.

"If you like finding furniture on the street," the Facebook event description went on, "you'll love Dude Patrol." I do and I did. But unlike stumbling across a broken wicker chair or a discarded coffee table, there was nothing wooden about these dudes. It's a comedy night worth checking out, if you live in the area. I might just make that one and and a half hour journey back out there, next month.

Facebook Chat: A poke too far?

My sister, Suman, is late to the party that is social networking. At 29, she graduated before Facebook became the big man on campus it is today and left high school while MySpace was still a twinkle in Tom Anderson's eye.

In the last month, she's joined both networks, muddled them up in her head and failed in her attempts to stay relevant by referring to each as MyFace. (I had to stop her from inviting friends to meet there. It was a conversation I never wanted to have with my sister.)

Just as Suman's getting to know Facebook (and her friends in a more intimate way than she imagined), I'm trying to distance myself from the social network that's costing UK business over £130m a day and 233 million hours of 'lost time' every month.

I'll be running for the hills when it rolls out its new instant messaging feature in the next couple of weeks. It's hitting some networks and the reviews are pretty good, but Facebook's already given me a second inbox to battle, not to mention another Wall to climb, and I'm terrified that I'll never keep up with friends, nor will I want to know that they're getting a sandwich, packing for their holidays or being surprised at the result of a football match, reality TV show or STD test.

It's hard enough trying to sneak onto Facebook without someone noticing that you haven't replied to their message ("oh, I haven't checked," doesn't really work). Now its new chat features promise to bring back into fashion a certain keyboard shortcut dance I used to perform when avoiding friends on instant messengers. (If I log on and then off immediately, you'll know what just happened...)

It's not too late for my sister, Suman - she's not yet hooked. However, by making Facebook a more real time experience, its developers are hoping session length will go through the roof. But it might just be the poke that pushes users, like me, over the edge.

The Bitch Is Back

I entertain by picking brains
Sell my soul by dropping names
I don't like those, my god, what's that?
Oh, it's full of nasty habits when the bitch gets back

'The Bitch Is Back', Elton John

I'm back on the blogosphere, guys, riding it all the way to your web browser, like an excited child on a space hopper. And what better way to return - out of breath - than with an Elton John lyric. (That should put to bed those 'gay' rumours.) Expect more brain-picking, name-dropping, gender-bending nastiness soon.

 

If, like Elton John suggests, there are bad habits, one might be going AWOL. I do apologise for that. And now that I'm back from my little sabbatical, let me explain.

I've been going through a period of change. Yes readers, puberty has hit me like a tonne of hairy bricks. Not only that, but after three years of working as Creative Director of Redbrick Enterprises Ltd., and on it's flagship product, Enterprise Nation, I've left to go freelance. The decision came about after a series of escalating threats led to my departure.

"Right," I said. "I'm going to leave!"
"Leave then," said managing director, Emma Jones.
"Okay, I'm leaving."
"Go!"
"I'm going." This went on for some time.
"On the count of three," I think I might have said. "1... 2... 2 and a half... 2 and three quarters..." Until, all of a sudden, I'd gone!

I'm still doing some work for Enterprise Nation - and everything's fine! - but I'm designing, writing and presenting for other companies too. You should expect this blog to change somewhat as well. Its focus is going to shift to pop culture, technology and business. But don't be surprised to find sprinklings of the old personal stuff. Inappropriate stuff, if anything.

Old habits, as they say, die hard. Nasty habits reincarnate.

So, welcome back to my blog, if you've been here before. If it's your first time, subscribe to my RSS feed, so you don't miss my updates, which I'm going to try and make more often. In the meantime, enjoy this video from the original "bitch". It's Elton John, with a pole-dancing Pamela Anderson, and a performance that I think really captures the essence of this blog: the roaring crowd, the sex appeal, the fat guy at the keyboard...

The Bitch Is Back, Elton John

Homeworking in action

Homeworking in action, originally uploaded by San Sharma.

Coconut Boy

While other mums worry about their sons turning to drugs, getting their girlfriends pregnant or joining some sort of gang, mine is concerned with matters more spiritual. (Besides, I don't have a girlfriend, I'm a responsible member of an online community and I just turned down a line of coke because I had a "terrible blocked nose".) The way my mum sees it, the only road I'm heading down is the one clearly marked, 'Identity Crisis'.

"Coconut boy," she calls me. "Brown on the outside, white on the inside."

While there might, at least, be parts of me that resemble a coconut - brown, covered in hair and full of a white, milky fluid - at this time of the year, when my colour fades, it's quite easy to 'lose my roots' when they're not so etched onto my face in hues of burnt sienna, sepia and mahogany. I'm invited to fewer dinner parties, considered less effective as a token person of colour, and stopped far less by police men.

It takes just a two hour journey up north and one weekend with my family to bring that muddy colour back to my sweet cheeks and to remind me that my roots don't stop in Shropshire, but in a land far, far away, to which ex-pat relatives still squint and admire what remains of a changing culture.

I found out this morning that my cousin, a graduate from Kings College London, is in India to get married.
"That's crazy!" I said. "Has he even met her before?"
"Oh yeah," my mum replied, nonchalantly. "At the engagement party, I think."

He's my second cousin in as many years to go east to find the perfect Indian bride. Some send for the brides to come over to the UK. Others, like my cousin, get married in India with a view to bring their brides home once 'the paperwork' is ready.

On the one hand, I think it sort of represents a failure, as if the groom-to-be was no match made in heaven for the British Indian girls he would have seen on the arranged marriage circuit (which I like to imagine is like the selection process of American Idol; Simon Cowell as busty bride-to-be).

On the other hand, it's like the son or, more often, his parents, look to India for the 'old fashioned decency' quickly escaping British Indian girls. (It's being replaced by ambition, I'm pleased to report.)

What they don't know - or fail to see - is that the kind of girl that insists on a wedding register at the UK Border & Immigration Agency, is probably pretty ambitious. And that India is going through it's own (belated) sexual revolution (after ironically triggering western 'free love' movements of the 1960s and 1970s, with the rediscovery of its ancient culture of sexual liberalism).

The pursuit and purchase of the 'perfect Indian bride' might be more a case for Trading Standards than Border and Immigration control. Ambition and sexual liberalism is completely at odds with the requirements of my cousin, his parents and other British Indians who look to India for 'old fashioned decency', as impossible to attain as the 'impaling on a stake' position of one of its most old-fashioned texts, the Kama Sutra.

Nevertheless, I wish them luck. If I'm like a coconut, and life a box of chocolates, an arranged marriage is like a curry. It's hot, it's exotic, you can pick it up or have it delivered, but soon enough that shit's going to really hurt.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Juno is pretty cool

"You're like the coolest person I've ever met," Ellen Page says to a knobbly knee'd Michael Cera at the climax of Juno. "And you don't even have to try, you know."
"I try really hard, actually."

Juno was Fox Searchlight's sleeper hit of 2007, grossing over $85 million in the US (after a modest budget of only $7.5 million). It comes out in the UK on February 8th and I was there at its VIP screening at the Soho Hotel in London last week.

Why am I dressed like a dork?

(If you're reading this through my RSS feed, you might not get the accompanying picture. In any case, it's probably a sensible question to ask - and on most occasions.)

My housemate Bill and I were there to help out a friend, whose event management company was putting on the screening. She needed a couple of geeks to dress up as characters from the film, greet guests and pose for pictures.

"You're like the geekiest guy I know," she said. "You don't even have to try." She was right. I couldn't claim, like Michael Cera's character in Juno, that the accolade was the result of any sort of effort. So, of course, I agreed to do it.

Not knowing much about the film however, I was somewhat unprepared for my costume: a sports vest and shorts, pull-up socks, a wrist and headband. Nevertheless, I left my shame with my trousers, in the cloak room, while Bill joked that stripping down to a pair shorts for £50 might be construed as the behaviour of a couple of "smack heads." We emerged from our dressing room all the same, regretfully sober and ready to face a room full of celebrities.

I joked with British soul singer, Beverley Knight, formed one point of a hip-hop love triangle with So Solid Crew's Lisa Mafia, even went for a post-screening drink with star of zombie film, 28 Weeks Later (and new best friend), Imogen Poots.

But the real star of the night - it's not difficult to say - was the movie itself. A sophomore effort from Thank You for Smoking director, Jason Reitman, Juno is a smart, funny and charming teen comedy, with real affection and wit. Go see it when it comes out here on February 8th (or catch it while you still can, if it's already showing in your country).

It's got an awesome soundtrack (that I reckon will do for The Mouldy Peaches what Garden State did for The Shins); it moves the plot along without being intrusive (take note, Sondre Lerche). And at one point, at the end of the movie, it sort of becomes the plot.

I won't ruin the ending for you. But when the film had finished, and we changed back into our own clothes, Bill joked that it felt good to be 'cool' again. As he did, I caught myself in the changing room mirror, one hand pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose, the other, buttoning the cardigan that snuggled under my second-hand blazer. I thought to myself that however hard I try, I'll never quite be cool. But that was okay.

In the film, Michael Cera's character got the girl. And there I was at the end of an awesome party, having met some pretty interesting people, £50 better off and about to go for a drink with a movie star? I suppose that is pretty cool.

Catch Juno in the UK on February 8th; find out more on the link below.

• Juno: Official Site - [Fox Searchlight]

 

New hymns

I'm back home with my parents for the holidays, where keeping up with the Jones' has escalated to a point where my family is no longer honouring its own religion, but instead joining the neighbours for midnight mass at the local Catholic church.

It's not typical behaviour for a Hindu family, but then mine has never been a typical Hindu family. Neither has it shied from Catholicism: My sisters and I went to the Catholic school opposite our house. (We got Christ and convenience - it was a 2 for 1 deal.)

As such, we knew what to expect from the service - lots of lengthy Bible passages, lots of time to 'reflect', lots of standing up and sitting down.

I didn't, however, expect there to be quite so many apologies. Soon after we arrived we joined the congregation in one massive plea for forgiveness.

It was a funny way to start, I thought. "Let's get this party started," I imagined the Father saying. "With a big fat, 'I'm sorry'." I wasn't sure why we were apologising (we weren't even late), but I joined in all the same.

It wasn't long, however, until my complicity turned into awkward silence. I was the only member of the congregation not saying 'amen,' 'thanks be to God,' or 'Kyrie Eleison' (I didn't even know what the last one meant, but I liked to think it was Jamaican patois); I was probably the only one censoring parts of Christmas carols, by refusing to sing them.

I wondered how the rest of my family could, not least because the church insisted on performing songs impossible to pick up. New ones, in an attempt to be relevant, employed all sorts of strange 'blue' notes, unpredictable key changes and song structures that eschewed the tried and tested verse/chorus formula of the last hundred or so years.

But then, I thought, that's not unlike my family at all: blue, unpredictable, unusual; also, unlike new hymns, relevant, at least to me. And, in a weird way, honouring its own religion.

No-one watching me.

"You don't want a girlfriend," I was recently reminded. "You want an audience." And despite her best efforts to, er, buck the trend, I went home alone that night and showed her that, in fact, I wanted neither. Oh, I showed her alright...

But waking up alone, again, I wondered whether there was any truth in her observation. I kind of wish I'd stuck around for its attempted deconstruction. But in all honesty, it's a fact that's been pointed out to me before.

I met her on a blind date, we'd e-mailed each other before the first meeting and she'd had the foresight to Google me in advance. Perhaps to check that I wasn't a suspected terrorist, a registered sex offender or a Tory.

But what she didn't expect was three pages of results, the first of which led her to this blog. "I have a lot less sex than people imagine," were the first words she must have read. And the dates that followed proved that I can, in fact, have even less sex than that.

But I appreciated her honesty in admitting her research, more so than her awkward first date questions. "Who is the real San Sharma?" She asked. "The man or the domain?"

I didn't expect questions any more soul searching than 'what's your favourite colour?' from a first date, but hers got me thinking.

Is being single intrinsic to my personality? Or to my persona, as a "single, metrosexual, twentysomething, British Indian male", as per the blurb above?

"What I'm asking is," she continued. "Can you have a girlfriend and an audience?" I didn't think that was an invitation to tape us having sex, so I told her that, at this time, I didn't think the two were possible. And walked home, with no-one watching me.