It is done. It was, actually... just over 3 months ago. The Roach, aye, the incredible Roach, got himself a bride.

Now the thing about getting married is, it kind of takes away your time from doing other things, like playing Bad Company 2 or updating your site... not that I'm complaining *looks over shoulder*. The Roach has been up to all sort of interesting things, starting with the run up to the big day, till present. Of course "interesting things" is a highly relative term. To the guys yet to get hitched - it will be terrible. To the ones who tied the knot a while back - it may bring back memories of similar things, and a quiet sigh. To me it's interesting because it's something that probably will happen only once in a lifetime.

So what has been keeping the Roach so busy? Well it all started around August 2010...

    Phase 0 - About a month and a half before the big day
    Activities that kept me busy were

  • Thinking of a suitable ways to communicate my intent to Niki. The usual dinner in a 5-star and then a ring appearing unexpectedly does not work for the Roach.
  • Designing, drawing and getting the above mentioned "communication of intent" printed. 5 pages. More on this later.
  • Looking at rings and understanding everything there is to know about diamonds (does not include watching Snatch).
  • Getting a ring made to a design selected after much searching.
  • Getting the ring remade because of minor flaws that I refused to accept.
  • Going to the gym 3 to 4 times a week and eating salad for dinner. Or at least trying to do that - even that takes effort!
  • Flying. Lots of flying.
  • And obviously, communicating intent and presenting the ring...

    Phase I - About 2 weeks before the big day
    Things started getting a little hectic with

  • Designing the invitation cards, finding a good printer, getting them printed, making alterations and getting them printed again.
  • Getting envelopes made that passed my strict quality control process. This resulted in the entire first set of 350 envelopes being returned, and the next lot being scrapped. Finally on the 3rd attempt the envelopes passed my inspection. Then putting 600 odd cards into envelopes and mailing them to people takes a whole lot of time...
  • Finding clothes for me to wear for the various events that make up a Punjabi wedding, and getting them altered to fit my mutant body... I never knew it takes so many trials to get a sherwani right.

    Phase II - The wedding itself
    Surely I need not provide details about what kept me busy during this period...
    Oh fine. Here.

  • Preparing strange dance sequences, trying to learn steps watching YouTube on a terrible connection.
  • Drinking and hardly sleeping while ensuring I still look pretty for the events - very hard. Trust me. Especially if you are partying so hard that you set off the fire alarm in the hotel.
  • Playing Machinarium from start to finish with Adit. What? Had to keep my mind active you know...
  • Meticulously ironing my clothes myself to avoid situations like those depicted in the movie 3 Idiots... and setting off the fire alarm in the hotel while ironing my suit. Hey I had to wait in my towel till they turned it off - that's a lot of time I could have spent updating the site!

    Phase III - Post wedding, till today
    Well to be honest, if you look at what I have actually achieved in this period it may not seem like much. Things like

  • Honeymooning, eating lots, then holding my stomach in for all the beach photos... my stomach muscles are ripped now!
  • Attempting to be more social. Yes. I went out and met a few people Niki insisted we must meet. I even attended somebody else's wedding! This is harder than you think. You have to account for the terrible Bangalore traffic after all...
  • Setting up a kitchen that is geared towards cooking more than just instant noodles and fried eggs.
  • Getting the Foosball table gifted to us by Russo, Kubnalk & Lekha, Bhaee & Lappak, Verma, Usaf, Kauchi and Asheem into the house... the bloody thing couldn't go through the front door! Luckily the time spent playing Machinarium earlier had prepared me for such tricky puzzles.
  • Thrashing all visitors to the house (goes hand in hand with the "being more social" bit) on the same Foosball table.
  • Visiting every mall and furniture store in the city looking for stuff to buy to fill the house. We have been only partially successful with this so far...
  • Spending time with Rajiv, and then spending a lot of time on the XBox he gifted me (to be honest this would account for a lot of time in this Phase). Also finding XBox games in India is hard!
  • Controlling Niki's shopping urges. Also being a good chauffer to her. Again, if you know women and Bangalore traffic, you will understand why the site does not get updated often any more!


So as you can see, I have rather valid reasons for the infrequent updates. I hope you find my reasons convincing (if not entertaining).

PS: If you too are going to get married soon and need to provide similar excuses to others, you may use some of mine for a nominal fee.